Widespread street flooding across New Orleans Saturday night raises questions about pumps, drainage

For the second time in two months, intense rain, combined with the breakdown of a critical piece of Sewerage & Water Board power equipment, flooded streets throughout parts of New Orleans Saturday night, serving as a frustrating reminder of the age, frailty and lack of redundancy in the city’s drainage system.

The failure of one of the S&WB’s turbines meant the power sent to the pumps had to be rationed, but the agency said there were also indications that there could be problems with the city-maintained catch basins and pipes that feed water into the system.

And the storm was intense enough that there would have been flooding even if the system had been operating at full capacity, the S&WB said.

Some streets in neighborhoods including Gentilly, Broadmoor, Uptown, the Lower Garden District, Treme and the Central Business District were impassable Saturday night, even after the rain tapered off just before 8 p.m. Many scrambled to pull their cars up onto the neutral ground as water crept up the sides of vehicles still on the street. The New Orleans Fire Department reported rescuing some stuck inside their cars. 

Others watched nervously as floodwaters inched toward their homes and business, and some of the buildings took on water.

At Gabrielle restaurant on Orleans Avenue in Treme, staff and patrons waded out into the rising waters at around 6:30 p.m. to move their cars as it became increasingly clear there would be a problem. About 30 minutes later, water started coming into the restaurant.

“In the kitchen, we were cooking in ankle-deep water,” Gabrielle Sonnier Prudhomme said. “In the dining room, we just kept moving people around to try to keep them in the driest spots possible. Finally we just gave up and everybody ate with their feet in the water.”

#CityofYes 😑 pic.twitter.com/wXJEkMmefB

— Gabrielle Restaurant (@GabrielleRest) February 4, 2024

Turbines or catch basins?

As of midday Sunday, officials with the S&WB had few answers for the widespread flooding beyond what they said Saturday evening: One of the critical generators that powers the pumps, Turbine 4, had been taken offline earlier in the day for an unspecified mechanical problem. 

The turbines are necessary because about half the pumping capacity in the drainage system runs on an archaic standard — known as 25-hz power — that must either be generated in-house or converted from electricity that the agency receives from Entergy New Orleans.

With Turbine 4 offline, the system was about 10% short of the amount needed to run the 25-hz pumps at full throttle.

The S&WB has yet to say what problems the turbine experienced. In early December, it attributed the flooding that night, in part, to a failure of Turbine 4, which went down in the middle of that storm.

No other power equipment failed Saturday night, S&WB spokesperson Grace Birch said Sunday. But operators were forced to ration power, she said.

There also were indications that water in the system was not making it from the streets to the pumps, Birch said. Notably, there were instances when the canals fed by the pumps had been emptied but there was still water on nearby streets.

That generally indicates an issue with the catch basins and lines that bring water in the drainage system, Birch said. Those are maintained by the city’s Department of Public Works.

It was unclear Sunday how much clogged catch basins factored into Saturday night’s street flooding, but there is reason to believe it was significant, said City Council member Joe Giarrusso, who has been trying to call attention to the issue for much of his tenure on the council.

Over the past two years, the public works department has cleaned out just 5,000 of the city’s 72,000 catch basins, about 7%, according to the city’s dashboard.

Separately, the council appropriated $10 million to the department in late 2022 to specifically target the problem. Some 14 months later, however, that money has not been spent, according to a recent budget presentation to the council. The city has budgeted $2.8 million to be spent this year cleaning out 7,000 basins.

There is no word on when the work will begin, much less be completed.

“We have to address the problem from both ends,” Giarrusso said. “Because we know that power is at a premium, so we have to do something to keep the catch basins clean.”

The city could not be reached Sunday afternoon for comment.

Too much rain

Another factor Saturday night, according to the S&WB, is that rainfall amounts in parts of the metro area exceeded what the system’s pumping capacity had it been fully operational. Parts of New Orleans saw more than 5.5 inches of rain over just a couple hours. Downtown, Gentilly and the Audubon Park area saw 4 inches of rain or more in just two hours, city rain gauges show.

When running properly, the drainage system can pump about an inch of water out in the first hour and a half-inch every hour after that.

The volume of water was apparent at the Broad Street pumping station, where it came about a foot from the edge of the retention walls of the canal. Resident Ed McGinnis stopped to snap a few pictures as he was trying to navigate flooded streets on his way home Uptown from dinner in Mid City.

“Everything was contained in the canal walls, but it was unusually high,” he said. “You could hear the pumps working, though, and people seemed to be manning them so that was comforting.”

‘What are you going to do?’

Weary residents interviewed Sunday had varied reactions to a problem they’ve been forced to grow accustomed to. There was anger, but also a sense of resignation.

Ryan Fitzmorris got six inches of water in the basement of his Octavia Street home near South Claiborne Avenue. It was the fourth time in five years. He managed to get things cleaned up by Sunday afternoon, just in time to hit the Carnival parades.

“What else are you going to do?” he said. “I’m not going to let it ruin my Mardi Gras.”

In Gentilly, Jill Musgrove’s home off Filmore Avenue near the London Avenue Canal still had not drained as she helped friends build a trailer for an upcoming parade. She said she watched the water creep up her driveway nervously the night before, but her slab home was spared. Her husband had to wade home in knee-deep water after his Uber driver couldn’t turn down their street.

Musgrove’s friend, Jennifer Wells, was less forgiving of the city’s inability to get a handle on the problem. A New Jersey native, Wells said the water covered the first two steps leading up to the front porch of her Palmyra Street home in Mid City.

She noted seven cars on her street have been totaled by floods in the past six years. 

‘I’m a transplant and I know you locals hate when I talk about the northern territories,” Wells said. “But you can’t say this is normal.”