MWI Sends Water Pumping Equipment to New Orleans

NBC6.net
Published September 02, 2005

As officials deal with the large human crisis from Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers is working on a plan to get rid of the floodwaters drowning New Orleans. A South Florida company may help in the effort. MWI Corporation based in Deerfield Beach has some of the largest hydraulic pumps in the country, and is sending machinery to Louisiana that can pump up to 50,000 gallons of water a minute.

But there is one problem officials are still considering. There’s no place to discharge the water,” MWI operations manager Michael Kelly said. “What they’re going to do with the water is yet to be determined.” Truck drivers have to travel about 250 miles out of their way to get to New Orleans, but hoped to arrive sometime Friday.

Kelly said the pumps and piping system can be up and running within a few days, but before they can begin pumping, levees need to be fixed and water levels in Lake Pontchartrain must go down.