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 Reference: RICHARD BURGESS, Acadiana bureau, Feb 28, 2006

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Highlights:
- Hurricane Rita piled more than 1,700 acres of debris in the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge in Cameron Parish, including hundreds of containers that could be filled with as much as 350,000 gallons of hazardous materials, according to a report prepared for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
- A prized national wildlife refuge that has effectively become a toxic dump
- Rita’s storm surge pushed the remnants of Holly Beach and other coastal towns into the refuge as well as storage tanks ripped from dozens of oil and gas facilities in the storm’s path.

LAFAYETTE — Hurricane Rita piled more than 1,700 acres of debris in the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge in Cameron Parish, including hundreds of containers that could be filled with as much as 350,000 gallons of hazardous materials, according to a report prepared for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The report, by Research Planning of South Carolina, concludes if work does not soon begin to remove the hazardous materials, the refuge “will be at significant risk of chemical and physical damages for decades.”

“We are looking at a prized national wildlife refuge that has effectively become a toxic dump,” said Evan Hirsche, chairman of the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement, a coalition of groups that push for more funding of the federal refuge system.

Rita’s storm surge pushed the remnants of Holly Beach and other coastal towns into the refuge as well as storage tanks ripped from dozens of oil and gas facilities in the storm’s path.

Much of the debris in the refuge is a mix of housing materials and dead vegetation, which can suffocate marsh plants and disturb natural water flow.

Of greater concern are the estimated 759 containers that could contain anywhere from 115,000 to 350,000 of hazardous liquids and gases, according to the report.

The containers — likely filled with such substances as oil, cleaning solvents and other industrial supplies — range from 10,000-gallon tanks to 35-gallon drums.

The low estimate of 115,000 gallons of hazardous material assumes that on average each container is filled to 25 percent capacity, while the high estimate of 350,000 gallons assumes the average container is at 75 percent capacity.

The report, based on aerial photography and satellite images, does not include any containers that might have sunk into the marsh.

“It is likely that there are significant numbers of hazmat debris items buried in the debris piles not currently visible,” the report states.

A lack of funding has frustrated efforts to remove hazardous debris from the 124,500-acre refuge, a coastal haven for waterfowl and shorebirds.

“A lot of that has been left there, because it takes particular skills for hazardous removal,” said Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Tom MacKenzie.

Early estimates for the cleanup of hazardous materials in the Sabine refuge are at “$10 million plus,” MacKenzie said.

He said the Fish and Wildlife Service has its hopes pinned on a $132 million package proposed by the Bush administration to fund cleanup and rebuilding on refuges throughout the southeast damaged by hurricanes Rita, Katrina and Wilma.

The funding requires congressional approval and includes money for work on 61 refuges or other Fish and Wildlife Service facilities.

“The onus now is really on Congress to step up to the plate,” Hirsche said.

MacKenzie said the $132 million would be “a real shot in the arm” for the hurricane-damaged refuge system along the Gulf Coast.

Less extensive hazardous waste cleanup work is needed in nearby Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge, MacKenzie said.

He said hazardous containers have been found in the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge and the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, both near New Orleans, but no formal studies of hazardous debris have been carried out at those refuges.

“I think Sabine is just the tip of the iceberg, the most compelling example,” Hirsche said.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has been removing hazardous material containers tossed about by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but the EPA is not performing cleanup work on federally owned lands, such as refuges.

In areas outside of the refuge in Cameron and Calcasieu parishes, EPA teams have recovered about 112,000 gas and liquid containers since November, said Chris Ruhl, who is helping coordinate EPA’s effort in southwest Louisiana.

The containers recovered so far in Cameron and Calcasieu include 7,371 55-gallon drums, 2,295 propane tanks and 1,100 containers larger than 55 gallons, Ruhl said.

Link to Reference: Spencer S. Hsu and Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, 2/23/06

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Highlights:
- Floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina deposited arsenic, lead and petrochemical compounds across greater New Orleans in amounts that are potentially dangerous to human health, despite federal and state assurances that the sludge is safe, according to a new study based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.
- "State and some federal officials have been consistently denying there are any significant risks from the toxic mud that has spread across the city,"
- Environmental activists are calling on government agencies to clean up contaminated sediment; test schools and playgrounds; and provide information and protective equipment to residential- and business-property owners.

