Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens reached out to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) when multiple water lines broke and left portions of the city without water on Friday, May 31st. Senior leaders from South Atlantic Division, Mobile District and Savannah District worked over the weekend to identify and send emergency management specialists to assist the city. In an interview with news outlets, South Atlantic Division Deputy Commander Col. Matthew McCulley stated, “Our headquarter office is here in Atlanta and we are part of this community. We empathize with the citizens and businesses this has affected. Whether it’s hurricane response, the wildfires in Maui or the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, when our communities are in need, we heed the call.”
Alou Rice, Environmental Engineer with the Mobile District and Brian Choate, Physical Scientist with the Savannah District arrived to assist the City of Atlanta on Tuesday morning. “I got the call Monday morning and on Tuesday morning I was standing with Mayor Dickens at the press conference at City Hall,” said Alou Rice, “I’ve been assisting communities affected by hurricanes for 38 years. We have a team of experts that can provide municipalities guidance on technical repairs and planning to mitigate future events. I like helping people and was pleased when I learned that everyone had water and the boil advisory had been lifted on Thursday morning.”
Under the authority provided by Section 22 of the WRDA of 1974 (PL 93-251), as amended, the USACE can provide states and local governments assistance in the preparation of comprehensive plans for the development, utilization and conservation of water and related land resources. The South Atlantic Division is working with the city to investigate the viability of doing a Planning of Assistance to States study to perform a full physical and operational assessment of the entire water system with the city of Atlanta. Brian Choate stated, “Atlanta experienced a very unfortunate one in a million coincidence of having 2 major lines break at nearly the same time, one did not cause the other, so this is a rare occurrence. The work that Atlanta has put in over the past few days has put them in a much better position should this happen again. Our plan moving forward has the possibility of becoming a model for how other major cities address aging water infrastructure.”