Ghassan Korban is talking about his legacy today.
In May, Korban will leave behind an agency that is still challenged but in better condition than when he found it, he said in a recent interview. Among his accomplishments are two infrastructure projects to supply reliable power to drainage pumps and installation of smart meters he says will eliminate problems with water billing.
Can't wait to find out
New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board Director Ghassan Korban said Tuesday the city’s pumping and drainage system is in a “good place” ahead of Francine.
Ninety of 99 drainage pumps are working across its 24 pumping stations, he said, and the city has 70 megawatts available to power its drainage pumps, above the 44 needed to run the system at peak demand.
Korban said 70 megawatts “is probably one of the highest numbers we've seen in a long, long time ... Today, this is the best that we can all really count on.”
The large generators the Sewerage and Water Board uses to supplement its turbines and provide power to its drainage system went offline for about 15 minutes late Wednesday as Francine battered New Orleans, leading to widespread flooding.
Canals were high in Hollygrove, Lakeview, Gentilly, and New Orleans at 10 p.m., and over 30 locations in the city were flooded, according to Streetwise NOLA.
Nobody could have predicted...
20.5 of those 70 megawatts are carried by overhead lines from four east bank frequency changers, which themselves are well over 50 years old.
— Matt McBride (@Matthew67052126) September 10, 2024
12.5 MW come from EMDs which are wildly unreliable.
T4 (18 MW) failed in December and February when it was called upon. https://t.co/PuprII1ws5
We'll know more tomorrow. But tonight there is widespread street flooding both in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. Right now I'm listening to Helena Moreno tell Channel 4 that Sewerage and Water Board had problems with the EMD generators and that it lost Entergy power a couple of times during the night. She has used the phrase "whack-a-mole" several times. She says there are Lakeview and Gentilly residents reporting flooding where there hasn't previously been flooding.
Anyway, we'll see about all that later. Meanwhile, just keep in mind that Francine ended up being, basically, a direct hit on New Orleans. Here is a picture of the eyewall approaching a little after 7:30. We're actually lucky that it was already being torn apart by wind shear at this point. If this had been a major hurricane there could have been catastrophic damage.
As it stands, the damage looks to have been significantly annoying at the very least. (Approximately 350,000 without power, for example.) Anyway, we'll know more about all that later. One thing we can't say at this point is that we're in an especially "good place."
See, they swallowed the ordinance to replace the ordinance to fix the billing errors...
The ordinance, which replaces one passed in 2022, matches laws passed in the spring legislative session. The rules are aimed at stabilizing billing, long a source of public outrage, while the S&WB replaces underground meters with new “smart” meters that track usage in real time.
“We are hoping to have this issue resolved forever," Council Vice President JP Morrell said Thursday.
(Forever! Okay)
That means they needed the "smart meters" to fix the "wonky software" that was supposed to fix the "human errors"...
Utility officials say the smart meters will eliminate the need for estimates, reduce human errors and replace wonky software, which have all been blamed for inaccuracies. Half the city’s 144,000 meters are set to be replaced by the end of this year, and the rest by the end of 2025.
(The smart metering is a dubious solution, though)
By the end of 2022, there will be over 124 million smart meters installed in 78% of U.S. households, according to data released in April by the Edison Foundation’s Institute for Electric Innovation. But less than 3% of today’s smart meters fulfill 2009 promises of customer savings and that must be prevented in the coming Energy Department-funded deployment, according to a September analysis by Mission:data Coalition.
“Utilities used federal and state funds to deploy smart meters and many explicitly promised to empower customers” to lower bills and earn rewards for supporting system peak demand reductions, said Mission:data President and analysis lead author Michael Murray. “The public policy failure is that utilities benefited from returns on capital expenditures and reduced operational costs but did not deliver those customer benefits,” he said.
Which is why they needed the contractor to fix... well, I guess, the continuing billing errors.
HGI will see a significant boost in compensation with its new role, a reflection of the higher volume of work it will perform, said Council member Joe Giarrusso, who sponsored the ordinance with Morrell. Its current contract is for $600,000, and the council voted Thursday to extend the contract through the end of next year with maximum compensation of $3.4 million.
Giarrusso said the council opted not to put the contract out to bid so the new appeal procedure could get up and running as quickly as possible.
Yes, yes, of course. Oh, also, they need a second contractor to fix the... wait, I think I'm lost here.
The new billing ordinance prohibits estimated meter readings starting next year, and offers customers the option of receiving fixed bill amounts. It also mandates a contractor to hear all appeals and make bill adjustments the contractor deems necessary. A separate contractor will be hired to ensure bills are correctly sent in the first place.
