Milena Franco, a Midtown resident, said she and her husband had water all weekend. But on Monday morning, the water flow was interrupted, Franco discovered, when she tried to take a shower.
“I got in the shower and cried a little,” Franco said.
City officials said water supplies were cut off in the immediate area as part of an effort to stem the flow of water from a broken water main that had been causing the river to pour into the streets since Friday evening.
The geyser finally dried up at dawn Monday after officials trucked parts of it out of Alabama under police escort. But most of the city remained under lock and key. order boil water before drinking it, even in areas where pressure was restored after the first giant leak was reported on Saturday. During the outages, some residents were frustrated with the pace of repairs, saying the city was still not doing a good job of providing information.
“We are focused on this issue, and my administration understands how important water is to our lifeline in this city,” Dickens told reporters at the scene of the water main break Monday.
But his press conference ended before reporters could ask all their questions because a Rhett Circle resident was asking questions that residents of nearby buildings wanted to know.
“When will the water be supplied again? Are there any estimated dates? We live right here!” Ssercle yelled at Department of Watershed Management Commissioner Al Wiggins Jr.
Wiggins, however, refused to predict when the water would start flowing again, even as excavators continued to dig the hole behind him.
The outage did not affect the entire city of 500,000 people — many areas of Atlanta’s north and south ends never lost water pressure or faced a boil order. But for thousands of residents, problems started on Friday when a major leak occurred at the junction of three water mains west of the city center. Wiggins said the leak was caused by corrosion and was difficult to fix because the three pipes created limited space to work.
The leak in Midtown began several hours later. Wiggins said city workers are still unsure why it happened, but it was difficult to fix because it happened at the junction of two large water pipes and the valve to shut them off was not accessible due to the fluid gushing out. Instead, city officials dug holes in four directions per block to block the flow to the leak in Midtown, although Scircle and some other residents said they didn’t see the work for much of Saturday and Sunday.
Water pressure began to return for many early Sunday morning, and some major events took place downtown on Sunday, such as a concert and an Atlanta United soccer game.
But for other residents, it was a tough weekend. Workers at a bar adjacent to the Midtown leak began trying to clean up the mess Monday after water spilled through a glass window and closed the bar all weekend, costing the owner and employees money. The Midtown-adjacent hotel evacuated some guests Monday after a dry weekend.
Some high-rise office buildings remained closed Monday because there was insufficient water pressure to operate air conditioners and supply water to upper floors.
Dickens, a first-term Democratic mayor, was in Memphis, Tennessee, on Friday holding a political fundraiser for his 2025 reelection campaign and did not return until Saturday. Many residents criticized the city’s response, saying officials were still failing to communicate clearly even after Dickens apologized Saturday and promised updates at two-hour intervals.
Jose Franco, Milena Franco’s husband, said he and his wife continued to drink tap water for some time Saturday because they were unaware of the boil water order. Both he and his wife said the water outage to their apartment caught them by surprise before dawn Monday.
“If they know there won’t be water for a few days, they should be given more free water,” Jose Franco said. And he noted the “elephant in the room” – the inability to flush the toilets.
On Monday, city workers continued to promise affected residents free bottled water at fire stations. Dickens declared a state of emergency so the city could buy materials and hire workers without following normal purchasing laws, but a spokesman said there was no estimate yet on how much the emergency was costing the city.
Crumbling infrastructure is a common story in older parts of American cities. Atlanta has spent billions in recent years to upgrade its aging sewer and water infrastructure, including a tunnel drilled into 5 miles (8 kilometers) of rock to provide the city with more than 30 days’ worth of water. Last month, voters approved maintaining a 1-cent sales tax to pay for federally mandated sewer upgrades. At one time, the city regularly discharged untreated sewage into streams and the Chattahoochee River.
Wiggins said Monday that the city’s water system is “always a work in progress.”