In early April, a thunderstorm dumped eight inches of rain in the New Orleans area, damaging homes, flooding highways, and drowning cars. Pumps weren’t able to keep up with the deluge, and the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans had to ration power to its pumping stations.
Across the city, restaurants faced the consequences.
The dining room and bar flooded at El Pavo Real in Broadmoor. Union Ramen on Magazine Street had to reject delivery orders because there was no way for drivers to reach the restaurant to pick them up. Gris Gris closed for what owner Eric Cook said was at least the fifth time in a year. Over in the Treme neighborhood, outside Li’l Dizzy’s Cafe, sewage came out of the manholes in the street, and a catch basin was clogged so water couldn’t drain.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it in the three years since I owned the restaurant,” Arkesha Baquet, owner of Li’l Dizzy’s, said. “The water by me just kept circling.”
April’s flooding wasn’t unprecedented. In February, restaurants also closed in response to heavy rainfall. El Pavo Real flooded and lost two refrigerators in that storm. In December, Gabrielle restaurant was inundated with water and some guests were stuck inside for hours because of water in the streets. The flooding was made worse every time a car drove by, pushing water into the restaurant.
After closing because of flooding in December, Li’l Dizzy’s lost power and had to close again a few days later.
“We have no idea when the power is gonna come back on,” Baquet said in a video posted to X. “Y’all keep me lifted in prayer, because I’m gonna be honest with you, I need them at the moment.”
New Orleans is well acquainted with water. It’s one of the rainiest cities in the country, with an average rainfall of 62 inches per year and 42 flood events over the past two decades, some of them severe. It’s a low city surrounded by levees, with lots of pavement and little green space to soak up water. But the rain’s repercussions for business owners have been intensified by climate change—which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts will cause severe flooding five times more often over the next 30 years—aging infrastructure, and what restaurateurs describe as the city’s egregious mismanagement of the situation.
“It has absolutely gotten worse,” said Jeff Gapultos, co-owner of Union Ramen. “It’s gotten to a point where they’ve put up signs on our street right outside our door that say this is a flood zone area, park here at your own risk.”
“They are completely inept, the biggest laughingstock probably in the history of modern human beings,” Gris Gris owner Cook said of the local water utility. Cook is appealing a $9,000 water bill from the Sewerage & Water board which he says was issued without a meter reading.
“We as citizens have to deal with it for our entire lives,” he continued. “There is zero accountability, zero responsibility. ”’
The Sewerage and Water Board did not respond to requests for comment. But some restaurant owners say the agency’s non-responsiveness is putting their businesses’ futures in jeopardy.
The high cost of heavy rain
When Cook’s restaurants close, he said he can lose $10,000 to $20,000 a day.
On a normal day, Li’l Dizzy’s brings in $4,000 to $6,000, which is lost when Baquet is forced to close. During April’s flooding, she brought in only about $1,000 before closing for the day.
Lilly Vuong of Lilly’s Cafe closed during April’s flooding and lost about $5,000. Gapultos said he loses $1,500–$5,000 in sales when it floods, depending on the day and how long Union Ramen is closed. He noted that flooding can cause damage, too.
“I can’t even factor how much of a monetary loss that is,” he said.
Even when restaurants remain open during a flood, their employees can take a financial hit, because the downturn in customer traffic leads to back-of-house workers being sent home early and front-of-house workers collecting fewer tips.
An agency overflowing with issues
New Orleans’ drainage system needs to be upgraded, but the city can’t cover the $1 billion cost estimate that the Sewerage and Water Board (S&WB) has pinned to the project over the next decade.
A new substation at the main S&WB plant should help prevent power outages that disable drainage pumps once it’s operational—it’s projected to go online by summer 2025—but the modern power supply will need to be converted to run old equipment, which could create complications.
In addition to machinery, New Orleans has 72,000 catch basins maintained by the Department of Public Works, which is responsible for rainwater until it passes into the active city pumping system. Those basins are in poor shape.