Is that the mail? They need to pay a company to mail things for them?
How many private contractors should it take for a public agency to
fulfill its basic administrative functions? The answer should be zero,
right? This is just absurd. Nobody's bill will improve here. But some
consulting companies will make a chunk of change off of the deal. Seems to be the only thing that matters.
Ha, see, you probably thought this was going to be about the Democratic national ticket. But, no, Wine Mom and Football Dad will have to wait. Even more normal things than that are happening in New Orleans.
The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board issued a boil water advisory for the city's entire east bank and Algiers Point Tuesday night after a power outage at the Carrollton and Algiers water plants.
The outages caused water pressure to drop across the city, prompting the advisory "out of an abundance of caution," S&WB said. The cause of the power outage is under investigation.
It's been a while since we've had a citywide boil advisory. I can't begin to guess why the Boil Order Decade came to a pause, but I would start with assuming they just stopped reporting the minor outages. When the pressure goes down everywhere at dinnertime, though, too many people notice. So they have to pretend to act.
The initial press release raises several questions.
The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans (SWBNO), in consultation with the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) has issued a precautionary boil water advisory (BWA) for the East Bank of New Orleans and Algiers Point. A map will be forthcoming.
Water pressures in thease areas fell below 20 pounds per square inch (psi) due to power failure at the Carrollton Water Treatment plant. The Algiers Water Treatment plant was also briefly affected by this power outage. The cause of the power failure is still being investigated. Water pressure to the New Orleans Eastbank and Algiers Point have been restored, but a precautionary boil water advisory is necessary until water samples can be collected and tested.
How long was the power to the pumps out? In 2019, SWB installed two "water hammer" towers that are supposed to maintain pressure in the event of a power outage for up to 40 minutes. Entergy tells WWLTV that tonight's outage was a "brief power fluctuation." Is and event that can be described in those terms, more than the "hammers" can handle? If so, what good are they?
How is it that the "brief power fluctuation" affected both the East and West bank treatment plants? I didn't think they were connected. Also what is going on with Entergy in general? Anecdotally, we've been experiencing little brown outs around here just about every evening this summer. I haven't seen any explanation for this.
In fact, it seems like they aren't even trying to communicate anymore. Tonight, for example, when tasked with explaining the brief fluctuation that somehow overcame SWB's big expensive hazard mitigation system, they just went into their bag of standard excuses and pulled out...
BREAKING: A spokesperson with Entergy N.O. says a Mylar balloon is behind tonight's power outage that led to SWBNO losing power and the subsequent boil water advisory that is currently affecting almost all of the city. @WWLTV @CmGiarrusso
— Lily Cummings (@lilyrcummings) August 7, 2024
Balloon? On both sides of the river at once? That's enough to knock out the most critical public infrastructure in the city? Still? After so many rounds of this? No way that makes sense.
On the other hand, it's an extremely normal thing to hear from them.
Good news! Sewerage and Water Board is about to fix your billing problems. You know, the problem everyone is having where there bill is too small every month.
The vast majority of customers should expect to see cost increases of about 10%, while a handful could see their bills go up as much as 25%, S&WB Project Manager Rebecca Johnsey told a City Council committee Monday. That's because the manual readers being replaced don’t actually capture the entirety of a customer's water usage.
“Our meters in the ground are mechanical meters, and that means they have pieces on the inside that physically move. So over time, they get gunked up and they slow down, and it actually takes more and more water on the front end to start the movement,” Johnsey said.
About 10,000 "smart meters" have already been installed under a $67 million contract with California-based Aqua-Metric signed in December 2022, and the first bills will begin going out next week, S&WB executive director Ghassan Korban said Tuesday.
The initial round of bills will be no more than 120% of a customer's annual average, he said. After that, bills will reflect the precise reading of the smart meters.
Pretty neat the way they get super interested in the "precise" amount of water used once it gets past the point in the line where you have to pay for it. How much gets dumped out into the ground before it arrives there, is anybody's guess. Sunk cost, right?
Anyway, this article doesn't tell us how Aqua-Metric's "smart" meters work. But, one assumes, they also have "pieces on the inside" that must do something. Hopefully it isn't what any of the various smart meter vendors who ran roughshod over the state of Mississippi have been doing.
From 2009 to 2017, at least 10 Mississippi cities signed contracts with the companies to install smart meters or other new technology. All but one have reported problems, and at least four have sued to recoup money they paid to Siemens, McNeil Rhoads or Mueller. Three of those suits are still pending.
Siemens and McNeil Rhoads, competitors that pitched the projects and acted as project managers, hired contractors who installed many meters improperly, according to officials in Jackson, McComb and Moss Point. In some cities, the two companies also struggled to link meters to the home office or to merge a new billing system with an old one.
