Residue and small drops of oil turning up on cars and homes, plants and trees in the neighborhood around the Sewerage and Water Board’s Carrollton Power Plant appears to be coming from an old turbine with a leak.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. Back in 2013 a similar occurrence coast took place. Neighbors around the Spruce Street side of the power plant found their neighborhood showered with oil.
“Sewerage & Water Board, you're doing wrong,” Spruce Street neighbor Johnny Wilson told the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. “Give us a break. Let us know what's going on. Talk to us. Help us out with our property over here. Do something toward us. You should. We've been here, being dumped on too long, much too long.”
Wilson’s main suspect is the oft-troubled Turbine 5. The last in a long line of out of date power generating equipment, which ended up costing the city tens of millions to rehabilitate. Number 5’s smoke stack blew in 2019, blowing out windows around the neighborhood.
“I was even sitting in the yard when the turbine blew up,” Wilson said. “That knocked me over, back in the yard.”
Though the S&WB decided to retire Turbine 5, they relented and refurbished it. Now the oily droplets are back, much too every ones bother.
Ariane Livaudais filed a complaint on March 3 with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
“That was the first concrete evidence that we had that someone admitted that, yes, it was coming from their property, and it was coming onto ours,” Livaudais told the paper.
“It's a necessary service that they're providing. I understand. We don't want people flooding,” Livaudais said. “But at the same time, I don't know. They never seem to ever reach out to us. (It’s) always us chasing, chasing, chasing.”
