Link to site: Matt Scallan, River Parishes bureau, April 01, 2006

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- progressively raise water rates for the biggest users, was one of seven options to pay for a proposed $25 million expansion project
- proposal would raise the rate for using 1,000 gallons of water from $2.22 to $4 for customers who use between 6,000 and 10,000 gallons per month and $4.30 for usage of more than 10,000 gallons per month. The first 6,000 gallons of water would remain at the current rate for all users.
- The proposed expansion would involve linking the east and west bank water plants, adding 6 million gallons per day of drinking water capacity on the east bank water plant, and 3 million gallons per day of capacity to the west bank plant, as well as building a new west bank storage tank.


The proposed water rate increase that the St. Charles Parish Council will consider on May 1 is designed to tread lightly on most water users and avoids funding mechanisms that would require voter approval.

The measure, which would progressively raise water rates for the biggest users, was one of seven options to pay for a proposed $25 million expansion project that engineer Rick Shread presented to the council at a special meeting Thursday.

The other measures would have either required the parish to seek voter approval for increased property taxes or required small water users to pay more.

The plan that the council is considering will be introduced in ordinance form at Monday's council meeting. It won't come to a vote until the council's May 1 meeting. That proposal would raise the rate for using 1,000 gallons of water from $2.22 to $4 for customers who use between 6,000 and 10,000 gallons per month and $4.30 for usage of more than 10,000 gallons per month. The first 6,000 gallons of water would remain at the current rate for all users.

Adoption of the plan would mean that 62 percent of the parish's 17,549 residential users would see no rate increase, according to Shread's firm, Shread-Kuyrkendall and Associates.

Currently, all users pay the $2.22 rate regardless of how much water they use, plus a $4-per-month service fee.

The proposed expansion would involve linking the east and west bank water plants, adding 6 million gallons per day of drinking water capacity on the east bank water plant, and 3 million gallons per day of capacity to the west bank plant, as well as building a new west bank storage tank.

To pay for the expansion, the system must generate about $3 million a year for the next 25 years, either by raising user fees or through property taxes.

Councilman Clayton "Snookie" Faucheux said St. Charles is the only parish in Louisiana where the water system isn't subsidized by property taxes. The parish levied a property tax until the east and west bank water systems merged in the late 1980s. Parish officials say the taxes went off the books in the mid-1990s, and the parish switched to a fee-based system, partly because of industry requests.

As they would under most of the options presented at Thursday's meeting, businesses would bear the brunt of the rate increase through taxes or higher user rates.

Lily Galland, chairwoman of St. Charles Industrial Council, said she could not comment on the specifics of the council plan, but said the parish's industrial taxpayers are willing to help.

"We want to work with the parish to ensure that the infrastructure meets the needs of its citizens," she said.

Ron Guillory, spokesman for the Valero St. Charles Parish Refinery in Norco, said the company won't comment on the proposal until it has a chance to study it, but noted that the refinery voluntarily reduced its water usage from about 60 million gallons per month to about 20 million after water supplies got tight after Hurricane Katrina.

The east bank system has been stretched to its production capacity and the main production unit cannot be turned off for needed repairs without causing a critical water shortage, parish officials say. Two smaller units produce water at a combined maximum rate of 3 million gallons per day, but their actual daily capacity is less.

Waterworks director Robert Brou said the main east bank unit could suffer a catastrophic failure at any time, leaving the east bank without enough water to meet its needs.

In addition, the west bank water system will begin facing its own capacity issues in the next few years as an expected 5,000 new homes are built in existing subdivisions.

"We're supposed to be the silent service, but people don't realize how much technology goes into a glass of water," Brou said.

Parish President Albert Laque's administration also proposes linking the two plants with a connection across the Mississippi River, building a million-gallon water storage tank on the west bank, and expanding that plant's daily capacity from 9 million gallons to 12 million gallons.

One of the options that Shread presented to the council would have involved asking voters to approve a 3.76-mill property tax, possibly in a July 15 referendum.

But Parish Council Chairman Brian Fabre said passing a property tax is no sure thing.

"It used to be that if you proposed a tax, everybody would vote for it because it would be on industry's back, but not since everybody got reappraised," he said, referring to the dramatic rise in property value that led to an increase in residential tax bills in 2004.

Shread noted that calling a referendum would be time-consuming and possibly could fail in a parishwide vote and delay the resolution to the most serious problem.

Other options that were considered include:

-- Raising rates to $3.45 per 1,000 gallons, which would mean a $7.38 monthly increase to a customer using 6,000 gallons.

-- Raising the monthly service fee from $4 to $16.77, an increase of $12.77 per month to all existing customers.

-- Raising the monthly service fee from $4 to $5 and the rate to $3.30 per 1,000 gallons. This would cost the user of 6,000 gallons of water an extra $7.48 per month.

-- Splitting the revenue stream by raising water rates to $2.84 per 1,000 gallons and levying a 1.96-mill property tax. This would raise the bill of a 6,000-gallon user by $3.72 per month, plus the property tax increase, which would total $9.80 per year for the owner of a homestead-exempt home assessed at $125,000. A business assessed at $500,000 would pay an additional $147 a year in property taxes.

. . . . . . .

Matt Scallan may be reached at mscallan@timespicayune.com or (985) 652-0953

Link to site: Regional Information - Hurricane Katrina

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- These pages cover water-related issues associated with Hurricane Katrina (2005) and other hurricanes.


Hurricane Health and Safety
DHHS. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Provides information on drinking water safety, sanitation, and hygiene following hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Hurricane Response 2005
Environmental Protection Agency.
Provides information on drinking water safety, flood waters, EPA response activities and related issues.

Hurricanes
Louisiana State University. Extension Disaster Education Network.
Covers a range of topics including flood recovery, locating safe drinking water and emergency sanitation.
Hurricane Katrina
Librarians' Index to the Internet.
Contains sections on environmental factors, flood cleanup, flood control and levee management, maps and images and more.
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
Provides information from the state environmental agency. See also Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and Mississippi Department of Health for drinking water information.
Hurricane Season 2005: Katrina
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Has satellite images, before, during and after Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricanes: Links to Health Information
DHHS. National Library of Medicine.
Provides links to environmental health and toxicology information.

Hurricane Katrina Images
DOC. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Provides images "of the Gulf coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama after Hurricane Katrina made landfall." NOAA's National Climatic Data Center has created a Summary of Hurricane Katrina page with sections on storm meteorology and background; rain, wind and pressure; and impacts of the storm.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
DOD. United States Army.
Provides many links to information about Corps activities in the hurricane-affected area.

Hurricane Katrina Special Feature
DOI. United States Geological Survey.
Contains information from the agency, including pictures of New Orleans and the coast before and after the hurricane.

Link to site: Bob Marshall, Staff writer, March 17, 2006

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Highlights:
- The combination of forces that brought the structure down was its finding that one of the main triggers for that failure -- extremely low soil strengths under the toe of the levee -- would have been detected had the design team done soil borings in that area
- "The factor of safety would have been (low enough) to where they would have changed the design,"
- The task force said rising water pushed the wall away from the canal, eventually creating a crack, separating the wall from the canal-side levee. Water pressure building inside the crack began pushing down on soil layers under the wall, which required support from the levee on the land side of the canal and the soils adjacent to it. The weak soils beneath the toe of the levee couldn't stand up to the rising pressure and began slipping, bringing the levee and the floodwall down.


The key to learning why the 17th Street Canal floodwall failed during Hurricane Katrina may lie more in what designers didn't do than in what they could have foreseen, experts now say.

Lost in the controversy swirling around a government panel's comment last week that the designers of the floodwall could not have anticipated the combination of forces that brought the structure down was its finding that one of the main triggers for that failure -- extremely low soil strengths under the toe of the levee -- would have been detected had the design team done soil borings in that area, an official with the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

Had the weakness at the toe of the levee been included in the analysis system used by the project designers, "The factor of safety would have been (low enough) to where they would have changed the design," said Reed Mosher, a researcher at the corps' Engineering Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss., and a member of the corps-sponsored Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force that is investigating the failures. The options considered probably would have included a T-wall, or a much larger levee, he said.

The task force said rising water pushed the wall away from the canal, eventually creating a crack, separating the wall from the canal-side levee. Water pressure building inside the crack began pushing down on soil layers under the wall, which required support from the levee on the land side of the canal and the soils adjacent to it. The weak soils beneath the toe of the levee couldn't stand up to the rising pressure and began slipping, bringing the levee and the floodwall down.

Review team members said the designers did "few if any" soil borings at the toe of the levee, a finding John Greishaber, acting chief of the engineering division at the corps' New Orleans district, said was not normal. He said his office normally required designers to take borings at the center line as well as at the toe of levees.

"This is the preferred method," he said. "There are items when this is not done. You have to get into specifics (for each case) as to why it is not."

Greishaber said that when borings aren't made, engineers can estimate the soil strengths at the toe of a levee.

Engineers use a standard formula for estimating the soil strengths at the toe based on the known strength of soils at the center line of the levee, where the soil strengths are highest. That means soil borings at the toe usually aren't necessary unless the center line values are below a certain threshold, task force members said.

And that is where the designers made obvious mistakes, said J. David Rogers, a professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla who is a leading expert on levee failures and a member of a National Science Foundation investigation into the disaster.

"Looking at their calculations on the slope stability analysis, they used the same high figure from the center of the levee and projected it out to the toe, without any diminution in value," Rogers said. "That was one of the first things we picked up when we started working on this.

"When we tried to find out what factor they used for diminution with increasing distance from the toe, it didn't appear they used any. They were using maximum strength all the way to the toe. That's the part everyone will take issue with."

More surprising, Rogers said, is the fact that obvious mistake was missed by the corps in New Orleans, as well as its superiors in Vicksburg.

"I can't explain how this went through," he said.

Making waves

Although the quality of the engineering done by local firms and reviewed by the corps has been the focus of scrutiny since shortly after the walls collapsed, it was pushed from the headlines last week when the task force released an interim report identifying how the walls collapsed and saying the combination of forces responsible could not have been anticipated by the project designers. That provoked criticism from independent investigators.

But this week Ed Link, project director for the task force, said his panel's statements had been misconstrued by the media.

"Our position on this is that, very simply, whoever did the design just did not consider this particular mechanism," said Link, a University of Maryland senior fellow who is head of the corps-sponsored Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force. "We, IPET, made no value judgment whether it should have been considered or could have been considered.

"If that was inferred by our comments, it was inaccurate."

Link added that the corps has made no attempt to interfere or steer the investigation by the panel, which lists more than 150 members from academia, private industry and other state and federal agencies.

"The only pressure the corps has put on us is to find out what has happened and put it in the public domain," he said. "I'm telling you as an engineer, as a professional, I would not work in this environment if I felt there was anything political or adverse pressure on what we are doing."

The executive summary of the task force report, which Link said he wrote without input from the corps, said "this failure mechanism was not anticipated by the design criteria used."

When task force panelists and corps engineers were asked if that meant the design systems used by the engineers of the day could not have foreseen this type of failure, they answered "yes."

Link said that while the individual components of the failure are well documented as concerns for engineers doing stability analysis of levees and floodwalls, the combination of those factors coming together at the same time is not. He also said methods of analysis used by engineers at the time would not have included all those factors in testing a design for stability.

Point of contention

Task force panelists at the press conference also said a "search of the literature" turned up no examples of this specific failure mechanism.

Those claims were quickly challenged by members of the engineering community. Most notably Ray Seed and Bob Bea, University of California-Berkeley professors and members of the National Science Foundation team investigating the levee failures, issued a response calling the task force statements "unfortunate" and inaccurate. They called attention to a 1986 report done by the corps, known as the E-99 report, that showed the separation -- "tension cracking" -- of the wall as well as the build-up of high pressure at the base of the floodwall after the cracking.

They also cited two 1997 papers published in an industry journal analyzing the 1986 test. One of papers' authors was Mosher, who is a member of the task force.

Link said Thursday that his reference to the "literature" meant a review of the corps engineering manuals, which design teams are required to use.

"We were looking at the design criteria to see if there was a process like this described in the corps' design manuals that (the design team) missed," he said. "We didn't see anything that described this mechanism, that would have alerted (the design team) to look for this when doing their analysis."

Link and Mosher disagreed with Bea and Seed's analysis of the importance of the 1986 study. Mosher, who analyzed the E-99 report, said it was not designed to look at levee stability, but at how much a sheet pile "moved at the top as water increased."

The fact that the test also showed there was evidence of tension cracking and high pressure at the toe of the wall was not given much attention at the time, Mosher said, "because the study was not designed to look at the stability of the levee." He also said the evidence of cracking and increased pressure was minimal.

Rethinking strategies

Mosher said Katrina has made the report important today.

"When I go back now and look at E-99 knowing the other pieces of information about the 17th Street failure, I can make a better interpretation of what's in E-99," he said. "Now I can say I understand how all this relates."

Mosher and Link said the lessons learned from the investigation already are being put to work.

"We're going back and doing borings at the toes of the levees in the system anywhere we think this failure mechanism might be present," he said. "We're already doing re-evaluations of the stability analysis done by the (original design teams).

"Now that we know what to look for, we're out there looking for it."

. . . . . . .

Bob Marshall can be reached at rmarshall@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3539.

Link to site: Bob Marshall, Staff writer, March 11, 2006

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Highlights:
- Unique combination of stresses that engineers could not have predicted caused the 17th Street Canal floodwall to fail and flood thousands of homes and businesses during Hurricane Katrina, according to an interim report of the task force investigating the disaster for the Army Corps of Engineers.
- Evidence points to forces that came together in a combination unique to the science and thus could not have been anticipated by the system's design teams.
- Interagency task force members said experiments with sophisticated computer models show the 17th Street Canal floodwall came down in a four-step process:

A unique combination of stresses that engineers could not have predicted caused the 17th Street Canal floodwall to fail and flood thousands of homes and businesses during Hurricane Katrina, according to an interim report of the task force investigating the disaster for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The report also points to soil subsidence that left floodwalls and levees lower than design specifications as contributing to the other failures and breaches that helped flood 80 percent of New Orleans and killed more than 1,100 residents in August.

Although independent analysts have blamed the 17th Street Canal failure on faulty engineering, including flawed soil investigations by local firms, the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, composed of experts from academia and industry as well as state and federal agencies, said evidence points to forces that came together in a combination unique to the science and thus could not have been anticipated by the system's design teams.

"I would say it's certainly going to come as a surprise to many people, if not most people," said Ed Link, University of Maryland professor and task force project director.

The group said the causes of the London Avenue canal floodwall collapses are not yet known and emphasized that its findings are preliminary.