Officials in at least eight Mississippi cities said they had problems with Mueller’s smart meters, which sometimes didn’t measure accurately because of faulty parts or batteries that died sooner than promised. Water departments in other states, including California and Missouri, have reported similar problems with Mueller meters over the past decade.McComb, a city of 12,000 people south of Jackson, signed the first Siemens water meter contract in Mississippi. Mayor Quordiniah N. Lockley, city manager at the time, said McComb agreed to pay the company $10 million to install 6,000 smart Master Meters.
But contract workers hired by Siemens put them in backward and missed deadlines to install the antennas that the meters needed to communicate with a central office, Mr. Lockley said. Then some customers saw their water bills hit as much as $1,000 per month, with no obvious explanation.
At least S&WB is trying to get out in front with an "obvious explanation" before the bills start to go up. Or at least that's what City Council is urging them to do.
Council members urged water board officials to “overdo” a campaign to inform the public about how the new meters will impact bills. Council member Eugene Green also asked the agency to hold community meetings in every council district.
“On the one hand, we can't not have people pay for service they're receiving, but on the other hand there will be sticker shock,” said Council member Joe Giarrusso.
Notice that none of your elected representatives has anything to say about the possibility that your bill is already too damn high. They're not here to help with that so much as they are here to manage your expectations. When property tax assessments threaten homeowners with "sticker shock" we at least get some effort at rolling back the millage rates in order to keep things under control. But here we aren't so motivated. Did no one ask about rolling back the water rates? It's different when the revenue windfall comes off the back of a regressive user fee, I guess. Poor people always pay their "fair share" first.
Probably you devoted at least a little bit of your time on Monday to experiencing the solar eclipse. Maybe you scored a pair of free glasses before the stampeding hordes got them all. In New Orleans, it didn't matter anyway. Most of us here just tried to get a brief frustrated glimpse through the cloud cover. At least, that's what I did. I kind of saw it a little. Here, I got a picture. Would you like to see?
Maybe you managed to get a better view than this. Maybe you made elaborate plans in advance to take a trip into the "path of totality" so that it could "touch your soul."
On April 8, the Stones will host a dozen-plus visitors from as far away as Sweden to experience this year’s event.
“It’s such an emotional event,” Stone said. “It touches your soul, it really does. Any time you realize there’s something bigger than you, it gives you perspective. Surely that power has a purpose.”In Buffalo, Horowitz said the eclipse, an obvious reminder of nature’s beauty, offers a chance to reflect on nature’s fragility and to find hope amid worldly chaos and personal challenges.
“You can sometimes be clouded by all that darkness,” he said. “The natural world is trying to tell us that beyond the darkness, there is light.”
If this is you, then, that's great. The human mind's capacity to perceive its surroundings and color it in feeling is infinite in its variation. Contemplation of the heavens is a popular vector for this. So I get it. But it's just not where I get my good vibes. The universe may be unfathomably vast. But most of it is also distant from and indifferent to us. The way I see it, if we really are made of star stuff, then we've got all of it we need down here. And besides, we're the ones doing all the interesting shit with it.
The music of the spheres is great and all but what really touches my soul is "truck stuck in flooded underpass appears to have Sewerage and Water Board logos." There is where we find the true face of God.
There is a white truck with what appears to be a Sewerage & Water Board logo stuck in a flooded Franklin Ave underpass.@WWLTV pic.twitter.com/WIvNQGUXx9
— Rachel Handley (@RachelHandleyTV) April 10, 2024
Not everyone is as impressed, of course.
But as life in many parts of the city returned to normal, business owners there were still knee-deep in clean-up work — again. Krivjanick's business has been flooded during storms in December, January, February and again on Wednesday, she said.
She's had enough.
"I love the city of New Orleans," said Krivjanick. "I love the culture. I love everything that we have. But I don't feel like I'm being respected as a property owner, as a taxpayer. I don't feel like I'm being heard."
Look I don't want to be here rooting for crumbling infrastructure and corrupt government. Not every time, anyway. But, "won't somebody respect the property owners for a change," isn't engendering a tremendous amount of sympathy. On the other hand, neither is this, "help us find the real killers," bit.
But in an update on Thursday, S&WB spokesperson Grace Birch said that the power supply was further hobbled while the rain pounded down. All three of the S&WB's available backup generators tripped offline, she said, and officials suspect vandalism to an electrical feeder was the cause. The New Orleans Police Department has been asked to investigate. Two other backup generators were already out of service because of mechanical issues.
The S&WB said more details would be forthcoming in an after-action report on its pumping, power and staffing levels during the storm, which is required by state law within 48 hours of National Weather Service advisories.