WASHINGTON — Floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina deposited arsenic, lead and petrochemical compounds across greater New Orleans in amounts that are potentially dangerous to human health, despite federal and state assurances that the sludge is safe, according to a new study based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.

The study, which was conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council and is being released today, urges the government to clean up the waste before permitting young children to return to the struggling city.

Government officials have minimized the public-health threat in New Orleans, the environmental group said. Louisiana officials have said some toxic contaminants have been found only on golf courses that use pesticides containing arsenic, but the NRDC report includes maps detailing dozens of high arsenic levels taken across wide swaths of the urban area.

"State and some federal officials have been consistently denying there are any significant risks from the toxic mud that has spread across the city," said Erik Olson, a senior NRDC lawyer. "The data they themselves have collected show that to the contrary, there are significant risks from arsenic and toxic chemicals that have blanketed much of New Orleans."

Environmental activists are calling on government agencies to clean up contaminated sediment; test schools and playgrounds; and provide information and protective equipment to residential- and business-property owners. Many toxins are especially dangerous to children, and metals such as lead can stunt development.

"Young children should not play in any areas where there is still sediment on the ground," wrote the report's authors, Gina Solomon and Miriam Rotkin-Ellman. "It would be best to keep children out of the city until cleanup has occurred."

Tom Harris, administrator of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality's Environment Technology Division, said the NRDC and others have been "grossly misusing" state screening standards and presenting them as thresholds that would trigger government cleanups. He added that these toxicity guidelines would merit further investigation rather than an automatic cleanup, and would have to be greatly exceeded before harming young children.

"We have taken to date almost 1,000 soil and sediment samples in New Orleans," Harris said. "I have not seen any samples that were a problem for acute exposure, short-term exposure," meaning up to two years, he said.

The safety thresholds are based on exposure over 30 years, Harris said.

EPA spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said the agency "from day one" has provided air, water and soil sample analyses for its state and local partners, "quickly shared our information and then executed the appropriate next steps."

Also, the White House is scheduled to release a report today calling for the military to be more closely involved in handling large natural disasters as part of a plan to improve the government's emergency-response operations.

Link to Reference: James Varney, Staff writer, Feb 15, 2006

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Highlights:
- FEMA contractors have been using the Old Gentilly site, which closed in 1986, as an emergency receptacle for some of the millions of cubic yards of debris created by last year's storms. The site's reopening triggered protests from various groups who feared the antiquated landfill wasn't an environmentally sound site for new dumping, and FEMA ordered up the study in response to those complaints and lawsuits.
- There is a concern that relatively weak natural foundation soils underlying the Gentilly Landfill may be overloaded by ongoing waste placement and become unstable," the report said. "In particular, there is a potential that affected soils may include foundation soils below the MR-GO levee and extend out as far as the MR-GO canal face."
- We had already developed concerns about the close proximity of the landfill and the levee in our review of the city's levee system," van Heerden said. "And with all this new matter there is a potential for a lateral heave given this type of soil." It appears that lateral heave would come from the estimated 4 million cubic yards of waste that has been dumped at Old Gentilly since Katrina.

The pressure from a monstrous pile of debris put into the Old Gentilly Landfill since Hurricane Katrina could push mushy soil under the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet levee, weakening another piece of New Orleans' already shaky flood-protection system, according to an investigative study of the site. That finding was the most explosive in a final draft of the study commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and released Tuesday.

State environmental officials disputed the findings in the report and characterized its methodology as "haphazard."

FEMA contractors have been using the Old Gentilly site, which closed in 1986, as an emergency receptacle for some of the millions of cubic yards of debris created by last year's storms. The site's reopening triggered protests from various groups who feared the antiquated landfill wasn't an environmentally sound site for new dumping, and FEMA ordered up the study in response to those complaints and lawsuits.

"Very simply, there is a concern that relatively weak natural foundation soils underlying the Gentilly Landfill may be overloaded by ongoing waste placement and become unstable," the report said. "In particular, there is a potential that affected soils may include foundation soils below the MR-GO levee and extend out as far as the MR-GO canal face."

