Actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took it upon himself to fill in what he believed to be a huge pothole on Tuesday.
Arnie even filmed himself filling in the pothole that he said was wreaking havoc with drivers in his Los Angeles neighborhood.
However, according to city officials, the star’s goodwill was misplaced. Authorities say that huge pothole was not a pothole at all but was actually a permitted “service trench” being used by a gas company.
Today, after the whole neighborhood has been upset about this giant pothole that’s been screwing up cars and bicycles for weeks, I went out with my team and fixed it. I always say, let’s not complain, let’s do something about it. Here you go. pic.twitter.com/aslhkUShvT
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) April 11, 2023
A spokesperson for the City of Los Angeles told NBC Los Angeles. “This location in not a pothole. It’s a service trench that relates to active, permitted work being performed at the location by SoCal Gas, who expects the work to be completed by the end of May.”
Breitbart reports: SoCalGas told the L.A. Times that its crews completed an upgrade on a pipeline at the end of January and “applied temporary paving over the excavation.”
While SoCalGas normally applies permanent paving within about 30 days of a project’s completion, the schedule was delayed due to the rain, according to the Times.
Schwarzenegger didn’t appear to buy the official explanation in a followup tweet Thursday from his chief of staff, Daniel Ketchell. “It’s always important to take bureaucratic damage control with a grain of salt,” he tweeted.
It’s always important to take bureaucratic damage control with a grain of salt. First, they implied @schwarzenegger paved over active gas work that would finish at the end of May. Then, the truth came out: the gas work was done in January (and the timeline for paving sped up). pic.twitter.com/37jCGFx85L
— Daniel Ketchell (@ketch) April 13, 2023