Jefferson Parish Seeks More Control Over New Orleans Airport Following Stormwater Pump Failures

Apr. 6—Jefferson Parish leaders are calling on New Orleans officials to give them more power over Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport following failures at its $27 million stormwater pump station during Hurricane Francine.

The Parish Council sponsored a resolution seeking a joint session between it, the New Orleans City Council's Transportation and Airport Committee, Kenner leaders and the New Orleans Aviation Board, which oversees the airport, to give the parish more representation on that board.

If a compromise can't be reached, the council is preparing a second resolution asking the state Legislature to intervene.

The council will vote on both measures Wednesday. The first resolution asks that the joint meeting take place before hurricane season starts on June 1.

The requests come after an engineer's report, which WVUE-TV surfaced, said the pump station was never properly tested using water. The airport requested the report after Hurricane Francine last year, when three of its four pumps did not function correctly as up to a foot of rain fell on parts of the east bank, flooding hundreds of homes.

The report has led Jefferson Parish leaders to question how much flooding could have been prevented had the airport's pump station worked properly, and whether the drainage system ever functioned in the first place.

"We deal with their traffic, we deal with big events in the city, we deal with trash, we deal with pollution," said Jefferson Parish Council member Arita Bohannan, who represents Kenner and authored the resolutions. "We don't mind doing that, but we have to make sure we're not being taken advantage of, either."

Airport officials say the engineer's report contains inaccuracies. They say the pump station operated properly before Francine and underwent routine inspections and maintenance.

They added that the airport's pump station accounts for only 2% of Jefferson Parish's overall drainage system.

"We're a very, very small piece of what's going on in the overall parish," said Chris Spann, a consultant to the airport. "This is just a storm event that overwhelmed the systems."

'The plight of Jeffersonians'

The airport is located in Kenner but is owned by New Orleans and governed by the New Orleans Aviation Board. All nine members are appointed by the New Orleans mayor, but two of those members are chosen from nominations provided by the Kenner City Council and St. Charles Parish government.

Bohannan hopes the Aviation Board will change that to include four members from New Orleans, three members from Jefferson Parish, one from Kenner and one from St. Charles Parish. She also wants Jefferson Parish to directly appoint its members instead of the mayor, saying that it has previously taken more than a year for Mayor LaToya Cantrell to appoint Kenner's nominee.

New Orleans City Council member Eugene Green, the chair of the council's Transportation and Airport Committee, said he is open to discussion but is also "confident that the Aviation Board itself is functioning well with its present makeup." He also said that a change to the board would require a vote from New Orleans residents.

As for getting the state involved, the Legislature tried once previously to switch up the board in 1983, but the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned it the following year because it wasn't necessary to protect residents' "health, morals, safety or welfare."

Bohannan says she thinks such an intervention would be justified now.

"The City of New Orleans and the NOAB are able to disregard and ignore the plight of Jeffersonians and Kenner residents because their voice on the Board is so small so as to render it useless," the resolution reads.

Pump station failures

Hurricane Francine hit Louisiana on Sept. 11, dropping an average of 7 to 9 inches of rain on Jefferson Parish's east bank and flooding at least 300 homes in Kenner and Metairie.

Jefferson Parish's drainage department has said that only three pumps at two of its six east bank stations malfunctioned during the hurricane, and one of those was brought back online during the storm.

Meanwhile, at the airport's pump station, three of the four pumps were starting and stopping, and by 11:30 p.m. all four pumps were "basically" inoperable, according to the parish, which can monitor the airport's pumps but cannot control them.

A point of agreement for the parish and the airport was that "even at full capacity and no pump issues," flooding still would have occurred due to the intensity of the storm surge.

WVUE-TV's stories on the Nov. 7 engineers' report by power management company Eaton focused on findings that the airport pump station's automatic drainage system was "obsolete" and failed to turn the pumps on during Francine.

They also highlighted that the report found that the system "is not certified for warranty and never has been," and that a manufacturer's test of the system at full capacity "could not be completed."

Bohannan said she does not believe the pump station ever worked, based on the findings, and that her attempts to request information from the Aviation Board have been met with "vague and largely unresponsive answers."

Spann, the airport consultant, said in an interview the pump station lacked a manual override system before Francine. After the storm, the airport repaired the automatic system and added a manual overdrive mechanism.

Airport spokesperson Erin Burns said the leaked engineers' report was inaccurate and provided a 2017 Eaton letter saying it will certify a warranty for the system "prior to the completion of the wet/functional test." Spann said he did not know why Eaton didn't have its original letter.

Spann said the pump station underwent tests at capacity after installation and that all four pumps run during storms on a monthly basis.

He added that the pumps are inspected and the automatic system is tested every week, including the week leading up to Francine.

In addition to the calls for change from the Jefferson Parish Council, the board is also facing a lawsuit seeking class-action status brought by Kenner resident Beulah Robinson, which alleges that the airport is responsible for the flooding Kenner because of the pump station's failures.

Burns and an attorney for Robinson both declined to comment on the lawsuit.

© 2025 The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate. Visit www.nola.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.