Replacement Pumps Don't Exist

Efforts to drain New Orleans hit another snag Friday as the Army Corps of Engineers discovered that it could not buy new pumps to replace those damaged by the flooding.

Massive pumps capable of draining the city like those that have been keeping New Orleans dry for decades are no longer made and would have to be specially ordered, a process that would take too long, said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the senior corps official in New Orleans.

Instead, repair crews will have to dry out the existing pumps, which could take up to a week, before repairing them with replacement motors and parts and begin pumping water back into Lake Pontchartrain. The repair job could prolong efforts to drain the city, about 80% of which is submerged.

"These pumps are so big, you can't buy them off the shelf. You have to make them, and we don't have time for that," said Wagenaar, who spent about an hour Friday escorting President Bush around the levee damage at the 17th Street Canal.

The city, much of which is below sea level, relies on a network of 22 pumps to keep water out. Army engineers now believe eight pumps are underwater.

The latest wrinkle illustrated the enormous complexity of draining the city, which for more than 200 years had gradually built up an elaborate system to keep itself dry.

Even with the setback, Wagenaar said, the city could be drained in three to six months, mainly because engineers may finally be able to get to the largest pump station, at the end of the 17th Street Canal, as early as today.

Read the PDFs linked in the first 250 posts on the pumping system. Some of the pumps are half that alone. Now I really don't have time to argue it anymore. We learned about the pumps in school. They are an engineering marvel and have been copied around the world.

They need to blast the low levee like they are talking about get the motors above water and put them back in service. After that it will take weeks. They needed the huge pumps for a reason.

Actually the Netherlands got their pumps from NO!

Sure enough. Screw pump invented by A. Baldwin Wood (native New Orlean) used in NO and the ZuiderZee Works among other places.

More Info

ZuiderZee Works

I saw an interview on MSNBC of Jesse Jackson being lobbed questions which asked how much more the Bush Administration was at fault in the rescue operations.

Jesse Jackson lambasted the Administration because Chavez had offered 20 tons of water which was turned down.

Let's run the numbers to see what was turned down..

20 ton x 2000lb/ton = 40,000 lbs water
40,000 lb / 8.345lbs/gal = 4742 gallons
One tractor trailer tanker truck hauls about 7500 gallons.
A KC-135 can haul about 7500 gal max of fuel
40,000 lb / 62lb/cuft = 645 cuft
645 cuft/ 4'x4'x4' = about 10 pallets

A small water truck used in washing down roads is about a 5000 gallon truck.

How much water is needed? , one might ask.
Logisitcs planners in the military routinely estimate 5 gal/man/day for all uses. Dehydration requirements would call for water rationing and pushing about 1 gal/man/day without showers or sanitation.
So let's say most refugees had been evacuated, 50,000 left, and another 50,000 emergency workers = about 100,000 gal to 500,000 gal water/day.

A 5000 gal gift is nice, but the logistics for the dedicated shipment could also be used to ship medicines and vital supplies better requiring the trucks/shipping vehicles. If 100k-500k gal of water are needed a day, its far better to use a logistics shipping mechanism to transport 100s of thousands if not millions of gallons per day to the area. (i.e. pipelines)

So we turned down 10 pallets of palletized water (1% of 1day requirement) destined for a major port city associated with the American oil and gas industry, from a country whose leader brags about its bioweapons labs and how they intend to kill Americans with bioweaponry and raise the price of gasoline to $10/gallon by the end of the year.

Seems pretty reasonable to me. I wonder if Jesse Jackson was in league with international socialists, trying to start an epidemic to blame on Bush.

It's quite the intellectual exercise calculating the volume of water to be pumped. Yet I don't know how you can possibly get accurate figures. There are two factors you are not considering and I don't know how you can even source them:

1) Elevation is variant. No single elevation applies to the entire area of New Orleans. See map:

2) The contents of New Orleans is unknown. More specifically, how much volume do the contents occupy and thereby displace water? There are buildings, monuments, vehicles, etc. etc. that all displace X volume of liquid.

3) The most complicated variable is submerged portion of contents that displace water. How do you determine what amount of any given object is below or above the water line?

So you can see why I am skeptical of any estimates of how long to dry out New Orleans. Plus no one has factored in percolation and evaporation rates. I can only pray that the repaired and new pumps perform well and at their designed capabilities. When they finish, well, they finish. God willing, it will be faster than anyone's prediction.

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