NEW ORLEANS — Heavy rain Saturday morning caused street flooding in several New Orleans neighborhoods. The problem was exacerbated by a mechanical failure at one of the turbines that powers the city’s pumps, the Sewerage and Water Board said Saturday.
Much of the flooding was reported in Lakeview, Mid-City, and Broadmoor. The water came on fast. “I went to Walgreens for forty-five minutes and came back and it was flooded,” one Lakeview resident told WWL Louisiana.
Ryan and Michelle Cox woke up to flooding outside their home on Octavia Street. They waded through the water to get to their car, which was parked about five blocks away. They found it with several inches of water inside. “It is a car that our daughter uses to get to school and get to practice, so we need it,” said Michelle.
They carefully drove it back to their house then spent the better part of the day trying to get the water out. Saturday night, they still had the doors open and an industrial fan blowing on the carpet. “The electrical system was doing weird things,” she said, “so we’re just hoping for the best.”
Late Saturday morning, the S&WB announced one of its power sources, turbine four, had gone offline during the heavy rain. Another, turbine five, has been off since last month. That suddenly left drainage pumps in all of New Orleans except New Orleans East and Algiers with less power.
“It did take us a little while longer to pump down the canals because we lost turbine four,” said Ron Spooner, Interim General Superintendent of the S&WB. He stressed that the pumps themselves functioned, it was solely a question of having to “manage power.”
Turbine four is more than a hundred years old. As WWL Louisiana has reported, it has experienced many problems before.
The turbine was offline completely for six years starting in 2012 and was only brought fully back into operation right before Hurricane Ida. Spooner says it is still “under investigation” whether previous problems contributed to Saturday’s failure.
The S&WB does not rely solely on the turbines, though as demonstrated Saturday, they provide an important source of power. The rest comes from Entergy, though the S&WB is not able to draw enough power from the city’s grid to rely on it completely.
Ground was broken on a new power complex in late 2022 that is meant to fix the problem. Crews have made progress on construction since then. But the initial estimated completion date of mid-2024 has been pushed to “peak hurricane season” of 2025, Spooner said Saturday.
Spooner said turbine five should be back online within ten days. Turbine four will be out indefinitely. WWL Louisiana asked Spooner whether this could mean a repeat of Saturday’s street flooding in the event of more heavy rain. He said the pumping system should still be able to handle the same amount of water as usual, but because there is less power available to help drain it, “it may cause the flooding to stay on the street a little longer.”
City Council President JP Morrell posted on X that the council has asked the S&WB to speak about the flooding at a meeting Wednesday.
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