Atlanta's fight to stop flooding in Black communities is far from over

“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.

“We never knew the extent of what had been built over here,” Thomas said.

Then, in September 2002, its vulnerability reared its head.

As a tropical storm drenched Atlanta, rains overwhelmed parts of the city’s combined sewage and stormwater system, sending floodwaters laced with raw sewage into Vine City’s streets and homes. Trapped residents had to be rescued by boat from the floodwaters, which left hundreds of homes damaged or destroyed.

Today, the area where many of those homes once stood is now a park. On a sunny February afternoon, walkers and skaters explored the maze of elevated walkways, while Canada geese bobbed in the pond below. The park still floods from time to time, but these days that’s by design.

Rodney Cook Sr. Park opened in 2021 and is just one piece of Atlanta’s complex effort to address flooding from its antiquated sewer and stormwater system. Those problems, experts say, have often disproportionately affected Black communities like Vine City.

The $40 million “sponge park” gave the area a much-needed green space and a new flood defense system, with a terraced retention pond and surrounding fields that can absorb 10 million gallons of stormwater. It’s already been called into action, including during Hurricane Helene’s record-breaking downpour.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Like the Historic Fourth Ward Park that took shape a decade earlier near the Atlanta Beltline’s Eastside Trail, Cook Park’s rain gardens, native plants and other “green infrastructure” are engineered to flood so the surrounding neighborhood stays dry.

The project has undeniably reshaped Vine City, which has been hit by decades of depopulation and disinvestment, wounds worsened by the 2002 flood and the financial crisis. To Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management, that makes these projects a “win-win.”

“I think the topography, the location, fit perfectly with this type of design,” said Hugh Smith, the DWM’s assistant commissioner.

In an era of storms supercharged by climate change, few disagree Atlanta needs upgrades to keep residents safe from the growing flood risk. But opinions differ on the best approach.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Some worry they fail to address the root cause: the maze of concrete, buildings and impervious surfaces in downtown — and the pipes beneath them — which send stormwater and sewage cascading into Black communities downstream. Critics also say projects like Cook Park and a stormwater project under construction south of downtown will make lower-income areas more attractive to developers, worsening what they call “green gentrification,” in a city already desperate for affordable housing.

“You can’t do this in isolation and just think about the capture of stormwater,” said Sarah Ledford, an associate professor at Georgia State University and urban hydrology expert. “You have to think about all of the impacts that happen to the residents beyond just the flooding.”

‘Fatal flaws’

Atlanta is not alone in its struggles with flooding. Like other urban areas, experts say its problems can be traced to its combined sewer system, the shared set of pipes built to carry both wastewater and stormwater.

In Atlanta’s early days, Ledford said sewage was simply dumped into roadside ditches and washed away by rain, a practice that was detrimental to human health and the smell of their surroundings. To get rid of the stench, Atlanta began placing pipes in gullies and creeks, using the natural flow of water to move the waste, and eventually giving rise to its mazelike combined sewer system. Eventually, treatment plants were added to kill pathogens before wastewater is released into waterways.

The system works well in dry weather, but time and science have revealed “fatal flaws,” Ledford said.

When it rains, stormwater and wastewater enter the same set of pipes. When enough enters the system, it gets overwhelmed, leading to flooding, sewage overflows and dangerous releases of untreated wastewater.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

The problems have landed Atlanta in legal trouble, including two federal consent decrees that forced the city to limit overflows.

Flooding can and does affect more affluent white communities. In 2024, Hurricane Helene caused severe flooding in parts of Buckhead along Peachtree Creek and Nancy Creek.

Still, historical accounts show how deliberate city planning and economic forces in the post-Civil War era combined to place many of Atlanta’s Black communities squarely in the path of dangerous runoff and sewage.

In his 2010 paper, environmental historian Bartow Elmore documented how Atlanta’s primitive sewer lines often emptied into Black neighborhoods; how “de facto residential segregation” policies pushed Black people into flood zones; and how poverty left many unable to afford housing outside of low-lying areas.

“Looking at the geography of segregation through the lens of environmental history, scholars can see how Atlanta’s most precious resource, water, determined where blacks and whites lived,” Elmore wrote.

‘It all comes to this block’

Over the years, Atlanta has spent billions to untangle its sewer and stormwater lines, and expand the system as the city grows.

