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'They needed someone to blame' - Ex-S&WB Supt. says he was fall guy

Two days before that, on Aug. 6, Becker had stood before television cameras and insisted the city's drainage pumps had been working "at capacity" during the Aug. 5 rainstorm.

NEW ORLEANS – The former general superintendent of the Sewerage & Water Board broke his silence this week, five months after he was fired over his response to the city’s massive drainage failures.

Joe Becker, the engineer who ran Sewerage & Water Board operations for nearly a decade, spoke at a grass-roots storytelling event Thursday, portraying himself as a dedicated public servant who took the fall for a drainage system that can no longer keep up with the types of heavy rainstorms the city regularly experiences.

“You know, they needed someone to blame,” Becker said during a 10-minute speech Thursday night.

Becker joined five other storytellers, all invited to share their flooding experiences by the climate-change awareness group ISeeChange.org and the storytelling consortium Bring Your Own. More than 200 residents packed a room at the nonprofit St. Bernard Project’s offices on Broad Street, in the heart of the area that suffered the worst of the flooding Aug. 5.

Most were there to hear from Becker, who hasn’t spoken publicly since Aug. 8, when he and the Sewerage & Water Board’s executive director at the time, Cedric Grant, went before the City Council to be called liars by council members and booed by angry citizens.

Two days before that, on Aug. 6, Becker had stood before television cameras and insisted the city’s drainage pumps had been working “at capacity” during the Aug. 5 rainstorm. But questioned by WWL-TV, he acknowledged that many drainage pumps had been down for scheduled maintenance.

With the help of blogger Matt McBride, WWL-TV subsequently discovered operational logs that showed it was even worse than that: The Sewerage & Water Board had also had major problems generating power to run the working pumps, several of which failed during the rain event.

In addition, the station found a whole pumping station in Lakeview didn’t work for hours during and after the rain because its operator was not able to get there because of the flooding.

At the Aug. 8 council meeting, City Council President Jason Williams asked Becker if his claim that the pumps were working was a “fabrication.” Becker stuck to his guns.

“All the pump stations were working at their maximum capacity,” Becker said.

Grant announced his retirement at the contentious City Council meeting. By the end of that same day, Mayor Mitch Landrieu called for Becker and the Sewerage & Water Board’s spokeswoman, Lisa Martin, to be fired.

Speaking at the storytelling event Thursday, Becker explained how he had risen through the ranks over a 30-year career at the agency and was proud to have been “the guy” who could fix residents’ sewer and water problems.

“And I liked being ‘the guy,’” Becker said. “Being ‘the guy’ is pretty cool.”

But Becker said he found the drainage system was not up to snuff, and as he rose higher at the Sewerage & Water Board, he was stuck with an inadequate system.

“When we get more than a half an inch of rain in an hour … then there’s going to be backups,” Becker said.

Becker said Mid-City got around 9 inches of rain in about three hours Aug. 5 and, therefore, needed 18 hours to drain.

Becker said the $700 million the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent adding more drainage capacity Uptown in recent years, when they snarled traffic while installing huge underground box culverts, did very little to improve the system’s capacity.

“It only bought me another half-inch per hour,” he said.

Julia Kumari Drapkin, a journalist and researcher with ISeeChange, said her group’s investigation of the city’s flooding found the system is totally overwhelmed by the effects of climate change.

“We can’t just depend on the drains. Blaming the drains is actually making the problem worse,” she said. Her group is gathering data hoping to help city leaders construct better green infrastructure projects – landscaping and other methods for retaining rainwater rather than pumping it all out.

WWL-TV’s months-long “Down the Drain” investigation last fall concluded that green infrastructure is sorely needed and too slow to be implemented. But the station also found the Sewerage & Water Board leadership had several opportunities over recent decades to upgrade decrepit, century-old pumping and power systems, but instead wasted tens of millions of dollars trying to repair the old equipment.

Becker didn’t address those findings Thursday. It’s still unclear what role he played in letting the power and drainage systems falter as much as they did. Instead, he suggested he had been stuck with the hand he was dealt. He told the rapt crowd he’s been struggling with his fall from grace, from having been “the guy” to become what he called “that guy” -- the one still being blamed for the flooding.

“Just two weeks ago, I was out, walking on Canal Street and somebody stopped me and said, ‘Hey, aren’t you Joe Becker?’ I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ He said, ‘My car flooded on August 5th. Thanks a lot,’” Becker said. “Well, I’m ‘that guy.’”

But Becker did find a sympathetic audience Thursday.

“So, that's just something I'm going to have to learn to live with. And I'm going to be ‘that guy.’ And hopefully, sooner or later, I'll get to be ‘the guy’ again,” Becker concluded, then walked off to loud applause.

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