Gutter buddies

From LaToya's pre-Carnival pep talk today:

Another new feature headed to parade routes is called a "gutter buddy," which is a sandbag placed in front of catch basins to prevent beads and other items from flowing in and clogging them.

Actually, these were a "new feature" last year along the parade routes uptown.  Here's what they look like.



Those didn't appear to be sandbags, though. Maybe they're going heavy duty this time around.  Hope it doesn't rain too hard while they're deployed. We do still have a drainage problem to worry about. And the "gutter buddies" are supposed to be good at plugging up culverts. 

Mosaic thinks so, anyway.

A fertilizer plant in St. James Parish is siphoning hazardous wastewater out of a retaining pond to try to prevent the possible collapse of a retaining wall, but also preparing to respond if it cannot prevent the failure, records show. A letter from the Mosaic Uncle Sam fertilizer plant to the Environmental Protection Agency outlined preparations to try to prevent the wastewater from contaminating surrounding wetlands if the wall collapses.

The plans include installing or staging plugs for nearby culverts to try to contain the wastewater, should it be released, according to a letter to the EPA date Jan. 30.

The waste water is sitting behind a 200 foot wall of gypsum right now.  That's a pretty big gutter buddy itself.  I'm sure some sandbags will be fine if that fails, though.