Still, officials acknowledge there’s work to be done.

The scale of the efforts are visible today at the juncture of Peoplestown and Summerhill, two historic Black communities south of downtown.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Here, cranes tower over the bungalows that line surrounding streets, as earthmovers excavate around five sewer and stormwater lines that converge beneath the site.

This $156.5 million project is known as the Custer Avenue Multi-Benefit Capacity Relief Stormwater Vault, and it’s supposed to mitigate flooding in this low-lying area and other parts of southeast Atlanta downstream.

Columbus Ward has spent almost all of his 72 years in Peoplestown. A longtime community advocate and member of the neighborhood planning unit, Ward said flooding wasn’t a problem here for most of his life.

Things changed after the 1996 Olympic Games.

That brought the new Centennial Olympic Stadium (later known as Turner Field and now Center Parc Stadium) and more pavement just west of the neighborhood, and in the years that followed, sewage and stormwater overflows.

“All the water from the interstate … all the asphalt up there — it all comes to this block,” Ward said.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

The nuisances became a full-blown crisis in 2012 after sewage-laden floodwaters damaged many homes, including some where the Custer project is now under construction.

The city has already taken steps to address the problem, installing permeable pavers and vegetated rain gardens along several streets in the area. But Department of Watershed Management officials believe the Custer project is the big fix the area needs.

Right now, contractors are removing 230,000 cubic yards of dirt from the site to make room for a concrete vault that will be able to store 20 million gallons of stormwater and sewage. On top of the vault, the city plans to build a green space with a playground, splash pad and walking paths.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Sharon Matthews, a program manager for the DWM, believes it will be a game-changer for the neighborhood.

“Especially for those that are in the immediate area who will get to use it on a daily basis, it’ll make a big difference,” Matthews said.

But residents like Ward are uneasy about what it may do to the neighborhood.

That, in part, has to do with how the project came to be.

Homes used to sit on much of the land where the vault and park are now under construction. But some longtime residents didn’t want to leave, and the city used eminent domain to acquire their properties. After about a decade of negotiations, the messy saga finally ended in 2022, when the city reached settlement deals with the remaining homeowners.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Ward knew many families who were forced to sell — he coached their kids in baseball and worked on community initiatives with others. Meanwhile, as property values in the area have climbed, he’s seen the neighborhood’s complexion shift and wonders if a brand-new park will only accelerate it.

“Things are going to change,” he said. “So far, it ain’t been bad-bad, but it ain’t been all good-good either.”

Matthews is confident the final product will be embraced by the neighborhood.

“Let’s get it built, let’s see its performance,” she said. “Sometimes you just got to show it to make people believers.”

‘You’ve got to be fair’

Even after years of work, flooding remains a hazard in several Black Atlanta communities.

Alfred Tucker grew up in one of them, Hunter Hills, a neighborhood just west of downtown. When it was established in the 1940s, Hunter Hills was one of the city’s few planned Black communities. Tucker’s father built the house he grew up in, the same house Tucker’s son lives in today.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Snaking through the neighborhood is a tendril of Proctor Creek, a major Chattahoochee River tributary that winds through northwest Atlanta. The creek’s headwaters lie near The Gulch, the gritty tangle of parking lots and railroads downtown being revived as the $5 billion Centennial Yards project.

The Proctor Creek watershed has long been a problem area for flooding, and Tucker says the crawlspace of his family’s home has been inundated many times over the years.

Today, Tucker helps lead the Stop Flooding Us Coalition, a grassroots organization gathering signatures for a petition that demands the city develop a comprehensive plan for controlling stormwater that emanates from downtown.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

“They’ve done some good things, I can’t deny that,” Tucker said about the city’s flood mitigation efforts so far. “But they need to do more.”

As new buildings rise, DWM officials say they’ve worked closely with the developers behind Centennial Yards and other downtown projects to ensure they have adequate infrastructure to handle stormwater. Alex Mohajer, deputy commissioner for Atlanta’s Office of Watershed Protection, said it’s also preparing to conduct a new, citywide flood plain analysis to inform future projects.

As Atlanta grows, Matthews, the project manager for DWM, said the city is committed to ensuring Black communities get the infrastructure improvements they deserve.

“They’ve been impacted for so long,” Matthews said. “You’ve got to be fair.”

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