Hour 3: What's up with the Sewerage and Water Board?

And the article, I mean, Ben Myers is a great writer. But, hey, how much free water is provided to public agencies? Do they have a meter? Do we know how much they use? Are they careful about their water usage? And the nonprofits that Stewart Public Lands, who are these nonprofits? Do they have golf courses? Do they provide universities? Are the universities paying water? Who all is paying the water? Are we providing free water for all sorts of different characters that don't give a flip and have to pay for it ourselves? That's my question. So from the engineering standpoint of water leaking into the ground, let's say it's 50%. Let's say, I'm just picking these numbers out of the air, but just to have a jumping off base, say of 75% that's lost, 25% of it's given away, 50% is leaking out. And again, that's just... picking numbers out of the air. There's no factual basis for that at all. But if that's the case, how is the water leaking out? Well, the pipes are old, and the joints come apart, and the service lines, the one between the water main and your meter could leak. But because our water table is so high, you know 90% of the time, maybe 80, where a leak is because it's coming up through the street. You can also hear them in the nearby catch basins. If water is leaking into a drain line, you can usually hear it if it's near a catch basin or whatnot. So water doesn't just go off in the nether regions beneath our streets. Those are already wet. They're bubbling up in the streets or somehow somewhere they've lost track of where the leaks are and they're not keeping track of them. And then the Surgeoning Water Board needs to get on this. You know, they need to know where the leaks are and why it takes a month to get to a leak. You know, we've all seen, you know, water in the streets and you put a cone out there and someone runs over the cone. Put another cone out there and someone runs over the cone. But the leaks in the street, you can see that create the potholes will leak for a month before the Surgeon Water Board shows up. Fortunately, and recently, I've noticed that they've hired independent contractors to make these fixes, which... are way more efficient and way more effective. When the water, let me take a break. We'll pick it up here. We come back. I don't want to talk about the engineering part of this, because if I remember correctly, the water can be... damaging the subsurface, and then you wind up wiping out the foundation, and then it leads some more pipes being broken. So you're causing your own problems in a water leaks, pipes break, water leaks, pipe break situation. That's a cycle of failure. We're talking to H.J. Bosworth, engineer, and research director of levies.org, about Ben Myers' story at nola.com about New Orleans Syringer Waterboard, wasted in three quarters of the treated water. Granted, some of it goes to nonprofits. and that Stewart Public Lands and to Public Agencies, but I just made the number, okay, 50%. Let's say they're losing 50% of it that they refine or that they clean. What kind of damage is that having on the streets? And what does it mean for ratepayers? And could that lead to more boil water advisories? Because how hard is it to sustain 20 PSI when you got water pouring out at 50% of what you clean? 821, Traffic Now, WWO.

827 Tommy Tucker Carlson, WWO, back with H.J. Bosworth, engineer and research director of levees.org talking about the water that surrogent waterboard is losing after they refine it and clean it and process it and leaking into the streets. H.J., is that what's happening? And as I said earlier, can the leaks erode what little bit of substructure we have? And as a result, that leads to more pipes breaking and more leaky pipes? Absolutely. Anytime you have a water leak and a nearby crack and a drain line or a sewer line, the water leak will find its way to that crack. And it won't just flow nice and pretty without taking out soil in the process. Anytime you see a sinkhole or a pothole or whatnot, and the city agency or whatnot shows up, fills it up with asphalt, and a year later it's a pothole once again, there's another problem beneath the surface where water, maybe it's groundwater, maybe it's treated water, is flowing from one spot to the next and taking with all the soil that's nearby. And, you know, like, remember years ago we had the sinkhole de Mayo where we had the gigantic sinkhole on Canal Street, not far from the ferry landing. That was the, that was exactly what was going on there. You had a leaky water pipe, you had an open drain pipe, and the water continued to erode all of the soil around the end of that, the tunnel underneath the river gate. for years. And then finally, the pavement collapse and created a hole big enough to put a small vehicle in. So, yeah, you've got all sorts of warning signs all over the city of where the water leaks are, where the problems are, but putting Band-Aids on... larger wounds just doesn't quite do it. You've got to have a dedicated crew to go in there and say, okay, here's a line we've patched with asphalt, you know, five, six times over the past five or eight years. Dig it up, find the problem, fix the pipe. But that would mean... Once the pipes are fixed, yeah, once the drain pipes and the sewer pipes are all fixed, everything else is going to bubble to the surface. Then you can see it, then you can act on it, even if it takes a month. You know, the Surgeon Border Board may just be understaffed. This could cost a lot of money, right? Right. So from an engineering standpoint, let me run this by you. It would seem as though, and this is the Saturday morning hardware store guy, engineer, right? It would seem as though if you were going to put the city on an equal footing with somewhere else where we're not on swamp land and everything else, you would have to drive pilings. place the pipes on that to make sure that they didn't sink or subside, and then from there you could get gone and have regular maintenance going on. Otherwise, you're stuck in this quagmire. Is that accurate or not? Maybe not. When you drive piles underneath one item that you've got buried under the streets, it stops that from settling, but it doesn't stop everything else from moving. The soils under the streets, the soils underneath, the sidewalk, the soils underneath the neutral grounds, they're still going to settle.

