Sohn: Our water crisis needs answers now

Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter / Workers are seen as water floods by a Tennessee American Water alongside the Tennessee River on Friday. A break in a major 36-inch line left much of Chattanooga without water for more than a day. Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter / Workers are seen as water floods by a Tennessee American Water alongside the Tennessee River on Friday. A break in a major 36-inch line left much of Chattanooga without water for more than a day.

By Pam Sohn September 17, 2019 5 min read

“At American Water, we keep life flowing.”

That is a sentence in one of the blurbs you likely found if you, like us, were searching the Tennessee American Water company’s website for information about the long dry weekend in Chattanooga – a weekend when the water of life was not flowing from many Chattanooga water taps.

With temps in the high 90s under a brutal September sun, 35,000 households and businesses had no water.

Many large buildings – Memorial Hospital and the Tennessee Aquarium, for instance – had no air conditioning either, as water makes their “chillers” function.

Memorial Hospital had to purchase at least 50 portable fans. Animals died at the Tennessee Aquarium when cool-exhibit tanks overheated. Ten portable toilets had to delivered to the Hamilton County Jail.