NEW ORLEANS — The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans announced that all power has been restored on the West Bank Wastewater System after a fire at an Entergy power station knocked out customers' electricity Friday morning.
The S&WB said the water treatment plant was not affected and no boil advisory is needed. Customers are now free to return to normal water usage.
The outage affected the Wastewater Treatment Plant and Sewer Pumping Stations on the West Bank. According to the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, flow to the plant was temporarily stopped because the sewer pumping stations were knocked offline.
The S&WB claimed the stations do not have backup power working to mobile generators and pumps to the affected stations. During the outage, the S&WB asked West Bank customers to be mindful of their water and wastewater usage, and to conserve as much as possible.
According to the S&WB, 11 sewerage lift stations on the West Bank were affected by the Entergy power outage. A spokesperson told WWL Louisiana that while Entergy worked to restore power, the S&WB was in the process of attempting to position mobile generators to mitigate the inconvenience.
The S&WB’s two drainage pump stations, 11 and 13, have built-in backup generators, so they remained operational.
A spokesperson for Entergy New Orleans told WWL Louisiana, “This morning, NOFD responded to a fire at an Entergy substation in Algiers. This created an outage currently impacting approximately 9400 customers. Entergy crews are working as quickly and safely as possible to restore service.”
The cause of the fire is under investigation, according to Entergy. Officials say there are no known environmental concerns at this time.
The Entergy map estimated restoration time at 1 p.m.
► 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.