Atlanta luxury high-rise residents grapple with ongoing water issue

ATLANTA - It’s been nearly two months since a massive water main break in the city of Atlanta left thousands of residents without water as crews worked to repair the outages that lasted days. Some residents of a downtown luxury apartment building say they are still without running water.  

Residents at Generation Atlanta have been managing with no water since last Thursday. Before that, there had been low water pressure for weeks. They say the response from management has been slow to fix multiple broken water pumps inside the building.  

Flags, ads, and balloons seek to catch the eye of prospective renters outside the apartment building, but inside, current residents say the luxury high-rise building is missing something. 

"The water shut off on the 18th right around midday, and we haven’t had water since then," one resident, who did not want to be identified, told FOX 5’s Joi Dukes. 

Nearly two months after a massive water main break in Atlanta led to widespread water outages, most tenants in the 17-story apartment building that advertises "luxe living" have not had access to running water. 

"I shower over at Georgia Tech at the rec center. We have to buy drinking water, we have to eat out because you can’t run the dishwasher, can’t cook, and we have to do laundry at our friends' apartment," the resident said. 

He says for the last five days he and his girlfriend have been unable to flush their toilets and are surviving off bottled water. From mid-June to mid-July they also had little to no water pressure. 

"Things break; things happen, but it just seems like they’re not fixing it in a timely manner," he said. 

In a statement to FOX 5 on Monday, officials wrote: 

"We are working diligently to determine the root cause. We had multiple vendors and experts come out to the property to determine the cause." 

"They said that on June 17 when we had low water pressure, and the issue didn’t get fixed until July 12," he said. 

The statement from the management goes on to state: 

"It is unclear whether the issue is related to the recent water main break, or another factor, but because issues started after the city main break, it is most likely related." 

An email from management to residents on July 20 identified the cause as three of the building’s four water pumps being broken and said that ownership and the corporate team are all working to get water restored as quickly as possible. 

"It’s not fair…I think we should be reimbursed…an apartment with no water is worthless," the resident said. 

A spokesperson for Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management wrote: 

"DWM is aware of the low-pressure issue in our water distribution system and deployed resources to assess the situation. Our team is ensuring that all valves are in the correct operating position." 

FOX 5 asked DWM officials whether there had been any other reports of outages or low-water pressure at other buildings in the area, but they had not given a response as of this publication.  

Officials are advising residents to call 311 if they do have problems.