Water on the floor in Roswell comes with a question before anything else: whose water is it? Roswell has two water providers. The city’s own Roswell Water Utility supplies about 18,500 residents, and the city’s annual water quality report says the remaining 80 percent of Roswell is served by Fulton County. Where you report a broken main depends on which side of that split your address falls.
GA Water Damage is a free referral service that connects callers with independent local water damage restoration providers. It is not a contractor, and it does no drying, cleanup or repair work itself. Call the number on this page about water inside a Roswell home or business and the call connects you with a provider; any visit, quote and contract after that is between you and that provider.
The rest of this page is the Roswell background a provider, a plumber or an insurance adjuster is likely to ask about: which utility is yours, who runs the sewers, how high Big Creek has been measured, what the city’s floodplain and permit pages say, and how old the housing is. Every figure comes from a published source named beside it.
For water inside a building in Roswell, one free call connects you with an independent local restoration provider.
City water or Fulton County water?
Roswell has a small city utility inside a much larger county system. Roswell Water Utility draws from Big Creek, runs a groundwater well, can buy supplemental water from Fulton County, and maintains 89 miles of water lines. Everyone else in the city, roughly four residents in five by the city’s own figures, is a Fulton County water customer.
The quickest way to know which you are is the bill: it comes from the City of Roswell or from Fulton County. If the bill is not at hand, Fulton County publishes a water service lookup and a sewer service lookup by address on its Public Works pages. It is worth checking once, on a dry day, and writing the answer down next to the location of the main shut-off valve.
It matters because a leak on the street side of the system is reported to the utility that owns the main. The city’s Water Utility page gives city water customers one line for a leak or main break on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., and a second line for after hours that is answered by police dispatch. The same page lists a separate number for Fulton County water customers. This site does not reprint the numbers, because the city’s page is the place they are kept current.
| What you are seeing | Who it goes to |
|---|---|
| Water coming up in the street or at the meter, and your bill is from the City of Roswell | Roswell Water Utility: the weekday line from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., the after-hours line at other times |
| Water coming up in the street or at the meter, and your bill is from Fulton County | Fulton County’s water system, through the number the city lists for county customers or the county’s Public Works pages |
| A sewer manhole leaking or overflowing anywhere in Roswell | Fulton County’s Wastewater Collection System Maintenance Division |
| A drainage problem | The city’s Drainage System Investigator or Environmental Public Works |
| A question about a floodplain | The city’s Engineering Division |
| Water inside the house, whatever the source | A water damage restoration provider, and a licensed plumber if a pipe has failed |
City water customers have one extra tool. Roswell Water Utility offers AquaHawk Alerting, a free online service that sends an alert during periods of unusual water use, such as a water leak. It applies only to accounts on the city system, not to the Fulton County majority. A leak caught early is generally a smaller drying job than one found when the floor starts to lift.
Reporting a main break gets the street side looked at. It does not get a wet room dried, and that part is what the call button on this page is for. The city also takes non-emergency reports, water leaks and water quality complaints among them, through the City of Roswell app and its Service Web Portal.
The first few minutes indoors
- If the water is from the plumbing, close the main shut-off valve. Consumer Reports says it is usually at the water meter or where the main line enters the house.
- Cut power to the wet rooms only if the panel can be reached from a dry place. The CDC’s guidance is not to step into standing water to reach a switch, and to call an electrician instead.
- Photograph the rooms and the damaged belongings before moving them. The joint federal mold guide puts contacting the insurer and taking photographs ahead of cleanup.
- Leave fans off if the water could contain sewage. The EPA’s instruction is not to set up fans until the water is known to be clean.
Those four steps are the short version. What a provider does next, from extraction to moisture readings, is set out on the page about water mitigation in Georgia.
Every sewer line in Roswell is Fulton County’s
The water split does not carry over to sewer. The city states that Fulton County, not the City of Roswell, runs every sewer line in Roswell. That holds whether your drinking water comes from the city plant or the county.
For the public side, the city’s watershed protection page tells residents to report a leaking or overflowing sewer manhole to Fulton County’s Wastewater Collection System Maintenance Division, and prints that division’s number. Calling City Hall about a manhole costs time, because the city does not operate the pipe underneath it.
Sewage inside a building is a different job from a clean supply line leak. General summaries of the trade’s water categories put sewage in Category 3, the most contaminated of the three. The EPA’s advice for damage caused by sewage or other contaminated water is to bring in a professional with experience in buildings damaged by contaminated water, not to treat it as a household chore.