I don't think there's an update on the "investigation" but we do know there were multiple power supply issues in play that day and that they can't all have been the work of imaginary terrorists.
The utility confronted a second major issue at about the same time, when it attempted to send power from another of its turbines — Turbine 6 — to Pump Station 6 as well as a series of stations along Broad Street.
Because that turbine is relatively new, installed after Hurricane Katrina, the power it produces needs to be converted by a frequency changer for use by the older pumps.
But the frequency changer tripped offline, rendering that power source useless, too.
The utility finally began using Entergy power to bring the frequency changers back online, allowing the pumping stations to begin using power from the changers between 10:15 a.m. and 11:25 a.m.
Without all of the necessary power, the Sewerage & Water Board was forced to leave some pumps off during the storm.
So to bring this back to the original point, there are more engrossing mysteries in the affairs of humanity on Earth than there are, even in the unfathomable expanse of outer space. And anyway, space is boring. For example, we already know exactly when the next total solar eclipse will be visible over US territory. In 2045, you can drive right over to Pensacola and see it. Hang around until 2078 and you can take a boat out to where New Orleans used to be and see it there too. It's all very predictable. Like a clock, I think someone once said.
But try and figure out when Turbine 4 is coming back online... well now there is a genuine challenge to demand every power of philosophy ever dreamed of.
The S&WB says it needs 44 megawatts of 25-hz power to run the pumps during the heaviest storms, but has been forced to operate with a little more than 40 megawatts since T-4 went down.
That turbine is not expected to return until next month.
We can peg the exact position of the moon for the next.. well for millennia into the future. Turbines, though, are unknowable. All we can say right now is check back sometime in May. Really puts things in perspective, doesn't it.
It felt like we measured out the 2010s in the time spent between the several boil orders. So much so, that by the end of the decade, it stopped feeling like anything out of the ordinary. And, of course, in the 20s, the global pandemic made our little home grown perpetual public health crisis seem practically pedestrian by comparison. It's just expected now the every so often, the water pressure will drop and people will have to take precautions. That's resilience! We even figured out a way to limit the boil orders to specific neighborhoods now so they seem like even less of a big deal. That's innovation! As we all know, resilience and innovation are synonymous with the global brand of New Orleans.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration has fumbled a $141 million grant for green infrastructure projects, according to a report from a federal watchdog, with poor planning, misallocation of funds and a lack of workers undercutting the city's efforts to keep stormwater at bay.
In one case, a grant-funded program to add porous pavement and other upgrades to New Orleans homes — which the city has previously touted as a success — was so poorly handled that it actually made some properties more vulnerable to flooding, according to an audit released this week by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Inspector General.
The audit, conducted over nine months ending in July 2023, said construction had not started on any of the eight grant-funded infrastructure projects comprising the “Gentilly Resilience District,” which is supposed to hold stormwater in redesigned green spaces that would otherwise flow directly to the often-overwhelmed city drainage system.
Okay well nevermind that right now. It's a global brand, trust me.
Following her participation in an international climate change conference in Dubai last December, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced she had signed a major new deal with a private company to significantly reduce the city’s carbon emissions and boost its drinking water and energy efficiencies.
The announcement was a public relations win for Cantrell after more than a year of being criticized for maintaining a busy travel schedule without any major results to show for them.
The Dec. 8 press release outlined the ambitious project the city would undertake with Zoetic Inc., an Ohio-based HV/AC coolant manufacturer. Described in the release as “a leading U.S.-based climate impact company with a portfolio of carbon reduction solutions,” Zoetic would be tasked with “increasing sustainability, including significant carbon reduction and water and energy resiliency.”
But more than three months later, the only thing Cantrell has to show for the trip remains the press release. In fact, internal administration documents indicate that after an initial flurry of behind-the-scenes activity, the project has completely halted.
Those documents also show Cantrell appears to have made the deal unilaterally within hours of meeting Zoetic’s founder. According to these records, Cantrell never consulted staff experts back in New Orleans before signing it, and the press release caught even her top climate-related aides off guard.
With city staffers scrambling to figure out what the agreement actually meant for the city, several people involved raised questions about the Zoetic deal, including one city employee who called the company “sketchy.”
Alright well put a pin in that one too. The point is, we're resilient now. The streets flood every time it rains for a few hours and the water gets all amoebaed up every time a main breaks and we are not fazed one bit by it.
That doesn't mean we can't be a little curious, though. I mean, maybe once or twice over the course of the Boil Order Decade, you may have wondered where does all the clean water our bills say we've been paying for go anyway? Well, now we know.
