Matt McBride

How does one sign up for these, since oddly they don't seem to appear anywhere on the city's website?

Since all of these don't seem to make it to the City's press release archive, could you repost whatever they said?

Likely following up to the Council combined Public Works/Utilities cmte meeting earlier in the day, which focused on hurricane preparedness. My endless tweeting and skeeting probably got their attention.

While today showed the power of oversight - this information might not have come out if S&WB hadn't had to appear before the council - it shouldn't take getting hauled before the Council to put out up to date information to the public, who is funding the whole operation. (4/4)

In between, they included a backdated update for July 18 which actually went up this morning, revealing the DPS 13 pump loss at least 3 days after it was known internally. (3/4)

After starting the day with 86 pumps available, they dropped to 85 this morning, then finished on the 84 announced by Gen'l Superintendent Steve Nelson, accounting for the losses of 1000 cfs pump 6 at DPS 14 in Algiers and 1200 cfs pump F at DPS 1 in Broadmoor. (2/4)

On their third try today, S&WB finally matched their pumping and power dashboard to the information about pumping and power told by S&WB leadership to the @nolacitycouncil.bsky.social
(1/4)

For that tracker to be of any use live, it must show data at the individual pump level, including the tags showing which pumps are out of service. The S&WB internal live data system already does this - they just don't release the data without a public records request, and then it takes months. (9/9)

This is why S&WB's supposedly live pump status tracker is useless. It shows a station pumping even if there is just one pump pumping there. It means nothing when that station has multiple pumps out of service or just not running during a storm. (8/9)

This is twice just today that S&WB's pump and power dashboard has been shown to be wrong. First thing this morning it counted 86 pumps available, which dropped to 85 (where it still is), but the actual number is 84. Here's what it looks like now, missing the DPS 1 outage (7/9):

Nelson also confirmed bearing problems on 1000 cfs 25 Hz pump E at DPS 4 in Gentilly, but it's worse. He said they were replacing BOTH bearings on the pump, which is a catastrophic failure of work done just six years ago. Background on that from an earlier thread (6/9): bsky.app/profile/mcbr...

Nelson also said they expect pump F to return to by the end of the week, while they await an inspection. He did not initially say exactly what the maintenance was for, but S&WB officials almost never do. Usually, S&WB calls every maintenance "routine," though most isn't. (5/9)

Nelson didn't initially say why "routine" maintenance was occurring in the middle of hurricane season on one of the biggest pumps at the station that drains all of Broadmoor and most of Uptown. The station is now down to 82% (not the 84% Nelson used, which counts non-storm pumps) (4/9)

Nelson said there is "routine maintenance ongoing" on pump F, implying that it may have been down prior to today. He did not clarify this, but hopefully @nolacitycouncil.bsky.social or @nolautilities.bsky.social will. (3/9)

F pump at DPS 1 has a nameplate capacity of 1200 cubic feet per second (cfs). It is the 2nd biggest pump in the entire system, with only G pump at the same station moving more water (1215 cfs). F&G run on 60 Hz Entergy New Orleans power. F pump represents 18% of station nameplate capacity. (2/9)

BREAKING: It seems S&WB is discovering pumps down even since this morning. Their available pump total is now down to 84 of 93, with the announcement by Gen'l Superintendent Steve Nelson at the @nolacitycouncil.bsky.social meeting that Pump F at drainage pumping station 1 in Broadmoor is down. (1/9)

I grabbed the screenshot I used in the main thread this morning just within the last hour, and it still showed 86 pumps available and a date of 7/16. Here's both side by side. (18/15)

Very soon after I posted this thread, S&WB updated their pumping dashboard, but with a backdated update. They put a date of 7/18/25 as if it has been there the whole time, but it only went up a little while ago (17/15)

Correction: Ms. Tymrak's first name is spelled Kaitlin, not Kaitlyn. (16/15)

I grabbed the screenshot I used in the main thread this morning just within the last hour, and it still showed 86 pumps available and a date of 7/16. Here's both side by side (2/2)

Very soon after I posted this thread, S&WB updated their pumping dashboard, but with a backdated update. They put a date of 7/18/25 as if it has been there the whole time, but it only went up a few minutes ago. (1/2)

The S&WB slide deck for today's @nolacitycouncil.bsky.social meeting can be found linked from the meeting agenda, which is here: (15/15) cityofno.granicus.com/GeneratedAge...

Each frequency changer and new turbine T7 have boxes for "equipment commissioning" and "WPC [West Power Complex] facility commissioning." The facility commissioning schedule for each appears to extend a month past the publicized dates they are highlighting elsewhere. This needs explanation. (14/15)

Their project schedule slide - which notably is only for "Phase 1" work due to wrap up this year, not the entire project, so there's still stuff they are withholding - shows testing and commissioning into December, a month past what other slides say. (13/15)

S&WB will also be presenting information about the new power complex at today's meeting. The slides for that have not changed since the 7/17 slide deck. I'm going to withhold comment on those slides - which are more comprehensive than ever - until after the meeting, except for one thing... (12/15)

What galls me the most is the slide presentation for today's meeting centers the pumping dashboard as a vital tool they are proud of. They have put it front and center as part of another webpage, their "Storm Center" page. In today's slide deck, pages 3 and 5 are about these websites. (11/15)

How is it the S&WB Deputy General Superintendent or someone above her doesn't have the juice within S&WB to get their prime public communication tool regarding pump status updated after the drainage capacity for 50,000 residents drops by half during hurricane season? (10/15)

Tymrak's slide presentation even acknowledges this on a screenshot of the pumping dashboard. A note about the 7/18/25 pump 6 loss at DPS 13 was added in PowerPoint, instead of just updating the dashboard (red highlighting is mine). What is the point of a dashboard if it is days out of date? (9/15)

But none of the public facing information about pumps and power on the S&WB website reflects this four day old major pumping loss. Not their dashboard, and certainly not any of their social media. Everything still says they have 86 pumps available, not 85. It was all last updated on July 16. (8/15)

Metadata for the new slide deck for today's meeting shows it was last modified on July 18th, the same day it was created by its author, S&WB Deputy General Superintendent Kaitlyn Tymrak. So S&WB has known about this pumping loss since last Friday, at least. (7/15)