A mylar balloon struck a power line near a crucial water treatment plant, putting much of New Orleans under a boil water advisory on Tuesday night.
The Carrollton Water Treatment Plant went offline for a brief moment on Tuesday after the strike, just long enough to trip pumps offline and create a pressure crash before backup pumps could be brought online, local station Fox 8 News reported.
Per the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, pressure loss caused by the power outage at the treatment plant put nearly all of the city's 380,000 residents under the required threshold, triggering a precautionary boil water advisory.
As of Thursday, the board has lifted the advisory in the city’s West Bank, while the East Bank’s was extended, with two out of 90 water samples testing positive for coliform bacteria. Nearly 250,000 residents in the East Bank are still under advisory.
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Under the boil advisory, officials recommend washing hands with bottled or boiled water and avoiding drinking water from the tap without boiling until more conclusive testing can be conducted, which is expected later Thursday night.
The incident, spurred by one rogue metallic balloon, underscores a deep vulnerability in the city’s water infrastructure. In other cities, infrastructure failures have caused days or weekslong water failures, prompting boil orders for hundreds of thousands.
A 2022 Jackson, Mississippi outage at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant left nearly 150,000 residents without access to clean drinkable water.