NEW ORLEANS — The office of the Inspector General released a report outlining failures within the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans.
The report says that infrastructure weaknesses, plus metering and billing errors created significant water loss.
According to the report, "SWBNO water losses were found to be consistently above the highest range of industry averages of 45.5 percent, with a ten-year average of non-revenue water of approximately 73 percent between 2008 and 2017. OIG evaluators found the SWBNO continued to experience similar rates in 2021 and 2022, with 75 percent water loss in 2021 and 64 percent water loss in 2022."
The OIG says the water board did not follow industry standards, resulting in a combined loss of over $19 million over two years.
They've been pouring it straight into the ground. Now, from what we understand, several of the stalled "Resilience District" projects had to do with creating stormwater retention facilities. This, we were told, had a dual benefit. They would supposedly lessen the stress on the drainage system by lowering the volume of water that had to be pumped out immediately. They also were supposed to be good for maintaining the soils beneath the city famously vulnerable to subsidence caused by over-efficient drainage. But here we see that, even though, the retention projects weren't being build, S&WB was more than making up for it by dumping the water back into the soil anyway. Score another one for innovation.
A Knights of Chaos float from this year's Carnival depicts Sewerage and Water Board Director Ghassan Korban (along with his salary)
One of several interesting things McBride pointed out today while watching the Sewerage and Water Board meeting was this apparent move to help Ghassan Korban cash out if the state really does manage to take over the utility.
The Sewerage & Water Board Thursday approved a three percent raise to Executive Director Ghassan Korban’s more than $300,000 salary, even as the Gov. Jeff Landry’s hand-picked task force released a plan to strip much of the local control of the city’s sewer, flooding and water treatment utility.
S&WB watchdog Matthew McBride, who first reported the pay raise vote, noted that “according to the salary published in the 2022 audit, this will increase his salary from $338,365 to $348,515.” According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2022 the average median household income in New Orleans was $51,116.
They also doubled his available leave time which further indicates a sizeable buyout could be coming soon. The board members are also quoted here making annoying comments in praise of Korban that place him among "the employees of the sewerage and water board" they claim to be very proud of. But that is a complete distortion. Korban isn't a rank and file employee. He's a highly compensated administrator who, even if he does get canned by Jeff Landry, won't have to worry about where his next meal is coming from for a very long time afterward. Korban is pretty close to retirement anyway. I'm sure the salary boost will help maximize his pension as well.
We can't say the same for most of the actual employees of Sewerage and Water Board. Their future is very much up in the air. Stephanie Hilferty has a bill pending that could transfer them all from the city to the state civil service system. I wonder what that does for their benefits, leave, and retirement plans. I'm guessing its not the same sort of jackpot their boss just got.
The Landry "task force" sounds like they want the state to take over the SWB and then turn it over to a private operator. Sort of the same process that moved us from public schools, to RSD, and then to the charterization mess we have now.
The proposed recovery district, to be controlled by a board composed of a majority of state appointees, would govern the agency for two years, according to the panel's recommendations. It could then cede control of the utility, renamed the “New Orleans Sewerage, Water and Drainage Board” to the City Council or the Public Service Commission. A third option would be to constitute the utility into a new municipal corporation modeled after one in Louisville, Kentucky.
In the meantime, there's plenty opportunity for a state appointed water czar to loot as much as possible. I wonder who will be our Paul Vallas of water?
Also of note, this week we had expected to see SWB's own "State of the Utility" report the mayor had decided to take on as a counterpoint to the task force. Guess she flaked on that.
From today's S&WB board meeting: "State of Utility" from @SWBNewOrleans, suggested by Mayor Cantrell as a rebuttal to Governor's task force on S&WB reform, pushed back to middle of the year.
— Matt McBride (@Matthew67052126) March 27, 2024
Here's a story on reaction from local political leaders on their deliberate exclusion from the Governor's Sewerage and Water Board "task force." The councilmembers all correctly perceive that they and their constituents are being ignored in favor of interests from either out of town altogether, or at least from the very top rung of the class pecking order. Landry's appointments, for example, include a Trump administration hand-me-down, Darryl Berger's nepo baby, the owner of a fracking company charged with hazardous waste violations, and a former Rex. Also Paul Rainwater is here because his name dictates it.
Landry announced his four picks on Wednesday. Chairing the task force will be Paul Rainwater, who once briefly ran the S&WB under former Mayor Mitch Landrieu and currently works as a lobbyist for Cornerstone Government Affairs. That firm represents the S&WB and the city.
Landry also appointed Lynes "Poco" Sloss, who currently holds a seat on the S&WB, as well as real estate developer Ryan Berger and William Vanderbrook, a Metairie accountant who served as a campaign treasurer for former U.S. Sen. David Vitter.
