For more than a year, the Athens Community Council on Aging has struggled to recover from a deluge of muddy water that caused extensive damage to its Hoyt Street facilities, forcing significant cutbacks in its programming.
“It’s been incredibly disruptive,” said Eve Anthony, CEO of the ACCA, which provides space and services for a host of programs for senior adults.
Among other things, Anthony explained, the flooding has forced the ACCA to lease space to continue its Senior Center programming. Also, the expense of repairing flood damage has meant the agency can’t address the waiting list for its Meals on Wheels initiative.
The facility is insured, but because the damage came from flooding, the payout was capped at $30,000, Anthony explained. That sum didn’t even cover the costs of drying out the ACCA, which totaled $50,000, she said.
To date, the ACCA has had out-of-pocket flood recovery expenses of $100,000.
Ongoing repair costs will add significantly to that total, according to Anthony. In addition, the ACCA has retained legal counsel, an expense not included in its budget.
The fiscal challenge is made even tougher by the fact that ACCA’s fee-for-service revenue is down as its programming has been cut back due to the flooding. Participation in the fee-based Center for Active Learning at ACAC is down 50% in the wake of the incident, according to Anthony.
But an even deeper frustration is that the entity it believes is responsible for the flooding has not offered any support. Anthony says the ACCA believes the flooding occurred June 11, 2023 – a Sunday, so no one was in the facility to react immediately – originated with work being done by an AT&T utility relocation crew.
Relying on a report submitted to the agency by its plumbing contractor, which the ACCA contacted upon discovering the flooding, Anthony contends the water entered the building through the snapped AT&T conduit, which is downhill from the North Downtown Athens Redevelopment Project.
The construction project is a massive public-private housing and mixed-use development initiative involving the Athens Housing Authority and funding from an Athens-Clarke County sales tax program.
According to Anthony, the conduit was next to a mound of dirt, and as a significant rainstorm moved across the area, a flood of muddy water was forced into it. Unfortunately for the ACCA, an open end of that conduit terminates in a utility room inside the agency’s building, and the muddy water flowed from there into a large part of the ACCA building, including its kitchen.
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Interaction with AT&T since the flooding has been unproductive, according to Anthony. At one point, she said, the utility company contended that its visual inspection of the conduit break site and the ACCA building showed that there were different types of mud at each location.
“It’s disappointing,” Anthony said, calling AT&T’s reaction to the flooding “a tough blow to get.”
For its part, AT&T flatly disputes the claim that it had any role in the flooding.
“What happened to the Athens Community Council on Aging is unfortunate, but based on our investigation to date, we are not responsible for it,” an AT&T spokesperson noted in an email.
Elsewhere in the corporate email, AT&T contends it investigated the ACCA claim with the utility’s third-party insurer and determined that its work did not damage any buried utilities. Anthony, however, contends that the third-party insurer did not do its own investigation, but relied on information provided to it.
The AT&T email goes on to contend that other parties were doing work at the site of the flooding during the same timeframe that AT&T was at the location.
All of those findings have been shared with the ACCA, according to the AT&T email.
According to Anthony, the ACCA’s counsel has advised the agency that one of its options going forward is simply to publicize the incident.
As part of that, Anthony said, the ACCA is asking people who are concerned about the agency’s attempts to deal with the flooding to talk with local officials, to raise questions about the flooding and its aftermath, and notwithstanding AT&T’s position on the incident, to appeal to the utility.
Beyond the AT&T investigation, the damage at ACCA has been visited by Athens-Clarke County Mayor Kelly Girtz and Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Dexter Fisher, given the local government’s involvement with the North Athens Downtown Redevelopment project.
“This is definitely one of those situations that has a series of layers,” Girtz said recently. “While we (ACC) are a funder of the (North Athens Redevelopment) project, we’re not the property owner or contracting agent. My understanding is that responsibility is with the telecom (telecommunications company) whose line was the conduit for water, and/or the contractor.”
Girtz went on to note, “I hate the impact that has landed on ACCA, who is just working every day to pursue their very important mission.”
Valdon Daniel, chairman of the Athens Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, said the authority has talked with the ACCA, and is in a “wait and see” posture until whoever did the disputed work offers up its information on the flooding.
“We always do the right thing,” Daniel said of the Athens Housing Authority.
However, Daniel balked at the question of whether the authority would help financially with repairs at the ACCA facility if some fault was established for the housing agency.
State Rep. Spencer Frye, D-Athens, who was called upon by the ACCA early in its dealing with the flooding, was surprised to learn Tuesday that the issue had not been resolved.
“I’m a little disappointed,” Frye said.
Pointing out that any of the entities involved in the issue, from government agencies to utilities to contractors and subcontractors, should have insurance to cover the ACCA damage. The fact that the issue has dragged on this long “shows a problem within the system,” Frye suggested.
Anyone who wants to stay up to date with ACCA events, programming and volunteer opportunities, or who wants to donate to the agency, can go online to www.accaging.org or call (706) 549-4850.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Athens Community Council on Aging still overcoming June 2023 flood
