Three major Sewerage & Water Board pumps, two in Lakeview and one in New Orleans East, are reportedly out of service as Tropical Storm Ida speeds toward a projected collision course with the Louisiana coast.
Drainage Pump Station 12, which is near Lake Marina Drive and covers areas of Lakeview from City Park to Jefferson Parish, will be completely offline during the storm, S&WB officials announced yesterday. Other nearby stations are expected to have enough capacity to pick up the slack, but the outage nevertheless raises questions about how the lakefront area will weather the storm.
The S&WB’s power system, which has been the main focus of concern in recent years due to a series of turbine failures, is currently capable of producing a bit more electricity than needed but the small amount of surplus power will still leave little room for error should something go wrong during the storm.