sometimes swell, sometimes shrink, depending on the weather because of the type soils they are. So putting everything on piles may not be as good as making sure that all the pipes are flexible. Okay. When the city was built, everything was cast iron, which was fine and great. But over time, the joints open up, the pipes crack, whatnot. You've got polyethylene pipe that's nice and flexible. It's really something that the Surgeon Water Board should embrace 20 years before they started to embrace them. I'm glad to ask that question. The word of the day, flexibility. Thank H.J. Bosworth, engineer research director of levies.org. We'll talk to Freddie King, New Orleans City Council, member district C, about the boil water advisories for the West Bank. When we come back, right now we pause for WWL First News. Tommy Tucker Carlson talking to Freddie King, New Orleans City Council member district C, which includes Algears in the French Quarter. How you doing, Freddie? I'm good time to have much so. All right. Let's talk about these boil water advisories in Algiers. What's going on? Do you know? Yes, yes. So the pipe, a 20-inch water main was hit. Friday night, Saturday morning at the intersection of German DeGal and Indiana Street. I think it's important to clarify that this was not a sewage and water board employee or a contract under Sewage and Water Board. This was a Army Corps of Engineers sealer project that had nothing to do with Sewage and Water Board. So once that pipe was hit, I received... an alert around 1.30 a.m. letting me know that the water, the water main was broken. The water pressure had dropped below a safety, a safe pressure, and the water distribution was disrupted in allergies. The water was restored roughly six, seven o'clock that Saturday morning, and the water was. tested on Sunday. The results came back yesterday. Also, when the results come back, the Seweridge and Water Board has to send those results to Louisiana Department of Health. They had to verify the levels or the testing results before they can lift the Ballwater Advisory. As of yesterday, about 435 o'clock, the Ballwater Advisory was lifted for most of Algears except for the the areas closely, closely connected to the area where the pipe was burst. So there was only one boil water advisory listed or two? There were two in the city. One was in the east, but... The one in Algiers, they both were lifted yesterday, the one in Algiers was lifted later in the day. So the one in Algiers was strictly because a Corps of Engineers contractor working on a CELA project hit a water main. Is that what happened? Yes. And water pressure drops. So in this case, there's no question about how it happened or who was at fault or anything else.

No, no question is as the information I received from the leadership of sewage of water board has been pretty consistent. I also went on the scene, talked to some of the workers, and from everything I've gathered, this was done by accident, of course, by a contractor with the ormical engineer doing a sealer drainage project on the gall. All right, Freddie. Anything you want to add? Look, I also wanted to mention the council now having more oversight as it relates to Suitor Water Board. For me, the main thing is to provide more transparency and more accountability to the residents of the district or of the city. I'm not trying to go in and tell Surgeon Water Board how to do the data the operations, but I think there needs to be a higher level of transparency, consistency, and accountability. And that's what I'm looking to bring with the council having more oversight of Surgeoning Waterboard. But wait, didn't they have... The Boil Water Advisory, oh, it was just an update that I'm thinking of on August 7th that talked about what happened on July 25th. That's what happened. Yeah, so that was a previous ballwater advisory sometime last month or the most recent was a result of the busted pipe on the Merrick Garland, Indiana. And do we know what the previous one was caused by? I don't have that information. readily available. I was told, but I was told weeks ago and forgot about it. And it was in July? Yes. So now it's different. Now, tell me how it's going to be different if something like this happens again in August, now that you have more control. Did the new system help you, divine, pardon the pun, where this leak came from or how it happened this time or not? Well, the difference for me is the information was coming. All the time, every, we were getting updates multiple times a day every so many hours. So the main difference is the communication piece. Things are going to happen. We have an outdated, antiquated war system. But I think the key is to be just honest and open with people. And in the past, it was difficult to get that information out as soon as possible. And look, there were some people who were saying the communication wasn't great. this paths go around with the water break over the weekend. But that's what I want to improve the communication and the transparency and accountability piece as relates to the water board. Gotcha. Am I going to see you at the Celebrity Waiter thing Friday? Yes. I'm about to make a few phone calls and get my table ready. All right. There we go. We got the Shaw Celebrity Waiter Lunching coming up Friday at the four columns. Freddie will be there and you can email me or Freddie and he'll give you the details on how to be involved with that if you like. Thank you, Freddie. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Freddie King, New Orleans City Council member, fellow Shaw graduate, 854.5. Traffic now, WWO.