"Able" Mable Thomas has spent almost her entire life in Vine City, the historic Black community west of downtown Atlanta that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once called home. Over the years, Thomas, a former state representative and Atlanta City Council member, had grown used to seeing the neighborhood's sewers overflow after a heavy rain. But as projects like the Georgia World Congress Center and the Georgia Dome reshaped downtown, she thought little about how the new concrete was really affecting her neighborhood.
In September 2002, a tropical storm drenched Atlanta, overwhelming parts of the city's combined sewage and stormwater system and sending floodwaters laced with raw sewage into Vine City's streets and homes. Trapped residents had to be rescued by boat, with hundreds of homes damaged or destroyed.
Today, the area where many of those homes once stood is now a park. Rodney Cook Sr. Park opened in 2021 and serves as one piece of Atlanta's complex effort to address flooding from its antiquated sewer and stormwater system. The $40 million "sponge park" includes a terraced retention pond and surrounding fields that can absorb 10 million gallons of stormwater.
At the juncture of Peoplestown and Summerhill, the city is constructing the $156.5 million Custer Avenue Multi-Benefit Capacity Relief Stormwater Vault — an underground concrete structure capable of storing 20 million gallons of stormwater and sewage, with a green space, playground, and splash pad planned above it. Columbus Ward, a 72-year-old Peoplestown resident, traces the neighborhood's flooding problems to the 1996 Olympic Games and the wave of pavement that followed.
Alfred Tucker of the Stop Flooding Us Coalition grew up in Hunter Hills, where Proctor Creek — a Chattahoochee River tributary with headwaters near The Gulch downtown — has repeatedly inundated his family's home. The coalition is demanding the city develop a comprehensive stormwater plan, while officials with Atlanta's Department of Watershed Management say they've worked closely with developers to ensure adequate infrastructure going forward.
Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution