Press Releases

NEW ORLEANS, LA — After issuing a precautionary boil water advisory for the East Bank and limited portions of the West Bank, the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans (SWBNO) is on track to have all tap samples tested and results available by Thursday afternoon.

SWBNO has collected 100 tap samples across the East Bank and West Bank, and testing is underway. If all sample results pass, SWBNO will lift the precautionary boil water advisory in conjunction with the Louisiana Department of Health. SWBNO will notify customers when the advisory is lifted.

"While we recognize a precautionary boil water advisory is inconvenient for our customers, we have issued this advisory out of an abundance of caution to ensure our city’s drinking water is safe,” said Ghassan Korban, SWBNO Executive Director. “We appreciate your understanding and patience as we complete testing over the next 24 hours."

In the meantime, SWBNO encourages residents take the following measures:

• Washing hands: Use soap and tap water, dry hands, then apply hand sanitizer; the safest option is to wash with bottled or boiled water.  
• Showering or bathing: Be careful not to swallow any water. Infants, young children, and disabled persons should be supervised to ensure water is not ingested. Residents with open wounds, chronic illness or weakened immune systems should use boiled or bottled water to bathe until the advisory is lifted.

A map of the affected area is here.

The initial power outage leading to the precautionary advisory was caused by a Mylar balloon connecting with a power line near the Carrollton Water Treatment Plant, according to Entergy. This created a brief power fluctuation that lasted about three minutes, which caused drinking water pumps to trip offline. SWBNO staff had to then turn the pumps back on manually.

The two water towers at the Carrollton Water Treatment Plant, which are part of SWBNO’s Water Hammer Hazard Mitigation program, worked as intended, buying the SWBNO operations team 40 minutes to respond to the issue. This critical infrastructure has enabled SWBNO to avoid issuing a citywide boil water advisory since 2018.

Unfortunately, as SWBNO staff responded, an employee sustained serious injuries that required EMS support. The two other pump operators on duty prioritized administering first aid to the injured employee while awaiting EMS in accordance with SWBNO safety protocols. As a result, it took our team roughly 50 minutes to manually turn on the pumps, causing the system to briefly dip below 20 pounds per second (psi) for about 10 minutes and triggering the precautionary boil water advisory.

SWBNO is grateful to its employees who managed to balance extenuating circumstances by addressing the power issue while also aiding an injured co-worker, who is currently still under hospital care.

“The health and safety of our employees is paramount to us, and we do everything in our power to ensure a safe work environment,” said Korban. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the employee who was seriously injured while responding to this incident last night.” SWBNO is investigating the sequence of events and will implement safety measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Currently, SWBNO must rely on Entergy’s residential grid, which can be vulnerable to mylar balloons, and other hazards, to power our drinking water pumps. The Power Complex, which is under construction and anticipated to come online next summer, will be more formidable against these types of hazards, providing a resilient power source and additional redundancy within our system.

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