Bob Bea, a University of California professor who is part of a National Science Foundation investigation into the failures, said the task force's explanation of the 17th Street Canal breach is lacking.

"It's our jobs as engineers to anticipate the failure points, and when that doesn't happen, breakdowns like this occur," Bea said, emphasizing that he is speaking only for himself and not the NSF team. "The corps has a documented history where they say, 'We couldn't have anticipated this, therefore it was an act of God.'

"An experienced engineer knows he can't accept that."

Four steps to hell

Interagency task force members said experiments with sophisticated computer models show the 17th Street Canal floodwall came down in a four-step process:

-- As water in the canal rose to 10 feet -- an unprecedented but not unplanned height -- the pressure from the water and wind-driven waves in the canal began to push, or deflect, the concrete floodwall and its subsurface supporting steel sheet piling away from the canal and toward Lakeview.

-- The deflection created space between the wall and the levee on the canal side.

-- Such flexing is expected by designers, as is a small opening between the wall and the levee. But what happened in this case, and was not expected, was the separation extended the entire length of the sheetpile wall to 17.5 feet below sea level. Water rushed into this opening quickly, creating a channel separating the floodwall from the levee on the inside of the canal and allowing high water pressure to travel directly down to the soil layers beneath the wall.

-- The final blow came when a layer of clay about 15 feet below sea level that extended beyond the toe of the levee began slipping toward Lakeview, causing the levee to collapse and the wall with it.

'Failure mechanism'

The fatal flaw in the weak soils beneath the structure was not the now-notorious layer of peat widely cited by independent analysts for months, the task force said. In fact, the failure surface, as engineers call it, did not occur under the levee or canal, but at a level beneath the toe of the levee and in the yards of homes adjacent to the canal.

Link said task force tests showed the soil-strength estimates done by local firm Eustis Engineering when the walls were built proved to be more conservative than actual results. Further, he said there was no method of testing the plans for a combination of forces that caused the collapse -- called the "failure mechanism" by engineers.

"We've searched the literature and found nothing that resembles this," he said. "I'm not saying nothing exists, but so far we haven't found it."

There was disagreement on that point.

Bea said a 1986 corps study showed such separations could occur.

"That report was done by the Vicksburg (Miss.) research station for the New Orleans District, but there's no evidence it ever made its way to the (engineering) firms doing the work," said Bea, who added that a full discussion of the report would be in the National Science Foundation study to be published next month.

Corps officials acknowledged the report, titled "E-99 Sheet Pile Wall Field Load Test Report," but disputed Bea's interpretation.

Neither the interagency task force nor the corps dismissed the long-standing criticism that sheet pilings should have been driven at least to the bottom of the canals -- a standard engineering practice -- rather than stopped at 17 feet. While they agreed deeper pilings generally make stronger walls, they have yet to run simulations to determine whether deeper pilings would have prevented this collapse given the other conditions now known.

Sinking floodwalls

Soil subsidence levels in a region that was largely marsh and swamp fewer than 100 years ago is well known, but the rate of sinkage, which left many structures below the heights built to guard against storm surges, apparently took the panel by surprise. For example, the Industrial Canal floodwall that was built to 15 feet actually measured just above 12 feet when Katrina hit, a loss of 2.7 feet.

Task force teams "documented that many sections of the levees and floodwalls were substantially below their original design elevations, an effective loss in protection," the report said.

Corps officials said the Bush administration has budgeted almost $3 billion to repair and restore all levees and floodwalls in the region up to design heights during the next two years.

Louisiana State University professor Ivor van Heerden, a member of the state team investigating the failures, said he was not surprised by the report and generally agreed with its findings. He said the corps started using updated elevation data only five years ago, even though the state had been urging a change for years.

"So the fact that the corps have found some levees lower than they should be reflects local subsidence but also that they built them lower than they should be because they would not update their datum," van Heerden commented by e-mail. "It is cheaper to make a wall 12.8 feet tall rather than one 14 feet tall!"

Further, van Heerden wrote, "whether the fail plane (on the 17th Street Canal) was in peat or clay is really academic. The structure underwent catastrophic structure failure, the same for the two breaches on the London Avenue Canal."

Hassan Mashriqui, an engineer and storm modeler at the LSU Hurricane Center, said he would be cautious about estimates of wave forces inside the 17th Street Canal because his findings show that a huge pile of debris that stacked up against the Old Hammond Highway bridge across the canal probably blocked much of that force.
Bob Marshall can be reached at rmarshall@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3539.

Link to site: March 7, 2006

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Highlights:
- Federal engineers in Vicksburg have begun tests to determine exactly what caused the levees to fail in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
- Engineers want to learn what part waves played in breaching a floodwall on the 17th Street Canal, where Hurricane Katrina's storm surge pushed water from Lake Pontchartrain and where water poured into the city after the storm hit

VICKSBURG, Miss. (AP) - Federal engineers in Vicksburg have begun tests to determine exactly what caused the levees to fail in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

Engineers on Sunday gathered to watch a centrifuge spin a tiny model of the 17th Street Canal.

Wayne Stroup, a spokesman for the Engineering Research and Development Center's Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, said more tests may be conducted later this week on a 14,000-square-foot model about a third the size of a football field.

Engineers want to learn what part waves played in breaching a floodwall on the 17th Street Canal, where Hurricane Katrina's storm surge pushed water from Lake Pontchartrain and where water poured into the city after the storm hit on Aug. 29.

Stroup said the larger model will be flooded with water. Engineers will use data, along with that from the centrifuge and other tests, to draw conclusions.

The work is part of the Corps' Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, which is investigating why levees and floodwalls in the New Orleans area failed during Katrina. The task force commissioned the work in Vicksburg under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The centrifuge, similar to those used in astronaut training to test the effects of increasing gravity, is three stories below ground.

It was manufactured in France and installed at the federal research station in Vicksburg more than 10 years ago. It remains one of the largest in the world.

Link to site: Matthew Brown, West Bank bureau, March 06, 2006

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Highlights:
- Six months after Katrina, the mark left on the natural world by last year's blockbuster hurricane season is a complex mix of more fish and shrimp, less habitat for them to live and breed in, and millions of gallons of oil possibly lost forever in south Louisiana's marshes.
- In terms of habitat, however, the storms sharply accelerated a coastal erosion problem already responsible for a decades-long decline in seafood production. And a lasting stain was left by at least nine major oil spills and countless hazardous-material containers strewn from Mississippi to Texas.
- Meanwhile, federal and state biologists report stocks of shrimp, fish and crabs are at their highest levels in years: a phenomenon attributed to a combination of lighter fishing pressure and a jolt of nutrients stirred up by the storms that served to stimulate the food chain.

Six months after Katrina, the mark left on the natural world by last year's blockbuster hurricane season is a complex mix of more fish and shrimp, less habitat for them to live and breed in, and millions of gallons of oil possibly lost forever in south Louisiana's marshes.

The central Gulf Coast was spared the massive fish kills that followed Hurricane Andrew in 1992. While some die-offs occurred, evidence has emerged of a spike in the populations of several saltwater species -- perhaps a result of the region's shattered fishing fleet.

In terms of habitat, however, the storms sharply accelerated a coastal erosion problem already responsible for a decades-long decline in seafood production. And a lasting stain was left by at least nine major oil spills and countless hazardous-material containers strewn from Mississippi to Texas.

Just as significant, however, is what the storms did not do. Federal scientists say the 224 billion gallons of foul floodwaters pumped out of New Orleans after the storms quickly dissipated in Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico.

