New Orleans officials celebrate completion of road work

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — In a news conference Tuesday, the City of New Orleans cut the ribbon on a $5 million road work project funded by FEMA.

The construction began in the St. Roch neighborhood in September 2020, but according to the city, there is still a lot more work to go with a lot more money needed.

“Once we spend all of our federal dollars, we’ll probably have completed about 10,000 blocks, city blocks within the City of New Orleans. We probably have another 10,000 to do, and I’m actively looking for ways to get additional funding to finish that. You can just drive around the City of New Orleans and see that the whole city needs some love, as the mayor would say, and that’s what we’re trying to do right now,” says Deputy CAO for Infrastructure, Joe Threat.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell calls the amount of work being done on city streets “unprecedented”.

“You cannot take for granted the hard work that we are putting into not only getting the resources but also finding partnerships on the design side, as well as the construction side to get this done. In partnership with SWBNO, we continue to make unprecedented investments that we’ve needed for decades which is all a part of our strategic planning. What we do now is going to determine where this city is going to be 50 years from now,” says Cantrell.

“We’ve replaced ten blocks of sewer and water lines that had not been repaired since between 1908 and 1946, which was the age of the system that was replaced. So again, investment in infrastructure is key, and that is what we are doing every day while continuing to utilize public dollars to improve our critical infrastructure, streets, and water systems,” said the Interim General Superintendent for the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans Ron Spooner.

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