If the water may be sewage
Keep children and pets away from it, as the EPA’s flood cleanup guidance says. Do not run fans: a flood cleanup guide linked by the Georgia Department of Public Health warns that moving air can spread germs to other rooms. Tell the provider on the call that the water may be contaminated, so the job is scoped that way from the start.
Insurance treats it separately too. The Insurance Information Institute says sewer backups are not covered by a typical homeowners policy or by flood insurance, and that the cover has to be bought as an endorsement or a separate product. Whether your policy has it is a question for your agent, not for this page.
Clean water or contaminated, call to be connected with an independent local restoration provider and describe what you are seeing.
Big Creek, measured inside the city
Roswell’s southern boundary follows the Chattahoochee River. Big Creek, also called Vickery Creek, is a 26.5-mile stream that reaches the Chattahoochee at that southern border. The old mill dam and the covered pedestrian bridge stand on this creek.
Roswell has a flood record taken inside the city. The U.S. Geological Survey runs a stream gauge on Big Creek at Roswell, station 02335757, that measures runoff from 103 square miles, with continuous readings from March 2004. Its annual peak record gives these high points.
| Date | Peak gauge height, Big Creek at Roswell | Note |
|---|---|---|
| September 22, 2009 | 15.24 feet | Highest in the gauge’s annual peak record |
| September 17, 2004 | 12.50 feet | Second highest |
| September 27, 2024 | 12.39 feet | Third highest, as Hurricane Helene crossed Georgia |
| December 29, 2018 | 11.27 feet | |
| October 11, 2020 | 11.21 feet | |
| February 7, 2020 | 11.08 feet | |
| February 14, 2025 | 9.82 feet |
Two things stand out. The three highest readings all fall in September, and the 2024 one came as Hurricane Helene crossed the state. But the list also holds a December peak and two February peaks, so high water on this creek is not confined to hurricane months. The 2009 reading belongs to the regional flood the National Weather Service dates to September 15 to 22 of that year, when the Chattahoochee reached the 100-year flood level at Roswell and Fulton was among the Georgia counties declared a federal disaster area.
Big Creek is one of five watersheds the city’s watershed page covers. The others are Hog Waller Creek, Foe Killer Creek, Rocky Creek and Willeo Creek. The USGS spells the second one Hog Wallow, which is why the gauge’s official name reads Big Creek below Hog Wallow Creek at Roswell.
The same city page lists Big Creek, Hog Waller Creek and Foe Killer Creek as not supporting their designated use because of elevated fecal coliform bacteria. That is a finding about the streams, not about any house. It does fit the way the trade handles creek water indoors: general summaries of the water categories place rising water from rivers and streams in Category 3 alongside sewage. Cleanup after rising water has its own page, flood damage restoration in Georgia.
The floodplain, the Class 6 discount and the 50 percent rule
The City of Roswell says 10 percent of the city is in or near a 100-year floodplain. Its floodplain management page refers to the Chattahoochee River, Big Creek and Willeo Creek, and sends floodplain questions to the Engineering Division.
That page also carries a figure worth money. Roswell takes part in the National Flood Insurance Program with a Community Rating System class of 6, which the city says cuts flood insurance premiums by 20 percent inside the Special Flood Hazard Area and by 10 percent outside it. A class can change when it is reviewed, so confirm the current discount with your insurance agent.
The discount only helps people who hold a flood policy. Georgia’s Office of Commissioner of Insurance says a standard homeowners policy does not cover flooding, and that flood cover is a separate policy bought through the National Flood Insurance Program. FloodSmart, the program’s own site, says a new policy takes effect 30 days after purchase.
Rebuilding in the floodplain: the 50 percent rule
The city says all development in the floodplain needs a local permit, not just the construction of buildings. If the cost of reconstruction after damage, rehabilitation, an addition or other improvements exceeds 50 percent of the building’s market value, the building must meet the same requirements as a new building. Ask the Engineering Division how that applies before agreeing to a rebuild scope.
Homes from the 1970s through the 1990s
Roswell is, by the numbers, a city built largely in three decades. The Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey estimates 36,969 housing units in the city with a median year built of 1989. About two thirds of them date from 1970 to 1999.
| When the unit was built | Estimated share of Roswell housing |
|---|---|
| Before 1970 | About 7 percent |
| 1970 to 1979 | About 15 percent |
| 1980 to 1989 | About 32 percent |
| 1990 to 1999 | About 21 percent |
| 2000 to 2009 | About 14 percent |
| 2010 or later | About 11 percent |
These are survey estimates with margins of error, so read them as rounded shares. They also say nothing about foundations or pipe materials. No public source read for this page gives the share of Roswell homes on basements, crawl spaces or slabs, and this page does not guess at one.
