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Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta uses system to protect campus from major water main breaks – WSB-TV Channel 2

ATLANTA — Inside the red brick building along Collier Road in Buckhead, it’s so loud you can barely hear yourself think.

But for Josh Roberts, it brings peace of mind.

“It helps me sleep at night. A lot,” Roberts said.

He is the chief operating officer of Piedmont Atlanta Hospital.

The noise is coming from what the hospital calls its WaterHub.

It is made up of 6,000 square feet of pipes, tanks, gauges and grates. This is a state-of-the-art system that takes dirty, smelly wastewater from the Piedmont Campus and makes it clean and clear.

It is used to power the hospital’s heating and cooling systems as well as medical equipment.

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This also protects the operation from emergency situations such as last weekend’s major water main break.

What some now call the “Midtown Geyser” did not affect Piedmont Atlanta in Buckhead.

But if that had been the case, administrators say WaterHub would have avoided any impact on the hospital.

The water isn’t used for drinking, but engineer Trip Reiter said it was pure enough and he downed some when Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen visited Friday.

Roberts said the goal is to ensure patient care is provided no matter what happens to one of the city’s water lines.

“The city is doing its best to fix it. But we made this investment to ensure we could sleep at night and take care of our patients every day,” Roberts said.

Over the past year, the Piedmont Atlanta WaterHub has recycled 75 million gallons of water.

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