(C) Verite News New Orleans
This story was originally published by Verite News New Orleans and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Salt in the Mississippi River threatens water supplies yet again. What’s New Orleans’ ‘long-term solution’? [1]
['Tristan Baurick', 'More Tristan Baurick', 'Verite News', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width']
Date: 2024-09-09
For the third year in a row, seawater creeping up the drought-stricken Mississippi River is threatening the drinking water supply for the nearly 1 million people in and around New Orleans.
Leaders from some southeast Louisiana communities say they’re more prepared than last year, when a massive wedge of salt water from the Gulf of Mexico pushed about 90 miles inland, contaminating drinking water in Plaquemines Parish for months and touching off a frantic effort to protect the more heavily populated parishes upriver. Jefferson Parish now has a portable pipeline system that can pump freshwater from safer spots upriver, and Plaquemines has reverse osmosis filtration machines at three of its water treatment plants.
But in New Orleans, the region’s biggest city, officials have sent mixed messages about their preparation efforts, expressing both confidence in the status quo and an urgent need for a permanent fix, which could include a permanent pipeline system that may be too expensive for New Orleans to build on its own.
When asked if the city had a long-term solution to saltwater intrusion, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell gave contradictory answers.
“No,” Cantrell answered flatly to the question, which was posed by an audience member at a community forum on Aug. 27. Cantrell immediately reversed course, saying, “What we do have … we have a long-term solution that was created and put on the table by the city of New Orleans when we had the saltwater intrusion [last year].”
Cantrell stressed that the saltwater wedge posed no immediate risk. As of last week, the wedge’s tip had moved just past Port Sulphur, about 35 miles downriver from New Orleans, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The wedge is unlikely to reach the Belle Chasse water treatment plant or the outskirts of New Orleans this month, Corps forecasters said on Friday.
The Corps began work early this month on an underwater barrier, known as a sill, across the river bed near Myrtle Grove in south Plaquemines to lessen the wedge’s upriver progress. Because the sill must be short enough to allow cargo ships to pass, it blocks some but not all of the oncoming saltwater. The Corps built similar sills in 1988, 1999, 2012, 2022 and 2023.
The growing threat from saltwater intrusion has been fueled by drought in the Midwest, rising seas and the Corps’ efforts to deepen the river for bigger ships, which the agency’s engineers warned decades ago would increase the frequency and duration of saltwater intrusion events.
Climate change is expected to produce longer and more severe droughts and push sea levels higher along Louisiana’s coast. That means salt water invasions and threats to the region’s water supplies may become routine.
“It’s no threat to us right now, but … we have to push for the long term solution, and we are doing that at the federal level,” Cantrell said at the forum before asking Collin Arnold, the city’s emergency management director, to fill in the details on the city’s efforts.
Arnold explained that the city had been approved to participate in a Federal Emergency Management Agency program that will “provide technical assistance” to help Louisiana parishes “come up with a solution.”
Arnold did not respond to requests for details about the program and other saltwater intrusion response plans. A city spokesperson indicated Arnold was referring to Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Direct Technical Assistance, a FEMA program that the agency says provides “process-oriented” help to local jurisdictions that want to plan “climate resilience” projects. The program offers no direct funding, and it’s unclear how the city plans to use the assistance.
Overall, New Orleans has “the same response plan as last year,” a spokesperson said, referring to strategies that depended largely on the Corps supplying freshwater barges and portable reverse osmosis units.
The most significant effort New Orleans undertook on its own last year was to prepare to build a three-sided barrier, called a cofferdam, in the river around a water intake. Led by the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, the nearly $17 million cofferdam would have held back some of the salt water and allowed barges to pump freshwater into the intake. The S&WB chose a contractor but put the project on hold when the salt water wedge began to retreat late last year.
New Orleans also floated the idea of a pipeline, but unlike Jefferson’s 15-mile-long portable system, which can be quickly installed when the need arises, S&WB officials say New Orleans’ east bank water needs are so great that a bigger and sturdier system would be needed.
“We are unfortunately not able to utilize a smaller ‘lay flat’ system as our demand is much higher than Jefferson Parish’s,” a S&WB spokesperson said. “The larger rigid pipe is necessary to convey the volume of water needed to meet demands.”
Jefferson, with a population of more than 425,000, has about 55,000 more people than New Orleans, but the city’s old and poorly-maintained water system is infamously wasteful. According to an audit of the city’s water system in April, New Orleans loses about 70% of its treated water each year due to leaks, theft, billing and metering issues and other inefficiencies.
New Orleans’ outsized thirst for water means that the city would need a pipeline and pump system costing between $150 million and $250 million, according to S&WB officials. It would extend about 15 miles to the “Kenner hump,” a rise in the riverbottom that serves as a natural barrier to salt water.
But the pipeline’s price tag, which, on the lower end of the estimated price range would be close to what the city spends on its police department each year, may be too high. Last year, the city tried unsuccessfully to get the federal government to cover 75% of the cost. New Orleans officials appear to be making a similar request this year.
“What we have heard is positive – that the federal government does want to solve this permanently and make this not a problem anymore,” Arnold said. “So, we’re going to continue to work towards that.”
Verite News reporter Katie Jane Fernelius contributed to this report.
Related
Most Read Stories
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Republish This Story
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://veritenews.org/2024/09/09/saltwater-threat-drinking-water-long-term-solution/
Published and (C) by Verite News New Orleans
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 US.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/veritenews/
