New Orleans Residents Have Been Drinking Untreated Water Used To Cool Steam Turbines

New Orleans’s Sewerage & Water Board has been cycling untreated water used to cool steam turbines into the drinking water supply for over a century. The procedure, which has been recently uncovered by the S&WB is in violation of state health regulations. It is yet another black eye for the beleaguered agency.

From WWL-TV:

The Sewerage & Water Board on Tuesday said it recently discovered that for the last century, it has used clean drinking water to cool its steam-powered turbines, then returned the cooling water to the drinking water system without re-treating it.

S&WB Executive Director Ghassan Korban said the public was never at risk and the city’s drinking water is safe. The drinking water that’s been used to cool the steam never leaves a closed system of tubes and coils as it passes through steam-powered turbine generators that produce electricity for the city’s water and drainage pumps, Korban said.

But cross-connections like that are prohibited by state health regulations — regulations established long after New Orleans started using the process.

Korban said nobody realized the S&WB was violating that until looking recently at how to replace steam power, and they self-reported […]

Full article: New Orleans Residents Have Been Drinking Untreated Water Used To Cool Steam Turbines