The potential development bears an alarming similarity to what some groups believe happened with the 17th Street Canal during Hurricane Katrina. Studies in the failure zone there indicate that porous soil underneath the floodwall's steel pilings probably destabilized the protective barrier and led to its collapse. A state Senate committee is expected to take up the report's findings at a hearing Thursday.

Meanwhile, what might be developing beneath the MR-GO levee has also caught the attention of engineers investigating the 17th Street Canal's failure. Ivor van Heerden, a geologist at Louisiana State University, said he hopes to launch a formal probe of the MR-GO levee's underground strength in the next 10 days. What investigators will be looking for is something called, informally, "a hamburger effect," in which pressure atop something forces what is underneath to squirt out the sides.

"We had already developed concerns about the close proximity of the landfill and the levee in our review of the city's levee system," van Heerden said. "And with all this new matter there is a potential for a lateral heave given this type of soil." It appears that lateral heave would come from the estimated 4 million cubic yards of waste that has been dumped at Old Gentilly since Katrina. Joel Waltzer, an attorney for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, which has filed a suit against the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality that seeks the revocation of the landfill's post-Katrina permit, estimated the debris is in places piled as high as 130 feet above the landfill's old clay cap and covers about 220 of the site's 230 acres.

FEMA did not respond to phone calls late Tuesday afternoon, and officials from the Department of Environmental Quality said elements of the study were done in a haphazard fashion and without full consultation with either DEQ or other regulatory agencies. In addition, the authors of the FEMA report, who spent no more than 45 minutes on the ground at Old Gentilly, never requested any of the voluminous data amassed on Old Gentilly Landfill operations, said Chuck Carr Brown, DEQ's assistant secretary.

"We see no place for FEMA to act like a regulatory agency here," Brown said, noting that his department was still reviewing the final report and would most likely issue a more comprehensive response. "We have lots and lots of issues with this report. We as a department have been involved with this site for more than 20 years, and you'd think if you were doing a report out there you'd want to talk to the regulatory bodies involved and they didn't."

Despite Brown's protests, Tuesday's report appeared to confirm many of the fears of the environmental groups who opposed the new activity at the landfill. It notes there is a dearth of data allowing accurate measurements of groundwater contamination, runoff, gas buildups and the structural soundness of a clay cap on the old dumped material. The report suggests the landfill could become a kind of seeping, poisonous sponge with long-term, baleful results in eastern New Orleans and beyond.

That could translate into a legal predicament for FEMA, according to National Infrastructure Support Technical Assistance Consultants, which conducted the study.

The group "concludes that FEMA could potentially be exposed to high risk of future environmental liability based on current conditions and environmental history of this site," the report said.

The environmental groups voiced that doomsday scenario even before the report began, but Waltzer said he was stunned by the possibility another levee could be undermined by subsoil action.

"It is beyond ironic (that) we would allow millions and millions of pounds of waste out there when we don't have conservative estimates or reliable information about the impact," he said.

The possibility the city's recent nightmarish history could repeat should be a bugle for residents, he said. Waltzer, who lost an office in eastern New Orleans and a home in Gentilly in the post-Katrina flooding, said he is not willing to take further chances.

"They're threatening my levee now," he said. "Forget about whether or not you're an environmentalist. You don't monkey around with levees here anymore."

On Tuesday morning, the Senate Environmental Quality Commission was addressing the draft version of the report when Sen. Derrick Shepherd, D-Marrero, said he received an anonymous copy of the final report. Senators and DEQ officials have rescheduled the hearing for Thursday morning, but Shepherd was outspoken about what he thinks could be a disaster.

"I'm hoping to sound the alarm because I'm very frightened and the public should be very frightened," he said. "This report is scary, and the DEQ has no answer except to say it's erroneous, and that's not going to cut it."

At DEQ, Brown insisted such talk is hyperbolic. He cited a 2004 study tied to the impact of additional waste being put on top of Old Gentilly's clay cap and said that study showed the site could hold 2,000 times as much debris as has been dumped there since Katrina. Furthermore, tests on the actual site soil do not reflect the destabilizing influence the report theorizes could occur, he said.

