Water main break continues to gush for a week

ATLANTA — Crews are trying to repair a massive water main that ruptured a week ago!¤w3 33 it is still affecting traffic along busy Marietta Boulevard in northwest Atlanta.

The water is finally down to spurt, instead of the steady flow that was going on for six days straight.

Crews are finally working on getting down to the broken pipe, by cutting away concrete and using large equipment to dig.

The broken pipe is deep underneath Marietta Boulevard in northwest Atlanta.

It is 6 feet wide and also from 1971.

The pipe burst during the extreme cold on Thursday.

Since then, area businesses clamored for information, not knowing if the water was safe to drink and use.

Channel 2 Action News finally got an on-camera interview with watershed management, who gave us a definitive answer.

“This is not impacting any our customers, it's merely a traffic inconvenience at this point,” Atlanta Watershed Management’s Reginal Wells said.

After nearly a week, it seems people are finding a new way around.

The city says this is one of 22 recent water main breaks, and that's why they had to hire outside contractors.

“You don't want to tie up your in-house resources, when we've had the multitude of breaks," Wells said.

Once crews find a way into the pipe, they say it could take days to fix it.

“We'll weld it, weld it from the inside and the outside, and that takes time,” Darrell Black with Rockdale Pipeline said.

Crews say it could be another week before everything is fixed.

WSBTV