In the wake of a water crisis, Atlantans take a closer look at the city’s priorities
On Friday, May 31, Kysha Cyrus had just parked her car and was walking over to open her Edgewood Avenue cocktail bar when someone on the street yelled, “Water’s out!” Inside Mambo Zombi, the water pressure was so low that Cyrus couldn’t flush the toilets. She’d later learn that two water main breaks—one in Midtown and one in Vine City—had caused an emergency that impacted a large part of the city: Approximately 7,000 businesses were within the affected areas. Some of Atlanta’s most populated neighborhoods would remain under a boil-water advisory for six days.
At Cyrus’s bar, operations were impossible without clean water. “It’s just constant ice movement, constantly making drinks, washing our hands, washing our tools,” she said. She and her business partner closed for the evening with plans to reopen when the water returned the next day. But the water didn’t return until Tuesday—an entire weekend’s sales went down the toilet.
Around the city, things weren’t much better. The low water pressure threw a wrench in daily operations at two hospitals and two jails. Schools canceled summer programming, and nine libraries shut their doors. Recreation centers and major event spaces like Mercedes Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena lost water. Business owners cut their losses. Some, still recovering from Covid, wondered if they would have to fold.
The crisis impacted families, seniors, and the unhoused community. Penny Steele, 78, lives in Mercy Housing’s Reynoldstown Senior Residences, which lost water for two days. Nearby stores sold out of water quickly, so she and her 81-year-old partner hitched a ride with a neighbor to a grocery store in Belvedere Park. Meanwhile, they couldn’t flush the toilet in their apartment.
Even after the boil advisory was lifted for all neighborhoods on June 6, Steele remained skeptical. A Michigan native, she remembers the Flint water crisis all too well, and she’s keenly aware that water access is a matter of public safety. “We need to make major infrastructure investments because it’s like a time bomb,” Steele said, noting a decades-old sales tax that is supposed to fund improvements in Atlanta’s water system. “Every day we make a purchase, we’re paying for water. The real issue is we’re not getting a return on that payment.” The crisis led many to feel that Atlanta, so eager to tout its status as an international city, has failed to invest in the public infrastructure that would actually make it one.
“We need to make major infrastructure investments because it’s like a time bomb.” —Penny Steele
As the crisis unfolded, Mayor Andre Dickens left town for a fundraiser in Memphis—a decision that would draw heavy criticism. Upon his return, Dickens announced that he was seeking help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and forming a blue-ribbon committee that would make the city’s water system “best in class.” That’ll be a big job, with a big price tag: Of the roughly 3,000 linear miles of pipes that transport drinking water around Atlanta, Dickens said that about 500 miles—17 percent—are “significantly aged.” Many city water mains are up to a century old; one of the burst mains from May 31 was more than 80 years old. Repairs could cost $200 million a year for three decades.
Taking office in 2022, Dickens inherited a water infrastructure system that’s long been plagued with problems—though in recent decades, concerns have focused more on wastewater than drinking water. In the 20th century, the city’s growth began to overwhelm its combined sewage system; heavy rains caused sewers to overflow into local creeks and into the Chattahoochee River. In 1995, the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper organized a lawsuit against the City over the frequent spills. In the wake of the lawsuit, Mayor Bill Campbell signed two federal consent decrees requiring Atlanta to clean up its act. With state and federal agencies breathing down its neck, the City was obligated to invest $4 billion in its sewer and stormwater infrastructure to meet federal standards.
Facing court-mandated deadlines for the consent decrees when she took office in 2002, Mayor Shirley Franklin nicknamed herself the “sewer mayor.” She established the Clean Water Atlanta program and ambitiously set out to upgrade the City’s failing sewer system—and, while she was at it, to improve the City’s drinking water infrastructure. Water rates skyrocketed as the City paid for major improvements; today, those rates—which were among the highest in the nation a little more than a decade ago—remain the metro’s most expensive.
In 2004, the City introduced the one-cent Municipal Option Sales Tax to help fund the sewer and stormwater projects required by the consent decrees. (Though water rates in Atlanta remain high, they also haven't increased since 2012, in part due to MOST.) The tax has helped pay for a variety of projects, including the replacement of more than 387 miles of aged sewer lines. While the City spent $320 million to increase its emergency drinking water supply to more than 30 days, replacing its clean water pipes did not make the list of priorities.
