Ongoing Investigation Finds 'Deeper Issues' With New Orleans Drinking Water
A closer look at New Orleans’ drinking water and wastewater system is uncovering a history of improper sampling results reporting and apparent cover ups.
“Emails and interviews with Sewerage and Water Board (S&WB) officials, combined with an extensive analysis of their data, have revealed deeper, more extensive problems within New Orleans’ drinking water testing and sample collection programs,” the Louisiana Illuminator reported. “However, a key S&WB leader continues to consider these issues an isolated matter.”
The investigation has found numerous problems surrounding sampling and reporting — critical safeguards to ensure drinking water and wastewater treatment operations are meeting state and federal quality standards.
GPS data showed a water board employee regularly “diverted to” his home when he was supposed to be taking samples. The report also accused S&WB of following an “unwritten procedure” that let employees substitute inaccessible drinking water sample stops with locations they preferred, as opposed to substitutes approved by the state. And hundreds of drinking water samples tested for coliform contamination were found to be incubated improperly.
Despite the reports, S&WB’s leadership has dismissed allegations of intentional wrongdoing.
“...We’ve got 1,200 employees of the Sewerage and Water Board,” its deputy general superintendent for engineering and services told the Illuminator. “So I’ll stand by my statement that the vast majority of the time we’re doing the right thing for the right reasons in the right places.”
As reporters and treatment professionals tussle over the investigation, the wider region is facing potential drinking water crises that go well beyond sampling inconsistencies.
“Saltwater from rising seas, a growing threat to freshwater worldwide, has plagued southeastern Louisiana (and) this was the second year in a row that the region suffered a drinking water crisis,” per The New York Times. “And experts predict more frequent intrusions as climate change continues to cause shifts in Midwestern rainfall.”
Changing climate and increasingly stressed supplies won’t help New Orleans wrangle its drinking water and wastewater treatment operation, even as the ongoing investigation uncovers potential shortcomings. But if treatment professionals there are indeed intentionally skewing sampling data, intervention and correction are likely on the horizon.
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