Two can be easily fixed, Mayor Mike Yenni says, but two others require more work
As critics had warned, Kenner built four sewage lift stations with electrical components too low to survive a major flood, Mayor Mike Yenni said Monday. Word of the faulty work came two weeks after the administration asked engineers to determine whether the electrical cabinets in six new lift stations are built to base flood elevation. That's the Federal Emergency Management Agency's minimum height at which structures must be built.
Kenner City Councilman Joe Stagni listens to the clanging sound of metal sewer parts at 33rd and Connecticut streets. There was never a question that two of the stations, on Vintage Drive at Medoc Drive and on 42nd Street at Erlanger Road, are built to the proper elevation, Yenni said.
Two other stations, at 42nd and Illinois Avenue and on Chateau Magdelaine Drive, have easy fixes, Yenni said. In those cases, "feet" can be installed on the power boxes.
But the other two, at 33rd Street and Connecticut Avenue and at West Stanford Place and West Loyola Drive, require more substantial work. The solution might involve pushing up components inside the electrical cabinets, Yenni said.
"When I meet with the engineers, they're going to tell me what the fixes are," Yenni said. After that, Kenner officials plan to meet Thursday with decision-makers from the state Department of Environmental Quality to discuss the fixes.
"I want to make sure they're OK with what we're doing to make the repairs," Yenni said.
Kenner is using a $22 million DEQ loan for sewerage improvements, and DEQ officials have said that if the lift stations don't comply with the base flood elevation, it won't pay for the work.
The possibility of slipshod design or construction at the lift stations was first raised in September by City Council member Joe Stagni and resident Jack Zewe, an electrician who regularly monitors City Hall activities. The Yenni administration responded by hiring BFM Corp. to survey the stations.
Stagni said the electrical cabinet on the new $950,000 lift station at 33rd and Connecticut, in his district, is lower than the one it replaced.
"Even though we spent a million dollars, we're more vulnerable to flooding than we were before we spent this million dollars," he said.
The company that Kenner is using to oversee its entire sewerage capital improvement program is Digital Engineering, which has long had close financial ties to local politicians. Yenni, for example, received the maximum $5,000, from Digital for his 2010 mayoral campaign, according to reports he filed with the state Ethics Administration. In 2009 and 2010, Digital also contributed these amounts to City Council members: $1,250 to Jeannie Black; $1,000 to Michele Branigan; $1,750 to Maria DeFrancesch; $1,000 each to Kent Denapolis and Stagni; and $500 to Ben Zahn, according to the officials' campaign finance reports. The only council member not listing a Digital contribution was Gregory Carroll.
Mike YenniStagni and Denapolis, whose district includes the West Stanford-West Loyola lift station, are pleased that Yenni is committed to complying with the base flood elevation.
"We're investing $60 million into our sewer system," Denapolis said. "we can't have this Achilles heel that will stop this revamped sewer system from functioning."