Researchers from the Battelle Seattle Research Center in Seattle, who attempted to mimic the floodwater's movement through computer simulations, have suggested much of the pumped-out water may be trapped in Lake Borgne. But extensive analyses of potential contaminants in seafood by state and federal fisheries scientists have turned up only trace amounts of chemicals such as PCBs and petroleum.

That contrasts sharply with news reports that continue to depict a grimmer situation. As recently as December, an article appearing in the Orlando Sentinel described the pumped-out floodwaters as a "slug of germs and chemicals . . . floating toward Florida's coast, drifting out to the Atlantic or lurking somewhere in between."

"By and large, the facts don't necessarily follow a lot of the speculation that was out there early, in terms of the chemicals that were out there and the threat to human health," said Steven Murawski, a senior scientist at the National Marine Fisheries Service, which has conducted nine rounds of seafood sampling from Texas to Florida.

Meanwhile, federal and state biologists report stocks of shrimp, fish and crabs are at their highest levels in years: a phenomenon attributed to a combination of lighter fishing pressure and a jolt of nutrients stirred up by the storms that served to stimulate the food chain.

Louisiana's inland waterways still are recovering from localized fish kills, but the scope of that damage is considered far narrower than the estimated 184 million fish that died in the Atchafalaya Basin during Hurricane Andrew.

Excess oxygen caused by heavy loads of organic material entering rivers after flooding caused fish kills along the Blind, Amite and Tchefuncte rivers after Katrina. Toward the coast, additional fish kills caused by an influx of saltwater were reported near Venice and Caernarvon in the southeast corner of the state, in the Atchafalaya Basin in south-central Louisiana and in Grand Lake and White Lake in the southwest, said John Roussel, assistant secretary for the Wildlife and Fisheries Department.

Plans are being made to restock the waterways with bass, catfish, bream and other species. For Grand and White lakes, however, Roussel said salinity levels -- the amount of salt in the water -- are still too high, keeping fish from returning and also threatening to kill off aquatic plants.

The direst story emerges from the physical toll the storm took on Louisiana's wetlands. Louisiana's coastal marshes comprise about 80 percent of the Gulf's wetlands, estuary systems that are vital for reproduction of shrimp, redfish, speckled trout, blue crabs, bluefish, menhaden and many other recreationally and commercially important species. The wetlands also serve as a natural buffer against hurricanes.

Rita and Katrina washed away or flooded about 118 square miles of wetlands, or about 75,500 acres.

Beyond those losses, oil spills caused by Katrina totaled 8 million gallons across southeast Louisiana, according to the Coast Guard. The most publicized spill, about 1 million gallons at the Murphy Oil refinery in St. Bernard Parish, occurred in a residential area. The rest were concentrated in rural areas or along the Mississippi River.

More than 2.3 million gallons of spilled oil have not been recovered.

As for other hazardous substances displaced by the storms, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has collected almost 4,200 tons of materials in 2.2 million hazardous material containers, from gasoline cans to drums of highly toxic industrial chemicals. That includes 675,000 containers from the coastal parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Lafourche and Vermilion and from Grand Isle in Jefferson Parish.

But many containers, as well as fishing boats and vehicles laden with fuel, were likely lost in marshes or water bottoms, state and federal officials have said. And in western Louisiana, about 1,400 hazardous-materials containers with up to 350,000 gallons of liquids and gases remain out of the EPA's reach.

The containers were found in the federally operated Sabine National Wildlife Refuge. Under the Stafford Act, which is driving the federal response to the recovery, that makes them off-limits to retrieval by agencies under the direction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA emergency money can be spent only on state and local needs, according to EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Fanning.

. . . . . . .

Matthew Brown can be reached at mbrown@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3784.

Link to site: Matthew Brown, West Bank bureau, March 06, 2006

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Highlights:
- authorities expressed increasing confidence in recent days that the region successfully skirted the nightmare scenario: a New Orleans forever marred by tainted soils, foul waterways and unexplainable health maladies.
- The storm highlighted chemical problems and health issues that the city had lived with for decades.
- the 46 locations across the metro area identified as potential toxic hot spots offer a significant exception to government claims that the region is generally safe. Almost all are in residential areas.


A litany of environmental and health unknowns hangs over the region more than six months after Hurricane Katrina, from 46 potential hot spots of contamination and the continuing cleanup of 8 million gallons of spilled oil, to health care workers raising the alarm over a spike in Legionnaires' disease.

Nevertheless, authorities expressed increasing confidence in recent days that the region successfully skirted the nightmare scenario: a New Orleans forever marred by tainted soils, foul waterways and unexplainable health maladies. Instead, state and federal environmental agencies and public health officials depict a region grappling with problems already present on Aug. 29.

This theory rejects the popular image of Katrina as culprit, tearing through chemical depots and unleashing the contents of tens of thousands of gas tanks to stir up the widely publicized "toxic gumbo." Rather, it suggests the storm highlighted chemical problems and health issues that the city had lived with for decades.

For instance, findings of elevated levels of lead, arsenic and the petroleum byproduct benzo(a)pyrene are being chalked up largely to New Orleans' history as an urban area, according to state and federal environmental officials and some outside scientists.

The lead could have come from lead paint or be the remnants of decades of leaded gasoline use; the arsenic, from common herbicides; and benzo(a)pyrene, from vehicle traffic, according to officials at the state Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"Look, nothing is completely risk-free, and that includes the level of chemical contamination in New Orleans. It wasn't before the storm and it isn't now. It's a fact of life in many cities," said Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health in Atlanta, which is advising federal agencies on their storm response.

Skeptics, from independent researchers to environmental and social activist groups, say such sweeping characterizations gloss over complications caused by the storm. Floodwaters could have brought to the surface lead that had been buried for decades, reviving the risk of human exposure, according to experts from several universities.

Also, the 46 locations across the metro area identified as potential toxic hot spots offer a significant exception to government claims that the region is generally safe. Almost all are in residential areas.

Similarly, the threat of a rise in potentially fatal Legionnaires' disease, which often is spread by water, was rejected outright by state epidemiologist Raoult Ratard as "urban legend." Yet several doctors in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish claim to have witnessed firsthand a sudden spike in cases. They say a medical system left in disarray after hospitals closed and hundreds of doctors relocated could easily miss the trend.

Even if their warnings pan out, the doctors who first raised the issue, William LaCorte, an internist at Touro and East Jefferson hospitals, and Jesse Penico, an infectious disease specialist at East Jefferson, said it is primarily doctors who need to be on the lookout for the disease, not the public at large.

The implications of what is in the region's soils have a much broader sweep.

The contaminants still under scrutiny were found across flooded residential areas of Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. Some were just above health risk standards; others exceeded the standards by five times or more. Benzo(a)pyrene and arsenic are known carcinogens, and lead exposure can damage the nervous system, with children particularly at risk.

"There's no ifs, ands or buts about it. If there's soil that's elevated (for lead), I'm not happy if there are people living around that soil," said Felicia Rabito, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. "I don't think the pre- and the post-storm question is so important as what is the current situation. We need to look at that as, 'Where do we live and play?' "

Yet with federal emergency spending limited to storm-related damage -- and the state hobbled by a perpetual cash-flow problem -- Katrina's role in any contamination is a pivotal issue in how it would be addressed.

Tom Henning, chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority's environmental task force, said calls to clean up chemical contamination, regardless of its origin, ignore the recovery's significant limitations.