What the figures do suggest is the first thing to say on the call: the year the house was built and what has been replaced since. A provider scoping a job in a 1984 house may want to know whether the water heater, the supply lines and the flooring are original or recent, because that changes what is worth drying and what is due for replacement anyway.
The historic district and the mill village
The old center of town is the exception to those dates. The Roswell Historic District covers 120 acres, roughly bounded by Big Creek, King and Dam streets and New Marietta Highway, and was added to the National Register on May 2, 1974. It has 28 contributing buildings, among them Bulloch Hall (1839), Barrington Hall (begun 1839 and finished 1842), Roswell Presbyterian Church (1840) and Great Oaks (1842).
Inside the district is the mill village. The Old Bricks were built as housing for mill workers, and a surviving mill building dates from 1882. The Census estimates only a few hundred Roswell housing units from 1939 or earlier, so buildings of this age are rare here, and a provider used to 1980s drywall should be told at the start that the walls are something older.
Two cautions apply to old buildings. The EPA warns that older homes may contain asbestos or lead in their building materials, which matters before anyone opens a wet wall, ceiling or floor. And in the historic district, some changes require a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Commission. The city will not accept that application until the applicant has completed an orientation with Community Development staff.
This page does not list which work needs a certificate, because the city page it draws on does not list it either. Planning and Zoning is the office to ask, and the time to ask is before repairs begin, not after materials are ordered.
What needs a Roswell permit
Drying a building and rebuilding it are separate stages, and the city has a say in the second. Permits are issued by the Building Division of Roswell Community Development. In the city’s wording, a permit is required to repair or alter a building, and to repair or replace any electrical, gas, mechanical or plumbing system.
The city also says what does not need one: routine maintenance such as painting, floor coverings and wallpaper. A water job often lands on both sides of that line, with floor coverings on one and the repair or replacement of a plumbing or electrical system on the other. The Building Division is the one to say which side a particular repair falls on.
- Applications go through the city’s online Roswell Permitting and Licensing HUB.
- A licensed contractor can apply for the permit under the contractor’s own name.
- An owner doing the work applies as both owner and contractor and uploads an owner affidavit.
- In the floodplain, the local permit rule and the 50 percent rule described above apply as well.
Licensing is the state’s side of it. The Georgia Attorney General’s office states that general contractors, electricians, plumbers, and heating and air conditioning contractors must be licensed through the Secretary of State’s office. GA Water Damage does not check or vouch for any provider’s license or insurance; as the notice at the foot of this page says, verifying both is the homeowner’s responsibility.
Freezes, rain and what the work costs
The most recent severe freeze is well documented. In the December 2022 Arctic outbreak, the weather station at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, south of Roswell, fell to 12.9 F on December 23 and got no warmer than 24.1 F on December 24. Lows on December 24, 25 and 26 were 19.9, 17.1 and 18.0 F. Georgia’s governor had declared a state of emergency on December 21, ahead of the cold.
Four days of lows that far below freezing are the conditions in which water lines in unheated spaces split, and the leak often shows only when the pipe thaws. What to do in that moment, and how insurers look at a frozen pipe, is covered under burst pipe water damage in Georgia.
Rain is the steadier source. A Weatherbase climate table gives Roswell about 52 inches a year, a figure to treat as approximate. March is the wettest month at about 6 inches, and even October, the driest, averages about 3.6. No month in that table is a dry one.
The air does not help. Average relative humidity at Atlanta is about 68 percent over the year, from about 61 percent in April to about 75 percent in August, while the EPA’s target for indoor air is below 60 percent and ideally 30 to 50. The EPA also says water-damaged areas and items need to be dried within 24 to 48 hours to prevent mold growth. Opening the windows on a wet Roswell house in August is unlikely to meet either figure, which is why providers generally close the building and dry it with machines.
If growth is already visible, know that nobody official will grade the work. Georgia’s Department of Public Health says mold inspection, testing and remediation have no enforceable state or federal standards, and that its Environmental Health Section performs no mold inspections or testing. Vetting a provider falls to the owner, and the questions to ask are on the page about mold remediation in Georgia.
