Nobody likes getting that text, “NOLAReady: Precautionary boil water advisory…”
However, while you may get a text about a boil advisory for a specific neighborhood, for the most part, city-wide boil advisories are no longer a reality.
This prompts the question: Why? What changed?
I interviewed Executive Director of the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board Ghassan Korban to explain some of the updates to the city's infrastructure responsible for eradicating the widescale boil advisories.
Tommy Tucker: We still get short-term boil advisories, but reports show that city-wide boil advisories have dropped dramatically. What’s behind this?
Ghassan Korban: Boil advisories for small localized areas are a fact of life regardless of where you live. For example, D.C. just lifted one that lasted for about three days. Water mains will break and you’ll lose pressure, and a boil advisory is just a precautionary step to make sure water is safe before you consume it. We will always have those here and there.
I think we're doing very well in terms of how the city is performing because of the investment we've made with the towers, with newer pumps, and a more resilient system that serves the city much better, especially when it comes to large events—whether it's the Super Bowl, Taylor Swift, or Mardi Gras.
Tommy Tucker: How do the twin water towers built in 2017 help avoid boil water advisories?
Ghassan Korban: The towers play a direct role in avoiding them because then they maintain supply and pressure. Those towers play a huge role in filling those transmission lines with water and pressure. However you have extremities of the system, so if you have a hydrant that's broken or a water main that breaks you’ll have a drop in pressure in that area itself. No matter how much pressure we have at the plant, you’ll always have that drop in pressure. And until you isolate and repair the main, you'll have a boil water advisory which typically lasts for 24 hours.
Tommy Tucker: With potential flooding coming up within the next couple of days, if someone has a problem with a leaky meter, what do they do?
Ghassan Korban: If you have a leaky meter, call 504-52-WATER. It's imperative to recognize where the leak is if it's on our side on the inflow—our side. If it is, obviously, it still needs to be repaired, but it really would not impact the actual volume of water that's going through the meter.
If the leak is on the side of the property, it could still be our responsibility to repair it. But it would cause the consumption number to appear higher than your typical consumption. That's when people get upset or nervous. And those are the ones we address earlier than the other ones because it impacts the amount of consumption.
Tommy: How's the Smart Water Meter Project coming along?
Ghassan Korban: We now have 70,000 smart meters in the ground. That's an awesome accomplishment for having started in the spring of this year. We plan to finish the rest before the end of next year.