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The New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board took 20 minutes to switch power from a downed turbine generator to electricity supplied by Entergy, the agency’s emergency manager, Paul Rainwater, said Wednesday (Sept. 20). By that time, water pressure had dropped enough across the east bank to trigger a large-scale boil water advisory that could last for hours or days.
Rainwater said the city’s sewer system was running on Entergy power and wasn’t affected by the outage. New Orleans’ drainage pumps are running on a combination of power supplied by Entergy and that generated by the steam-powered Turbine 1.
Turbine 1 on Wednesday was the only turbine among five in the power plant that was working. It was fixed after an electrical fire knocked it out on Aug. 9.
It usually takes 24 hours to conduct those tests.
Marsha Broussard, the city’s health director, said no one should drink the tap water for the foreseeable future.