Corps Placed Faulty Pumps in New Orleans

"But the Corps and the politically connected manufacturer..."

It reads like a cheap shot to me. How is it known that the politically connected manufacturer is responsible? Was the installation done correctly? Was the transfer of the pump from the manufacturer to the site was done correctly? Was the pump tested before it was installed? Does the pump meet the specifications of the engineers who are dealing with the problem? Were the installers properly trained or/and have several years of experience in this field?

If there is truly a problem I certainly hope the issue gets resolved.

Watch the evening news man! There certainly is a problem. It would be a disingenius gunslinger, who has fostered the pracitice of acting without thought or fear of repercussion. Apparently Dubyuh. started an epidemic. Now GSA employees operate with the notion that a defective sump pump can drain the Gulf of Mexico. Fear not, for once the job was done on time and on budget(Glad it wasn't Haliburton). Wait a second... All of this comes to you from a card carrying member of the GOP (Never been a Dem.). I do hope that my relatives in Picayune Get to move out of the Fema trailers before the leader of the free world is evicted from the White House, and extradited back to Texas.

Looking at New Orleans today, I would say the answer to your questions are yes, no, no, no, no and no. The one test that applies to all of these is the only one that matters - do they work?

You need to do more than read the article. You need to go the MWI's website and see the pumps that were likely purchased for this installation and how they are used. There are a number of photos that look like they are from the New Orleans area on the website. These are pumps that are designed to be buried in levees they are not like the pumps permanently installed in pumping stations around New Orleans, which by the way are still there. The fact that there are some problems is not surprising, this is still a band aid not a permanent solution. It would have taken much longer to get a permanent solution in place, there was no way that you could have done that less than a year after Katrina. Companies don't have the kind of pumps required for a permanent solution just sitting around. They will likely have to be built and may require some redesign to make sure they are right for New Orleans. This measure will buy a little extra time to get permanent solutions in place and if only half the pumps work properly that would still be 17 more pumps than they had before Katrina. No matter how you look at it the situation in New Orleans is still better than it was.

One of the best sources of information on this topic can be found here:

http://fixthepumps.blogspot.com/

I have been following this story in local news and through other sources. The site above , by Matt McBride, has a wealth of information and has links to close-up images of the pumps in question. These are some pretty crappy looking pumps.
I work for a pump manufacturer in Louisiana and we could have produced a more permanent solution in the time given and probably at a lower cost.

This "band-aid" cost the you and I over 25 million. JW

I don't disagree, but 25 million is a drop in the bucket compared to what has and will be spent on rebuilding New Orleans. Even bad progress is still progress there are other issues that remain without being adressed at all. Most of the severely flooded neighborhoods are filled with gutted homes and FEMA trailers parked out front. Many have no means to rebuild. There was a documentary on Discovery Channel last week about a high school in St Bernard parish. If they had waited for the government to help them they would not have had a school year in 2005. Instead they found the necessary items they needed to make repairs or move classrooms to reopen their school. And when it was all over they sent FEMA the bill. (They did not say if they had gotten paid yet.) There are many others without the same initiative as these folks that are waiting for some one to help. But that won't get big head lines.

The Pump Company in question has a first class reputation worldwide for top rated equipment for the past 50 years. Where I work (a very large Florida farm) they are the only manufacturer for our main pump stations and they function without flaw. I have read some of the specifications for Corps style pump stations. They are enormously expensive and still poorly specified. The ACOE should hire the major pump companies and station contractors to design the pump stations to increase fuel efficiency and cost effectiveness.

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE ABOUT FIXING THE LEVY?

Hoped they don't get a high tide?

1)The levees that broke were on canals that drained to the lake and those have been repaired and floodwall structures are being completed to close them off during storms. By closing them off, new pumps are required to pump the rainfall into the lake. Those are the pumps in question.

2) The main levees around the city did not fail, but do not meet even the Corp's requirements, so they are being "brought up to specs" by the Corps at this time. However, the Corps is just now releasing a new "100 year flood" requirement that they cannot possibly meet within the next 10 years.

I have a specific history on this. As an independent engine driven pump consultant, I had offered to audit this design for the Corps, evaluate the offers, sit in on the Best Value meetings that the Corps conducts before placing this order, place an office trailer on MWI's property and help them design / build / test these pumps which, due to size, were outside the experience level of most suppliers (if not all). There are a few rotor dynamic issues to worry about with these (vibes, structural support, engine cooling, etc). If memory serves these were 60" axial or mixed flow . . . . can't quite remember. I was also concerned about placing a large order like this upon a company that is located in the hurricane storm path; plus, worried about the size of this order that may equal or exceed their annual volume . . . not sure if this is true, but it was a VERY large order . . . . . something just didn't seem right. But the Corps had a heck of a job to do and limited resources. I'd call the 'boys' at midnight and they were all still working, Saturdays, Sundays, 24 / 7 it seemed.

Was it that I failed to impress the people involved (probably) . . . did they just not need the help (??) . . . or was there something else going on? I really don't know, but I was a bit shocked at the replies I received. The help was interesting to some people, but, due to the regiment, rejected rather harshly by others close to the pump order placement.

From my limited perspective, there would have been little Plan B available if New Orleans got hit with another Katrina so I was applying my international oil field culture thinking of offering to treat this as a large "must happen / flawless start" project common in oil field culture (my background).

One of the HUGE problems was that as a 'one man show' small consulting company specializing in large diesel engine driven pumps, it was VERY difficult to penetrate the bureaucracy of being able to offer services to the Corps. There just wasn't a fast way to become hired, no matter how much of an expert you were (it seemed to me anyway).

Failing with the Corps, I contacted the "VP" of MWI who is the son of the owner and offered to oversee the entire deal on their behalf (to protect them from liability and costs of warranty). Again, I failed to impress them (it seems) since the initial interest dropped off. Not sure I would have prevented any of this, or perhaps, I might have made it worse . . . who knows in hindsight. We can all be pump experts in hindsight!

But the thing that just amazed me was that nobody seemed to really impress upon me that they understood how important it was to succeed with this in case of another large storm. Not enough to at least hear me out in person, which is all one can expect as a minimum. At one point I even offered to do this on my own nickel. For this work, a Plan A, B, and C were needed 'in case' these didn't work.

These pumps are propeller type pumps or mixed flow pumps in a can submerged in the canal water driven by hydraulic motors, and above ground is a Caterpillar 3412 diesel engine driven hydraulic pump on a trailer. A proven design conceptually, but, there were a lot of headaches reported to me by others during testing and installation. An offer by myself to assist in the 'fix' was also not successful. And MWI seems to be a professional company with tons of experience . . . so . . what went wrong?

I am just glad we didn't have a storm last year since there are a lot of people who were on the edge of deciding to totally move out of New Orleans, or wait one more season. If they got hit again, and these pumps failed to work, I think New Orleans would just fold up their tent and a lot of oil companies, hotels and restaurants, etc, would just simply have no workers.

Now we must not condemn, but learn, so it is not repeated on the permanent pump stations being discussed / designed now.