The joint committee meeting on quality of life and public works sanitation and the environment was held on May 19, 2026, with presentations from the Sewage and Water Board (SWB) and the Department of Public Works (DPW) on infrastructure updates, water quality, drainage, and the JIRR road program. Councilmembers discussed ongoing issues including water loss, sewer leaks, catch basin maintenance, and the progress of the FEMA-funded road reconstruction.
Mm. Alright, good morning everyone. Today is Tuesday, May 19th. This is the joint committee meeting on quality of life and public work sanitation and the environment. Can I please get a roll call? Roll call. Councilmember Hughes. Here. Council Member McCarran. Here. Councilmember Harris. Council Member King. Councilmember Green. Here. Councilmember Willard. We have one, two, three members. We do not have a quorum. Thank you very much. What we'll do is we'll go right into the presentation from Sewage and Water Board. Director Heyman and members of the sewage and water board team. Good morning. What we'll do is we'll let you get through your entire presentation and then we'll take any questions. But let me publicly acknowledge Mr. Director, the fact that you have hit the road and have started going directly to the people. And I really really appreciate that. And as you continue these meetings, please keep our offices in the loop. As I told you, I definitely want to help with uh attendance for district E. But I really do appreciate you engaging directly with the community. And before you start your presentation, I know we had a uh little hydrant break in New Orleans East, so if you want to just talk about that for the benefit of the community. Yeah, good morning, everyone. Uh Caitlin Timrak, interim general superintendent. This morning there was a uh a broken hydrant uh out in the New Orleans East area, and as such uh pressures, water pressures in that area did drop below 20 for a short 20 PSI, I'm sorry, for a short period of time. And as such, uh we are presently um issuing the precautionary boiled water advisory for an area bound by Bullard, Morrison, and Paris, and then of course the lake. So our website is being updated now if it is not already, and uh our press releases are going out on that. So that is just an emerging item this morning. We'll be our crews are already responding and uh fixing hydrant, and we'll be looking into that further. Well, thank you all for uh letting us know so timely and and being so transparent with the public. Mr. Executive Director, uh turn it over to you. Okay, good morning. I want to say that we have a large agenda, but we want to make sure we highlight all the work that we're doing, and we'll discuss today our community engagement, our enterprise asset management system, our water system, our sewer system, and our drainage system. As you noted, uh the sewer and water board has an obligation to keep our customers informed, and to that end, community engagement is a major focus right now. Most recently we hosted two water talk community meetings in May, and we'll be scheduling more in June. It's our goal to go to all of the council districts in the city. Additionally, the annual water system consumer confidence report will be sent in June. And again, I just want to stress that we have an obligation to keep the public informed, and we will be doing so with the public meetings and doing more as far as uh leaflets and other things that can help inform the public about what's happening. And of course, uh using the social media. Next, we'll look at our enterprise asset management system. We're pleased to be making progress on beginning to implement our new uh enterprise asset management system. This system will replace a 30-year-old legacy work order management system, will give us the tools we need to manage all of our equipment from pipes to pumps to buildings in a centralized location.