Some call it "Liquid Sunshine." The spring rains hit New Orleans hard on May 3, 1978, April 13, 1979 and May 8, 1995. These events caused lots of flooded cars, some house flooding, carpet replacements, and drywall work. Six deaths were attributed to the 1995 floods and $350 million in damage. FEMA designated a few locations repeat flooding hazards and offered some mitigation. Congress tasked the Corps with upgrades to the storm drain and pumping system initiating the  Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Program. The Corps decided to increase pumping capacity, dredge the canals and add flood walls atop the canal levees.

Curiously enough, SELA project work may have set the stage for the Katrina. Improvement (?) work along the outfall canals seems to have been the major contributor to those levee failures.

Citizens awoke December 21, 2006 to see the city once again awash in rainwater. The cold front that caused record snows in Colorado and ice storms in Kansas and Oklahoma stalled over New Orleans and we once again heard the dreaded term "training" applied to the heavy rains that repeatedly swept north from the Gulf and over the city. Street flooding snarled traffic and threatened homes.

The pumps are designed to handle 1 inch in the first hour, a half-inch an hour thereafter, up to 9 inches in 24 hours. The December 21st storm was close to all those limits and citizens held their breath. The canals were full, the ground saturated and the pumps ran at capacity for 24 hours. The system worked with few problems, but we are not out of the woods yet.