It wasn't even a hurricane, but heavy rains flooded New Orleans as pumps faltered

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: August 10, 2017 at 6:51:37 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] It wasn't even a hurricane, but heavy rains flooded New Orleans as pumps faltered
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> It wasn’t even a hurricane, but heavy rains flooded New Orleans as pumps faltered
> By Tim Craig
> Aug 9 2017
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/it-wasnt-even-a-hurricane-but-heavy-rains-flooded-new-orleans-as-pumps-faltered/2017/08/09/b3b7506a-7d37-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html>
>
> After Hurricane Katrina destroyed his house and forced him to flee to nearby Baton Rouge, Ronald Williams spent a 
> dozen years waiting for the right time to go home. Seven months ago, after repeated government promises that New 
> Orleans was once again about as flood-proof as the city can get, Williams finally got up the nerve to return.
>
> But on Saturday, from the steps of his new rental home, Williams watched water again pour through the city’s streets 
> after a thunderstorm dropped as much as nine inches of rain in just four hours. The ensuing flood overwhelmed the 
> city’s pump system and covered much of central New Orleans in several feet of water, taking 14 hours to drain and 
> prompting 200 “life-threatening” emergency calls, according to city records.
>
> “I came home because I believed what they said about the new system and that it was supposed to be the best in the 
> world,” said Williams, 67. “But now it seems if we get hit by another Katrina, the city will be gone.”
>
> Panic and rough memories have surfaced across New Orleans this week as residents cope with yet another reminder that 
> parts of the city sit as much as seven feet below sea level. And even though U.S. taxpayers have spent nearly $15 
> billion rebuilding the city’s flood protections since 2005, few here are confident the fixes can keep the city dry 
> for long.
>
> Unlike during Hurricane Katrina, the problem over the weekend wasn’t the 133 miles of levees and flood walls that 
> protect New Orleans from the tidal surges of the Gulf of Mexico or Lake Pontchartrain, which hangs over the northern 
> and eastern edge of the city. Instead, parts of New Orleans were underwater because the city’s hundreds of miles of 
> drains and pumps couldn’t bail rainwater fast enough.
>
> Though the water finally receded this week, the aftermath has thrown the New Orleans government and its municipal 
> water and sewage authority into turmoil, reviving long-standing concerns that natural disasters here have been made 
> worse by inconsistent leadership.
>
> The tension and recriminations come as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is preparing to turn over the newly built 
> levee and storm barrier system to local officials, adding new responsibilities for a city already stressed by high 
> crime rates and chronic budget deficits.
>
> But scientists and engineering experts say the weekend flooding is just another sign that neither money nor 
> leadership will be enough to keep New Orleans above water forever as sea levels rise and the city’s mushy soil sinks 
> about two inches per year.
>
> “This is just another reminder of what we created there,” said Robert Bea, a retired professor at the Center for 
> Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s been studied, the deficiencies have 
> been identified but . . . we wait until something fails, and, at that point, we react quickly and try to reestablish 
> functionality, and then back to business as usual.”
>
> The past few days appear to validate some of Bea’s concerns. On Sunday, amid streets clogged by scores of 
> water-damaged vehicles, the leaders of the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans promised that all 121 drainage pumps 
> were working properly during the storm. They said the flooding was simply caused by too much rain for the system to 
> handle.
>
> By Tuesday, as community skepticism deepened, the board acknowledged that eight pumps were either broken or out of 
> service for maintenance when the rain began. Power shortages also hampered pump operations in some neighborhoods.
>
> As a result, pumps in some hard-hit areas were operating at half of capacity, according to Joseph Becker, the water 
> board’s superintendent.
>
> In an uptown neighborhood, some of the flooding might also have been exacerbated by a Corps of Engineers project 
> designed to limit future flooding. Contractors digging new drainage culverts left three 70-foot holes in metal panels 
> that lead to the Peoples Avenue Canal, allowing water to back up into the neighborhood, said Col. Michael N. Clancy, 
> commander of the corps’ New Orleans district.
>
> But New Orleans residents are directing much of their anger at city officials, with some holding signs that read 
> “Katrina” or “lies” at a packed city council hearing Tuesday.
>
> “For a lot of people, this is PTSD,” said Hillary Barq, 24, ­referring to Katrina and using an acronym for 
> post-traumatic stress disorder as she recounted how she spent Saturday night “floating through” her neighborhood 
> trying to rescue stranded motorists.
>
> [snip]
>
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