Billions of dollars will be going to improvements to the water and sewer systems in Jefferson Parish, and that means residents should prepare for roadwork in throughout the parish.
Most of the water and sewage pipes running underneath Jefferson Parish are estimated to have been installed in the 1930’s and it took a recent hurricane to expose the frailties of those systems. Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng appeared on WWL First News with Tommy Tucker this week to discuss this massive undertaking.
She told tucker how in the wake of the August 2021 hurricane, many neighborhoods in the parish had little to no water because of what the storm had done to the water and sewer system. Ida’s winds uprooted trees in various parts of the parish. When some of those trees became uprooted, they also damaged water sewer lines that were beneath the streets’ surface.
“We were sitting on very aging systems, and we knew that.
And when Ida came, it kind of showed how old our systems were,” said Lee Sheng.
With that understanding, the president said she set out on an eight-month long campaign following the storm’s landfall raise water and sewer rates. Lee Sheng’s administration met with civic and business groups to explain the need for upgrades to both systems. The issue eventually did not to go before voters. The Jefferson Parish Council approved the rate increases. Lee Sheng says what will emerge from that will be $1.1 billion for water improvement projects and $1.2 billion for improvements to the sewage system.
“We had an incredible amount of infrastructure for drainage after Katrina happened. We got state funds, federal funds, and did a big push for drainage improvement. So other than that initiative, this will be the largest public works in modern times. When I came in office in 2020, I knew for a long time that our water and sewer infrastructure needed help. We were just kind of in maintenance mode if you will. Both systems were actually losing money. So, it was a situation we could not withstand for very long,” Lee Sheng told Tucker.
Listen to the entire conversation including how Lee Sheng believes the benefits to the upgrades could last here.
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