Atlanta remains under state of emergency amid ongoing water troubles

Atlanta Public Schools’ summer school and summer programs will not be held Monday, as the city continues to grapple with disruptions to the city’s water service that first began last week.

Atlanta remains under a state of emergency Monday as it battles disruptions to its water service that first began last week, leaving a swath of a major city under boil water advisories and highlighting the pervasiveness of problems caused by America’s aging infrastructure. “To the people of Atlanta, I do want to apologize that this has frustrated you and frustrated me this weekend,” Mayor Andre Dickens said on “CNN News Central” on Monday morning, nearly three days after the first water main break was reported. “This is not the way the city nor the visitors, residents intended to spend our weekend, having to boil water and deal with low pressure or water outages in certain areas.” Atlanta Public Schools’ summer school and programs will not be held Monday as a result, and programs “will reconvene once the boil water advisories have been lifted,” a notice from the school district said. Non-essential employees have been told to work remotely. The city has been plagued by water woes since Friday, when the first two of a series of water main breaks emerged along two pipes – one a 36-inch pipe, the other a 48-inch pipe – that Dickens said were about a century old. Repairs were completed on one break near downtown Saturday evening, hours before Dickens declared a state of emergency. Repairs on the other break, in Midtown, have yet to be completed, and crews were working on it as recently as Monday morning.