Around town Friday morning, the air is warming up, green leaves have burst through tree buds, the Orioles are 1-0 and a gaping, six-story hole beside a beloved Northeast Baltimore lake is, finally, gone.

The sinkhole beside Lake Montebello, which officials discovered in November 2022, has been filled, Baltimore’s Department of Public Works announced Friday.

That means the complete 1.3-mile path around the reservoir will reopen to walkers, runners, rollerbladers and bikers Saturday morning. But don’t get too used to it.

The public works department said in a news release that it would close a similar section of the circuit late this fall for another two years — a consequence of unrelated maintenance work tied to the reservoir’s water filtration plant.

“What began as a sinkhole roughly the size of a basketball revealed the urgent need to overhaul century-old infrastructure beneath Lake Montebello,” Public Works Director Khalil Zaied said in the release. “This spring and summer, we’re taking a short pause before beginning the next phase of work to fortify the Montebello Filtration Plant — one of the most critical assets in our water system."

When public works officials first discovered the sinkhole at Lake Montebello, they predicted repairs would take several weeks.

But the sinkhole grew, and the operation became increasingly complex.

The problem stemmed from the failure in a brick-and-mortar storm drain, built in 1876 and housing a historic stream that flows into Herring Run.

That hole widened and ultimately required millions of dollars to repair.

To access and fix the storm drain, the DPW ended up removing enough soil to fill about 7,500 dump trucks. Crews have installed new piping to replace the collapsed portion of the old brick drain.

Beginning Saturday, most of the area around the Montebello reservoir will be accessible, including the full walking loop, though some sections will remain fenced off as crews finish stabilizing the ground and to allow new grass to grow, according to the DPW.

After the Baltimore Running Festival in October, public works crews will again close a portion of the walking trail for another major undertaking. The festival has needed to adjust its route in recent years because of the sinkhole.

At that point, the department will begin dredging Lake Montebello, one of the city’s drinking water reservoirs, to remove built-up sediment, a necessary step to comply with state environmental regulations.

Since work began on the sinkhole, most of the Montebello path stayed open, but a stretch on the side housing the water filtration plant was blocked off for work crews, dead-ending the loop.

Councilwoman Odette Ramos, whose district includes the Montebello filtration plant, commended the public works department for completing a complex engineering feat. A group of local cyclists has been checking in with the Northeast Baltimore councilwoman on a monthly basis asking when the loop would be back, she said.

“I think this is the time where people wanted to go out and enjoy the spring that Baltimore has to offer,” she said. “It’s gonna be great.”

But while Ramos said she wants to hold a formal event to celebrate the reopening, she thinks shuttering the loop for another 24 months after this fall is too much. Ramos acknowledged the necessity of the dredging for the city water system, but said she’s trying to negotiate an arrangement with the department to keep the path open in spring and summer months.

The dredging work is intended to restore Lake Montebello’s full capacity to support the water filtration system. According to a public works spokesperson, this dredging hasn’t been done there in nearly 20 years.