Water management in New Orleans is bound in a self-perpetuating cycle where current techniques for water management increase reliance on an existing system that perpetuates flood risk rather than improving it. Today, the city relies on a network of single-purpose drainage infrastructure constructed a century ago. A single rain event can be enough to overwhelm it, triggering nuisance flooding, property damage, gridlock, and potential impacts to public health. Bound by levees, the city must actively discharge water from the system through forced drainage. Rainwater is discharged via a system of catch basins, pipes, canals, and pumping stations under the jurisdiction of different entities: the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans (SWBNO) (Major systems) and Department of Public Works (DPW) (Minor systems). Pumping intentionally lowers the groundwater table to create freeboard, but compacts the city’s deltaic soils and leads to subsidence. Writ large, this puts the city at greater risk, frequently damaging infrastructure in the process—pipes, roads, levees, and other utilities. In the lowest parts of the city, increased flooding as a result of this subsidence increases the demand for pumping capacity, overtaxing the system even further. The cycle repeats, exacerbating the root issues with each recurrence.

Jurisdictional disconnects include a discrepancy between operations and maintenance approaches for Major and Minor systems; the absence of readily available funding / financing mechanisms to address this costly challenge, make near-term repairs or address long-term issues; the fact that there is no entity responsible for managing groundwater levels or their associated impacts on subsidence rates across the city—when this is a key part of the problem.