ATLANTA — Atlanta watershed crews are trying to isolate pipes along Centennial Olympic Park Drive following a massive water main break Thursday.
The Atlanta Mission, which serves the homeless, found themselves without water for most of the day as gallons upon gallons of water flowed like a river down Centennial Olympic Park Drive.
Drivers navigating through the floodwater at the intersection of Ivan Allen Jr. Drive found themselves sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, waiting and hoping for a green light.
"I’m just trying to get on 75, so I should be fine, hopefully," driver Robbi Fountain said.
City of Atlanta Watershed Management workers tried hard to shut off the water to avoid the waste.
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"A 12-inch pipe -- it's pretty significant," assistant commissioner Calvin Farr, with Atlanta Watershed, told Channel 2's Wendy Halloran.
Farr said new construction, including an apartment complex in the path of the water main break, made it difficult to shut the water off.
“There’s a lot of construction down here in the city, so that’s the challenge,” Farr said.
The construction also presents other problems for record keeping.
“When you have new construction, you have new infrastructure, newer valves, and then it’s a matter of putting it in our records and keeping track of it," Farr said.
For hours on end, water crews dug to get down to the broken pipes, but ran into layers and layers of rocks as they tried to excavate.
“Definitely a very serious situation trying to get a handle on right now," Farr told Halloran.
So far, they have no timetable as to when they will be able to isolate the problem.