For nearly a year, 70-year-old Simone Grier has had to start every morning using bottled water to brush her teeth and to wash her hands after a pipe burst in her home and left her without running water.
The pipe burst just weeks after she moved into her home this past February. She said that plumbers told her that repairs to pipes and the damage to her home would cost thousands of dollars, something she couldn’t afford on her own.
She was eventually put in touch with advocates who connected her with a DeKalb County program designed to fix pipes for low-income residents for free.
But eight months later, her taps are still dry, and she’s living without one of life’s most basic necessities.
“I don’t want the toilet to stink, so I pee in a container and throw it out. When I need to poop, I sit on something and bag it up for the trash. I can only shower once a week at a friend’s house,” Grier told Capital B Atlanta.
Grier works six days a week as a caregiver for a patient in her 90s with dementia, and when she returns home at the end of the work day, she lives in stressful conditions.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I come home and just sit down. I’m trying to keep it together.”
DeKalb County has a long-standing history of faulty water infrastructure, as it is legally obligated by the Environmental Protection Agency to update its sewer infrastructure throughout the county due to violations of the Clean Water Act.
A consent decree was originally established in 2011 between the county and the EPA, which gave DeKalb a 2020 deadline to fix its infrastructure. After missing that deadline, the decree was modified for a deadline for 2027. However, the county is now pushing to extend the deadline to 2037.
One of the reasons the county has asked for multiple extensions is because of the high costs needed to fix its water and sewer infrastructure. To meet these costs, DeKalb implemented a measure that began this summer to raise water rates 10% every year for the next decade.
Grier said that a handful of her neighbors are also dealing with faulty pipes.
The county’s Department of Community Development promised to help Grier through the DeKalb Cares plumbing repair program, an initiative launched during the COVID pandemic that’s designed to fix leaks and pipe bursts for low-income residents. But weeks have turned into months, and despite repeated phone calls, meetings, and assurances that her case would be “expedited,” no one has come yet to fix her pipes.
“Every time I call, they say the same thing: ‘There’s a lot of people ahead of you,’” she said.
Adding to her challenges, Grier said she’s been dealing with a handful of health issues, like sleep apnea and stomach ulcers. She’s also delaying an important medical procedure until her water is finally restored.
Five miles away, another DeKalb resident, Michael, who declined to share his last name, has been living without running water for nearly as long as Grier, but for a different reason.
Last year, his monthly water bill skyrocketed to $1,500 a month, suggesting he was using hundreds of gallons more than usual. But as the year went on, he said, his bill started to decrease, eventually going down to $300.
The county’s argument for why his bill spiked and then decreased was likely due to a leak in his house, and that if he showed evidence of repairs, the county would work to address his bills.
But Michael, 45, said that multiple plumbers searched his house and a leak was never found.
During his back and forth dispute with the county about his water bills, he said that he lost water service altogether this past March for not paying the outstanding fees.
Michael says his total water bill debt is now around $65,000.
For more than half a year, he has lived without running water at the home he’s rented for 13 years. He showers at a local gym, buys bottled water for drinking, and says his children and grandson have had to move into a hotel.
“I can’t have people over, I can’t even use my own bathroom,” he told Capital B Atlanta. “It’s just me here now. The house is silent.”
Both residents have spent months in a bureaucratic limbo that illustrates the widening gap between what the county promises on paper and what it delivers in practice.
A resolution ignored
In February, after years of advocacy by groups like the Legal Defense Fund and DeKalb Water Watch, the county Board of Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution to address ongoing water issues.
The measure included three key reforms: a Water Customer Advocate Office that would act as an independent mediator between residents and the county, an income-based bill affordability program for low-income residents, and lastly, the resolution established shutoff protections for vulnerable households. The advocate office and affordability programs are set to be administered through the Urban League of Greater Atlanta.
In June, the county also approved a debt-forgiveness program, modeled after initiatives in Philadelphia and Chicago.
But despite the board’s action, advocates say core parts of the resolution remain unenforced. While the affordability program has inched forward, they say shutoff protections have not.
Commissioner Ted Terry, who voted in favor of both measures, blames DeKalb County CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson and the county’s Finance Department. He said that in May, Cochran-Johnson made public comments saying the February resolution was not binding law in the county.
“Earlier this year, there was a statement [from Cochran-Johnson] in a press conference that basically referred to the resolution we passed as not being worth the paper it was written on, in essence, signifying that a resolution is just a request,” Terry told Capital B Atlanta.
