Whoops!

 Shot (September 10)

New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board Director Ghassan Korban said Tuesday the city’s pumping and drainage system is in a “good place” ahead of Francine.

Ninety of 99 drainage pumps are working across its 24 pumping stations, he said, and the city has 70 megawatts available to power its drainage pumps, above the 44 needed to run the system at peak demand.

Korban said 70 megawatts “is probably one of the highest numbers we've seen in a long, long time ... Today, this is the best that we can all really count on.”

Chaser (September 11)

The large generators the Sewerage and Water Board uses to supplement its turbines and provide power to its drainage system went offline for about 15 minutes late Wednesday as Francine battered New Orleans, leading to widespread flooding.

Canals were high in Hollygrove, Lakeview, Gentilly, and New Orleans at 10 p.m., and over 30 locations in the city were flooded, according to Streetwise NOLA.

Nobody could have predicted... 

 

20.5 of those 70 megawatts are carried by overhead lines from four east bank frequency changers, which themselves are well over 50 years old.
12.5 MW come from EMDs which are wildly unreliable.
T4 (18 MW) failed in December and February when it was called upon. https://t.co/PuprII1ws5

— Matt McBride (@Matthew67052126) September 10, 2024

We'll know more tomorrow. But tonight there is widespread street flooding both in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. Right now I'm listening to Helena Moreno tell Channel 4 that Sewerage and Water Board had problems with the EMD generators and that it lost Entergy power a couple of times during the night.  She has used the phrase "whack-a-mole" several times.  She says there are Lakeview and Gentilly residents reporting flooding where there hasn't previously been flooding. 

Anyway, we'll see about all that later. Meanwhile, just keep in mind that Francine ended up being, basically, a direct hit on New Orleans. Here is a picture of the eyewall approaching a little after 7:30.  We're actually lucky that it was already being torn apart by wind shear at this point. If this had been a major hurricane there could have been catastrophic damage. 

 

As it stands, the damage looks to have been significantly annoying at the very least. (Approximately 350,000 without power, for example.)   Anyway, we'll know more about all that later.  One thing we can't say at this point is that we're in an especially "good place."

Not ideal

 Old Francine. 

Tropical Storm Francine has formed in the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to further develop into a hurricane and impact Louisiana later this week, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said Monday morning. 

The storm is expected to make landfall in Louisiana on Wednesday evening as a Category 1 storm, though forecasters say there is a bit of uncertainty as to Francine's exact track.

As of 1 p.m., Francine had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph. The storm is expected to turn north-northwestward over the next day, turn more east and intensify before making landfall on the Gulf Coast as a hurricane.

Cat 1 predicted as of this afternoon but some of the weatherfolk are concerned at the accelerated pace of its organization. 

Not liking the look of things this afternoon. #Francine appears poised to strengthen even quicker than expected. Already seeing hints of an eye trying to clear out in visible satellite imagery. pic.twitter.com/NmSc1bRijW

— Steve Caparotta, Ph.D. (@SteveWAFB) September 9, 2024

That isn't great news given the path of the storm.  Drawing a bullseye bead on Lafayette is not great. Also it places SE Louisiana's highly vulnerable coastal marshes and heavy petro-chemical infrastructure on the "bad side" of the storm. If the intensity forecast gets any greater than it is this would be a very bad track.

 

 Anyway, let's hope this reasoning holds up. 

In a forecast discussion issued Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that models are showing a heightened possibility of rapid intensification Tuesday through Wednesday. Then, after the period of intensification, high vertical wind shear could cause the storms intensity to plateau before it makes landfall on Wednesday, according to the NHC.

Both those predictions influenced the NHC's forecast that the storm will hit Louisiana with Category 1 winds.

In addition to the shear, the storm is expected to pull in dry air from Texas, which could serve to as another check on the intensification process, Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes said.

Together, those two factors may prevent Francine from becoming a monster storm.

"I wouldn’t say its not on the table, but it seems to be fairly unlikely," Grymes said, though he cautioned that the storm will still bring dangerous conditions that residents need to prepare for.

 

 

There was an S&WB that swallowed a fly

See, they swallowed the ordinance to replace the ordinance to fix the billing errors...

The ordinance, which replaces one passed in 2022, matches laws passed in the spring legislative session. The rules are aimed at stabilizing billing, long a source of public outrage, while the S&WB replaces underground meters with new “smart” meters that track usage in real time. 

“We are hoping to have this issue resolved forever," Council Vice President JP Morrell said Thursday.

(Forever! Okay) 

That means they needed the "smart meters" to fix the "wonky software" that was supposed to fix the "human errors"... 