"The people who did this report should have had that data, and they didn't," he said.

Similarly, fears of water contamination are overblown, Brown said. An analysis of groundwater at the site on Nov. 9 reflected zero contaminants, he said. What's more, the public is being misled about the type of debris that is being dumped at the Old Gentilly site. Brown pointed to three points at which the debris is reviewed -- at curbside when it is picked up, by "eyes" in towers who survey the trucks when they arrive, and by "pickers" at the dumping location -- as evidence hazardous materials are not being mingled.

As a result, he bristles at suggestions New Orleans might be repeating a mistake made at the Agriculture Street landfill after Hurricane Betsy in 1965. In that case, city officials dumped and burned storm-related debris atop the former landfill, which subsequently morphed into a Superfund site, the designation imposed on the nation's most contaminated areas and one that requires expensive and lengthy cleanups.

. . . . . . .

James Varney can be reached at jvarney@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3386.

Link to Reference: AMY WOLD, Advocate staff writer, Feb 13, 2006

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Highlights:
- Initial testing of the flood water showed extremely high levels of bacteria, sewage and chemicals from oil and gasoline. Speculation abounded about the “toxic soup” that would poison people and the land.
- Tests have shown that while the water was definitely unsanitary, it didn’t significantly differ from the normal storm runoff New Orleans experiences during heavy rain,
- He explained that most of the flooded areas were residential, not industrial. Even where a container of pesticide was left unsealed, the power of dilution in so much flood water made the impact negligible,

When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, people predicted a life-threatening “toxic soup.” It never formed.

They expected Lake Ponchartrain to suffer or even die as contaminated water from New Orleans was pumped into it. That didn’t occur.

Then they waited for returning residents to pack emergency rooms with lung ailments from the toxic dust, contaminated soil and mold. That hasn’t happened yet. So far, state Epidemiologist Dr. Raoult Ratard said, nothing appears out of the ordinary with illness in the New Orleans area.

While Hurricane Katrina caused massive destruction, many dire environmental predictions failed to materialize, state officials say.

Initial testing of the flood water showed extremely high levels of bacteria, sewage and chemicals from oil and gasoline. Speculation abounded about the “toxic soup” that would poison people and the land.

Tests have shown that while the water was definitely unsanitary, it didn’t significantly differ from the normal storm runoff New Orleans experiences during heavy rain, state Department of Environmental Quality scientists say.

John Pardue, associate professor and director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at LSU, said his research results seem consistent with what DEQ and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found.

“It’s fair to say the water there was just like normal storm water,” Pardue said.

He explained that most of the flooded areas were residential, not industrial. Even where a container of pesticide was left unsealed, the power of dilution in so much flood water made the impact negligible, he said.

“For the most part, those things floated away pretty intact without major spills,” Pardue said.

Part of the confusion involves how some groups compare test results to standards, said Tom Harris, administrator of DEQ’s environmental technology division.

At one point, groups were applying drinking-water standards to flood-water samples, he said. The drinking-water standard is based on someone consuming two liters daily for 30 years. That wasn’t going to happen with New Orleans flood water, Harris said.

Another fear was that dust from contaminated soil would pose a severe health threat.

Harris said the way soil samples were taken led to some confusion.

The first round of EPA testing took samples from the worst areas instead of trying to get an overall picture of the city’s safety. So if contamination could be seen, a sample was taken, meaning testing was done on storm drains and in areas were there was no flood-water sediment, he said.

Harris said in one round of testing, DEQ found that out of 160 samples taken by EPA, only 14 were from actual flood sediment. The rest were from soils that were probably there before the flooding, he said.

Image persists
So where did the idea of a toxic New Orleans start, and why has that image lingered in the public mind?

Chalk that up to human nature, DEQ Secretary Mike McDaniel said. The concentration of industry led many people, even experts, to expect horrific contamination.

“Unfortunately, those first concepts took root and spread around the world,” McDaniel said.

News reports circulated of a chemical plant blast, train car explosions and the ever-popular toxic soup.

“None of it was true,” McDaniel said. “That’s the result of the initial feeding frenzy — what’s the comment I heard the other day? — of disaster porn. It just frustrated the dickens out of me.”

