Atlanta’s Environmental Problems Are Caused by Overpopulation

Atlanta was founded in 1847, as the capital of Georgia. It was founded as a hub for transportation because it was located at the center of the Atlantic and Midwestern train lines. The city was never intended to grow as fast and wide as it is now. It is located in the center of the state, in what is called the Piedmont region, known for its hills and forests. The city is known for its vast forests and green scenery. The Chattahoochee River flows through metro Atlanta, under the highways and in the yards of homes. The city itself is very hilly and filled with trees.

When rebuilding the city after it was burned down by Union General Sherman in the Civil War, the city planners did not plan for it to grow into what it is today. The builders focused on making the city more industrial and less agricultural. This attracted many more people in the early 20th century and the city began to grow at an unprecedented rate, expanding the city limits. The growth did not stop there, however. To this day, Atlanta continues to grow and expand the city limits, but remains environmentally unprepared for the amount of people living in it. The city faces problems of sewage control, traffic pollution, and deforestation due to the continuing growth of the city.

Overpopulation combined with a lot of rainfall causes the Atlanta sewage system to overflow into the Chattahoochee river. The sewage system in Atlanta was not built for the amount of people who use it. Residents all over the city face sewage issues at least once a year due to overwhelming the sewage pipes. Atlanta also receives an average of 52 inches of rain per year. This amount of rain draining into the already overwhelmed sewers causes the sewage to overflow into the Chattahoochee River.

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The problem peaked in the late 20th century, Jason Ulseth of The Chattahoochee Riverkeeper explains, “From the late 1970s through the 1990s, officials in the city of Atlanta failed to invest in regular maintenance of the city’s sewer system, which led to thousands of overflows and spills of untreated sewage each year during wet and dry weather.” (Ulseth, 2019). The river had extreme levels of E.coli than normal due to the overflow, which put much of the wildlife at risk. While the sewage problem has gotten better due to more funding and river clean-up initiatives, it hasn’t cleared. An AJC article explains that in early 2019, Fulton County reported 18 million gallons of sewage spilled into the Chattahoochee River (Arielle Kass, 2019). The sewage system continues to be overwhelmed, but there are steps being taken to clean the river and fix the system.

A newspaper article explains, “Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms signed legislation which authorized the sale of a $291 million water and wastewater revenue bond.” (Everett Catts, 2019). This means that the sewage plants have more funding to improve the system and keep it from getting overwhelmed.

Due to the unpreparedness of public transportation and the highway system, Atlanta has one of the worst traffic problems in the US, causing air pollution throughout the city, but being unevenly spread in poorer parts of town. When planning MARTA, the public transportation system for Atlanta, in 1970, there were four main parts of the city. The train was built to run to only those four parts of the city (Figure 1). As the city grew, more people lived in other parts of the city and it made it harder to use the train because it only ran 4 directions. MARTA was never updated and is only used by people who live near the stations who need to get somewhere with a station.

In the 1950s, Atlanta built its highway system. This was during the Civil Rights Era, and the highway system, uncoincidentally, was built as a separation of the black and white neighborhoods. The builders bulldozed straight through the neighborhood of Martin Luther King Jr.’s house. Rather than making a logically sound highway system, the highway builders placed the highways in “undesirable” neighborhoods, or neighborhoods with a majority of black residents (Kruse, 2018). The discrimination that went into building Atlanta’s highway system caused the actual highways to be more of a burden than helpful.

The streets of Atlanta are anything but a block system due to racial discrimination as well. Certain streets were composed to run only through the good parts of town, making them winding and confusing to drivers. The senseless construction of the roads, then is the reason why Atlanta traffic is so bad. Confused drivers paired with long and winding roads, paired with an unused public transportation system, gives way to massive buildups everywhere, which causes bad air pollution.

The air pollution is also unevenly spread in poorer areas because of where the highways and streets are located. It is hard to fix these problems because the highway system is so vast that it makes it difficult to be changed without causing more traffic. To help with this problem, MARTA is expanding its train system to go around all of metro Atlanta (Figure 2). This will make public transportation more accessible, meaning less people will drive in cars and more people will use public transportation. As for the poorer areas being more affected by air pollution due to the placement of the highways, more highways are being made to run around the whole city so that there is less traffic and more cars are evenly spread out.

The location of Atlanta in the middle of the Piedmont region of Georgia makes it necessary to cut down trees to allow for more urban space. The city of Atlanta is different from other big cities because of its natural landscape. Had it never turned into a city, Atlanta would have been a big forest. Millions of trees have been cut down since the city was first founded. This is causing many species to lose their habitats. As the city continues to grow, more trees get cut down. Because the city prides itself on its mix of urban and natural landscape, the government has worked hard to fix this problem by making it expensive and difficult to chop down a tree in metro Atlanta. A New York Times article explains that, “With 27 percent of the city covered with trees, Atlanta charges up to $1,000 to cut down a single one, even with permission” (Brown, 2011).

In conclusion, Atlanta’s historical development and growth continues through the 21st century, still causing major environmental issues. As more people populate Atlanta, the sewage system gets more overwhelmed, flooding the Chattahoochee River. Because of the discrimination during the Civil Rights Movement, Atlantans suffer the consequences through bad trafffic and the pollution that comes with it. Atlanta also finds itself losing what it prides itself on to this day: its forests. Although the city of Atlanta faces many environmental problems, the government and people are working hard to fix the environment.

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