Utility officials say the smart meters will eliminate the need for estimates, reduce human errors and replace wonky software, which have all been blamed for inaccuracies. Half the city’s 144,000 meters are set to be replaced by the end of this year, and the rest by the end of 2025.

(The smart metering is a dubious solution, though) 

By the end of 2022, there will be over 124 million smart meters installed in 78% of U.S. households, according to data released in April by the Edison Foundation’s Institute for Electric Innovation. But less than 3% of today’s smart meters fulfill 2009 promises of customer savings and that must be prevented in the coming Energy Department-funded deployment, according to a September analysis by Mission:data Coalition.

“Utilities used federal and state funds to deploy smart meters and many explicitly promised to empower customers” to lower bills and earn rewards for supporting system peak demand reductions, said Mission:data President and analysis lead author Michael Murray. “The public policy failure is that utilities benefited from returns on capital expenditures and reduced operational costs but did not deliver those customer benefits,” he said.

Which is why they needed the contractor to fix... well, I guess, the continuing billing errors.

HGI will see a significant boost in compensation with its new role, a reflection of the higher volume of work it will perform, said Council member Joe Giarrusso, who sponsored the ordinance with Morrell. Its current contract is for $600,000, and the council voted Thursday to extend the contract through the end of next year with maximum compensation of $3.4 million.

Giarrusso said the council opted not to put the contract out to bid so the new appeal procedure could get up and running as quickly as possible.

Yes, yes, of course. Oh, also, they need a second contractor to fix the... wait, I think I'm lost here. 

The new billing ordinance prohibits estimated meter readings starting next year, and offers customers the option of receiving fixed bill amounts. It also mandates a contractor to hear all appeals and make bill adjustments the contractor deems necessary. A separate contractor will be hired to ensure bills are correctly sent in the first place.

Is that the mail? They need to pay a company to mail things for them?

How many private contractors should it take for a public agency to fulfill its basic administrative functions? The answer should be zero, right? This is just absurd. Nobody's bill will improve here. But some consulting companies will make a chunk of change off of the deal.  Seems to be the only thing that matters.

I'm thinking of a number between zero rats and thousands of exploding rats

 Could be anything I guess.

 New Orleans City Hall officials are still trying to identify the cause of a bad smell inside the building.

According to a city spokesperson, an inspection of the building Friday has ruled out both gas leak and rat concerns. 

Portions of city hall remain closed as city officials continue to investigate the cause behind the smell.

The Bureaus of Revenue and Treasury, the Office of the Registrar of Voters, and the Department of Sanitation remain closed due to the smell.

 

 

Rat jokes

On most days, it's hardly surprising to learn that somebody might walk into City Hall and loudly proclaim that they smell a rat. It just isn't always quite so literal as this.

According to these sources, the city recently decided to exterminate the rodents in the hall. But while it may have succeeded in culling the rodent population, it also apparently left a lot of carcasses in its wake, which as they decomposed have apparently released a potent cloud of noxious fumes into the building.

According to one source, there could be thousands of rat corpses left behind in city hall and that some of the bodies may have "exploded," presumably due to the petrification process.

NOPD's stoner rats declined to comment.

That's Gambit's John Stanton sharing the scuttlebutt with us there. I think he means "putrefaction process" instead of petrification there. Don't worry. We'll get that cleaned up in copy editing before it goes to publish. 

I've been watching everyone's similarly labored attempts online to merge the previous popular rodent meme with the most recent one and I think I may have it. 

When you walk into City Hall and start to go woozy from the putrefied rat fumes, does that mean you are also high?

Right?

Folks?

Better?

Okay maybe not. 

Anyway, I'm sure it smells petty bad. But, as someone who has been around the block a few times, I should point out that this "thousands of dead rats in the walls" story is a common urban legend in New Orleans. (And probably in a lot of other cities too.) It's a tall tale I've heard a few times from different bosses or co-workers. There's always a story about a building downtown where so-and-so "used to work" when they opened up the walls for some reason and found the Khmer Rouge of rats in there. 

This doesn't mean there isn't some truth to it. Animals do die and rot in buildings sometimes and it is unpleasant.  I just think John's source on the "could be thousands of rat corpses" angle is probably repeating a version of the popular hearsay. 

Consider also that the culture at City Hall is very, well, anti-City Hall as a physical space.  In March, the city approved a land swap agreement with the state that should clear the way to construct a new building just across Perdido Street.  I don't think a construction timeline has been announced yet, though. And there are likely several steps remaining toward approving a budgetary allocation all of which will require continuing political pressure.  So any number of exploding rat carcasses can probably help with that. 

The more of those that can be conjured, the better. Which is another reason you are probably reading about "thousands" of them today.  Recall that dubious rat memes helped move NOPD into a suspicious deal for a new HQ this year. Might as well stick with what works.