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Neighbors cleaning their own catch basins still flood

They say there's an underlying problem the city needs to address.

Broken pumps and power issues caused part of New Orleans to flood last August, but the city also said catch basins played a part. That spurred a huge clean up program, even pushing residents to adopt a basin.

But residents say after last Friday's flood, no amount of catch basin cleaning could stop the flooding. They say there’s an underlying problem the city needs to address.

"When I was coming home from work around 4, 4:30 this whole area was flooded," Charles Miller said, as he pointed to a basin at the corner of Baudin and Jefferson Davis Parkway.

Miller was stunned to see his street flooding last Friday.

"I clean it out every week."

Miller's neighborhood also flooded during last year's August flood. Shortly after, he signed up with the city's Adopt a Basin program to keep the storm waters flowing freely.

"And it still flooded," he said.

To make matters worse, he was awakened by crews digging up a part of his driveway to connect a sewer line.

"They didn't connect the first time -- it seems Sewerage and Water Board has a pattern of this."

All this, he says, points to a pattern that shows the city's drainage pipes aren’t connected correctly.

Elaine Cummins sees similar cracks in the drainage issue in the French Quarter.

"Nice deep storm drain drains on both sides of the street,” Cummins said.

She thinks the city needs to check where the drainage pipes are connected.

"So the other day the water was nine inches above this catch basin," as she pointed.

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She says that happened, despite the basin being clear.

"And if you diagram it on a map, you're going to see a lot of sinkholes in this footprint," she said.

That problem, as she sees, is water going nowhere, and that is why residents who have been cleaning their catch basins say the city needs to look further past the surface to get to a much bigger problem.

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