Water that may contain sewage has been leaking into the Dwyer Canal in New Orleans East for almost two months, according to residents and New Orleans City Council members. Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans (SWBNO) officials, however, told the council during a joint committee meeting on Tuesday that its crews did not start investigating the incident until late last week.
SWBNO said the discharge of water into the canal was seen at four different locations, coming from a storm drain during dry weather. The discharge could be coming from nearby drinking water or sewage lines.
District E Councilman Jason Hughes said his office alerted SWBNO as early as December about the issue and questioned why the utility did not address the problem sooner.
“I think you all smelled the air in certain areas out there. It's horrific, and our residents deserve better,” he said.
Kaitlyn Tymrak, SWBNO’s general superintendent, said the utility fixed a pump that caused a temporary sewage leak earlier in December, but did not get reports of these discharges until last week.
”Those were, to my knowledge, the first time that those had been reported,” she said. “So in this case, those were new instances that we wanted to take action on.”
Sage Michael Pellet, an organizer with Healthy Gulf who lives in New Orleans East, brought the issue to the council’s attention.
“When sewer systems fail, it impacts our health, our quality of life, and the environment. For that reason, sewer discharges to the Dwyer Canal must remain a priority and treat it as an emergency now,” he told the City Council.
Pellet said this is one of many incidents where New Orleans East residents’ complaints about bad smells and pollution have been ignored. He made recommendations to keep that from happening again, such as testing water more frequently and taking preventative measures in the stormwater drainage system, like linings and covers.
Randy Haywood, SWBNO’s executive director, said the utility is now in the process of testing the water and investigating the cause.
“We have crews out there. We are evaluating the situation. We're doing the proper testing, and the engineers will look at it and analyze what's the next step,” he said.
He did not say when the problem would be resolved.
