The Boil Order Decade

It felt like we measured out the 2010s in the time spent between the several boil orders.  So much so, that by the end of the decade, it stopped feeling like anything out of the ordinary. And, of course, in the 20s, the global pandemic made our little home grown perpetual public health crisis seem practically pedestrian by comparison. It's just expected now the every so often, the water pressure will drop and people will have to take precautions.  That's resilience!  We even figured out a way to limit the boil orders to specific neighborhoods now so they seem like even less of a big deal. That's innovation!  As we all know, resilience and innovation are synonymous with the global brand of New Orleans. 

Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration has fumbled a $141 million grant for green infrastructure projects, according to a report from a federal watchdog, with poor planning, misallocation of funds and a lack of workers undercutting the city's efforts to keep stormwater at bay.

In one case, a grant-funded program to add porous pavement and other upgrades to New Orleans homes — which the city has previously touted as a success — was so poorly handled that it actually made some properties more vulnerable to flooding, according to an audit released this week by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Inspector General.

The audit, conducted over nine months ending in July 2023, said construction had not started on any of the eight grant-funded infrastructure projects comprising the “Gentilly Resilience District,” which is supposed to hold stormwater in redesigned green spaces that would otherwise flow directly to the often-overwhelmed city drainage system.

 Okay well nevermind that right now. It's a global brand, trust me.

Following her participation in an international climate change conference in Dubai last December, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced she had signed a major new deal with a private company to significantly reduce the city’s carbon emissions and boost its drinking water and energy efficiencies.

The announcement was a public relations win for Cantrell after more than a year of being criticized for maintaining a busy travel schedule without any major results to show for them.

The Dec. 8 press release outlined the ambitious project the city would undertake with Zoetic Inc., an Ohio-based HV/AC coolant manufacturer. Described in the release as “a leading U.S.-based climate impact company with a portfolio of carbon reduction solutions,” Zoetic would be tasked with “increasing sustainability, including significant carbon reduction and water and energy resiliency.”

But more than three months later, the only thing Cantrell has to show for the trip remains the press release. In fact, internal administration documents indicate that after an initial flurry of behind-the-scenes activity, the project has completely halted.

Those documents also show Cantrell appears to have made the deal unilaterally within hours of meeting Zoetic’s founder. According to these records, Cantrell never consulted staff experts back in New Orleans before signing it, and the press release caught even her top climate-related aides off guard.

With city staffers scrambling to figure out what the agreement actually meant for the city, several people involved raised questions about the Zoetic deal, including one city employee who called the company “sketchy.”

Alright well put a pin in that one too. The point is, we're resilient now.  The streets flood every time it rains for a few hours and the water gets all amoebaed up every time a main breaks and we are not fazed one bit by it.  

That doesn't mean we can't be a little curious, though. I mean, maybe once or twice over the course of the Boil Order Decade, you may have wondered where does all the clean water our bills say we've been paying for go anyway? Well, now we know. 

NEW ORLEANS — The office of the Inspector General released a report outlining failures within the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans.

The report says that infrastructure weaknesses, plus metering and billing errors created significant water loss.

According to the report, "SWBNO water losses were found to be consistently above the highest range of industry averages of 45.5 percent, with a ten-year average of non-revenue water of approximately 73 percent between 2008 and 2017. OIG evaluators found the SWBNO continued to experience similar rates in 2021 and 2022, with 75 percent water loss in 2021 and 64 percent water loss in 2022."

The OIG says the water board did not follow industry standards, resulting in a combined loss of over $19 million over two years.

They've been pouring it straight into the ground.  Now, from what we understand, several of the stalled "Resilience District" projects had to do with creating stormwater retention facilities. This, we were told, had a dual benefit. They would supposedly lessen the stress on the drainage system by lowering the volume of water that had to be pumped out immediately. They also were supposed to be good for maintaining the soils beneath the city famously vulnerable to subsidence caused by over-efficient drainage.  But here we see that, even though, the retention projects weren't being build, S&WB was more than making up for it by dumping the water back into the soil anyway.  Score another one for innovation.