The Sewerage and Water Board is embarking upon a major rebuilding and renovation of the drainage system throughout the city, and our goal is to greatly reduce the chance of flooding in streets and homes during major rain storms.

You are well aware of the inconvenience and devastation caused by some of our major storms of the past.

The damage estimate for the May 8, 1995 flood is 360 million dollars.

As you can see on this slide, information from FEMA shows that sections of this area are considered repetitive flood areas in Orleans Parish.
The projects we are presenting will help alleviate some of the problems.

They include the construction of a new Dwyer Road Pumping Station and new outfall and inlet canals.

The area to be served by these improvements is bounded by Chef Highway, Morrison, Read and the Industrial Canal. The area also includes the Georgetown complex.

This work is part of the Southeast Louisiana Program (SELA), a cooperative venture between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Sewerage and Water Board, using Federal matching funds.

The program's objective is the reduction of flood damages in the city of New Orleans.

Phase One SELA Projects include the Dwyer Road Pumping Station and Canals at a cost of $31 million, the upgrade of Pumping Station One uptown, new canals beneath Napoleon Avenue, the South Claiborne Manifold Canal and a new pumping station and canals in Hollygrove.

The combined cost of all phase one projects is $160 million, with the Federal government contributing $120 million and the Sewerage and Water Board funding $40 million.
This represents 75 per cent federal funds and 25 per cent Sewerage and Water Board funds.

In one phase of the project, we will be replacing the existing Dwyer Road Pumping Station with a brand new one.

The new station, to be constructed at the western end of Dwyer Road, will have nearly 10 times the capacity of the old one. It will house three pumps, yielding a total pumping capacity of half a million gallons per minute.

The new station will discharge through three underground 84-inch diameter tubes which will run through the hurricane protection floodwalls and discharge into the Industrial Canal.

Another phase of the project is the construction of a 20-foot wide by 12-foot high discharge canal between the control structure and the Industrial Canal. It will carry pump waters from the station to the Industrial Canal.

The cost of these first two phases will be approximately $19.3 million. Construction began earlier this month and will take two years to complete.

A third phase of the project is the $12 million construction of a new 14-foot by 12-foot inlet canal to be constructed parallel to the existing canal beneath Dwyer Road from the pumping station to the St. Charles Canal. The canal work will begin after the completion of the pumping station and discharge canal and is expected to take 2 years to complete.

As you can see, the canal will be large enough to hold a large RTA bus.

All of the work described is in response to citizen input asking the Sewerage and Water Board to continue to improve and expand the drainage system in this area.

During construction, there will be some inconveniences, so we have established a special hotline for questions, comments or damage claims. The number is 585-2450. Information about the project will also be on our website: www.swbnola.org.

Further, we assure you that we will ask our consultants and contractors to keep inconveniences to a minimum. We will also ask them to inform us of any special needs or requests from the community.

The contractor for the Pumping Station is C.R. Pittman Construction.

The contractor for the Outfall Canal is Tri-State/McElwee.