"Wouldn't it be a good time to do these things? Practically, if you had no constraints on money, it would be," Henning said. "Money is the problem."

But state and federal officials are not the only ones holding the purse strings for the recovery, said John Casbon, president of First American Transportation Title Insurance. He said the nationwide firms that underwrite mortgages and home insurance policies remain skittish about backing the rebuilding. What they want, Casbon said, is a better picture of what new flood maps will look like and whether contamination could become a liability in the future.

"This is really all about markets and the tolerance for risk. There is really a very small tolerance for risk in the lending world," he said. "There's no politician that's going to decide who's going to repopulate these areas. It will be done by risk management within the insurance industry. If we don't know whether the soil has any kind of contaminants in it, whether the soil has to be raised before you can even build on it, then insurance companies become very noncommittal about coming back into those areas."

In summing up the region's post-hurricane environmental issues, Louisiana Secretary of Environmental Quality Mike McDaniel made clear his agency has little appetite for diving into problems that predate the storm.

"It is what it was," he said of the New Orleans region, suggesting the city's contamination issues are little changed since before Katrina. "The more we look at it, the more we see what was already there before Katrina. . . . The facts just overwhelmed the fantasy."

The exception, McDaniel and others said, is the million-gallon crude oil spill at the Murphy Oil refinery in St. Bernard Parish. That was the most severe of nine major spills after Katrina, totaling more than 8 million gallons.

Most of the spills occurred in lightly populated rural areas or coastal marshes. But about 1,800 homes and businesses in Meraux and neighboring Chalmette were fouled by the Murphy spill, according to the EPA. About 75 percent of the spill has been recovered, according to the Coast Guard, one of several agencies overseeing the cleanup. Murphy spokeswoman Mindy West said the company had scrubbed down about 600 home interiors and 1,000 exteriors through last month.

A one-square-mile area was affected by the spill, and whether those neighborhoods will ever rebound is unclear.

Aside from that case, McDaniel said thousands of tests performed on soil, air, water and living organisms such as fish have turned up contamination in only a small fraction of cases.

That has not quelled a running dispute between government agencies and scientists, environmental groups and others pushing for a thorough cleanup of tainted soil. One reason for the disagreement is the difficulty of pinpointing the risk posed by the chemicals in question.

With water contamination, determining risk is relatively easy: Drinking a given quantity of chemical-laced water equates to a quantifiable health risk. But for soil, scientists also must factor in how likely a person is to be exposed to the soil and for how long. That encompasses whether the soil is from a highway median or in a back yard, in a commercial or residential area, in a neighborhood full of children or one with 9-to-5 workers.

Out of about 800 soil and sediment samples collected by the EPA and the DEQ between September and late November, the number posing a possible health risk has been narrowed to 46 locations. None are said to pose a short-term health risk. An investigation for long-term risk is ongoing.

For lead, that includes all sites with levels in excess of 400 parts per million, the baseline for health dangers. For arsenic and benzo(a)pyrene, it includes all sites with levels that pose a greater than 1 in 10,000 chance for a person to develop cancer based on 30 years of exposure.

Not included in the latest round of sampling were more than 100 sites that had shown elevated levels of diesel range organics, chemicals that could have come from the tens of thousands of vehicles flooded when 80 percent of New Orleans was inundated. DEQ toxicologist Tom Harris said those generally degrade within a year, so they do not pose a long-term risk.

In New Orleans, the potential hot spots include 33 locations with elevated lead, arsenic or benzo(a)pyrene in the Lower 9th Ward, Mid-City, Uptown, Bywater, eastern New Orleans, Gentilly and Lakeview. Five locations around the Metairie Country Club in Jefferson Parish are under scrutiny for elevated arsenic or lead levels. Four sites in St. Bernard are being probed for lead and three for arsenic. And a site in Buras in Plaquemines Parish is being looked at for possible benzo(a)pyrene contamination.

Between Feb. 16 and 22, soil samples were collected in a 500-foot radius around each location. Combined, that amounts to almost 830 acres under scrutiny, or the equivalent of about 300 to 375 city blocks. Results should be known in two or three weeks, said EPA scientist Jon Rauscher. He said additional potential hot spots could develop as the agency continues sampling sediments.

DEQ officials said the results of the samples will be averaged to determine whether entire neighborhoods contain toxins or whether contamination is limited to a single spot. Because the initial findings of contamination were biased to look for problems, with EPA officials saying they searched out the worst-looking storm sediments they could find, Harris said he expected the latest round of tests to show lower levels of contamination.

Steven Presley, a Texas Tech University toxicologist whose own soil tests have turned up high levels of lead and arsenic levels in the city, said he attempted to persuade federal regulators in recent months to remediate all sites that showed high levels of toxins, to no avail.

"It seems like it would be a good opportunity. If the concentrations are there, then let's remediate it," Presley said. "I was told the immediate concern is not on the contaminated soil right now. The immediate concern is the cleanup and removal and reconstruction. And if problems develop later, then they will be addressed."

Presley declined to identify which agencies or federal officials made the comments.

Sam Coleman, regional director for the EPA's toxic waste cleanup division, said he could not respond directly to Presley's claim. But he said his agency's involvement in New Orleans did not end in December, when the EPA agreed to a broad statement drafted by McDaniel's office that said the region was generally safe for return.

"When you talk to scientists and engineers, you always get a lot of hedging," Coleman said. "In general, there's no long-term health effects, but the reason we go back and look at these locations is (that) something there has caused us some concern to go back and look further. And as we look further, we'll be able to go back and make long-term decisions."

. . . . . . .

Information about chemical contamination, broken down by ZIP code, is available on the DEQ's Web site, www.deq.louisiana.gov. An alternate view is available through the Natural Resources Defense Council, www.nrdc.org.

. . . . . . .

Matthew Brown can be reached at mbrown@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3784.

Link to site: Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 6, 2006; Page A01

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Highlights:
- Experts monitoring the $1.6 billion reconstruction project say large sections of the rebuilt levee system will be substantially weaker than before the hurricane hit.
- These experts say the Corps, racing to rebuild 169 miles of levees destroyed or damaged by Katrina, is taking shortcuts to compress what is usually a years-long construction process into a few weeks.
- And they say the Corps is deferring repairs to flood walls that survived Katrina but suffered structural damage that could cause them to topple in a future storm.


NEW ORLEANS -- The Army Corps of Engineers seems likely to fulfill a promise by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans's toppled flood walls to their original, pre-Katrina height by June 1, but two teams of independent experts monitoring the $1.6 billion reconstruction project say large sections of the rebuilt levee system will be substantially weaker than before the hurricane hit.

These experts say the Corps, racing to rebuild 169 miles of levees destroyed or damaged by Katrina, is taking shortcuts to compress what is usually a years-long construction process into a few weeks. They say that weak, substandard materials are being used in some levee walls, citing lab tests as evidence. And they say the Corps is deferring repairs to flood walls that survived Katrina but suffered structural damage that could cause them to topple in a future storm.

Louisiana State University researcher Ezra Boyd examines a crack in a flood wall in Jefferson Parish, west of New Orleans. Scientists say many levees that survived Hurricane Katrina are compromised and may fail in another storm. (By Joby Warrick -- The Washington Post)
Graphic
Levee Rebuilding: Ready or Not?
The Army Corps of Engineers is racing to rebuild 41 miles of broken levees and patch up damage along an additional 128 miles before the hurricane season officially starts June 1. But some independent experts are questioning whether New Orleans's hurricane-protection system will be truly ready.

