Much of Terrebonne Parish has replacement water mains that have not been used since the 1970s.
Three years after Hurricane Ida destroyed the main drinking water artery in eastern and southern Terrebonne, the community still relies on emergency water mains.
Mike Sobert, general manager of Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Waterworks, said the 24-inch line has been shut down since Hurricane Ida because it cannot provide water to residents. The line was leaking before the storm, but Sobert said the hurricane finally put a stop to it.
Now the water district is using three older replacement pipes to keep the water flowing.
The Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government is applying for $5 million in Community Development Block Grant Recovery funds to replace the pipe on behalf of the water company. Assuming they get the money, the water district expects to have it repaired in a year.
If something were to happen to the replacement lines that currently supply water to Terrebonne Parish households, Sobert said the parish would find itself in uncharted territory.
“I guarantee you, if I lose that 16-inch line, someone will be on a boil water advisory,” he said. “I just can’t give them enough water.”
When asked if everyone still had running water, Sobert said that was speculation and had never been tested.
“We’re pretty good at pulling rabbits out of hats, but this isn’t the kind of thing where we can say, ‘All right, guys, go boil some water, let me try this and see what happens.'”
The pipes that currently supply water to all homes are an older system that was shut down in the 1970s. Sobert said the water that now flows through the older system’s pipes is clean and safe. The system consists of 16-, 12- and 10-inch pipe.
“This doesn’t happen every day,” he said. “I tell the younger engineers to watch out because this will never happen again. The old stuff is made of metal, kind of like cast iron pipes, and I mean, it’s 40 years old and it works.”
The 24-inch pipe is important because since it was installed in the 1970s, the rest of the system has been built around it. The three pipes cannot create the same pressure as one large pipe, Sobert said.
He said the water district knew the 24-inch pipe was leaking before Hurricane Ida. The district had built a $30,000 road to get to and work on the damaged section, and repairs cost another $300,000. Then Hurricane Ida swept through, dealing the water the final blow.
“Before Hurricane Ida, we were leaking 300 gallons a minute,” he said. “After Hurricane Ida, we’re now leaking 1.3 million gallons a day.”
Sobert said the entire system needs major modernization, and two years ago he asked the water district board to raise fees to repair the equipment, including the pipes. There have been two increases of $5 per unit in the past two years.
The goal, said Chief Engineer Jacob Prosperie, is to submit the application in the next two weeks and put the project out to tender by November. He said they hope to award the project by the end of the year and complete it eight to nine months later.
The repairs would go beyond simply fixing the broken part. Sobert wants to replace the section with a steel pipe embedded in concrete to protect it from future damage.
“I want to buy as many new pipes as I can,” he said.
