It was a problem decades in the making: raw sewage flowing into Proctor Creek, a tributary of the Chattahoochee River that winds through some of the most impoverished parts of Atlanta.
As often as 80 times a year, rainstorms caused the overburdened sewer systems to overflow in downtown Atlanta.
City leaders and residents alike cheered seven years ago when, under a federal decree stemming from a lawsuit, Atlanta officials completed a $112 million project untangling portions of the city’s water and sewer lines to fix the problem in the Proctor Creek basin. It was a pivotal moment in righting one of Atlanta’s most toxic wrongs.
There’s just one problem: they missed some spots.
Water quality testing has revealed a small but lingering amount of E. coli bacteria in Proctor Creek, caused by underground pipes that still send sewage into the waterway instead of to a treatment plant.
The ongoing problems at Proctor Creek highlight the complexity of fixing Atlanta’s notoriously troubled water and sewer infrastructure, a system so neglected that it fell under federal oversight in the 1990s following a lawsuit by the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.
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