Let’s just be frank: The City of Atlanta’s communication with the public during the water crisis was an embarrassing shambles.
The lack of information and updates from Atlanta Watershed and the city itself played out over six days and often left other elected officials to take to social media to fill the communication gaps. Admonishment by the public and city council members did little to improve the situation, even after Mayor Andre Dickens and Watershed Commissioner Al Wiggins (who has only been on the job for a little more than a month) pledged it would.
As a journalist for more than 35 years, being able to communicate a coherent message to readers has been my driving principle. When a crisis like the water main breaks of May 31 erupts, we rely on the city’s communications team, their experts, and elected officials to help us share that message with a worried, frustrated, and angry populace. We had boots-on-the-ground reporters doing amazing reporting in the field, but the lack of response from the city left coverage incomplete.
Friday, May 31; Before noon
We first heard rumblings of a water main break at 11:56 a.m. on Friday, May 31. My colleague Beth McKibben sent a Slack message to the editorial team about restaurants taking to social media to report they were closing due to low water pressure. Shortly after, the city posted an “Urgent Notice” on social media of a water main break impacting water service across the city. This was the Vine City rupture.
A cascade of closures ensued – restaurants, businesses, Atlanta City Hall, Fulton County government offices, and major tourist attractions – as taps went dry and a boil water advisory went into effect for neighborhoods from West End to East Atlanta Village and from southern Midtown to Downtown.
Water was shut off to a large swath of the city on Friday at 5 p.m. That’s also when timely updates from the city begin to seriously falter.
Meanwhile, a second water main break was rupturing in Midtown that would quickly compound Atlanta’s water woes.
Where is the mayor?
Mayor Dickens was silent on Friday as the downward spiral began and was nowhere to be found – an oddity since he’s usually communicative and a show-up kinda guy.
Sometime on Saturday, June 1, we learned that Dickens had been in Memphis, TN at a campaign fundraising dinner. He caught a lot of flak for being missing in action as the crisis began, but I don’t fault him. Politicians do travel and they do fundraise and he’s not a fortune teller, so he couldn’t have known.
However, a spokesperson for the city gave this statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “When Mayor Dickens left Atlanta, the consensus was that the water main break was similar to the roughly 530 breaks or leaks that the City of Atlanta experienced over the last 12 months. It was not until late Friday evening, after repairs had been attempted, that the City learned the severity of the breaks.”
The timeline of when Dickens was told things had gone from a routine water main break to something much bigger is still unclear.
Saturday, June 1; 2 p.m.
A 2 p.m. press conference on Saturday was the first real communication on the citywide water outages from the mayor, who flew back to Atlanta sometime after the fundraiser ended. The city was already more than 24 hours into the crisis, and he promised an update every two hours.
After the water was shut off at 5 p.m. the night before, there had been a deafening silence on repairs, a potential timeline for water restoration, and little to no details on what was happening at the 11th and West Peachtree water main break in Midtown.
A geyser of water sometimes 18 feet tall had been pouring out of a hole in the ground beside Eleventh Street Pub on 11th Street for hours. The force of the water eventually broke the windows on Saturday afternoon and flooded the neighborhood institution. The water would continue to pour unchecked until Monday, June 3. Watershed crews couldn’t find the cut-off valve – it turned out to be underneath the geyser – and were forced to install other cut-offs at locations near the main break to stem the flow of water.
An angry Megan Thee Stallion went on social media and criticized the city’s response after her two concerts were postponed at State Farm Arena. More seriously, Emory University Hospital in Midtown announced Saturday afternoon that it was diverting ambulances and moving patients due to the outage. And, to make matters worse, several smaller main breaks occurred around the city, most notably at Euclid and North avenues.
The trickle of information from the city matched what was coming, or not coming, from taps.
Sunday, June 2
While the Vine City break was fixed in a timely manner and the boil advisory lifted, the Midtown break would prove much more challenging. Parts had to be obtained from Alabama and Gwinnett County, and a 100-year-old segment of pipe had to be replaced.
One of the most egregious lapses in communication occurred in the wee hours of Sunday night/Monday morning when Atlanta Watershed announced at 12:30 a.m. that it was turning off water to a portion of Midtown at 1 a.m. – and extending the boil water advisory. That message was posted while most of the city slept and after many of Atlanta’s restaurants and businesses were closed for another day and night, piling up financial losses.
The boil water advisory for Midtown and East Atlanta would drag on for two more days, and maps eventually released by Atlanta Watershed were confusing to the public.
Monday, June 3
On Monday, both Dickens and Wiggins made predictions on the repair time that came and went without any follow-up or comment. When angry residents in Midtown peppered Dickens with questions about the timeline for repairs at a Monday morning press conference, he was ushered away without answering any of them.
Later that afternoon at the Atlanta City Council meeting, Dickens and Wiggins apologized for the shoddy communication with the public and again promised to do better.
But more hours of silence followed and Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari finally took to her own social media to provide an update and post a current boil advisory map. She would have to do this again on Tuesday night when the city failed to provide timely updates. Councilman Alex Wan was also emailing his constituents with updates.
Lessons learned?
By the time the repairs were completed in Midtown and the boil water advisory lifted for the city on Thursday, June 6, it had been six days of the city in the grips of a crisis rivaled by Snowpocalypse 2014 and the I-85 bridge fire.
Dickens called in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to assess the city’s aging water system and said he would create a “Blue Ribbon” panel of experts and ask the feds for billions of dollars that would be needed to fix it.
It is my sincere hope that city officials learned a huge lesson over this week-long communication blunder, but that remains to be seen.
While Dickens and his team said they’re heeding the “wake-up call” of Atlanta’s aging infrastructure, perhaps another Blue Ribbon panel should be set up on how to effectively communicate with the public during a crisis. Put people on the payroll who know how to get that done.
Fixing the aging infrastructure has been a can kicked down the road by succeeding administrations for decades. Only Mayor Shirley Franklin made a dent when she made repairs to the city’s crumbling sewer system, which was a hallmark of her time in office.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was a frequent voice on social media and TV keeping Atlantans updated on situations directly affecting the city. My inbox was usually full of updates from various city departments.
But it is glaringly obvious after this past week that there has been a communication breakdown at city hall that Mayor Dickens must address immediately. That repair is just as important as the pipes.
