NEW ORLEANS — Saturday morning, as up to 7 inches of rain swamped the city the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board struggled to cobble together enough electricity, through a complicated mix of sources to power drainage pumps to keep the streets from flooding.
Wednesday, a city council committee called utility leaders to explain what happened.
“Our system is fragile, it’s probably going to get more fragile than it is today, more communications is part of the solution, over preparing may be the way to go until we have more solid ground in terms of more reliability, more efficiency,” SWBNO Executive Director Ghassan Korban said.
“Number one the equipment that you’re working with as you show on the screen is older than the entire council put together.,” City Councilman Joe Giarrusso said. “We know it is going to break down. What can be done on contingency basis to help either mitigate that or to have supplemental power.”
During the storm, Turbine 4, which is a key supplier of 25 hertz power to many of the pumps, tripped offline. Turbine 5 had been out of service since late October due to mechanical problems.
That left the SWBNO with about half the power it needs during peak demand to run the pumps.
According to the water board’s after-action report, there was a long list of problems hindering the utility’s power generation ability prior to the rain event.
Turbine 4 was only running at half of its 20-megawatt capacity to allow for maintenance of boiler room fans before it eventually clicked offline.
Two of the five EMD generators that serve as backups to the turbines were out for repairs. The three that were available would not start, according to the report. They finally started about an hour after the rain stopped.
Two of six frequency changers needed to transform power from the electrical grid for use by the city’s ancient drainage pumps also went down.
When Turbine 4 failed, it knocked out pumps in Lakeview and Mid-City. It also caused other pumping stations to run at reduced power. What followed was widespread street flooding across the city.
Also, during Wednesday’s meeting, council members asked city Homeland Security Director Collin Arnold why residents did not receive an alert from the city’s NOLA Ready system.
Typically, a text message is sent notifying residents it’s okay to park on the neutral ground because of potential flooding.
“All of us up here on the city council heard complaints from the public saying why weren’t we warned,” City Council VP Helena Moreno said. “Where was my NOLA Ready Alert?”
“I was more concerned about the tornado watch an about lightning, then I was about continued rainfall. That was an error on my part given the circumstances that occurred,” Arnold said. “The bottom line is a that a warning didn’t go out.”
The SWBNO now hopes to bring T5 back online by Dec. 15.
T4 is expected to be out until further notice.
The long term fix, the new Entergy substation that will power all the pumps is now being built at the water board’s main plant and is expected to be available by peak hurricane season in 2025.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.