The Corps strongly disputes the assertion -- by engineers from a National Science Foundation-funded panel and a Louisiana team appointed to monitor the rebuilding -- that substandard materials are being used in construction. Agency officials maintain that the new levees are rigorously inspected at each step. But they acknowledge that much more work will be needed after June 1, the beginning of hurricane season, and that the finished system still will not be strong enough to withstand a storm the magnitude of Katrina.

"The people of New Orleans need to get back to at least the level of hurricane protection we had before Katrina," Corps spokesman Jim Taylor said. "We were authorized to do that, and do it quickly. It's up to Congress to decide to take it to a higher level."

But Ivor van Heerden, a Louisiana State University engineering professor and leader of a state-appointed team of experts investigating the failure of the levee system during Katrina, charged that "the government is trying to create a sense of security that doesn't exist."

"What we have today," he added, "is a compromised levee system that failed during a fast-moving Category 3 hurricane. Absolutely nowhere are the levees ready to stand up to the same kind of test."

The Corps said several steps that could help the levee system survive a major hurricane will have to wait until next year. For example, systematic testing for weak soils beneath the levees will not be completed until 2007. Two of the most devastating flood wall breaches during Katrina have been blamed in part on weak, peatlike soils beneath the walls' foundations.

In addition, a plan to line the bases of certain critical levees with a protective layer of rock or concrete -- a process known as "armoring" -- is not expected to begin until summer, and then only if Congress provides additional money. Levee armoring significantly lowers the risk that a levee will collapse when it is overtopped by floodwaters.

A recent report by a prestigious panel of the American Society of Civil Engineers described the lack of armoring in New Orleans's levees as a "fundamental flaw" that demands urgent attention. The same report also faulted the Corps for making predictions about the system's safety before the agency officially determined what caused the levees to fail in the first place.

"Overtopping during Katrina caused catastrophic flooding and destruction of the levees themselves," said David E. Daniel, president of the University of Texas at Dallas and a member of the engineers panel. "It is inevitable that the levees will again be overtopped -- the only question is when."

Katrina breached the region's 350-mile levee system in dozens of places, blasting out huge chunks of concrete flood walls in central New Orleans and obliterating miles of earthen levees south and east of downtown. The breaches put 75 percent of New Orleans under water and transformed Katrina from a destructive but ordinary storm to a monumental disaster that claimed more than 1,300 lives.

The Bush administration has requested about $3.1 billion for repairing and strengthening the region's hurricane defenses. In addition to the $1.6 billion approved by Congress for rapid repairs to broken levees, the administration is seeking additional money for armoring, new floodgates and more pumping stations.

Link to site: Hurricane Response 2005, updated 4/14/06

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Highlights:
- EPA has taken soil samples at potential temporary resident housing locations. They will be used to help FEMA determine the suitability of these locations for temporary housing for residents.
- EPA has a mission assignment to sample up to 25 sites for FEMA, and will continue to sample locations as requested.
• Chapperon Development Corporation Temporary Housing Location
• City Park Temporary Housing Location
• Clanton Chapel United Methodist Church in Dulac Temporary Housing Location
• Corinne Baptist Church
• Fanz Mobile Estates Park
• Judge Perez Drive Temporary Housing Location
• Jumonville Temporary Housing Location
• Lattimore Temporary Housing Location
- SEE BELOW FOR MORE INFO

At the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), EPA has taken soil samples at potential temporary resident housing locations. They will be used to help FEMA determine the suitability of these locations for temporary housing for residents.

EPA has a mission assignment to sample up to 25 sites for FEMA, and will continue to sample locations as requested.
• Chapperon Development Corporation Temporary Housing Location
• City Park Temporary Housing Location
• Clanton Chapel United Methodist Church in Dulac Temporary Housing Location
• Corinne Baptist Church
• Fanz Mobile Estates Park
• Judge Perez Drive Temporary Housing Location
• Jumonville Temporary Housing Location
• Lattimore Temporary Housing Location

Chapperon Development Corporation Temporary Housing Location
On January 18, 2006, EPA collected 20 soil samples and three surface water samples at the Chapperon Development Property in Meraux, St. Bernard Parish. These soil samples were collected at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the suitability of this location for use as a temporary housing site.

Low levels of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pesticides and metals were detected in a number of the soil samples collected. However, the concentrations of chemicals detected in the samples did not exceed Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) values.

Similarly, low levels of diesel range and oil range organic chemicals and metals were found in water samples collected in a creek adjacent to the property. None of the concentrations detected exceeded LDEQ drinking water standards, with the exception of thallium. Thallium levels in two samples (0.0082 and 0.0097 mg/L) exceeded the LDEQ RECAP value for drinking water of 0.002 mg/L. The water in the creek is not a source of drinking water. However, for the purposes of screening, the results of the water samples were compared to LDEQ RECAP values for drinking water.

City Park Temporary Housing Location
On January 22 and 23, 2006, EPA collected 40 soil samples at City Park in New Orleans. These samples were collected at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the suitability of this location for use as a temporary housing site.

Low levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), diesel and oil range organic chemicals, pesticides and metals were detected in the samples. The levels of most of the chemicals detected fell below Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) standards for residential soil.

PAHs were detected in 34 of the 40 samples collected. Benzo(a)pyrene was detected in two samples at 973 ug/kg and 1,070 ug/kg. The RECAP value for benzo(a)pyrene is 330 ug/kg. Benzo(b)fluoranthene was detected in the same two samples at 1,710 ug/kg and 1,750 ug/kg. The RECAP value for benzo(b)fluoranthene is 620 ug/kg. Indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene was detected in two samples at 678 ug/kg and 697 ug/kg. The RECAP value for indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene is 620 ug/kg. Although the levels of these PAHs exceed their respective RECAP values, these levels fall within a risk range, of 1 in 1,000,000 to 1 in 10,000 risk of an individual developing cancer over a lifetime from exposure to these concentrations, which EPA has found acceptable in other contexts.

Pesticides were detected in 19 of the 40 samples collected. Dieldrin was detected in two samples at 46.4 ug/kg and 76.8 ug/kg. The RECAP value for dieldrin is 30 ug/kg. Although these levels of dieldrin exceed their RECAP value, these levels fall within a risk range, of 1 in 1,000,000 to 1 in 10,000 risk of an individual developing cancer over a lifetime from exposure to these concentrations, which EPA has found acceptable in other contexts.

Arsenic was detected 37 of the 40 samples collected. In ten of the samples, arsenic was detected at levels above the RECAP value of 12 mg/kg. In two of the samples, the concentrations detected exceeded the EPA risk range. Arsenic was detected in one sample at 40 mg/kg and in a second sample at 67.5 mg/kg. Using long-term (i.e., 30 year) residential exposure assumptions, EPA estimates exposure to an arsenic concentration of 39 mg/kg may pose a 1 in 10,000 excess lifetime cancer risk.

Clanton Chapel United Methodist Church in Dulac Temporary Housing Location

On February 18, 2006, EPA collected 4 sediment samples from the Clanton Chapel United Methodist Church in Dulac, Terrebonne Parish. EPA has collected these sediment samples at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist FEMA in its determination as to the suitability of this location for use as a temporary housing site. At the Clanton Chapel United Methodist Church location there were no contaminants detected above Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) levels.