Three other task force members hold important state jobs under Landry: Joe Donahue leads the Department of Transportation of Development; Gordon Dove chairs of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority; and Aurelia Giacometto is secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality.
Paul Flower, chair of the New Orleans Business Council, said he will be that organization’s representative. The other six members have not been announced.
And, as we mentioned the other day, the remaining seats are appointed by organizations with no democratic accountability to the city and little to no interest in representing poor or working class people in any way. The City Council is at least somewhat expected to do some of that, at least in theory. Which is one reason they've been cut out. They aren't happy about that. There are other more cynical reasons they've been excluded and there are other more cynical reasons they are complaining, but let's not focus on that right now.
Instead, take a look at their comments, which are quite strong. In particular, see JP Morrell's thread here referencing the Council's ongoing efforts to exercise some oversight of its own.
Council Vice President JP Morrell said in a series of social media posts that many of the organizations represented on the task force “hid” during the council’s sometimes-tense debates with the S&WB over recent reforms.
“The fact that SWB had a press release lauding this creation means the likelihood the task force will actually suggest fundamental changes in favor of ratepayers or legitimate critical review of S&WB’s performance is 0.0%,” Morrell said.
He's probably onto something there. Otherwise, why would the SWB leadership be so welcoming of the Governor's initiative?
Some City Council members also lambasted the water board's lackluster response to Landry’s order Tuesday creating the task force, which skewered the utility for corruption, incompetence and dishonesty. The S&WB simply said it “welcomes the attention to our utility and our city’s critical needs.”
Council member Joe Giarrusso called that response “cloying and sniveling.”
“I was candidly surprised by the fact that the executive order is so over the top... and the Sewerage and Water Board seemed to say thank you, we'll take another lashing,” he said.
This isn't the first case of the city's administrative wing falling over itself to announce that it is "in alignment" with the new Governor's reactionary policies. Expect the cloying and sniveling to continue apace.
Get used to this sort of thing under Governor Landry. The City of New Orleans and its people can consider themselves an occupied territory, basically. Decisions about their basic infrastructure, even, are going to be made from elsewhere.
Landry announced Tuesday he had signed an executive order creating the Governor’s Task Force for the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. The 14-member body, consisting of appointees by the governor, state agencies, city economic development leaders and others, will have wide latitude to make recommendations on any aspect of the agency's operations.
It also has a specific mandate to look at the S&WB's billing practices, its governing structure and whether its management should be reorganized to "achieve more direct lines of authority" over key operations.
The task force is to provide recommendations within 30 days, in time for the upcoming legislative session.
Notably, the group does not include any dedicated appointments by New Orleans elected officials — including Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who serves as president of the state-authorized agency — or any leaders of the S&WB, though a Landry spokesperson suggested some local officials could be named.
No one you've elected gets to appoint anyone to the "task force." Nor does anyone who can reasonably be construed to represent the residents and workers here. Instead, we get bosses and business owners.
One person appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Transportation and Development
One person appointed by the Executive Director of the Coast Protection and Restoration Authority
One person appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality
One person appointed by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Louisiana
One person appointed by the Louisiana Engineering Society
One person appointed by the Louisiana Associated General Contractors
One person appointed by Jefferson Parish Public Works
One person appointed by Greater New Orleans, Inc.
One person appointed by the Business Council of New Orleans
One person appointed by New Orleans & Company
Four people appointed by Governor Landry
None of these parties has released the names of their appointees yet. But the wind is blowing toward privatization now so keep an eye out for Jim Bernhard.
I guess we should have known the increasing frequency of system failures and boil orders would inevitably lead to S&WB just giving up even trying to know if the water is safe.
NEW ORLEANS — The Louisiana Department of Health has sent three notices of violations to the Sewerage and Water Board based on the findings of a joint investigation by the Illuminator and WVUE-TV Fox 8. The series “Tapped Out” found — and state officials confirmed — utility employees regularly fabricated drinking water testing results based on a review of several months of data.
One of the employees involved in falsifying samples has been fired, the Sewerage and Water Board has confirmed.
By skipping sampling sites or conducting the test improperly, the Sewerage and Water Board could have potentially missed the presence of contamination or when levels of chlorine in the water were inadequate to ensure it was safe.
This probably also raises the question as to whether or not it's ever really been safe. Likely there's a range of acceptable amoeba levels we're always adjusting to keep up with what's in there.
Large fire visible in Algiers coming over the Woodland Bridge. Looks to be an Entergy Substation with nearly 10,000 people out of power. pic.twitter.com/p8oh3uYF2E
— Zack Fradella (@ZackFradellaWx) January 5, 2024
Update: If you have any information about the bird and/or small furry animals responsible, please contact the authorities.
