Myrna Fawer has spent months watching her stretch of Topaz Street sit torn up, gravel-covered and unfinished, after a water leak repair near her Lakeshore home went wrong back in August. The street, sidewalk and her property have remained in disrepair ever since, and as of Nov. 12, the pavement restoration she was promised still had not happened.
The trouble started when the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans attempted to fix a water leak near Fawer's home in August, according to city spokesperson Keristen Holmes. “Unfortunately, that repair was unsuccessful,” Holmes said, as reported by FOX 8 Live WVUE. Fawer said she asked the utility to make repairs, but nothing worked.
By the time a Fox 8 crew met with Fawer at her home two months after that failed repair, the damage outside her house had turned into standing water deep enough to measure. Fox 8 measured the pooled water in front of her home at two feet deep. Fawer called the situation “a disaster” and a “horror story.”
A Safety Concern Alongside the Inconvenience
Beyond the mess, Fawer said watching young children look at the pooled water outside her home made her nervous. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warns that young children can drown in as little as two inches of water, a far smaller amount than what had collected outside Fawer's house for weeks. Fawer declined to give Fox 8 a message to pass along to SWBNO when asked.
Fox 8 emailed SWBNO on Oct. 14 and sent multiple follow-up emails, also requesting an interview with Executive Director Randy Hayman. The utility did not make Hayman available for an interview, the station reported. Fox 8 also reached out to RNGD, the contractor working on the site, for comment.
Repairs Appear Days After Reporters Get Involved
Two days after speaking with Fawer, Fox 8 returned to her home to interview City Councilmember Eugene Green, who represents the area at New Orleans City Hall. A SWBNO crew appeared to begin repairs around that same time, shortly before the station's interview with Green. Green said SWBNO owes Fawer an apology and should improve its communications with residents.
Holmes later sent Fox 8 a statement saying publicly funded contractor RNGD made repairs at the property on Oct. 20. When Fox 8 returned, the station found the water gone, with the sidewalk and street repaired using gravel. RNGD is doing work along Topaz Street as part of the city's joint infrastructure recovery request effort.
Pavement Restoration Still Pending as Deadline Nears
Holmes said pavement restoration would be expected in an estimated four to six weeks, putting the work near the end of November. SWBNO said it had coordinated the water leak repair at Topaz Street and the post-repair restoration with the city as part of the ongoing joint infrastructure project RR407, constructed by RNGD, according to a statement provided Nov. 11. Despite that timeline, the repaving had not happened as of Nov. 12, per the same account.
The delay comes as the utility faces broader scrutiny over its pace of street repairs citywide. At a June 2024 meeting, SWBNO reported 809 open paving cuts compared with 3,019 at the same time in 2023, according to a meeting packet posted on swbno.org. The utility said at the time that its restoration timeline had dropped from 101 days to under 50 days, with a goal of completing repairs within two to four weeks — though a separate Infrastructure Advisory Board report for the same quarter put the paving backlog at 850, a figure that differs from the 809 cited in the SWBNO meeting packet.
Residents can check the status of individual repair requests through SWBNO's Work Order Dashboard, which the utility says is updated weekly with work order numbers, dates, problem descriptions and average repair times. The dashboard page shows it was last modified on Nov. 12, the same day Fox 8 confirmed Fawer's street still had not been repaved.
Frustrations over SWBNO's handling of leaks and infrastructure emergencies have surfaced elsewhere in the city too. In a separate Gentilly incident, Green has called for a faster utility response after a significant watermain break reportedly left substantial erosion around a large tree, causing it to lean, according to WGNO. New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno is pushing for SWBNO to become a city department by 2028, a shift that could reshape how the utility is held accountable for repairs like the one still unfinished on Fawer's block.
