City leaders address Atlanta’s water woes one month after water crisis – Capital B News

Only about 60% of the nearly 900 businesses that began filing applications to receive stimulus funds from the city of Atlanta after the catastrophic water outage in early June that left some residents without water for five days have completed those applications, Invest Atlanta said.

Only 535 applications have been submitted to the city, said Eloisa Klementich, president and CEO of Invest Atlanta, providing an update on the city’s progress in addressing systemic water infrastructure issues.

“We are prioritizing businesses like nail salons, hair salons, daycares and restaurants where water is an operational necessity,” she said. “While many people have been impacted, some people may have had the opportunity to continue working from home during this time.”

Klementich appeared before Atlanta City Council members last week at a special meeting to discuss the findings of two major water main breaks, the first at Joseph E. Boone Boulevard and J.P. Brawley Drive in Vine City and the second at West Peachtree and 11th Streets in Midtown. Council members present were Antonio Lewis, Alex Wan, Byron Amos, Mary Norwood, Matt Westmoreland and Andrea L. Boone.

The outages prompted Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who was heavily criticized for his delayed response, to declare a state of emergency as hundreds of thousands of Atlanta residents were placed under a boil water advisory.

The Small Business Recovery Fund is the culmination of a city ordinance that provided Invest Atlanta with $5 million to help small businesses that were negatively impacted by the June water crisis. Eligible businesses included those with addresses within the city’s boil water advisory lines, those that held active City of Atlanta business licenses, were registered with the Secretary of State’s office, and could provide proof of revenue between May 13 and June 11.

The grant amount will be determined based on a set of criteria including the total number of business closures and revenue ranges. Grant applications closed on July 8.

Devin Barrington-Ward, a community activist who has organized around the water crisis, said the grant rollout was troubling because the city didn’t appear to be acting with urgency.

“We know this could happen again in the future,” said Ward, founder of the Black Futurist Group, a public policy advocacy group focused on social justice. “So what preparedness measures are going to be taken in advance to make sure we can respond quickly?”

Ward also said some affected businesses still have unpaid wages owed to their employees, including some that were already facing lost revenue due to ongoing capital projects like the Cascade Road improvement project.

Al Wiggins, commissioner of the Department of Watershed Management, walked council members through exactly what happened. The two water main breaks resulted in a longer repair time and a wider network of outages than most scenarios the department faces, he said.

“Three major transmission lines intersect right at Boone and Brawley, which meant we had to extend the disconnection to several other lines while we made the repairs,” Wiggins said. “And in West Peachtree, the major break was right above the valve we needed to shut off service, so we had to go down further to fix that.”

Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management serves nearly 1.2 million people daily and has more than 4,000 miles of sewer and drinking water lines.

Water infrastructure is not a new problem for Atlanta, and its leaders must think holistically to address it, said Peter Aman, the city’s chief strategy officer.

“There are pipes that are 100 years old, and sometimes even older,” Aman said. “It’s a problem that has been around for a long time.”