Dunwoody residents got a Water 101 course when DeKalb officials provided an overview on July 9 about the county’s beleaguered water infrastructure system, but there were no reassurances that frequent water main breaks on Chamblee Dunwoody Road will be fixed any time soon.
DeKalb County District 1 Commissioner Robert Patrick and CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson, along with key staff members, painted a now-familiar glum picture about the county’s aging water infrastructure, reiterating that nothing had been done to significantly improve the system for six decades.
Speaking in front of about 50 people at the Dunwoody Nature Center’s Treehouse Pavilion, many of them who have been affected by frequent water main breaks on Chamblee Dunwoody Road near Harris Circle and Dunwoody Knoll, Cochran-Johnson said that District 1’s water woes are not unique to the county.
“We average four breaks a day in DeKalb County,” she said. “We have 60 years of repair work to do.”
The water presentation included a graphic about the number of breaks in District 1. Dunwoody was the largest city as far as pipe length (193 miles), which is 31 percent of the district’s pipes. With 525 water main breaks recorded from January 2017 to June 2025, Dunwoody was the highest of all District 1 areas, which includes Chamblee, Doraville, Tucker, as well as unincorporated DeKalb.
Related stories:
• Burst pipes and infrastructure dreams
• DeKalb County needs billions to repair water system
DeKalb County is under a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) that formalizes implementation of sanitary sewer system programs and improvements. In order to finance these repairs, estimated at more than $4 billion, DeKalb County residents will see a 10 percent increase in their bills each year for the next 10 years.
Maria Houser, the county’s director of environmental compliance, said there are about 12 neighborhoods in the county that experience the type of frequent breaks that residents are seeing in the Chamblee Dunwoody/Harris Circle/Dunwoody Knoll area.
The county took a data-driven approach to prioritize the order of repair/replacement, and the $5.5 million Dunwoody Knoll project is not scheduled until 2028, a statement that was met with mutters and groans from the attendees.
However, Houser pointed out that the project is currently tagged as “under review,” which means it could move up on the priority list “because of the amount of water breaks you are having.”
Ironically, another water main break occurred just hours before the meeting.
Later, when asked if there is a chance that the 2028 timeline could be delayed because of other more pressing crises, officials assured attendees that “there is no way it is going to be moved back.”
Patrick, seeming to sense the growing discontent in the crowd, suspended most of the informational part of the meeting and opened up the floor to questions from attendees. Many asked about the safety of using “brown” water coming out of their faucets after completed repairs (which county officials said was safe), and whether there were any quick fixes that could be accomplished instead of waiting until 2028.
“I have two words for you – ‘it’s time,'” Cochran-Johnson said. “We cannot continue to go down this road.”