Climate change is increasing the intensity of flash flooding in Atlanta. While the city has taken measures to mitigate the issue, residents in one watershed say not enough is being done.
City Government’s Efforts
One blueprint for saving Atlanta from drowning has been around for over 20 years.
In 2001, following years of public input, the City of Atlanta started an effort to address flooding concerns. In this, it created a plan to reduce combined sewer overflows and improve water quality in nearby watersheds. This plan was originally set to be completed within the next year.
By 2007, the city planned to invest in green infrastructure going forward to mitigate flash flooding. Since then, multiple green infrastructure projects have been completed.
Historic Fourth Ward Park, a 17-acre green space that includes a stormwater retention basin capable of capturing stormwater from a 100-year storm, is one. Another is Cook Park, which has a retention pond and other infrastructure capable of storing 10 million gallons of stormwater.
These projects have helped reduce the number of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) by 62 percent since 2001.
With Atlanta recently receiving $29 million in loans to address additional infrastructure concerns, such as improving the Flint River pump station, more progress seems to be underway.
In the meantime, some communities will continue to be flooded due to a history of government neglect and the legacy of segregation. One area is Proctor Creek.
Proctor Creek and Impervious Surfaces
In the past, redlining and zoning forced Black residents into low-lying floodplains, like Vine City. In 2002, Vine City was hit with a massive flood of stormwater and raw sewage. While this area became Cook Park, it is also in the Proctor Creek Watershed.
But what is the Proctor Creek Watershed?
In an interview with Alfred Tucker, a resident of the Proctor Creek area since 1942 and current co-chair of the Stop Flooding Us Coalition, Tucker described the Proctor Creek Watershed and two major concerns: impervious surfaces and CSOs.
As Tucker said, “Proctor Creek is an eight-mile-long creek whose headwaters are in the area near Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which they call the Gulch because it was a huge, paved parking lot.”
Much of Downtown consists of impervious surfaces. For instance, a fourth of all the Downtown Atlanta area is parking lots. This, coupled with the fact that from 1970 to 2024, Atlanta saw a 13.2 percent increase in rainfall intensity, means that some neighborhoods can expect worsening flooding in the coming years.
With Atlanta’s urban network and old water infrastructure, this increase in rainfall intensity may also lead to more overflows and flooding in South Atlanta.
In another conversation at a Ke’nekt Cooperative with Sylvester Pierce, a longtime resident in South Atlanta, Pierce mentioned that every time it rains, his neighborhood floods. However, the flooding Pierce and Tucker may not look the same due to the presence of CSOs in Proctor Creek.
Proctor Creek and CSOs
Proctor Creek Watershed is home to two CSO facilities that treat stormwater. Importantly, these CSO facilities rely on older combined sewer systems that use a single pipe to carry stormwater and raw sewage.
With this in mind, and with increased rainfall intensity due to climate change, there is an increase in overflow discharges into local watersheds.
While the EPA claims that green infrastructure, integrated planning, smart sewers, smart data infrastructure, and real-time notification systems are all possible solutions for managing the impacts of flash floods and CSOs, equity concerns remain.
For instance, according to Dan Immergluck with the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State, “green gentrification” is another issue at play.
As Immergluck notes, green gentrification is “a process in which restoring degraded urban areas by adding green features drives up housing prices and pushes out working-class residents.”
Ultimately, flooding in Atlanta affects areas beyond just Proctor Creek, as it did on May 20. However, those impacts are not equally distributed.
As Tucker mentioned, “everybody is being affected by it, [but] it’s a matter of who’s being affected the worst.”
