New Orleans has hit the pause button on its contract to clean thousands of catch basins in the city while it waits for the state Department of Environmental Quality to approve a plan to get rid of the gunk sucked out of the drains.
The city reached out to DEQ about the project last week after it became clear there was no plan in place for RAMJ Construction, which already had been working for a week under an emergency $7 million catch-basin cleaning contract, to dispose of the โslurry and solid wasteโ from the job, city spokeswoman Erin Burns said.
Several loads of waste had already been taken to landfills before the city got in touch with DEQ to ask how it should be taken care of.
The catch basin contract was one of several measures put in place last month as part of the city's and the Sewerage & Water Board's response to the flooding of some neighborhoods on Aug. 5 and July 22. That flooding was blamed in large part on problems with S&WB pumps, power and staffing and may have been exacerbated by clogged catch basins that funnel rainwater into the drainage system.
But hauling the waste to a landfill can present problems, particularly because of the large amount of water that anything pulled out of the catch basins and drains would contain, DEQ spokesman Greg Langley said.
Regulations prohibit dumping liquids into landfills because of the possibility they can carry material outside the landfill itself, he said.
At least one of the landfills where RAMJ tried to drop off the waste knew of those regulations and refused the load, he said.
City officials met with DEQ officials Friday and submitted a plan that day, Langley said. The city was not able to provide a copy of the plan when asked about it Monday.
The cleaning program was temporarily halted Sunday, Burns said.
Itโs not clear how long the work will be delayed. Burns said the city expected to have approval by Tuesday and to give RAMJ the green light to resume work shortly after that.
Langley suggested the process could โtake a whileโ but said, โIโm not sure it would be too long because we want to facilitate this work.โ
The RAMJ contract is part of a package approved by the City Council aimed at cleaning and repairing a sizable portion of the 65,000 catch basins in the city. The plan was for RAMJ to clean about 15,000, while Hard Rock Construction, working on a $14 million contract, would do more serious repairs on 7,500 catch basins.
RAMJ had cleaned out 382 catch basins during the time its crews were working. Another 2,260 had been cleaned by city and state Department of Transportation and Development crews in the month between the Aug. 5 flood and the start of the company's contract.