Published cost figures
GA Water Damage sets no prices, and only a provider who has measured the damage can quote a job. The figures below are third-party estimates, shown with their source and date so that a quote can be set against something.
| Published figure | Amount | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| National average, water damage restoration | $3,868 | HomeAdvisor, updated June 17, 2026 |
| Typical national range | $1,383 to $6,369 | HomeAdvisor, updated June 17, 2026 |
| Full national range | $450 to $16,000 | HomeAdvisor, updated June 17, 2026 |
| Cleanup per square foot, clean water | About $3.50 | HomeAdvisor, updated June 17, 2026 |
| Cleanup per square foot, gray water | About $5.25 | HomeAdvisor, updated June 17, 2026 |
| Cleanup per square foot, black water | About $7.50 | HomeAdvisor, updated June 17, 2026 |
| Roswell, 215 square feet of water damage repair | $2,205 to $2,328 | Homeyou, page dated September 8, 2026; no method given |
The HomeAdvisor rows are national, not local. The Homeyou row is the only Roswell figure found, and its page states no method or data source, so give it the least weight of the seven. None of these is a price from this site or from any provider you may be connected with.
Roswell neighborhoods and local offices
Calls from Roswell describe very different buildings. Four named places show the spread.
- Roswell Historic District: 120 acres around the town square, with buildings from 1839 on and a certificate process for some changes.
- The mill village: the mill workers’ quarter inside the historic district, including The Old Bricks.
- Horseshoe Bend: the country club at its center describes itself as sitting within a bend of the Chattahoochee River.
- Litchfield Hundred: a community whose own site places it in Roswell, off Cox Road.
For anything that threatens life, call 911. For a tree that has fallen into a roadway and is blocking it, the city directs residents to the Roswell Police non-emergency line, which is listed on the department’s page. County-wide alerts come from the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency, which runs the Fulton Alert notification system.
Some participating providers offer 24/7 emergency response. Whether one is available for a given address at a given hour depends on the provider, as the availability notice at the foot of this page explains, and this site promises no arrival time on anyone’s behalf.
Roswell is one of eight cities covered here. The statewide picture is on the page about water damage restoration in Georgia, and two nearby cities are covered under water damage restoration in Alpharetta, GA, upstream on Big Creek, and water damage restoration in Sandy Springs, GA. How the referral works is explained on the page about GA Water Damage.
City water or county water, the wet room is handled the same way: call to be connected with an independent local restoration provider serving Roswell.
Questions people ask
My street is flooding from a broken main in Roswell. Who do I call?
It depends on who supplies your water. City of Roswell water customers report a leak or main break to Roswell Water Utility, which has a weekday line from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and an after-hours line answered by police dispatch. Fulton County customers, the larger group, report to the county. The city’s Water Utility page lists the numbers for both. If the water threatens people or traffic, call 911.
Is my Roswell home on city water or Fulton County water, and why does it matter?
Check who sends the water bill. Roswell Water Utility supplies about 18,500 residents, and the city says the remaining 80 percent of Roswell is served by Fulton County. Fulton County also publishes a water service lookup by address. It matters because a main break is reported to the utility that owns the main, and because the free AquaHawk leak alerts are offered only to city water customers.
A sewer manhole is overflowing in Roswell. Is that the city or the county?
The county. Fulton County, not the City of Roswell, runs every sewer line in the city, whichever utility supplies your drinking water. The city’s watershed protection page tells residents to report a leaking or overflowing sewer manhole to Fulton County’s Wastewater Collection System Maintenance Division and gives the number. Sewage inside a building is a separate matter for a restoration provider experienced with contaminated water.
Does Big Creek flood, and how high has it been?
Yes. The USGS gauge on Big Creek at Roswell has kept continuous readings since March 2004. Its highest annual peak is 15.24 feet on September 22, 2009, followed by 12.50 feet on September 17, 2004 and 12.39 feet on September 27, 2024. Peaks of 11.08 feet on February 7, 2020 and 9.82 feet on February 14, 2025 show that high water also comes outside hurricane months.
Does the city’s flood rating lower my flood insurance?
According to the City of Roswell’s floodplain management page, yes. The city holds a Community Rating System class of 6 in the National Flood Insurance Program, which it says reduces flood insurance premiums by 20 percent inside the Special Flood Hazard Area and 10 percent outside it. Classes can change on review, so ask your insurance agent to confirm the discount on your own policy.
Do I need a permit in Roswell to repair water damage?
Often, for the rebuild. The city’s Building Division says a permit is required to repair or alter a building and to repair or replace any electrical, gas, mechanical or plumbing system. Routine maintenance such as painting, floor coverings and wallpaper does not need one. Applications go through the Roswell Permitting and Licensing HUB. Ask the Building Division about your specific repair, and the Engineering Division if the property is in a floodplain.
Is this a restoration company? Who comes to my house?
No. GA Water Damage is a free referral service, not a restoration contractor. It does not dry, clean, repair or inspect anything and employs no technicians. A call to the number on this page connects you with an independent local restoration provider. That provider arranges any visit, gives any quote and does any work, and it is your responsibility to verify the provider’s license and insurance before hiring.