Tbilisi districts, Mtskheta and nearby villages to face 36-hour water cut for new Aragvi bridge works

Georgian Water and Power (GWP) has announced a planned interruption of water supply that will affect several districts of Tbilisi, the city of Mtskheta and a number of surrounding villages for a total of 36 hours. The supply cut is scheduled to begin at 03:00 on September 26 and to continue until 15:00 on September 27, GWP said in its public notice.

According to the company, the suspension is required to allow workers to connect a newly installed trunk water pipeline to the existing distribution network. The pipeline installation is part of a larger construction project: building a new bridge across the Aragvi River on the Tbilisi–Senaki–Leselidze highway at kilometer 26. GWP said the new pipeline must be drained of water to enable the safe and secure integration of the new main into the operational system.

Work is due to begin at 03:00 on September 26 and will be carried out simultaneously at several locations, the company said. To reduce immediate hardship while the network is offline, GWP has committed to supplying drinking water to affected residents by tanker trucks until full restoration of the system is completed.

The utility published an extensive list of areas that will be affected by the suspension. In the Saburtalo district the outage will hit parts of Nutsubidze Street and surrounding micro-districts, and streets including Zhgentis, Chavgulidze, Mindeli, Politkovskaya, Fkhakadze, Mkhatarte, Dzots, and many others. The notice also listed residents on some stretches of University and Danelia streets.

In the Dighomi area the suspension covers numerous streets — including Vazha-Pshavela, Kazbegi, Ugrelidze, Svetitskhoveli and many additional roads — several apartment blocks and housing zones, and the Dighomi Massif I quarter in its entirety except for buildings numbered 10, 11 and 12. Other named streets and blocks across Dighomi and nearby neighborhoods will also be affected, the company added.

Vake district residents in multiple Vazha-Pshavela quarters (I–VII), parts of Vazha-Pshavela and Kazbegi avenues and a broad sweep of side streets from Margiani to Gelovani were included in the list. In Gldani's Zakhesi settlement, streets such as Tsinamdzghvrishvili, Chichinadze, Tavisupleba and others are slated to lose mains water during the works.

Outside Tbilisi, the suspension will affect the city of Mtskheta and the villages of Natakhtari and Tsitsamuri, as well as the Tserovani settlement, which is designated for internally displaced persons (IDPs). The inclusion of an IDP settlement among the affected locations underscores the impact the interruption will have on particularly vulnerable groups.

The Infrastructure Ministry of Georgia has said the existing Aragvi bridge, constructed in 1973, suffered damage and that rehabilitation of the old structure would not ensure full restoration of safe operations. For that reason, authorities decided to build a new bridge alongside the existing one. GWP’s statement frames the pipeline works as an essential element of that broader infrastructure project.

Residents in the listed areas were urged to take account of the scheduled outage. GWP said it will run multiple crews and continue emergency deliveries of potable water by tanker until the connection works are complete and regular supply is fully reinstated. The company did not provide an exact timetable for phased restoration beyond the 15:00 September 27 target, saying the timetable depends on completion of the connection work.

The planned suspension highlights the tensions that can arise between urgent infrastructure upgrades and the immediate needs of urban populations for continuous access to water. Authorities and service providers will need to manage logistics and outreach carefully in the coming hours to ensure that households, healthcare facilities and other essential services in affected neighborhoods — including displaced-persons communities — are supplied while the works proceed.