The Boil water advisory has been cancelled … but how long will it be until the next one is issued? With crumbling infrastructure beneath our feet and the threat seeming ever-present after back-to-back issues with water main breaks, plenty of NOLA residents are on edge.
There have been multiple water main breaks in the city of New Orleans leading to street closures, costly business disruptions, and other issues.
With the breaks happening almost back to back, many people in the Crescent City are wondering if this will be an ongoing issue moving forward. Mayor Helena Moreno has been frustrated by these persistent problems since taking office and wants to take a proactive approach when it comes to identifying vulnerable areas. However, it’s a difficult process according to experts.
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HJ Bosworth is an engineer and says, unfortunately, the only way to locate a small leak in a water main essentially comes down to spotting water already building on the surface. “Most of the water breaks we have in town start with a trickle and then erupt into a geyser like we had early Monday morning,” Bosworth says. He attributes the majority of the water infrastructure issues to both age and poor initial construction. “We have pipes that are so old, they’re made from lead and oakum joints. You hope that those things will hold up, but sometimes they don’t,” Bosworth went on to add.
While the new administration is trying to stay ahead other potential damage to the water infrastructure, Bosworth concedes that they will be facing a major uphill battle. “There are a lot of problems. There are a lot of small leaks in New Orleans where you can see the roadways wet. That leads me to believe that there’s a good chance the tie-ins weren’t made properly. I don’t think the final connections were carefully installed, otherwise we wouldn’t have these problems where, after months and months of waiting for the streets to be paved … then, suddenly, there’s water coming in through the seams”, he noted further. That means a patchwork approach to infrastructure problems is unlikely to work. However, a more comprehensive approach will be much more expensive and much harder to put into action.