Will Santa need a wet suit this year? With impending heavy rain predicted on the night the jolly man makes his rounds, most residents are hoping the Sewerage and Water Board can do what they can to keep water at bay and away from neighborhood streets.
Sewerage and Water Board Executive Director, Ghassan Korban says, “Turbine five is back online and adds about seventeen megawatts of power. That puts us right where we need to be in terms of a weather event.”
While Santa is checking his list twice, Korban says he and his team will check the turbines and pumps as many times as necessary to make sure the city stays as dry as possible. However, he stresses that it isn't the pumps that give the most issues but ensuring there's enough power flowing to them.
“We don’t have issues with the pumps, but the power that drives the pumps has been unpredictable.”
Since this will be an ongoing issue until the new power substation comes on line, Korban says that they will definitely communicate preemptive information better.
“We just launched a new dashboard that will inform our customers of pump and power status.”
As for the heavy rain predicted this holiday weekend, Korban says with turbine four not being operational there needs to be room left for "what ifs" as we well know.
“Turbines four and five have their issues of unpredictability and unfortunately they can go down.”
All in all, Korban says he and his team will remain at the ready.
“We will treat all forecasted storms as if it will dump a lot of water on us.”