In December, federal, state and local officials held a news conference on the safety of New Orleans. Public health officials urged people to take precautions against mold and to be careful while removing debris, but insisted the water, soil and air were safe.

“We’ve seen very little to be concerned about. Actually, nothing to be concerned about,” said June Sutherlin, a DEQ toxicologist.

Another take
Not everyone agrees with that assessment.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network have repeatedly accused DEQ and EPA of playing down the dangers.

Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association in New Orleans, cites an analysis by Dr. Gina Solomon.

“The concerns have not yet been addressed,” Dashiell said. “There’s been no remediation. It’s a matter of the EPA just not doing its job.”

Solomon, a physician who works with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, said she agrees with the test numbers posted by EPA and DEQ, but disagrees with how those results are being portrayed by the agencies.

She takes exception to the statement that there was no “toxic soup” in New Orleans.

“I think it all hinges on the definition of toxic soup,” she said.

There’s no dispute that oil, gasoline and a lot of bacteria were in the flood water, she noted.

While that contamination might be at the same level as the runoff from any storm in the city, the major difference is exposure. People walking through an inch or two of water have far less exposure to contaminants than those swimming in it, a common occurrence after Katrina, Solomon said.

Downplaying the results, she said, is an effort to make people feel comfortable moving back to New Orleans and an attempt to avoid having to clean anything up.

A question of arsenic
Solomon said arsenic levels are high all over the New Orleans area. Some groups are calling for soil removal in hotspots.
DEQ’s Harris said the higher levels his agency found were almost exclusively from samples taken from golf courses, where arsenic-containing pesticides are used.

Harris said Louisiana’s background level for arsenic is 12 parts per million. Even though that might be above EPA standards, people were likely living with those levels before the storm, he said.

“Even potting soil you bring home can have 100 parts per million of arsenic in it,” said June Sutherlin, a DEQ toxicologist.

Some people note that even if the post-Katrina contamination isn’t worse than what existed before the flooding, people still need to know what dangers they face.

Pardue noted that much of New Orleans had lead levels above residential standards before the storm. That doesn’t mean the results should be ignored, he said.

He said this question still remains: Should areas with higher arsenic and lead be cleaned up before rebuilding?

If it’s not feasible to clean to residential standards, people should be told of the long-term risks associated with returning — even if the contamination existed before the storm, Pardue said.

McDaniel said DEQ has been under no pressure to minimize the dangers. He said the department’s information is corroborated by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a long list of other agencies.

“Our pressure is to get the facts out,” he said.

Link to Reference: Pam Radtke Russell, Business writer, January 20, 2006

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Highlights:
- Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 115 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico
- 418 "minor pollution incidents" occurred within a four-week period in August and September. The agency defines a minor incident as a spill of 500 barrels of oil or less that does not reach the coastline. A spokeswoman could not provide the cumulative amount of oil that was spilled.
- The agency estimates that 3,050 of the Gulf's 4,000 platforms and 22,000 of the 33,000 miles of pipelines were in the direct path of the hurricanes. Most of the destroyed platforms were older and in shallower waters

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 115 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in the worst natural disaster to hit the oil and natural gas industry in the Gulf, the Minerals Management Service said Thursday.

The most recent assessment from the federal agency showed that in addition to the destroyed platforms, 52 platforms and 183 pipelines were damaged, and 418 "minor pollution incidents" occurred within a four-week period in August and September. The agency defines a minor incident as a spill of 500 barrels of oil or less that does not reach the coastline. A spokeswoman could not provide the cumulative amount of oil that was spilled.

About 25 percent of the oil production in the Gulf remains down because of the damage. That amount isn't expected to significantly change until the second half of this year.

The agency estimates that 3,050 of the Gulf's 4,000 platforms and 22,000 of the 33,000 miles of pipelines were in the direct path of the hurricanes. Most of the destroyed platforms were older and in shallower waters, said MMS spokeswoman Caryl Fagot, and all but one was a fixed platform.

