New Orleans, LA

October 2009

Lifting the Lift Stations

FEMA obligates more than $279 million to help the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans recover after Hurricane Katrina. The repairs include mitigating some of the lift, or sewage, pumping stations such as the Lamb lift station in New Orleans East.

The sewerage and water board has 83 sewer pump and lift stations and following Katrina and the failure of the federal levee system, all 83 sewer pump and lift stations were severely damaged.

The pumps were submerged under, in some parts of the city, up to 18 feet of water at the waste treatment plants. In this area probably about 7 feet of water, so the pumps could not operate, all the electrical components were damaged and all the mechanical components were damaged.

When the sewerage pumps stations were damaged, we didn���t have the ability to collect wastewater from the homes of the citizens of New Orleans and the businesses from New Orleans, so it was imperative that we quickly dewater the city and we dried and baked the motors and we began installing temporary pumps and generators. We���ve been operating these wastewater sewer pumping stations with temporary pumps and generators, in some cases, now 4 years.

This particular station is called a can pump station, in which the pump is contained in a device that looks like a can.

All of the controls are within the can and the controls are normally below the surface.

For this particular station, this is one of 10 pump stations in which FEMA has approved completely rebuilding the pump station. And we will build the pump station above the ground. So hopefully in the future, we won���t have another Katrina. But if we do have another failure of a federal levee system, hopefully these stations will not be as impacted as they were in August of 2005.

We���re very pleased that FEMA has recognized the importance of water and wastewater to the lives of the citizens of New Orleans, and we look forward to this continued partnership.

For more information visit www.FEMA.gov.