City-parish settlements for sewer backup claims are significantly higher through the first half of this year compared to last year, with the local government on pace to shell out a record high in 2016.
Through June 30, the city-parish had already settled $464,004 worth of claims, well exceeding the $407,940 in settlement payments made in all of 2015 for sewer backup claims, according to public records examined by Daily Report.
At the current pace, settlements this year should have no problem surpassing the $510,417 worth of claims paid in 2014, which was the highest of any year over the past decade.
Adam Smith, chief of wastewater engineering and technology, notes that many claims take months to settle, meaning some of the payments in 2016 are from claims filed in 2015.
The backups stem largely from sewers being inundated with heavy and frequent rains. Some settlements reached this year stem from a pair of 48-hour periods of heavy rain in October 2015 that Smith calls “anomalies.” Smith says more than 10 inches of rain fell over two days that month, followed by another five inches the following weekend.
“The backups caused by the inflow of stormwater into the sewer system over those two weekends resulted in approximately $161,000 in settlements paid in 2016,” he says.
The parish is expected to complete a massive overhaul of the sewer system by the end of 2018, which officials say should help prevent sewer backups in the future. Since the Sanitary Sewer Overflow, or SSO, overhaul was launched in 2008, 76 of the 110 projects included have been completed. Another 25 are currently under construction, and the remaining nine will get underway later this year.
Some projects have recently gone online, and Smith says they will prevent sewer backups as long as rainfall doesn’t exceed its capacity of 4.4 inches in 12 hours.
—Sam Karlin