BP alone lost 10 platforms in Hurricane Katrina. Seven of BP's platforms were toppled, and three of them were listing after the storm, said company spokeswoman Ayana McIntosh-Lee. But many of the shallow-water facilities were not producing, and those that were producing generated only about the equivalent of 2,500 barrels of oil per day.

BP produces about 400,000 barrels per day in the Gulf of Mexico, Lee said. The company is assessing the damage to the platforms and deciding what to do with them.

The Minerals Management Service plans to award six contracts to further assess and study the hurricanes and the damage they caused, including the response of waves and currents in the Gulf of Mexico.

After Hurricane Ivan in 2004, only seven platforms were destroyed, said MMS Regional Director Chris Oynes.

The assessment is not complete, Fagot said. The amount of damage could change as companies survey their Gulf facilities.

Oynes said the assessments have been delayed because of "overwhelmed support resources, such as diving equipment, support vessels, and remotely operated vehicles."

The most significant damage occurred at Royal Dutch Shell's Mars platform, which each day was producing 130,000 barrels of oil and 150 million cubic feet of gas before Katrina. Repairs are expected to be complete in the second half of the year.

The information released in the report was self-reported by the oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico.

Link to Reference: ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS SERVICE, Washington DC, February 23, 2006 (ENS)

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Highlights:
- 1,400 barrels of toxic liquids and gases are sinking into the coastal wetlands of the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge as a result of Hurricane Rita, which smashed southwestern Louisiana last September.
- 115,000 to 350,000 gallons of everything from oil and bleach to propane are contained within those barrels.
- "An additional unknown number [of barrels] are undetected or not visible," the report says. "It is likely that, without the address of these issues, Sabine National Wildlife Refuge will be at significant risk of chemical and physical damages for decades."


Government consultants report that more than 1,400 barrels of toxic liquids and gases are sinking into the coastal wetlands of the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge as a result of Hurricane Rita, which smashed southwestern Louisiana last September.

A report prepared for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and just released to the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE) finds that 115,000 to 350,000 gallons of everything from oil and bleach to propane are contained within those barrels.

Four containers of chlorine gas, which kills immediately upon exposure, were found, and two entire 18 wheelers were identified during the debris survey of the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge on which the report is based. Their contents is unknown.

"An additional unknown number [of barrels] are undetected or not visible," the report says. "It is likely that, without the address of these issues, Sabine National Wildlife Refuge will be at significant risk of chemical and physical damages for decades."

Debris dumped by Hurricane Rita still lies scattered across the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo credit unknown)
The refuge, on the coast near the Louisiana and Texas border, lacks the funding to begin removing the 1,400 barrels of toxics, which are strewn across the refuge.

The barrels are part of a six mile long debris field which can be seen from space and is thought to be the longest in the state. Much of the debris was created when nearby oil and gas facilities were ripped apart by the hurricane. More than 70 platforms and drilling rigs completely destroyed and more than 40 were damaged.

"This is really a simple question – do we want to clean this up now, while the impacts and costs are relatively manageable, or do we want to wait until this becomes a massive Superfund cleanup project?" said Evan Hirsche, chair of the Cooperative Alliance For Refuge Enhancement, a group of 21 nonprofit organizations committed to protecting wildlife refuges.

Neither the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been granted authority to work on the refuge lands, says Hirsche. The Department of the Interior lacks the funding to act, and current proposals before congressional appropriators appear too small to make any real difference, he says.

The destruction at Sabine has been devastating to its wildlife, Hirsche says. Dead animals alligators, small mammals and fish are scattered throughout the refuge.

The main trail through the refuge is closed, crippling the local ecotourism economy, which can bring in as much as $1.5 million daily. The toxic stew is seeping into the groundwater, putting local people at risk.

Written by Zach Nixon and Jacqueline Michel of Research Planning, Inc. based in Columbia, South Carolina, the report is based on ground and aerial surveys and remote sensing data.

In this aerial photo of the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, debris is seen scattered across the mud. (Photo courtesy Nixon and Michel)
In addition to the hazardous debris, the researchers identified thousands of non-toxic debris items such as pieces of vinyl or aluminum siding, insulation, plywood, corrugated metal, lumber and white goods such as refrigerators and water heaters that may contain small amounts of toxics.

