Atlanta water service expected to be restored to normal Wednesday morning following days of trouble, officials say | CNN

CNN
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Atlanta officials anticipate the city’s water service will return to normal Wednesday morning after a series of burst water mains left large portions of the city without safe drinking water and launched the city into a state of emergency.

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

A boil water advisory still was in place Tuesday evening for a portion of the city from downtown up to Midtown and into several East Atlanta neighborhoods.

The city’s water difficulties began on Friday when the first two of a series of water main breaks emerged along two pipes that were about a century old – one a 36-inch pipe, the other a 48-inch pipe, Mayor Andre Dickens said. One of the pipes that failed was installed in 1910, while another dated to 1930, the mayor said.

Dickens declared an emergency on Saturday as a string of breaks left parts of the city without water or under boil advisories and caused significant disruptions to medical and educational facilities in the city.

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

Repairs on a break near downtown were finished Saturday, allowing the city to lift a boil water advisory that had been in effect in the area since Friday.

The breaks have highlighted the decaying infrastructure criss-crossing Atlanta and many other major American cities.

“What we have found, in digging and digging and digging and looking at pipes, we are repairing pipes from 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and our infrastructure is crumbling,” Atlanta Chief Operating Officer LaChandra Burks said at a Monday afternoon city council meeting.

The US Army Corps of Engineers arrived in the city Tuesday to help “develop a plan to assess and evaluate our aging infrastructure,” Dickens said. But while improving the city’s infrastructure will help make repairs faster, Burks noted, it will not prevent future breaks.

Atlanta’s woes are part of a larger issue of aging infrastructure throughout Canada and the US, where more than 30% of water mains are over 50 years old, according to a December 2023 study from Utah State University. Failing water mains are on average 53 years old, the study noted.

In the US and Canada, around 260,000 water main breaks happen each year, costing about $2.6 billion each year, according to the study.