How Marisa Pyle Would Fix Atlanta
Oh, hello.
Some quick housekeeping! Each year around this time, we do a big old fundraiser to abolish as much medical debt in the Atlanta metro area as possible. This year is no different. Please save the date: Sept. 22.
Gonna need you to donate as much as you can and tell all your friends and send it to your group chats and print it out and make it into little paper airplanes and throw them at strangers and help us change the lives of a bunch of our neighbors. Get hyped. It's gonna be great.
We've got more news soon. More announcements. More stickers. More everything. But today? Well, today we've got a lovely new essay from Marisa Pyle. Please enjoy.
How I’d Fix Atlanta — Bring Back Public Drinking Fountains
Marisa Pyle
I worship at the altar of the Oakhurst Square water fountain. Located at the precise halfway point of one of my running routes, it saves me from wearing my hydration vest on longer treks. It’s also the only public drinking fountain on any of my routes. On more desperate days, when I’ve miscalculated my thirst and my plan doesn’t take me past the square, I’ve found myself fantasizing about streams, lakes, and even puddles that look increasingly tantalizing as the miles drag on.
I’ve also had time to think: Why have our priorities led us away from ensuring water is easily available throughout neighborhoods? Atlanta is thirsty. Our pedestrians are enduring a near-drought, and it’s time we remember that water is essential to public spaces.
Water fountains were originally introduced and popularized in the U.S. in the mid-to-late-1800s, amid a movement to invest in public goods and direct philanthropy toward humanitarian projects. Their prioritization then, as now, signals a city’s priorities—namely, that its leaders value public health, equitable infrastructure, and outdoor activities.
Atlanta’s leaders have for years talked about diversifying our transit, making us more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly. And just as public drinking fountains were flashpoints in the fight for desegregation (one of the reasons some cities, including our own, ceased or deprioritized their installation), they should now be a part of designing for inclusivity and racial justice in Atlanta’s future.
No single solution will provide a silver bullet, but the reintroduction of water fountains would go a long way toward realigning our priorities toward the needs of ATL's growing population.
As we know all too well from recent ruptures, our water infrastructure is old and often failing. Water main breaks have disrupted access to tens of thousands of residents, and boil water advisories are increasingly common. More than that, we’re positively soaked—there’s loads of water in places where it can’t even be consumed. It’s a mess, and we need real change.
While we’re updating Atlanta’s plumbing and adding green infrastructure, why not modernize our water systems to make us a more welcoming, climate-resilient, and accessible city? Proactively updating our water system not only would let us reap the benefits in our daily lives, but would also help us avoid the unplanned disruptions of breaks and leaks.
And then there’s the aspect of public trust. Newer and more visible infrastructure, particularly a water system that focuses on public consumption through drinking fountains, is proven to increase that consumption by boosting trust in the safety and health of the water itself. While we make those updates, let’s not just keep what we have, but expand access to water across the city so that commuters, families, runners, and all residents can get a drink when they need it.
Beyond simple infrastructure, widespread expansion of our public drinking fountain system sends a message that Atlanta welcomes outdoor recreation, pedestrians, and a diversification of transport. This shift could radically transform how we get around, spend time, and plan our commutes. It would also encourage more pedestrian activity across the city, increasing the use of footpaths, sidewalks, and parks.
Studies show that widespread adoption of public drinking infrastructure drives people to spend more time outside, allowing for pedestrians to have safer and more supported commutes. Right now, we’re so far behind: a 2023 study estimates that Atlanta has only 0.68 water fountains per 100,000 residents. Contrast that against the cities leading the list: Washington DC (24.83 per 100,000), Austin (15.91 per 100,000) and Portland (9.51 per 100,000). As ATL slowly takes steps to reduce our car dependency, this a great and relatively light lift to move us closer to that exciting new reality.
This summer, we’ve all felt the oppressive, humid, sweltering impacts of a climate crisis that isn’t so much as looming as it is already hitting us. As extreme heat becomes more common, often paired with Southern humidity that creates wet bulb temperatures extremely dangerous to health and safety, resilience must be built into our urban planning. For all of us, water fountains could make hydration more accessible and readily available city-wide, but crucially, they are one component of a climate crisis safety net for unhoused ATLiens.
Too many of our essential services are essentially paywalled, blockaded behind the cost of housing, shelter, or simply a single-use, plastic bottle at a gas station. Safe, widespread, and free drinking fountains help ensure that there’s never a cost barrier to avoiding the deadly threat of dehydration. And, as with many investments in essential infrastructure, this expansion has an outsized benefit for the health and safety of lower-income and at-risk residents.
So, how do we make all this happen?
Now that our Mayor has already committed $2 billion of funding for water infrastructure upgrades, it’s time for him—and us—to push for drinking fountains to be built into those projects. We can take tips from New York City’s city council, which last year passed legislation to add 50 new drinking fountains in the next 10 years—all within 100 feet of public parks. We can also follow the lead of Los Angeles, which partnered with WeTap, an app that maps nearby drinking fountains so they’re easy to find and use, when they installed over 200 new fountains across their city over the last decade.
We need strategic and intentional development and a cohesive plan to build a more inclusive and equitable Atlanta. So next time you go for a walk, a run, or just take your kids or pets to the local park: look around for a water fountain. Think about what water access means for public inclusivity and equitable use of our outdoor spaces.
It’s time we recognize clean water access as not only a human right, but a public good that we proactively provide and maintain. And maybe, if we all work for it together, more of our future travels could be on bike paths instead of roads, and we could all be a little less thirsty while we get to where we're going.
Marisa Pyle is an Atlanta organizer whose work focuses on disinformation mitigation, political violence monitoring, and voting rights. They’re passionate about police abolition, collective liberation, and building community safety. Marisa can be found at plant sales or local run clubs, and wrote this in their personal capacity.
How I'd Fix Atlanta is an essay series by ATLiens for ATL. In each of these pieces, a thoughtful human argues for one way we could make our city better. Sometimes the ideas are serious. Other times? A little more lighthearted. From infrastructure to food trucks, public transit to wildflowers, nothing is off limits.
How I’d Fix Atlanta was created by Austin L. Ray. It's a free newsletter sent on a Thursday of most months. It's also an annual zine that costs money. Sometimes it’s a performance on a stage. Other times, it’s a fundraiser. It's always a bunch of stickers. Occasionally it's featured on a podcast or a legendary WABE show. How I’d Fix Atlanta is large, it contains multitudes.
Each writer is paid $1,000 for their essay. Thanks for reading.
