NEW ORLEANS — Tuesday afternoon’s burst of heavy rain caused above-sidewalk flooding in much of the Gentilly area. Many neighbors said they have come to expect it, and that despite a city project designed to improve drainage in the area, they are still dreading the possibility of another hurricane.
Malcolm Martin has lived on Chamberlain Street for more than 40 years. He told WWL Louisiana that since Hurricane Katrina, any amount of heavy rain leaves his block underwater.
“You can’t get out of the driveway,” he said, “because with the water up that high you’re looking at two feet of water coming off the gutter and it’s gonna get in your car, so you’re trapped.”
His was one of many blocks that flooded Tuesday afternoon. Rain fell as fast as 5 inches an hour in some parts of New Orleans. According to the Sewerage and Water Board, the city’s pumps can only handle an inch of rain in the first hour of a storm and half an inch every hour after that.
Cell phone video from around Gentilly shows water nearing the doorsteps of some houses. “If you have plans your day’s kind of ruined,” said neighbor Raleigh Katz, “and people are upset because it messes up their yard.”
Katz lives in the Oak Park area of Gentilly, close to the site of a project included in the multi-million dollar Gentilly Resilience District, a city plan to fight flooding with green infrastructure.
The Oak Park project consists of several lots surrounded by bioswales, with a tank buried underneath designed to hold stormwater.
The project was completed in November. Several neighbors told WWL Louisiana it does not seem as if flooding has improved since then. “We all thought that that was gonna work, and it clearly hasn’t,” said Katz.
That has left them frustrated, especially with the peak of an already-active hurricane season looming. “I don’t want to see two feet of rain,” said Martin, “but it’s possible because of the intensity of these hurricanes that we’re getting.”
WWL Louisiana reached out to the Mayor’s Office to see if the City has data on flooding since the Oak Park project was completed.
► 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.