Corinne Baptist Church
On December 17, 2005, sediment samples were collected at the Corinne Baptist Church, in Violet, St. Bernard Parish. These sediment samples were collected at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the suitability of this location for use as a temporary housing site. At the Corinne Baptist Church location there were no contaminants detected above Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) levels.

Fanz Mobile Estates Park
On December 15 and 16, 2005, sediment samples were collected at the Fanz Mobile Estates Park in Toca, St. Bernard Parish. These sediment samples were collected at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the suitability of this location for temporary housing. At the Fanz Mobile Estates Park there were no contaminants detected above Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) levels.

Judge Perez Drive Temporary Housing Location
On December 15, 2005, sediment samples were collected at a property on Judge Perez Drive in Violet, St. Bernard Parish. These sediment samples were collected at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the suitability of this location for use as a temporary housing site. At the Judge Perez Drive location, lead was detected in one sample at 404 mg/kg. This level is slightly above the USEPA screening level and Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) level of 400 mg/kg. Benzo(a)pyrene was detected in another sample at a concentration of 0.951 mg/kg. This concentration exceeds the RECAP level of 0.330 mg/kg, but falls within a risk range of 1 in 1,000,000 to 1 in 10,000 risk, of an individual developing cancer over a lifetime from exposure to those concentrations, which USEPA has found acceptable in other contexts.

Jumonville Temporary Housing Location
On January 24, 2006, EPA collected 6 soil samples at the Jumonville Temporary Housing location in Mereaux, St. Bernard Parish. These samples were collected at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the suitability of this location for use as a temporary housing site.

Low levels of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), diesel and oil range organic chemicals, pesticides and metals were detected in the samples. None of the levels exceeded their respective Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) values.

Lattimore Temporary Housing Location
On January 20, 2006, EPA collected 7 soil samples at the Lattimore Temporary Housing location in Mereaux, St. Bernard Parish. These samples were collected at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the suitability of this location for use as a temporary housing site.

Low levels of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), diesel and oil range organic chemicals, pesticides and metals were detected in the samples. None of the levels exceeded their respective Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) values.

Link to site: Jim Motavalli, Green Living March, 2006

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Highlights:
- The Bush administration had other funding priorities. President Bush committed $22 million over five years to Army Corps of Engineers flood control efforts, but the Corps and the state of Louisiana had asked for five times that much.
- National Geographic report from 2004: “The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.”
- The environmental community is anticipating that politicians will twist the oil shortage to their own ends.


In an interview with TV anchor Diane Sawyer, President Bush proclaimed confidently, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” The statement had about as much grounding in reality as one made a few days later by his mother, Barbara Bush, who was visiting Houston as part of Republican spin control and was favorably impressed with conditions inside the Astrodome: “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this is working very well for them,” she said. As blogger Andrew Sullivan noted, it was her Marie Antoinette moment.

We knew not only that the levees could breach, but that they were likely to do so. We even knew what to do about it, but the Bush administration had other funding priorities. President Bush committed $22 million over five years to Army Corps of Engineers flood control efforts, but the Corps and the state of Louisiana had asked for five times that much. “For years, Congress has consistently approved far more for New Orleans-area projects than the White House has proposed,” said the San Jose Mercury News.

Absent such preparation, we knew what to expect. New Orleans' Time-Picayune ran an exhaustive series on the impending disaster. Here’s a brief excerpt from a National Geographic report from 2004: “The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.”

The article quotes Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State: “The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours--coming from the worst direction.”

Nobody anticipated a horrific flooding of New Orleans? Here’s National Geographic’s graphic but imaginary scenario from 2004, which was only too painfully realized. The actual storm differed only in details: “The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back [Lake Pontchartrain] and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level--more than eight feet below in places--so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.”

Here’s another warning, from the pages of Mike Tidwell’s newly timely Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast, published in 2003 by Pantheon. The state’s coastal wetlands, Tidwell pointed out, were disappearing at a rate of 25 square miles per year, meaning that “hundreds of Louisiana towns and cities, all just a few feet above sea level, lie increasingly prone to that deadly wrecking ball of hurricane force known as the storm surge. Coastal wetlands, it turns out, provide more than just a critical nursery for shrimp, crabs and fish. Every 2.7 miles of marsh grass absorbs a foot of a hurricane’s storm surge, that huge tide of water pushed inland by the storm’s winds. For New Orleans alone, hemmed in by levees and already on average eight feet below sea level, the apron of wetlands between it and the closest Gulf shore was, cumulatively, about 50 miles a century ago. Today that distance is perhaps 20 miles and shrinking fast. With very slow evacuation speed virtually guaranteed (there are only three major exit bridges that jump over the encircling levees for central New Orleans’ 600,000 people, it’s not implausible that a major hurricane approaching from the right direction could cause tens of thousands of deaths.”

We still don’t know the full human toll from Hurricane Katrina. The full extent of the environmental damage may be long in coming, too. Environmental reporters say the EPA has so far been unresponsive in providing an overview on oil spills, chemical releases, fires and other accidents. Tanks capable of holding two million barrels of oil were seen to be leaking into the Mississippi River near the Louisiana town of Venice, Reuters reported.

The oil industry was still largely out of commission at presstime, with 70 percent of normal oil production and half of natural gas output shut down. Twenty oil platforms were reported missing. Eight major refineries--vital to produce gasoline from crude oil, and already strained before the hurricane struck--were out of commission. As the Associated Press noted, the hurricane disabled 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity and “contributed to a surge in retail gasoline prices and spot shortages around the country.”

The environmental community is anticipating that politicians will twist the oil shortage to their own ends. New York Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jeanine Pirro called for a suspension of the federal gas tax, which would surely put more people on the road, increasing demand and exacerbating the problem. Calls to drill in Alaska weren't far behind. The Sierra Club’s David Willet: “Some members of Congress have already used Hurricane Katrina--which killed untold hundreds or thousands of people to advance their narrow political agenda. Now because Hurricane Katrina seriously affected the production, refinery capacity and price of oil in the United States, some in Congress are trying to use it as an excuse to renew calls to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and our fragile coastlines. Have they no shame? Are they so bankrupt of ideas?”

The Chicago Tribune called the environmental after-effects of the storm a “creeping catastrophe,” though it noted that, according to early reports, the chemical plants and refineries to the south and east of New Orleans had mostly escaped serious damage. And of course, the floodwaters themselves were hardly benign. “Even before the storm hit, many of the region’s waterways were among the dirtiest in the nation,” the Tribune said. “Louisiana ranks fourth in the nation for releases of toxic chemicals into rivers and streams, and it leads the nation in releases of chemicals that persist in the environment and build up in the human body, according to government data.” There was concern about tetanus spreading through the area, and contaminated sediment being left behind when the floodwaters recede.

It wasn’t surprising that the media suddenly took an interest in Mike Tidwell’s prescient Bayou Farewell book. E spoke to an impassioned Tidwell in the midst of a barrage of calls from major news outlets:

TIDWELL: I think that the fact that the President can make a comment like “no one anticipated the breach of the levees” in New Orleans is all the evidence America needs to see how profoundly out of touch this President is with basic homeland security issues here in America. How can you have homeland security when you don’t have a home, like a million people along the Gulf Coast? How can you have homeland security when those people have no security whatsoever? How can you have homeland security when people can’t even afford to drive their cars because gas is $1.50 more a gallon?