“My position has always been that if the Board of Commissioners passes a resolution that dictates and lays out a course of action, whether it be policy, funding, or constituent services, it is a matter of law and should be followed.”
David Wheaton, assistant policy counsel for the Legal Defense Fund, told Capital B Atlanta that vulnerable residents are being impacted by the county’s refusal to enact water shutoff protections laid out in the resolution.
“They’re still continuously shutting people off who are elderly, who are low income, who have families, and that’s the real unfortunate part of this, is that we thought those people were going to be protected, so we’re going to keep pushing for those people to be protected,” Wheaton said.
During a May 14 press conference, Cochran-Johnson said that the county is owed $104.7 million from delinquent water bills and that there are 600 individual accounts with balances over $5,000.
“We are building a system that is fair, that is accurate and a system that is compassionate, but also we are seeking accountability,” Cochran-Johnson said at the press conference.
She said that the county was beginning to implement measures that included a recorded customer service line, resolution consultations via Zoom for residents, and payment plans that require a digital signature from the customer.
The county’s communications team and the Office of the CEO did not respond to Capital B Atlanta’s repeated requests for comment.
Black residents pay the price
Kat Maddox, an advocate with DeKalb Water Watch, says her group sees the fallout firsthand with residents.
“I have not seen any demonstration of the county being committed to establishing affordable water policies. What I have seen is them committed to short-term shakedowns and intimidation of their own residents,” Maddox told Capital B Atlanta.
Maddox said Michael’s case, in which four different contractors found no leaks, is typical.
“It’s a story I’ve heard more than several times, that if someone has a high bill, they do their due diligence to attempt to find a leak. No leak is found, and their usage has not changed. The county just says, ‘Well, if you can’t send us evidence of repairs, then we can’t move forward.’ It’s one of their favorite booby traps,” she said.
She also describes the Finance Department’s response patterns as “helter-skelter” — that they either don’t respond at all to residents fighting billing errors and meter issues, or they respond in ways that make no sense.
Michael said his bills remain unresolved, and his landlord is continuing to push the county to address the issue.
Wheaton said an analysis of LDF’s data indicates that water shut-offs in the county are more common in neighborhoods with higher percentages of non-Hispanic Black residents. The group’s research also shows that shutoffs are more likely for low income residents and residents with disabilities.
“So the more shutoffs we have, the more we know that Black DeKalb residents are going to suffer from that. So that’s what we try to continuously tell the county, and that’s what our research has shown,” Wheaton said.
Beyond policy failures, advocates say DeKalb may also be violating residents’ constitutional rights.
Under current payment-plan contracts, Wheaton said that there’s new language that appeared this year that states that anyone who misses a single payment can be disconnected without notice.
“It’s really a deprivation of the 14th Amendment and due-process rights because you should have to give people the ability to appeal and the ability to understand before their water is disconnected,” Wheaton said.
The future for water in DeKalb County
Wheaton said the Customer Advocate Office is expected to open by January 2026. While the water bill affordability program is running, he said, it is already showing cracks.
While the program takes into account a household’s income and current water bill rate, advocates say clients’ previous payment plans are not being taken into account. Advocates worry that not including this in the eligibility equation could exclude some struggling families from qualifying for the program.
Commissioner Terry said he’s introduced new resolutions that are currently being reviewed in county committees, including a Water Customer Bill of Rights, to ensure due process before shutoffs. In addition, the LDF is calling for the county to uphold shutoff protections.
But Maddox said residents shouldn’t have to wait for another policy cycle for relief.
“Since I started this campaign two years ago, I haven’t seen a single resident get full resolution,” she said.
She credits the Urban League of Greater Atlanta, which was tapped to administer the affordability program and customer advocate office, for “sincere effort.” But she insists the county’s leadership must follow through.
“The Cochran-Johnson administration needs to examine more closely the crisis that they are facing and the solutions that they have been presented with, and to begin implementing those solutions in good faith,” she said.
As DeKalb County officials fail to adhere to the Board of Commissioners’ reforms and address the county’s water infrastructure issues, residents are waiting — and hoping that the county’s promises will eventually reach them.
As Grier marks eight months waiting for the county to help fix her pipes and restore water to her home, she said she’s “lost confidence” in county officials.
“I don’t try to stress myself out, I try to keep calm, and I have friends, and I know to pray,” Grier said. “I just have faith something is gonna happen for me.”
