S&WB pump station parts are rusting away underwater. No one knows how bad the problem is.

By Ben Myers

Source: The Times-Picayune | NOLA.com

May 31, 2026

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.

The discharge bell corrosion could lead to pump failures at any time, officials have said. The risk of failure is ever-present, but there’s little information available to forecast when or if it might happen. Detailed inspections have not been conducted since the 2012 photo was taken, according to the S&WB. There also aren’t any plans to replace the bells, at least not any time soon, because there’s no money to do so.

“We have just been in a reactive state and will continue to be so at this point until we can get an infusion of funds,” said S&WB General Superintendent Kaitlin Tymrak as she stood on the bank of the Orleans Canal, a few feet away from the submerged bells, during a recent tour of Pump Station 7. “Some things are going to be more risky than others. Certainly, the consequence of this is high.”

The rusty discharge bells are a symptom of the S&WB’s chronic condition: Major infrastructure problems are lurking within the utility’s drainage and tap water systems. The S&WB sewer system is in better shape after hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades over the last two decades, but that system too will need upkeep in the coming years.

Decades of underinvestment have a spiraling effect, with maintenance backlogs growing more expensive and harder to address as years go by. And with no money in hand to pay for it all, S&WB leaders are increasingly warning about potential equipment failures, with severe consequences for residents unlucky enough to be located close to whatever piece happens to break.

“If we don’t properly fund our stormwater management system, we cannot continue to exist here,” S&WB board member Tyler Antrup said at a meeting earlier this month. 

‘Figure something out’

Pump Station 7, which was constructed in the early 1900s, drains parts of Mid-City and Lakeview with three major pumps. It also receives some of the stormwater from the St. Louis Canal, which drains Treme and the Central Business District. A failure during a storm, Tymrak said, would create “a very difficult situation with some significant flooding in those areas.”

In addition to Pump Station 7, Tymrak said the bells at six other stations, serving every part of the city outside of New Orleans East and Algiers, were constructed around the same time and are likely corroded, too. 

Neighboring areas could suffer if just one of the Pump Station 7 pumps go down. That happened during the August 2017 flood, when one of the pumps was out of service and caused additional runoff into the northern part of Lakeview, according to an exhaustive consultant analysis. That area, which is served by a different pump station, suffered significant flooding despite receiving a modest amount of rain, the analysis showed.

The S&WB commissioned designs for new discharge bells at Pump Station 7 after the catastrophic flooding, but they were shelved. The $12 million to $15 million cost exceeds what the S&WB has to spend on repairs for the entire drainage system in a single year.

Tymrak said detailed underwater inspections at Station 7 will be scheduled within the next year. All seven stations with steel discharge bells need inspections, she said, but that would likely cost more than $2 million. Even that amount is prohibitive.

“We want to do these broader investigations and end up being hampered,” Tymrak said.

If inspections show that immediate action is needed, Tymrak said “we’re going to have to figure something out.”

What the S&WB can afford 

The consultant analysis after the 2017 flood laid bare the S&WB’s many systemic failures, none bigger than the lack of reliable power for drainage pumps. The agency responded by constructing a $350 million power complex with a combination of city, state and federal funds.

The complex, which is built around a new Entergy substation, came online late last year and is currently providing more than enough power to run the drainage system.

New Orleans’ drainage woes transcend power, however. The analysis of the 2017 flood by ABS Group found infrastructure failures throughout the system. Notably, it pointed out that corroded discharge bells prevented pumps from running at full capacity.

ABS Vice President Darrell Barker, addressing City Council members in 2018, also pointed to “a very pervasive culture” within S&WB that allowed priorities to slide because there was never enough funding.

Former S&WB Executive Director Ghassan Korban, who led the agency from 2018 through the middle of 2025, said the Pump Station 7 discharge bells and numerous other vulnerabilities worried him during his tenure. But he said the entire pumping system was in danger of malfunctioning without a new electricity source, so the power complex was the top priority.

“I don’t think I was comfortable with any component of our systems,” Korban said. “The reality is, decisions came down to what we could afford. How much money do we have, and what are the top of the top priorities? That’s how we had to do business.”

Funding cliff

S&WB officials say their hands are tied, with barely enough funding for day-to-day operations and just a few million dollars for repairs every year. Three property taxes for drainage annually combine for about $75 million, leaving a $50 million shortfall for what the system needs, according to an S&WB consultant.

The shortfall could widen after next year, when one of the three drainage taxes expires. If voters don’t renew it, about a quarter of the existing drainage revenue would be wiped out starting in 2028.

With the potential funding cliff looming, the S&WB and Mayor Helena Moreno’s administration are attempting to work out how to pay for drainage in the future.

The S&WB wants a new stormwater fee paid by all property owners, including universities, churches and other tax-exempt property owners who represent about 40% of the city’s combined property value.

Administration officials agree tax-exempt owners should pay into the system, but they say it could unfairly benefit higher-value property owners. The administration prefers a multipurpose “parcel fee” to pay for a range of infrastructure, including drainage, but hasn’t provided details.

Any new fee will need approval from voters and winning them over could require an extensive public outreach campaign. Rebecca Mowbray, executive director of the Bureau of Governmental Research, the nonpartisan policy shop, said she’s worried that time is running out before the drainage tax expires.

“We need our public and elected officials to settle on plans quickly and start educating the public,” said Mowbray.

All the while, the corrosion continues, as pump operator Darrell Hayward witnessed during his time working at Pump Station 7 from 2013 to 2021.

Rusted holes occasionally opened up in above-water portions of the discharge bells and other parts of the station during his time, he said during a recent interview.

“Sometimes it breaks off in the front, sometimes it breaks off in the back,” Hayward said. “We don’t really know about it until you damn near hear the pump whistling.”

Hayward said welders would patch those holes, but nothing was done to check the underwater portions. He likened corrosion to “cancer of metal” that doesn’t stop until all the metal is gone. Regular inspections would have been an obvious step “in the regular world,” he said.

“That is not the Sewerage and Water Board world. The Sewerage and Water Board world is backward,” Hayward said. “You do not fix it until there’s a problem.”

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