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 is under investigation, according to Entergy and officials say no known environmental concerns at this time.
Upperdate: Ah yes, of course there is more
The outage has 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 has stopped because the sewer pumping stations are offline.
The S&WB claims the stations do not have backup power onsite working to mobile generators and pumps to the stations. The S&WB is asking West Bank customers to be mindful of their water and wastewater usage, and to conserve as much as possible.
This new S&WB substation has gone on quite a journey. First, Entergy was going to pay for it outright. We thought that sounded suspicious. And lo and behold, it was. After that fell through, the plan was to pay for it out of the city's American Rescue Plan allocation. But that also sounded suspicious to us because it was already clear the mayor wanted to spend that money on cops and discretionary nonsense. Those suspicions also turned out to be well founded and now here we are back where we always thought we would be.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the City Council responded in unison last July when Assessor Errol Williams announced that citywide property assessments had jumped by more than 20%.
They said City Hall would not “roll forward” property tax rates under its control, meaning property owners would not face additional liability for a little more than half of all citywide millages.
But the Sewerage & Water Board’s executive director, Ghassan Korban, has different ideas than his elected overseers when it comes to the utility’s tax rates. At the board’s Sept. 20 meeting, he said that he will argue for a roll forward, as the S&WB is in full tree-shaking mode to pay for a critical drainage power upgrade and a citywide meter replacement project.
Eventually the burden finds its way downstream to where the least important people are. And that's who has to bear it.
For those of us reaching a certain age, the idea of bending all of reality to run on Sewerage and Water Board time does sound nice. But I don't think it works that way.
NEW ORLEANS — According to the latest projections, Orleans and Jefferson Parish water intakes on the Mississippi are expected to have saltwater impacts by mid to late October.
The saltwater wedge that now threatens the drinking water supply for nearly a million residents has reached Jesuit Bend about 20 miles south of New Orleans.
Area leaders say a 10 to 12-mile-long pipeline will be needed to deliver fresh water from upstream, north of Kenner.
“To be able to end up with an intake at that location and pump and pipe that downstream into our intakes and as well as Jefferson Parish’s does remain our most viable option,” SWBNO Deputy Superintendent Steve Nelson told the city council on Wednesday.
It is expected to cost up to $200 million to build the pipeline.
But as of Friday GOHSEP, the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness had not received a detailed pipeline plan or a formal request for state funding from the Sewerage and Water Board.
According to the Army Corps of Engineers, city leaders also still haven’t applied for the necessary environmental permits to build the pipeline.
Look, I get it. I hate deadlines too. Never been one to meet most of the ones that applied to me alone. But when it affects hundreds of thousands of other people...
Update: The two minute offense is cranking up!
NEW ORLEANS — The governor's office has received and approved a plan to combat the saltwater intrusion in Southeast Louisiana, state officials said on Saturday.
More details on the specifics of the plan, approved Friday night, are expected to be released by officials by the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans as the project moves forward.
"The corps and the state received their proposed solution and didn't have any issues with SWBNO pursuing the procurement process," Officials in the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness told Eyewitness News on Saturday.
However, the plan still requires the USACE to sign off on the environmental permits.
Plenty time left?
In one regard, we're getting a lot of information about the salt water. We know roughly when it will get to each intake. We know it will be as long as three months before it is gone. What we aren't getting enough information about is what can/should be done about it and, more specifically, who should be doing what thing.
For instance, it's become clear that, although we don't know the severity of the issue, there's going to be a problem with contamination through corroded pipes. There's going to be a problem with lead.
The city has incomplete and unreliable information about its 1,500-mile water pipe system. How much of it is encased in lead is unknown.
That’s “the million-dollar question,” said Adrienne Katner, a drinking water researcher with the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. “We have no idea how many lead pipes remain in the city, but in my field research it was rare for me to find a home without a lead service line.”
About 48 percent of the New Orleans water system was installed before 1940, making many pipes more than 80 years old. Lead was a common pipe material until the U.S. banned it in 1986.
It’s safe to assume the water from any faucet in the city has come into contact with lead, Murphy said.
“We’re a very old city, and we still have lead in everything from our distribution system to the feeder lines to individual homes,” he said.
About 88 percent of nearly 400 homes tested on the East Bank had lead in their water, according to a 2018 study by LSU. While lead levels were generally lower compared to the EPA's action level of 15 parts per billion, many health officials stress that there is no safe level of lead.
