NEW ORLEANS — Saturday night, streets of New Orleans flooded due to a lack of power to the Sewerage and Water Board’s drainage pumps. Turbine 4 was the problem, as it often is. WWL Louisiana Investigator David Hammer looked at the history of it.
The turbine is the main power supplier to the pumps that drain the city. It’s out of commission more often than it’s operational. T4 is 109 years old and failed Saturday before the storm.
Hammer found, since the turbine broke in 2012, the Sewerage and Water Board has spent more than $50 million to try to repair it. The agency could have purchased four brand-new turbines for half that cost.
The long-term fix – a power substation at the main plant in the Carrollton neighborhood – is currently under construction, but is at least 18 months away.
The $300 million substation will generate a frequency of electricity that Entergy doesn’t produce in order to power the city’s drainage pumps.
As of about two months ago, the Sewerage and Water Board said the equipment foundations are nearly complete on the project.
But the substation isn’t expected to replace the turbines as the main form of energy until peak hurricane season 2025. The project was initially supposed to be completed this year.
That means Turbine 4 can’t be retired yet. The city will have to attempt to repair it again, hoping it hangs on until 2025, or buy a new turbine.