Mayor Dickens calls water crisis ‘wake-up call’ for aging infrastructure

His comments came during an early news conference at City Hall, where the mayor and department heads celebrated the latest repairs to the water breaker at 11th and West Peachtree Street in Midtown.

Dickens and watershed leaders said residents have no reason to worry about continued serious water problems.

“It took decades,” the mayor said. “And we just happen to be in that moment where this incident happened.”

Credit: Miguel Martínez

Credit: Miguel Martínez

But many Atlanta residents still have wavering confidence in the city after a complete breakdown in communication at the start of the water problems, leading many to question whether the city was actually responding.

It was a few hours after the first break Friday on Joseph E. Boone Boulevard before Atlantans were notified of the boil water advisory in place. The mayor did not make his first public appearance until after 2 p.m. Saturday, nearly 24 hours after widespread outages began in the city.

The mayor — who was at a campaign fundraiser in Memphis as the issues unfolded Friday night — acknowledged the lack of information and inconsistency in messaging distributed to residents ahead of the weekend.

“I wish we had done a better job of communicating,” Dickens said again on Wednesday. “We have learned it and we will not learn it again.”

Even city council members were among those expressing frustration over the city’s botched communications, as they fielded frantic calls from constituents desperate for updates.

Although officials said that at this point there was no reason to believe the multiple breakups were related, the breakups were far from typical. Workers rushed to make repairs and repressurize the system to see if the fixes would hold. A crucial part of stopping the geyser from erupting from the Midtown street had to be dispatched from Alabama.

During the city council meeting Monday, Dickens announced that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was assessing the city’s infrastructure vulnerabilities. On Wednesday, the mayor added that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would also come to Atlanta to help with “resilience planning.”

“I know we need to act proactively to start moving in the right direction and replace as much broken or old infrastructure as we have,” he said.

Problems with the city’s water and sewer system date back decades and have affected many municipal governments. So much so that since 2004, residents have voted to renew the long-standing sales tax for water and sewer projects.

But despite Atlanta voters’ support for the tax in May, Dickens said the fund was nowhere near enough to solve all of the infrastructure problems.

“I will ask the federal government for more money, a lot more money,” he said. “This will be a figure well into the billions. It won’t be a small number.

But today, showing that the water is flowing and that we are all working on it together should give residents some confidence,” Dickens said.

Watershed Commissioner Al Wiggins said Wednesday the city will launch a pilot program in all Midtown neighborhoods next week to install small devices on city water valves that will detect leaks and notify authorities of their seriousness.

“This is one of many steps we are taking to prevent any future incidents,” Wiggins said.