NEW ORLEANS — The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans says a combination of heavy rain and the loss of turbine four is why we saw flooding on Saturday. Councilman Joe Giarrusso is calling for the city to clean out the catch basins so water can flow out of the city.
Preston Petit told WWL Louisiana, "If I wouldn't have woken up or wasn't home my car would have been destroyed."
He says when the sky opened up Saturday, he had to quickly move his car, saying, "So we're panicking, I am getting in the water, I move this car first, I put it on the medium, then I come back and move his car and by the time I got back it was already to the step right here."
Petit lives on Orleans Avenue.
The video he shared shows the flooding outside his front door, he says this is some of the worst flooding he has seen.
"It happened in December, it was almost the same thing. I am not surprised honestly, but it needs to get fixed."
The Sewerage and Water Board says the city’s pump system is very old and fragile. Ghassan Korban, the department's executive director says two things happened Saturday that led to the flooding. One, we got a lot of rain in a short period of time, and two, turbine four went offline.
Korban said, "That intensity and that amount of rain can overwhelm our system even if everything works just perfectly." He admitted that when turbine four shut down, they lost half the power, which simply exacerbated the problem, he said, "We lost some available power to provide power to the much-needed pumps."
Clogged catch basins are another issue, councilman Joe Giarrusso is calling for them to be cleaned. The councilman said, "My primary concern is the catch basins have to be cleaned there's 72000 of them only about 5000 have been cleaned in the last two years."
The councilman says the city's Department of Public Works is responsible for cleaning the catch basin and linear pipes, some of which are blocked, because devices called gutter buddies stop beads and other debris from getting through.
"We really need to rethink drainage is done, it's unfair to residents that part of it is owned by the Department of Public Works and part of it is owned by sewage and water board," said Giarrusso.
Sewerage and Water Board said a new power substation should be running by 2025.
The City's The Department of Public Works said in a statement, "DPW has been actively responding to Catch Basin Service Requests following a weekend flood event. Drain line cleaning and catch basin maintenance staff have been diligently working ahead of the parade season. Over 300 catch basins and 15,000 linear feet of drain line have been cleared to ensure proper drainage during upcoming events. Additionally, the contractor will identify areas requiring repairs to the subsurface infrastructure. The cleaning contractor is expected to assign crews shortly. While the drainage system protection devices were in place during this past weekend's rain event, it has not been established if they were a contributing factor since they are designed for curb inlets without grates where water flow is critical. The filtering action lets water freely flow through the fibrous material while stopping sediment and debris."