As mysteriously as it began, water that for months oozed from around the bottom of a Bathurst Street utility pole has abruptly dried up.

Last week I wrote about a pole at the southwest corner of Bathurst and Glengrove Avenue that Catriel Blum told me had been leaking water from around its base since last summer.

I suggested tapping the pole like a maple tree, to see if water would pour out like sap. An amusing idea, but it was obvious that the source of the water was beneath it.

Blum emailed again a few days later to say “the hydro pole has stopped leaking! One of the seven wonders of Toronto has disappeared.”

When water starts bubbling out of the road or a sidewalk, it’s usually from a ruptured water main below ground. So I asked the city to investigate and got a surprising reply: Testing revealed the water is untreated, which points to “runoff” or ground water, said Toronto Water, adding it couldn’t find any leaks in its local infrastructure.

That suggests the water is coming from a spring or underground stream; I learned from previously writing about wetness that cannot be explained that Toronto has many natural sources of ground water.

Blum, who has long lived in the area, speculated as much in one of his notes to me. His theory was supported by an email from George McClellan, who lived in the same area as a boy.

“When I was growing up in the 1950s on Glencairn (Avenue), there was a creek that ran generally from the northwest to the southeast that was open and it flowed behind the houses on Alexandra Wood,” said McClellan.

“There was a concrete bridge on Glencairn, between Alexandra Wood and Forest Wood and the stream came from the area of Bathurst and Glengrove.”

The stream was eventually covered over as the area was developed, he said, adding the bridge was demolished and water from the stream was funneled through a pipe that was installed.

“I suspect that the water around the pole is coming from the pipe which replaced the open stream.”

That sounded like a valid theory, so I ran it past Don Ford, a hydrogeologist with the Toronto Region Conservation Authority and an expert on ground water in the GTA

“The hydrogeologic database that I have access to includes information on the horizontal and vertical extent of aquifers that generally can transmit water, and aquitards that generally don’t transmit much water,” Ford said in an email.

“Based on the information available to me, I don’t see any reason to suspect the existence of springs in the vicinity of the utility pole. Yes, ground water can cause the symptom, but I highly doubt it in this particular location.”

In an interview, Ford said that if a utility pole is sunk into a layer of sand that can more easily conduct ground water, it can eventually make its way to the puncture point and ooze out of the ground.

Given that Glengrove is at the bottom of a small hill that crests one block to the south at Glencairn, Ford said it’s possible that the water is pushing down the incline, through the sand layer and surfacing around the pole.

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It’s also possible for the water to run intermittently through the sand, he said, and stop bubbling out from around the pole, as mysteriously as it started.

The bottom line is that it stopped. I wish we could say the same about other problems that are bubbling up around the world.