To date, Atlanta has collected nearly $2 billion from MOST to pay for the consent decree projects. Although the City met the requirements for one consent decree in 2008, it’s still working on the other, and has until 2027 to improve its sewage infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper recently announced it intends to sue Atlanta again over alleged releases of poorly treated wastewater if the City does not take action. The CRK reported finding E. coli levels near the R.M. Clayton water treatment plant, which discharges into the Chattahoochee River, that were 340 times the limits recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Subpar water infrastructure is not unique to Atlanta. In a 2021 report, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. infrastructure a C-minus, generally. The “drinking water” category received a C-minus, stormwater received a D, and wastewater received a D-plus. Here at home, the Department of Watershed Management for DeKalb County documented that more than 40 percent of its water pipes will be over 70 years old by 2030; it has managed to replace 91 miles of those pipes since 2017. On average, the City of Atlanta replaces fewer than 5 miles of pipes a year.
Granted, Atlanta is a large city with more projects to juggle than its less populous neighbors, but the track record is undeniable: Until it has a lawsuit or a citywide crisis on its hands, Atlanta tends to neglect public infrastructure in favor of more headline-worthy endeavors (e.g. 2026 World Cup preparations). Johnny Martinez, who co-owns two bars on Edgewood Avenue—including Mambo Zombi, where his business partner is Kysha Cyrus—boils it down to priorities. The way he sees it, the City prioritizes corporations and economic growth over mom-and-pops and longtime residents. “We’re just kind of left to the whims of what the City wants to do and unfortunately for us, this is what happens when as a city you don’t pay attention to all those little small things that aren’t sexy, like roads and potholes and sidewalks.”
“This is what happens when as a city you don’t pay attention to all those little small things that aren’t sexy, like roads and potholes and sidewalks.” —Johnny Martinez
While water pipes decay underground, the City is finishing construction on a $110 million police training facility that detractors have nicknamed “Cop City,” which taxpayers will pay up to $67 million toward. (And which may present watershed problems of its own: An environmental group filed a lawsuit alleging that stormwater runoff from the construction site, which sits in a forested tract of DeKalb County, violates the Clean Water Act by polluting the nearby South River. In January, a federal judge ruled against the group, claiming it didn’t provide enough evidence to merit the “extraordinary and drastic remedy’” of halting construction.) “We seem to have money for things like Cop City, but we don’t spend money for things like sidewalks or improving infrastructure,” Martinez said.
Martinez estimates he lost $12,000 between his two bars due to the water outage. The City attempted to mitigate the financial hit incurred by business owners by introducing some relief funds. Still, the $7.5 million relief package—which excludes home-based businesses, nonprofits without for-profit activities, liquor and pawn shops, and businesses that earn revenue from gambling—may not be sufficient. During a presentation before the City Council’s Community Development/Human Services Committee last month, a representative from Invest Atlanta, the agency tasked with distributing the funds, said they would require closer to $9 million to cover 100 percent of the eligible businesses. The most Martinez can receive from the City’s relief funds, he said, is $2,000 for each bar.
Jamshad “Jaammy” Zarnegar said his Inman Park Mediterranean restaurant, Kitty Dare, lost $20,000 in sales from being closed all weekend. “That was my biggest worry: Can the restaurant survive?” said Zarnegar. On the Friday and Saturday of the crisis, he called each of his reservations to cancel and explain that they didn’t have water. All the while, he worried about members of his kitchen staff who rely on income from their weekend shifts.
That was a concern, too, at Joystick Gamebar—Johnny Martinez’s other Edgewood Avenue business, where Adonnica McKenzie tends bar four nights a week. McKenzie lives outside the Perimeter, so she wasn’t impacted at home. But when she arrived for her Saturday shift, she found the bar in a state of “pure chaos.” Without water, she couldn’t make the bar’s signature slushies or wash dishes. On top of that, the soda gun didn’t work, so the manager had to make a run to the store to buy canned soda and ice. McKenzie was in no position to turn down work, though. The bar was closed on Friday, one of the best days for tips. “We’re on the front line,” said McKenzie, estimating she lost about $100 without her Friday shift. “We’re the ones struggling, living paycheck to paycheck.” •
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