Summary: TriPod: New Orleans at 300 returns with its NOLA versus Nature series . This week: WWNO’s Laine Kaplan-Levenson and Travis Lux look at the city’s drainage pumps, and the man behind their design -- Albert Baldwin Wood. New Orleans is below sea level. You know this, and certainly, if you were here this past August, you really know this. Almost a foot of rain fell over a couple hours and parts of town were knee deep in water. The sewerage and water board caught a lot of flack for this, people lost