That sounds like a critical vulnerability to a citywide public utility. How do we fix that? Who is responsible for fixing that? Nobody knows! Some of these articles are beginning to suggest that each of us is just on our own to identify and purchase the appropriate expensive equipment.
Luckily, if it's right for you, systems that work and won't break the bank are available for homes, and run about $200 and can be installed under a single sink.
These work through reverse osmosis, where a semipermeable membrane separates salt from water, Scientific American reported. Systems are available for whole homes, as well, but start at $1,000.
Reverse osmosis is the only way to remove man-made chemicals called PFAS that have been linked to health hazards. Some systems can also remove lead, in addition to bacteria commonly found in water.
Depends on whose bank we're thinking about breaking here, but for a lot of people, $200 is a lot of money to spend on something that *might* help. If people need filters just to have safe water during an emergency then FEMA (the agency responsible for handling emergencies) or S&WB (the agency responsible for delivering safe drinking water) should probably get them for people.
Of course we don't know if that's exactly the thing that should be done. (Better figure it out soon, though!) But if it is, then that's who should do it.
Don't panic. It turns out the thing we kept saying wouldn't be a problem is a bigger problem than we thought. But it's okay. We're just taking extreme emergency measures around you as you go about your day.
Water barges will be insufficient to deal with salt intrusion at New Orleans' Carrolton plant and for the east bank of Jefferson Parish and construction of a pipeline to deliver water from further upstream is being looked at, officials said Wednesday.
Cost estimates for such an effort are currently between $100 million and $250 million and federal funding is being sought, New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board officials told a City Council committee meeting.
Article doesn't say a whole lot about logistics. But they do make it sound like the "temporary" pipeline can be built in the short time between now and when the salt water gets here to be of use. Which is sort of a surprise given the usual speed at which infrastructure happens around here.
Anyway they also say that the pipeline can, in the future, become a "permanent solution" to salt water intrusion. This implies what everyone already knows; that this is likely to become a regular problem as the effects of climate change progress. It causes one to wonder how long the pipeline plan has been on the shelf. More to the point, why did they wait until the last minute to deploy a known solution to a known problem?
Update: Oh well maybe it won't be built in time after all.
Contractors are offering assurances that the work could be completed despite the short timeframe, but officials are preparing for the possibility of making bottled water available if there is a gap. The city is also looking at water conservation methods, Arnold said.
That is very exciting! Also that says once it's here the salt water will probably be around for 3 months or so. As usual, be ready to hunker down.
Upperdate: Ah and we have visual confirmation that operation pipeline is already underway
Confirmed: temporary @swbneworleans water intake station for NOLA and JP being constructed on S&WB-owned land at IMTT playground on Anthony St. in St. Rose. Implying the Corps believes the salt wedge won't make it there. https://t.co/yw65r7r2iy
— Matt McBride (@Matthew67052126) September 27, 2023
We get lots of quotes to the effect that "local officials are preparing for impacts" from the salt water. Not a lot of information about what they plan to do. Or even what they recommend that you do. Besides, just, be aware and prepare or something.
Of course there are things that could have been done ages ago to prepare
our vulnerable water utility to handle this very predictable scenario.
But one thing we've learned about disaster recovery vs disaster
mitigation is that the emergency no bid contracts that come with the
latter tend to be better opportunities for the important people to profit. So, really, this is just the
market at work. As for you, personally, well, look, there's still time to prepare!
While there’s still time to prepare, the clock is now ticking for local residents and businesses.
“A little worried for sure. Especially with the holidays coming up cause not only do we have to deal with that, but we have to deal with the water possibly being contaminated with a bunch of salt water and so that’s going to be a big issue for us,” Debarbieris said.
Ok. How, though? How do we prepare. Besides just panic buying water if we can find it? Doesn't matter. What matters is you internalize the idea that whatever happens is somehow your fault for not preparing enough. That's always the way with this stuff. It's definitely part of the model for climate change response going forward. So get used to that.
Tripping the light fantastic, and whatnot
NEW ORLEANS — The Sewerage and Water Board reports some pumps went offline during Monday's storms. The utility says two pumps on Interstate 10 near the Metairie Road exit were "tripping offline."
A spokesperson with the Sewerage and Water Board says the operators were able to turn these pumps back online, and the water has now receded. This comes as Orleans Parish is under a flash flood warning until 6:15 p.m.
Extended another month, basically.
According to @swbneworleans sewage will continue to be dumped to the Mississippi River until at least August 20. It started July 7, after a July 5 break in a force main outside Station D at Florida and Peoples could not be repaired. That break was fixed, but a 2nd hole opened. pic.twitter.com/CMYEZ4Rs4y
— Matt McBride (@Matthew67052126) August 7, 2023
