"Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink." ...

[Gamle-ged]

New Orleans can't catch a break; either too much water (salt) or not enough (potable)...

Army Corps of Engineers to barge 36 million gallons of freshwater a day as saltwater intrusion threatens New Orleans-area drinking water

CNN...

[oflguy]

New Orleans can't catch a break; either too much water (salt) or not enough (potable)...

Army Corps of Engineers to barge 36 million gallons of freshwater a day as saltwater intrusion threatens New Orleans-area drinking water

CNN...

Getting drinking water and water for cooking is not a problem. The high salt content, however, could do a number on ice machines, dishwashers, hot water heaters, clothes washers and refrigerators, not to mention the people that still have iron pipes in their houses.

Then you have commercial applications like cooling towers, commercial laundry's, boilers....it goes on and on.

[Gamle-ged]

Getting drinking water and water for cooking is not a problem. The high salt content could do a number on ice machines, dishwashers, hot water heaters, clothes washers, refrigerators, not to mention the people that still have iron pipes in their houses.

Then you have commercial applications like cooling towers, commercial laundry's, boilers....it goes on and on.

That complicates things. My well was getting iffy (no salt intrusion, just less ground water, but I AM 1/3rd mile from the Gulf) so I paid the initial and hooked up to county water five years ago and am very satisfied with the monthly cost and water quality. Also the 65psi vs about 50psi is nice and the county wells are well away from the coast...

[oflguy]

That complicates things. My well was getting iffy (no salt intrusion, just less ground water, but I AM 1/3rd mile from the Gulf) so I paid the initial and hooked up to county water five years ago and am very satisfied with the monthly cost and water quality. Also the 65psi vs about 50psi is nice and the county wells are well away from the coast...

Here in New Orleans you have to go down thousands of feet to get potable water. I'm sure you are well aware how much it cost per foot to dig a well.

I'm amazed how little awareness there is around here about wells. Ochsner Hospital had the forethought to install a well long before Katrina. Not long before the storm a hospital administrator told the central plant manager to not worry about getting it fixed. Fortunately for the thousands of people in the hospital, the central plant manager disobeyed the administrator and had it fixed anyway. When Katrina hit, they lost city water. The well saved the hospital from evacuating hundreds of patients and closing the hospital down, since the cooling towers used water for make-up. This kept the air conditioning running which saved the hospital millions of dollars in moisture intrusion. Fortunately, the back-up generators kept the hospital in power until Entergy could restore power.

Another hospital, Memorial, in uptown New Orleans, lost their back-up generators and air conditioning and the situation got so bad that doctors were euthanizing patients, who were suffering so badly that they started putting them out of their misery. They wrote a book documenting the whole story called Five Days at Memorial. They had foolishly accepted residents of a nursing home from neighboring St. Bernard Parish. Those elderly people were the ones most affected.

I was a contractor for an emergency operations and 911 center after Katrina. When I asked the parish construction manager where they were going to put the well, he answered, "Well? Why do we need a well?" I could hardly keep from rolling my eyes. I told him they could be out of power and water for over a week, maybe more. I asked him how were they going to flush toilets? After getting prices for a well deep enough for potable water, they decided to drill one for water acceptable to flush toilets and planned to acquire a container that could hold potable water big enough for a week.

Another customer of mine, a hospital in New Orleans, had to evacuate hundreds of patients by helicopter (the city was flooded) because they did not maintain their back-up generators properly and they had no well.

Charity Hospital, the oldest hospital in the United States, never opened again.

There is one institution that needs to be fully prepared in case of a disaster and that is hospitals. They should never become the focus of evacuations, ever. They are the places people need to be evacuated TO, not FROM.

Saltwater intrusion into the water supply of hospitals that have no well threatens the closure and evacuation of those facilities.