Atlanta water service expected to be restored to normal Wednesday morning after days of unrest, officials say

CNN
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Atlanta officials expect the city’s water service to return to normal Wednesday morning after a series of water main breaks left large parts of the city without drinking water and placed the city in a state of emergency.

Water service is expected to be fully restored between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. once repairs are completed on a broken water main at 11th and West Peachtree streets in Midtown, the city announced in a news release Tuesday.

A boil water advisory was still in effect Tuesday evening for part of the city, from downtown to Midtown and several neighborhoods in East Atlanta.

The city’s water supply woes began Friday when the first two in a series of water main breaks appeared along two roughly century-old pipes – one 36 inches, the other 48 inches, Mayor Andre Dickens said. One of the failing pipes was installed in 1910, while another dated from 1930, the mayor said.

Dickens declared a state of emergency Saturday as a series of outages left parts of the city without water or with boil advisories and caused significant disruptions to the city’s medical and educational facilities.

Emory University Hospital in Midtown began diverting ambulances from its emergency department and transferring dialysis patients to other hospitals — although normal operations resumed Sunday. Atlanta Public Schools also canceled many of its summer programs Monday and Tuesday, saying they would resume once water service was restored.

Repairs to a breach near downtown were completed Saturday, allowing the city to lift the boil water advisory that has been in place in the area since Friday.

These ruptures have highlighted the dilapidated infrastructure that crisscrosses Atlanta and many other major American cities.

“What we found, as we dug, dug, dug and looked at pipes, we’re repairing pipes from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and our infrastructure is falling apart,” said LaChandra Burks, director of the operation of Atlanta, during a city council meeting Monday afternoon.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arrived in the city Tuesday to help “develop a plan to assess our aging infrastructure,” Dickens said. But while improving the city’s infrastructure will help speed up repairs, Burks noted, it won’t prevent future breaks.

Atlanta’s woes are part of a larger problem of aging infrastructure in Canada and the United States, where more than 30% of water mains are more than 50 years old, according to a December 2023 study by the ‘Utah State University. Faulty water pipes are on average 53 years old, the study notes.

In the United States and Canada, about 260,000 water main breaks occur each year, costing about $2.6 billion each year, according to the study.