It’s the photo that keeps Sewerage & Water Board officials up at night.
Taken at Drainage Pump Station 7 in Lakeview, it shows the jagged edges of two huge, bell-shaped pipes eaten away by rust and detached from support pilings sticking out of the Orleans Canal.
It’s a rare glimpse of the discharge bells that help funnel stormwater collected on city streets into Lake Pontchartrain. The bells are usually submerged in water, where they must remain for the pumps to work. When the photograph was taken in 2012, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had lowered the canal for a construction project, exposing decades of corrosion.
Ever since, water board officials have worried that one or more of the 14-foot discharge bells at Pump Station 7 and six other major pumping stations will reach a point where the corrosion knocks a pump out of commission, leaving water to pool in city streets and potentially flood cars and homes. S&WB officials in recent months have displayed the photo in presentations to demonstrate the need for new funding…