The boil order decade

Another one come and gone over the weekend.  

The Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans lifted a boil water advisory Sunday afternoon (Sept. 23) that was issued for Lower 9th Ward residents Saturday afternoon.

The agency sent out a notification around 4:30 p.m. Sunday lifting the precautionary advisory after "bacteriological tests confirmed that water in the area was safe to drink and could be used for personal needs," according to the S&WB

Yawn. Remember when we used to count these? Now they're pretty much just regular neighborhood events. Look at how localized this one is. They lost pressure at the Carrollton plant but only the Ninth Ward needed to worry.  It seems like the many repetitions of this drill have made our boil advisories more precise.  Or maybe we just have a higher amoeba tolerance now.

But, hey, good news! City Council will soon have the benefit of its own panel of experts to help it keep an eye on S&WB for you. Call it the Sewerage and Water Board Board.

“The public justifiably has no confidence in the Sewerage & Water Board,” said Councilman Jared Brossett, who sponsored the move to prepare a request for qualifications from third-party advisers. Those firms would arm the council with technical know-how on a long-term basis as it continues to serve as a watchdog of the floundering agency, he said.

Keep in mind we aren't talking about the "technical know-how" necessary to determine when a meeting is not really a meeting.  For that you would need a lawyer. Or, really, just a literate person.

City Council needs more than just that. What they need to do is keep up with the Board in the escalating consultancy arms race. As of last November the Board's advantage in the consultant gap was staggering.

The New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board has paid a Colorado consulting firm $6 million more than what FEMA considers a “reasonable” fee to manage a critical power-plant project – and so far, with little to show for it.

In fact, the agency has allowed the company's fees to balloon over the past six years, to the point where the company now stands to ultimately collect four times more than the “reasonable” rate by the time its contract is through, according to public records obtained by WWL-TV.

Why is this so urgent?  Well, consultants can provide you with valuable information. For example, they can tell councilmembers about how flooding is caused by "inconsistent leadership." They can also tell councilmembers that they definitely need to hire more consultants.

Also at Monday’s meeting, representatives from the ABS Group, a Houston-based consulting firm, presented the findings of its report on the flooding in July and August of 2017. A draft of the report was obtained by The Advocate in August.

The report found that one of the root causes of the flooding was “inconsistent leadership oversight of power and pumping operations.” At Monday’s meeting, ABS representatives recommended that the council keep closer tabs on the Sewerage and Water Board.

The proposal to hire a consultant appears to be a direct response to the report.

The best consultants are good at telling you to hire themselves specifically.  Perhaps the most famous example of this in local lore is the case of former New Orleans "Recovery Czar" Ed Blakely. 

Ed Blakely, an urban affairs professor who led recovery efforts after Oakland's 1988 (sic?) earthquake and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, said success in those and other massive rebuilding efforts resulted from leaders' swift action, sometimes laying out recovery plans within 24 hours of a disaster, and their willingness to install a single chief to guide a comprehensive plan "so that you're not moving home by home."

"It should not be a local person," said Blakely, who paid his own way from his home in Australia to address the African-American Leadership Project's summit in Central City. "They (should) have no baggage, but they have to have a real human touch to know where people are coming from."

Blakely said such a leader would be less likely to be influenced by historical, cultural and political factors that can sway the decisions of local residents on issues including which geographic areas, if any, should be off limits to rebuilding.

It was not long after this talk that Ray Nagin hired Blakely.  That turned out okay, right?