NEW ORLEANS — As Hurricane Francine nears landfall, the Sewerage and Water Board says it's prepared to handle the storm with 90 out of 99 pumps available at "ample pumping capacity."
Officials with the board discussed concerns about some of the pump stations and what's being done to prepare for the storm. WWL Louisiana's David Hammer checked in with Sewerage and Water Board General Superintendent Steve Nelson.
"At this point, the key for us is pumps and power, and the ability to get the water to those pumps", said Nelson.
He said S&WB needs about 44 megawatts at a typical peak load. Nelson said they have 70 available.
"Having that redundancy is key." "We have 90 of 99 pumps available, so it should be ample pumping capacity," he said.
S&WB can handle one inch of rain an hour. The utility will monitor the rain closely and continue operating through the storm.
Hammer brought up concerns about Station D on Peoples Ave. Nelson said the station is not there to pump out drainage.
"In the interest of full transparency, Station 17 in that neighborhood handles what we call 'dry weather flow', so it's essentially groundwater," Nelson explained. "Stormwater runoff goes to Station 19, that's got full pump capacity and is running as intended and ready to go."
Another concern is DPS 12, a small station in the northwest corner of Lake View. Hammer said we've seen issues before where the pumps worked in reverse and pumped water into the lake, which was not supposed to happen.
Then in 2017, it went down and had to be manned, but no one was there to operate it manually.
"DPS 12 is up and running," Nelson said. He said the staff is at the station full-time and will be there 24 hours a day through Hurricane Francine.
"We have altered our staffing plan for that in anticipation of regular rainfall events as well, Nelson said. "So lessons learned and we are working to continue to operate as we need to."
Hammer also noted the Sewerage lift stations that went down during Hurricane Ida. Those stations rely on Entergy's power, which went down for an extended period of time. The utility then had to pump raw sewerage into Bayou Sauvage at one point out at the sewer treatment plant.
Nelson said S&WB has additional generators available and ready. He also said the utility has spoken with Entergy and the governor's office.
"If we do see widespread power outages and it goes past two or three days, in a widespread manner, we'll be deploying additional generators," he said. "We've got additional resources and folks partnering with us to address that."
View Sewerage and Water Board's Dashboard here.
► 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.
