Did somebody say boil order?

Coach Ryan takes Sunday's boil order in stride. (Image via The Hayride)

For the third time in less than four years, the city found itself under a boil water order Sunday as, according to S&WB statements, a fire in a natural gas line affected one of the boilers. Here is Gambit's video of Sunday's brief press conference where Marcia St. Martin tells us about the "berler" which may also have been affected.




For the third time, S&WB officials have singled out their plant's antiquated power system as the source of their problem.

The S&WB's aging power plant has seen better days. Built in 1903, it flooded heavily during Hurricane Katrina, suffering damage that has led power outages and boil water warnings becoming more frequent in recent years, including a 41-hour advisory in November 2010 and another 25-hour one in October. Both were linked to steam boiler problems at the plant.

Debate is raging about how to fix the plant, which generates a rare type of energy known as 25-cycle, or 25-Hertz, electricity. It relies on steam heated by natural gas to power most of the city's ancient pump stations. More modern pump stations, such as those east of the Industrial Canal, rely on more common 60-cycle electricity, the power type supplied by Entergy.

During discussions that led to major rate hikes last year for water and sewer services to businesses and residences, a taskforce of outside engineers and consultants determined that the S&WB should focus on converting the power plant fully to self-generated 60-cycle power. The current gas-to-steam system has too many opportunities for failure, taskforce spokesman Jeff Thomas said Monday.

"At any point along the way there, something can go wrong," he said, "which it has."
The task force, led by former S&WB member Gary Solomon, recommends that the station's four turbines be fueled directly by heat from natural gas, removing steam from the system. Older pump stations should be outfitted with converters that switch 60-cycle electricity to 25-cycle, Thomas said.

Click here for an image of the Rex Bulletin from 1903.  Not many people know this but the parade's theme that year, the somewhat bland "Feasts and Fetes" was originally going to be "Hurrah for 25-cycle power!" but Krewe members re-thought this out of concern over alienating visitors with a too-provincial NOLA-centric subject. "As we all know, tourism is the lifeblood of our city," said sugar refining magnate J.Thornwell Witherspoon who reigned as Rex that year, "and there's also the national Rex brand to think about."

Kidding aside, the modernization of the water and drainage system was a significant achievement of civil engineering.  Among several improvements, it made possible the eradication of one of New Orleans's major pre-20th century bogeymen 

The last Yellow Fever epidemic in the United States struck New Orleans in 1905, which was the same year that doctors working at Walter Reed Hospital discovered the link between mosquitoes and Yellow Fever. With an understanding of the disease, New Orleans officials were able to fight it, primarily by ordering that all cisterns be covered.

And with dependable running water available, the obsolete cisterns were steadily decommissioned. Now, in the early 21st Century, we're seeing this infrastructure begin to reach the end of its life cycle.  Yesterday, on the tweeter tube I sorta joked that the modern response to this problem would probably entail some sort of misguided green-foodie "well-your-own-water" trend.  Turns out such a thing has already been proposed.

Several homes in the two most advanced green communities—the Make It Right development spearheaded by actor Brad Pitt, and Global Green, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s project just a few miles south in the Lower Ninth Ward’s Holy Cross neighborhood—have 1,000-gallon underground cisterns to collect New Orleans’ copious rainwater. The plan was to use solar energy to pump water from the cisterns into a separate plumbing system that would be used to flush toilets.

But the state of Louisiana has outlawed such cistern and non-potable water use for nearly a century, and has not changed its stance, citing public health concerns. The law was written when mosquito-borne illnesses such as yellow fever washed through the area like a storm surge, according to Lousiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) Clyde Carlson, a district engineer who now finds himself in the middle of a water re-use debate in New Orleans.

A Fear of Water
The historic fear was that poorly maintained water systems would serve as breeding grounds for infected mosquitoes, contributing to the spread of disease, Carlson explains.

While yellow fever is no longer a threat, West Nile virus is, says Gordon Austin, chief of environmental affairs at the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, which would administer any water re-use programs at the city level.

But until the whole city turns water vigilante and we all die of West Nile, we can only express the utmost confidence that the S&WB task force will get this worked out given the can-do quality of its leadership and the resources it will have at its disposal.  And if not, at least it's still crawfish season.

 Update: Did I confuse Gary Solomon with George Solomon in that last bit? Yes I believe I did. Mea Culpa. Been not feeling so well today anyway.. although I don't think it's the water.