TV show features overhaul of Atlanta sewer

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin proudly declares herself the “sewer mayor” to a nationwide audience on a PBS documentary about America’s failing water systems.

“People laugh about me being the sewer mayor, but they remember what I’m doing,” Franklin says in the Atlanta segment of “Liquid Assets: The Story of Our Water Infrastructure.” It airs Sunday on Georgia Public Broadcasting at 6 p.m.

“I wear that title very proudly because without wastewater infrastructure and drinking water infrastructure, the economy will stop,” the mayor says.

The documentary gives Franklin just credit for finally shouldering the $4 billion task of overhauling the city’s aging, leaking, out-of-date water and sewer system that just a decade ago spilled raw sewage into the Chattahoochee River whenever it rained.

The fix was long overdue. Two key events that made it happen: a 1995 federal lawsuit by the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and a decision by Atlanta voters in 2004 to add a 1-cent sales tax to raise revenue.

“There were no alternatives. The infrastructure was in dire straits,” Department of Watershed Protection Commissioner Rob Hunter says.

On Monday, 10 years after the city signed the federal consent decree, it will celebrate the completion of the $757 million combined sewer project.

The documentary puts Atlanta’s situation in a national context. With more than 2 million miles of pipe in our country, some more than a century old, experts say the infrastructure is under stress. The documentary explains and explores the issues, from basic sanitation to public health, public safety, and economic development.