In 2019, the city pledged to clean 10,000–12,000 catch basins each year, a goal it hasn’t come close to meeting, even after receiving $10 million in American Rescue Act funds to support the project. About 2,700 basins have been cleaned so far this year.
S&WB has also been plagued by internal issues. A 2023 investigation from the Louisiana Illuminator and WVUE-TV Fox 8 found S&WB employees had falsified results from drinking water tests and routinely skipped sample sites.
The previous year, the FBI raided the S&WB offices over self-dealing in the plumping department. Jay Arnold, who oversaw plumbing permits and inspections, was placed on house arrest, sentenced to four years of probation, and fined for theft from an agency receiving federal funds.
Like Cook, homeowners and other businesses have reported S&WB bills in the four and five figure ranges and a frustrating appeals process. The utility is in the process of installing SMART meters that it says will help with water readings.
In response to some of these issues, Gov. Jeff Landry set up a task force to evaluate S&WB. The task force was immediately controversial because the task force chairman is a lobbyist for S&WB at the state legislature. The group recommended suspending and replacing the utility’s leadership with a temporary board made up of mostly state government officials, raising rates to fund upgrades to the system, and consolidating the drainage system under S&WB.
But those proposals don’t address the funding shortfall. S&WB estimates it would need an additional $25 million per year to maintain the catch basin system, for example.
From bad to worse
Last summer, tourism was slow because it was so hot. This year, experts say the hurricane season could be severe.
“The financial burden is really starting to take a toll. If this summer is anything like last summer, it’s gonna be a shitshow,” said Cook. “We’re gonna lose 30, 40, 50, maybe more businesses over the summer, but no one cares.”
Other local circumstances threaten restaurants, too. New Orleans is hemorrhaging residents. From 2020–2023, the New Orleans metro area lost 4.3% of its population, the biggest loss in the U.S. among cities with at least 500,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“As we have more flooding, as people lose property, they leave,” said Jessica Dandrige, executive director of The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans, a nonprofit working on water issues in the city. “Obviously we need businesses. They bring jobs and are the reason people stay, the reason people come. If they leave, residents leave, and we’ll have trickle-down effect where you won’t have residents to manage the tax base.”
The New Orleans water system requires a lot of maintenance and upkeep. It was built for a city of nearly 500,000 – the population before Hurricane Katrina – and now has fewer people maintaining an even larger system.
There’s also a large tax-free base, like nonprofits, state property, and ports that don’t pay into drainage, along with an insurance crisis.
“Louisiana has seen a massive increase in insurance costs. The numbers are insane. In some cases, a 300% increase, or more,” Dandridge said.
Aging infrastructure is “probably a third” of the drainage problem, Dandridge said. It’s not just the age of the pumps, which she said S&WB does a good job of maintaining, but of powering them.
“Long-term, to be more resilient we really have to pump less,” she said. “We’re pumping so much it’s forcing us to sink.”
To start solving the issues, Dandridge said New Orleans needs an office of stormwater management.
“It’s wild to me that a city that is below sea level and has always had problems with this since settlers came, doesn’t have an office for this,” she said.
The Water Collaborative has come up with numerous recommendations for New Orleans. One is to collect a stormwater fee from property owners, which the S&WB is considering.
The group has also endorsed green infrastructure plans, reforestation, city-purchased insurance for whole neighborhoods, and green banking.
Restaurants would benefit from all of these, but especially green infrastructure and green banking.
For now, restaurant owners will keep serving customers when they can, and closing when they can’t.
Cook said, “I’m 54. I don’t have a whole lot of time in my life, I’m definitely past the halfway point. I decided I’m gonna enjoy living my life, enjoy operating my restaurant. If they close, so be it. I was proud to be a part of the history and culture this city showed me.”
Excellent reporting, as usual, Rebecca!
This was a very eye-opening article. It’s sad that the Sewerage and Water Board is so poorly managed.