Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens gave a brief press conference at the site of another broken water main in Midtown on Monday morning, where officials did not offer a timeline for when repairs would be done and water restored to surrounding buildings.
Crews are continuing to work on West Peachtree Street where water was still seen running down sidewalk gutters just before noon.
“We are laser focused on this problem,” the mayor said as crews worked behind him. “My administration understands how critical water is for our lifeline in the city.”
“Our main priority is to restore water service to all residents and businesses,” Dickens said.
The first-term mayor issued a state of emergency over the weekend and residents are still under a boil water advisory while contamination levels remain unclear.
“As we are focused on this area, we are also monitoring our entire infrastructure system to ensure it is available to everyone,” he said.
But despite criticism that the city’s response to the crisis has been far from adequate, Dickens left the press conference without taking questions. The mayor was quickly ushered away from the site after one Midtown resident impacted by the outages yelled out over press for a concrete timeline for repairs.
“When will the water be back on?” yelled the resident, who said he lived in the building on the street. “What are you going to do if one of the high rises catches on fire?”
Department of Watershed Management Commissioner Al Wiggins — who was recently appointed to the position — said during the press conference that officials have no evidence that indicates the numerous water breaks across the city are connected but noted that a full investigation has yet to take place.
“The area where the work is being conducted is a confined area,” he said of the break in Midtown, adding that buildings within a few blocks radius are the only places suffering from no water at all.
Wiggins said the valve that turns off water to the compromised pipe was directly under the rushing geyser that erupted from the point, creating additional repair challenges.
Repairs to the water break that took place on Friday at Joseph E. Boone Boulevard near J.P. Brawley Drive were fully completed late Saturday, city officials said, although much of Atlanta still struggled with low pressure throughout the rest of the weekend.
City officials said Monday that fixing a leak requires an arduous process of draining the ruptured area, making the repairs, then slowly waiting for the system to refill through the pipes to confirm that the fix holds against restored water pressure. And each step in the process takes multiple hours.
Both Atlanta Police Department Chief Darin Scheirbaum and Fire Chief Rodney Smith said that law enforcement and emergency response from the city’s police and fire forces have not been impacted by the continued water challenges.
Jazmen Dean, who lives in an apartment along West Peachtree Street, said her friends came over in droves this weekend to use her shower, since she wasn’t impacted by the outages.
That situation reversed Monday.
“People were coming to my place to shower, but now I’ve got to go to one of my friend’s to shower after pilates,” she said.
Dean moved to Midtown from Washington, D.C., in February. She never had a prolonged water outage there, and she never thought an issue like this would happen in one of the most expensive parts of this city.
“It’s a damper on the city, especially for this to be in Midtown,” she said. As an engineer, she was annoyed at the lack of clarity from city leaders and the lack of an action plan.
“The biggest thing we want is just an explanation,” she said.
Staff reporter Zachary Hansen contributed to this report.
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