Author of Bayou Farewell, Mike Tidwell.
This President says he didn’t know the levees could break, but his own administration was virtually besieged with urgent requests for levee restoration and building by the State of Louisiana and by New Orleans itself for years. They heard repeated urgent pleas for federal money contributed towards the $14 billion coastal restoration plan, which is a plan to reengineer the coast of Louisiana and recreate the islands and the wetlands that have disappeared. This President ignored or dramatically under-funded all requests for federal involvement in that plan.

So there is a paper trail that is as tall as Mount Everest. Governor Kathleen Blanco met with Bush just a few months after she was elected. She brought up three issues, the most important of them was that our coast is imploding, it’s disappearing, it’s outlandishly vulnerable to hurricanes. The President’s response was, “I’d like to help you as long as the science is sound.” And they then proceeded to do nothing. You know that same phrase “sound science” was used to do nothing about global warming, even though the science is irrefutable.

JIM MOTAVALLI: I edited the book <&src=QHA022" >Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Climate Change, which came out last year and details the global warming effects that are already underway and measurable. There’s a chapter that I wrote looking at barrier islands and what they do, and why we’re losing them because of global warming. It focuses on the vulnerability of the New Jersey and Florida coasts, which are doubly in danger because development has removed wetlands and housing extends right to the shore.

TIDWELL: I’m trying to bend the discussion towards climate change. I’ve been given a platform and, my God, every media outlet in the country is contacting me. I will be on MSNBC and CNN tonight, and NPR’s Morning Edition tomorrow morning. I owe a call to the Wall Street Journal. What I’m saying to them is that the same Bush administration that ignored the warnings about the levees in New Orleans also ignored the warning about the barrier islands and the wetlands buffering the coast in Louisiana. They did nothing, and now we have a million refugees and tens of thousands of people probably dead and who knows how much economic damage. Their negligent policy led to or contributed to this catastrophe. They’re now ignoring the same iron-clad data from their own agencies saying that climate change is real. And one of the impacts is going to be one to three feet of sea level rise in the 21st century.

If we continue to ignore these warnings, every coastal city in America and around the world could turn into a New Orleans. Whether the land sinks three feet in a century or the sea level rises three feet a century, you get the same effect. So if we want to know what Shanghai, Bombay, Miami and New York are all going to be like 50, 70 or 100 years from now, turn on your television right now: It’s on full graphic display.

MOTAVALLI: Let me just ask you one more question, because I know you have to go. What do you think really needs to be done not just to rebuild New Orleans, but to save it from another such tragedy?

TIDWELL: We can rebuild New Orleans: A lot of those structures are still there and can be either rebuilt or refurbished. We could rebuild the levees, and make them much bigger. We can do all that, but in my view it would be immoral and irresponsible to repair a single broken window or pick up a single piece of debris to repair a single cubic foot of levee without simultaneously committing to a full coastal restoration plan. You’ve got to repair the barrier islands at the same time that you fix the windows; you have to replenish the wetlands at the same time you drain New Orleans. To do one without the other is an invitation for another nightmare.

Link to site: JOE GYAN JR., New Orleans bureau, 3/2/06

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Highlights:
- The city Sewerage & Water Board plans to begin delivering safe drinking water in two to three weeks, and FEMA contractors will be ready to hook up hundreds of trailers.
- The city’s Internet site says the Lower 9th’s sewerage system is inoperative, water is not potable, electric service is available to less than 25 percent of the area’s customers and gas service is available to only 3 percent.
- The Lower 9th has faced four major obstacles: electricity, drinkable water, debris removal and sewerage service.

NEW ORLEANS — In what she termed a “major breakthrough,” New Orleans City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis announced Wednesday that electricity, potable water and temporary trailers soon will be coming to parts of the Lower 9th Ward, much of which was ravaged by hurricanes Katrina’s and Rita’s flood waters.

Willard-Lewis, whose district includes the Lower 9th, said Entergy New Orleans is prepared to hook up electrical connections, the city Sewerage & Water Board plans to begin delivering safe drinking water in two to three weeks, and FEMA contractors will be ready to hook up hundreds of trailers.

Willard-Lewis said “thousands” of Lower 9th residents have expressed a desire to return to the neighborhood and 500 have requested trailers. The trailers can go on front lawns, side lawns or at group sites centered on churches, she said.

“We have a plan today. It focuses on the people’s right to return to the Lower 9th Ward,” Willard-Lewis, flanked by clergy and community leaders, said during a news conference at City Hall. There are 15,000 to 17,000 homes in the Lower 9th, she said.

The Lower 9th Ward, east of the Industrial Canal, was heavily damaged by the hurricanes when the canal levee breached during both storms. The entire Lower 9th is open only for what Mayor Ray Nagin calls “look and leave” visitation, meaning residents can return to see the extent of damage to their property and gather personal effects. Visitation hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The city’s Internet site says the Lower 9th’s sewerage system is inoperative, water is not potable, electric service is available to less than 25 percent of the area’s customers and gas service is available to only 3 percent.

Entergy New Orleans spokeswoman Beth Raley, who attended the news conference, said a particularly hard-hit six-block area of the Lower 9th on the lake side of North Claiborne Avenue where a barge came through the levee breach will not have available electric service for the foreseeable future.

Overall, Raley said, roughly 95 percent of the city can take electricity when homes are safe to do so and 86 percent can take gas service when homes are ready for it. Last month alone, she said, Entergy connected more than 3,400 trailers across the city.

Willard-Lewis said the Lower 9th has faced four major obstacles: electricity, drinkable water, debris removal and sewerage service.

“We are busting through the obstacles,” she said, noting that the neighborhood is being cleaned up.

The Sewerage & Water Board, in conjunction with the state, hopes to test and certify the water from Derbigny Street south to the river in the next two to three weeks, Willard-Lewis said.

Reporters asked her if it is wise to try to move ahead in the Lower 9th when FEMA’s new flood maps have not been released and Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission has not issued its final report.

“We are focusing on the plan of the people,” she said. “We are not going to be sidetracked.”Willard-Lewis, who noted that too much of New Orleans, particularly the 9th Ward, resembles a “disaster zone,” said roadblocks and delays and excuses are no longer acceptable.

“We are building on the invitation to bring New Orleans back,” she said, adding that the rebuilding will be a “long-term process.”

Willard-Lewis, though, said the recovery has been “much too slow.”

“Get out of the way. Remove the roadblocks,” she said.

Bishop J.E. Daniels, a minister in the Lower 9th Ward, said members of his congregation who are scattered across the country in Atlanta and Memphis, Tenn., are “hurting” and “bleeding” but want to return home.

“We’re here to say that we’re coming back,” he said at the news conference. “We’re not going to stand on the sideline and wait. We’re going to stand firm and get our people back.”

As for the recovery, Daniels said, “I think we should have moved this process faster. I think they’re (government officials) dragging their feet.”

Rev. Errol Dyson, another Lower 9th minister, said he has been holding services in the Lower 9th for about a month.

“We have property here. This is our home. We don’t have to ask to come home. It’s our right,” he said. Dyson said his church on Forstall Street does not have electricity, but Holy Cross Middle School half a block away has power. Several trailers are hooked up in the Holy Cross area, he said.

Dyson said many Lower 9th residents feel their neighborhood has been placed at the “bottom of the totem pole.”

“It’s becoming offensive to many of those who want to come home,” he said.

Mary Fontenot, executive director of All Congregations Together, or ACT, spoke for the Lower 9th “homeowners who are homeless.” “Our No. 1 effort is to see our people back in their homes,” she said.