Friday, October 2, 2026
Sometime between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of 2025, a homeless man identifying himself as Henry pitched a small tent next to the public restroom on 4th Avenue East between Adams and Jefferson streets Southeast in downtown Olympia.
“I haven’t been feeling good, and I wanted to be near a toilet if I needed one,” he explained. “Last night, I didn’t see the locks or sign on the door, and I was out of luck.”
A sign taped to the door by a city official states in red letters, “Water Main Leak; Closed Until Further Notice.” Above the statement someone had scrawled in blue ink, “Water Main leak for 6+ months?” and “Lies and Fabrications.”
What use is a public restroom if it has been closed to the public for 17 months? According to some of the homeless individuals in the area, the closure is directly aimed at them.
“I think the city is trying to push us out of Olympia,” said one homeless man as several others nodded their heads in agreement. All stated they wanted to remain anonymous.
City officials disagree with their assessment of the situation.
“The restroom has been closed due to a waterline leak,” said Laura Keehan, Olympia Director of Parks Planning & Maintenance,. “That is the sole reason.”
She explained the restroom has been out of service since December 2024 when city personnel were alerted to the leak from utility billing.
“The waterline is about 3 feet underground. Parks crews tried to isolate the leak location. The leak was determined to be somewhere underground between the fleet parking and the restroom,” said Sylvana Niehuser, Director of Olympia Parks, Arts & Recreation.
“We determined that the repair (work) was going to involve engineering and contracting support. The project was delayed because our initial contractor pulled their bid due to insurance requirements, followed by staff capacity constraints and major changes to our small contracting process. With that process approved and ready to move forward, we can proceed with hiring a new contractor.”
Both Keehan and Niehuser said they expect the waterline repairs to be completed this summer if unforeseen issues do not arise.
“The city has a repair plan and is moving the project forward,” Keehan said.
8 comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here
OlyMamaLlama
Would it be possible to put a temporary one up in the meantime? I would love everyone to have access to a safe place to pee.
Friday, May 29 Report this
VDRAKE2
Does this story surprise ANYONE. Olympia was once gracious, welcoming to everyone who came to be here. Now it's barely able to utilize its bureaucracy to fix a public toilet leak??? 17 months? Come on. See those scafolds around gov. Offices ondowntown? How much is that costing just to pressure wash the government offices? You can't fix a toilet for public use? Much less the homeless. Why not use some of the beautification funds, or for sidewalks funding & build a toilet big enough with ementities for the homeless to use? Imagine a world who cares about it population before the buildings for government use.
Friday, May 29 Report this
chrispc2u
Does all it take shutting down outdoor toilets to get rid of PROFESSIONAL BUMS sucking of Olympia’s teet since Covid? Then by all means, shut ‘em down. This culture of entitlement, enabling and encouraging professional bums needs to end!
Friday, May 29 Report this
PatMer
Too bad they can't use the very near artesian water supply?!
Saturday, May 30 Report this
TheVirtualOne
Until Olympia “leaders” decide to truly address the problems of people being allowed to live on the streets of the city, this will continue. I agree with others that it would be nice to have a working facility for people to use instead of peeing on the sidewalks, but I personally would never use a public bathroom in downtown Olympia because it would be for drug addicts and homeless people, not the general public. It’s a given it would not be kept clean to even a minimal standard, so I would never use it, as I am sure 99.9% of others would feel. So this is not so much about getting the toilet working as it is about a referendum on how the City of Olympia handles pretty much everything.
Saturday, May 30 Report this
JasonS
The comments here indicate that you folks think the problem is that they're having trouble fixing the toilet due to some mysterious technical difficulties or financial red tape. That's not it at all. It's a liability issue for the city because on many occasions, these public toilets were being used for anything but their intended purpose, from being a private place to shoot drugs to a way to extort people for *** (both of which have been reported in various articles in the past few years). Until the city can find a way to prevent those kinds of misuses, I suspect there won't be any active City-owned toilets.
Saturday, May 30 Report this
badavis6
To the concerned citizens who accuse the City of Olympia of heartlessness, I encourage each of you to give your home address to one or more homeless individuals downtown and invite them to camp in your yard or driveway. Why not share YOUR family's bathroom?
Until this outdoor toilet can be fixed, I support the idea of installing a portable toilet, though because it would not be metal like this one, it will almost immediately be destroyed by some of the very people who need it. This admittedly weird lapse isn't part of any plan to get rid of the homeless in downtown Olympia. Our city spends a lot of its small budget on accommodating homeless people downtown, most of whom are addicts. In addition to medical emergencies, policing, outreach, and support for housing alternatives and "wrap-around services," the city pays a crew to drive around every morning to clean up trash and fecal matter, vomit and etc from doorways. Then there are the costs of business that is being driven out of downtown. For six years I have lived downtown across from the old 130+-year-old building covered with scaffolding which is being re-roofed with state funds, not the city's. The situation down here is extremely complicated, without a single easy solution. Simply being "kinder" to addicts is a path to a quicker death for them and for our struggling little downtown where the crime rate has been verifiably reported as 68% to 74% higher than the national average. (Mostly property crimes, but still ...)
Saturday, May 30 Report this
TheGreatAnon
Sweet Jesus, it's a broken water line, not rocket science. I suspect Oly Parks has been slow rolling this thing. Parks tried to force a pocket park around the Artesian well, didn't listen to well advocates telling them it was a bad idea, got burned and since then have neglected the space.
Monday, June 1 Report this