Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul said he wants a judge to rule on the city’s lawsuit over a water system agreement with Atlanta to avoid the kind of crisis that has been playing out over the weekend.
Sandy Springs gets its water from a water system owned and operated by Atlanta. For decades Sandy Springs has tried to resolve its dispute with Atlanta, and finally filed lawsuits to force an intergovernmental agreement for water service and rates.
According to city attorney Dan Lee, Atlanta has operated the water system in Sandy Springs without a formal agreement since the city incorporated in 2005.
A hearing before the judge is scheduled for July, Paul said. Atlanta changed lawyers again, which the mayor attributed to more delaying tactics.
“Let’s get this resolved so we can prevent something catastrophic from happening in Sandy Springs,” Paul said. “It’s already happened twice since we’ve become a city,”
Paul was referring to June 2023 when Sandy Springs was without water for 24 hours after a gate valve blew off on the main trunk line that feeds the city with water from Johns Creek. The Atlanta Department of Watershed Management had to send divers into the Chattahoochee River to fix the valve.
Sandy Springs funded a $400,000 study by Hartman and Associates that revealed water treatment facility repairs and upgrades needed within city limits would cost $80 million, a figure that is several years old.
“I know everybody’s upset with the city of Atlanta because of the water situation. We’d like to try to do things to prevent that sort of thing from happening here,” Paul said. “Unfortunately, until the court’s rule, we’re powerless to do anything about it.”
Paul alleged that the city of Atlanta is lying to its bondholders after it pledged to make repairs to the system in bond documents.
