ATLANTA — It's a sight that caught the eyes of many just taking a stroll along the Northside BeltLine Trail: electric green water flowing through a creek.
The photo snapped of the fluorescent water was posted to Reddit, where it quickly raised some alarm - and some jokes.
"Take a swig." one person posted. "Atlanta needs a superhero."
"Or just population control who knows," someone replied back.
But while some were concerned about the color of the water, officials told 11Alive that it's nothing to worry about.
As one commenter logically pointed out, it turns out the lime green color of the water was actually from a dye used by Atlanta Watershed officials during testing.
According to Atlanta Fire Rescue Sgt. Cortez Stafford, crews were dispatched to the same area Tuesday night for a possible HAZMAT call regarding the water, but it turned out to be a false alarm. That's because the green color was left over from that process.
"Our watershed department actually put some green dye in the sewer system to test water flow and where it goes, and there was some residual dye left over from earlier in the day or a previous day," he said.
"It was concerning because they saw it and didn't know, but it worked out and it was fine," Stafford said. "It didn't harm the environment or anything like that."
In a follow up statement from the Atlanta Watershed Department, the agency confirmed that they had indeed been performing dye tests on a storm sewer line after a complaint of water entering a building off Bennet Avenue.
"The dye that was used is biodegradable and environmentally safe, and therefore does not pose a health risk to the public or impacts to the environment," the agency said. "Testing on the sewer line, which is upstream from Clear Creek along the Northside Beltline Trail and between Bobby Jones and Colonial Homes Drive, was concluded (Thursday) and was not found to be the source of the water intrusion."
Mystery solved.
However, this is not the first time the waters in Atlanta have seemingly turned a bright green.
Back in 2017, 11Alive viewers contacted us for a similar sight at a Buckhead stream. Back then, as was the case in this situation, the color of the creek was related to tests being conducted on a catch basin. After that situation, crews flushed out the water, and the color dissipated.
That's likely to be the case this time, too, meaning there is no cause for concern.
PHOTOS: Green water in Atlanta stream
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