Some good news for New Orleans residents concerned about flooding: The Sewerage and Water Board's Turbine Number 4 is back up and running.
What's more: city leaders are taking other proactive steps to prevent major street flooding.
Sewerage and Water Board Director Gassan Korban told WWL's Newell Normand that with Turbine 4 back in operation, the S-W-B has more redundancies and more than enough power to keep the city's streets from flooding.
"We need no more than 44 at the highest peak demand for any event that may come our way," Korban said. "Now we're running at 70 megawatts, which is a great, great number."
However, Korban says he's cautiously optimistic.
"We still are running or relying on these old pieces of equipment that could break down and cause us challenges."
Meanwhile, the city is using federal money to hire contractors to perform other anti-flooding work. According to Korban, the city is spending $10 million in ARPA funds to hire contractors to clean the city's catch basins to stop floods before they happen.
"(They'll) clean specific areas and designated catch basins, including the actual laterals that lead from the catch basin to the actual main and looking at the mains as well," Korban said.
That work, Korban told Normand, will help city leaders answer a vital question. According to Korban, that question is: with $10 million, how many "of the 76,000 catch basins that exist in the city, how many can you do on an annual basis?"
Korban says city officials are also working with DOTD to have catch basins that fall under their purview cleaned.
"The streets that belong to them, that fall in their jurisdiction, (include) Airline, Claiborne, and a few others, major highways that bisect the city," Korban said.
