An extensive water main break along Panola Street flooded homes and cars in New Orleans Monday morning as residents Uptown and across the east bank woke up again to low water pressure and a boil water advisory.
A large portion of the east bank, including Uptown, the Central Business District, the French Quarter, the 9th Ward, Mid City, and Gentilly, is under a boil water advisory following the break, Sewerage and Water Board officials said. Crews were out making repairs to the street starting at around 7:30 a.m.
The break at South Carrollton and Panola Street is the third major water disruption in less than three months, starting with a 48-inch water main break that caused a sinkhole in January along Panola Street, just a few blocks from Monday’s break. A second 48-inch water main burst along South Claiborne on Feb. 23, flooding the area near the intersection with Louisiana Avenue, dropping water pressure and forcing schools to close for days.
In addition to the three major transmission line breaks, a smaller pipe burst on March 4 in Central City, near the intersection of Jackson Avenue and Magnolia Street. A sewer main also ruptured near the Lafitte Greenway on Feb. 15.
A new leak along Panola Street — separate from the one in January — was under repair last week, but work paused after the Central City break last week, said Kaitlin Tymrak, the S&WB interim general superintendent. “Due to the system configuration, we would be concerned about one thing causing another problem,” Tymrak said, explaining the pause in repair work. She said repair work on the new Panola Street leak was set to resume this week, and there is no indication that the repair work did anything to worsen the initial rupture and cause the major break on Monday.
Homes and cars along Panola Street were flooded after a geyser of water splashed out from the broken underground pipe on Monday. District A City Councilmember Aimee McCarron said it appeared that a dozen or more homes were flooded. BilliJo Dolton, a resident in the area, said her home flooded and much of her belongings were soaked, including her car. Her car was previously flooded just over a month ago during the first main break on Panola Street, she said. Elizabeth Carder, another Panola Street resident, was woken up by flashing police lights. She stepped out of bed to see that water had poured into her room from her apartment’s storage closet. “I stepped down right into water,” Carder said.
After alerting other tenants of the apartment building, Carder said police told her to stay in the building until the water was drained. As she waited on the porch of a higher-up unit, she recorded video of a firefighter using a kayak to traverse the water. Hours later, Carder, who used to be homeless and said she was in need of more permanent housing, still had to go through her belongings that were inside the flooded closet. “I have not gone to sleep,” Carder said. Daniece Tate, an assisted living attendant who worked close to the water main break, was collecting her belongings from her flooded car Monday morning. She was working when she saw police lights, but authorities told her it was too late for her to move her vehicle to neutral ground and a tow truck driver she called was unable to reach the car. “When the tow truck person couldn’t come, I opened my trunk to see what stuff I could save because I had my diploma, birth certificate, my laptop in the car,” Tate said. “I started to take them out last night but I was tired so I left them.” “I just hope the city does what it’s supposed to do to fix this problem,” she said.
S&WB officials have blamed the recent failures on the age of the city’s water pipes, many of which are at or near the end of their lifespan. Tymrak said the S&WB is working to determine if something else contributed to the rapid succession of water pipe failures. Tymrak said pressure within the transmission system has been slightly elevated recently while testing is conducted on water pumps at the Carrollton Water Treatment Plant, but pressure has remained within normal operating range. She declined comment when asked if the increase would be enough to burst the water mains.
McCarron said she will demand more detailed information from S&WB officials at the Public Works Committee meeting on Tuesday. “There’s got to be something else happening. I know the pipes are old, but it doesn’t seem to me like we should have three significant, huge water main breaks within like two months of each other,” McCarron said. The S&WB has 47 miles of large water transmission lines, including the ones along Panola Street and South Claiborne Avenue. Tymrak said 35 of those miles – about three-quarters of the system – are more than 100 years old and have reached their expected lifespan. The S&WB plans to inspect each section of those 35 miles to come up with plans for repairing, replacing, or lining them to prevent additional breaks.
“Each section has to be evaluated to determine what the best way to repair is. Lining is good in some cases, but it cannot be done at all,” Tymrak said. Tymrak said she did not know how long the assessment might take. The cost of securing the system isn’t clear, though S&WB Executive Director Randy Hayman has previously suggested it might be around $200 million. Hayman was in Washington, D.C. on Monday morning lobbying federal lawmakers to identify new funding sources for the water system. “We will immediately go in to get a contractor to do the work,” Hayman told FOX 8 on Monday morning, discussing repairs to the break on Monday morning.