Nixon and Michel estimate that there are 2,900 separate debris piles within the boundaries of the refuge, covering more than 1,730 acres or about 1.5 percent of its total area.

There are more than seven million cubic meters of debris in the refuge, and "the piles themselves represent a significant physical and ecological modification to the landscape" of the refuge, they report.

"It is likely that there are significant numbers of HAZMAT debris items buried in the debris piles and not currently visible," the report states.

In their report, Nixon and Michel offer three recommendations.

First, they recommend development of a detailed plan for removal of the identified items of hazardous materials (HAZMAT). Much has already been learned during HAZMAT removal actions in Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, they say.

As of January 30, they write, responders in coastal Louisiana are still working on removal of HAZMAT items from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina outside of federal lands, many located in remote and sensitive wetland areas. Responders are developing technologies and tracking costs for their removal, and their experiences can be used to evaluate cost effective technologies that will not further damage marsh habitats, Nixon and Michel suggest.

In southeast Louisiana, costs as of mid-January 2006 have been estimated to $800 per drum and $1,600 per larger container. "These costs are based on the difficult working conditions in St. Bernard Parish, where crews are getting only about four hours of actual work per day. The response team expects to increase their efficiency over time and cut these costs in half," they report.

Cost estimates for removal of large items with heavy lift helicopters are $4 million for 240 large items where the liquids have mostly been removed already, Nixon and Michel write.

This six mile long debris field was left by Hurricane Rita which made landfall on September 24, 2005. (Photo credit unknown)
Second, they suggest that surveys be conducted to identify buried debris items. Thermal surveys appear to be most promising and least expensive method, they recommend.

Finally, they say it will be important to continue monitoring the debris piles that remain after removal actions are finished

"The large amount of non-vegetative material in the debris piles poses significant risks to the habitat and use of the refuge," write Nixon and Michel. "Monitoring is necessary to track the rate of decay of the vegetative and woody material and track the behavior and fate of the persistent materials.

Hirsche of the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement warns that the situation in Sabine is a public health issue. "A national wildlife refuge could be declared a Superfund site," he told ENS in an interview. "We've got a severe situation with ramifications for groundwater, wildlife and people that depend on it for their well being."

Hirsche supports a request for emergency supplemental funding sent to Congress by President George W. Bush. It includes $132 million for cleanup of the 61 wildlife refuges in the Gulf Coast hurricane-stricken region, in addition to the $30 million approved by Congress two months ago.

But Hirsche says his group is concerned that funding for habitat restoration is not included in the budget requests made to date. Saltwater incursion has claimed miles of the coastal area, he says, suggesting that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs $75 million for habitat restoration.

Refuges in the Gulf coast states are havens for migratory songbirds, waterfowl, herons, egrets, spoonbills, and they are habitats that support a whole range of species.

"Even with all of this seemingly bad news, there is still a glimmer of hope," said Hirsche. "If we can convince our federal and state officials that this is important enough to focus on immediately, we can save future generations a dollar tomorrow for what we can spend a dime on today."

Link to Reference: Renee Peck, InsideOut editor, January 14, 2006

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Highlights:
- Mold is pretty gross stuff. It may, in fact, give the cockroach a run for its money.
- Mold spores are invisible -- typical size is 2 to 20 microns. To get a sense of how tiny that is, consider that you could fit 20 million 5-micron spores on a postage stamp.
- While there are no national numerical standards that decree what spore levels are "safe," the indoor air count should be a third or less of the corresponding outdoor count.

"But we only got 8 inches of water," Stewart kept saying as we surveyed molds in a panoply of varieties, hues and textures crawling across the walls and ceilings and into the air ducts of our East Lakeshore home.

"Eight inches, 8 feet, with mold it doesn't matter," replied the first of a series of workmen who come and go through our family like stray pets. We try to adopt them, but life on some other street invariably calls. After a career that has involved covering food, TV, parenting issues, local entertainment, the Internet and interior decor, I never saw myself as The Times-Picayune's mold writer.

Now I've spent four months in at-home and on-the-job training. I've talked to professional industrial hygienists on both coasts and states in between. I've interviewed government mold experts and licensed mold remediators and attended mold workshops. The Google home page on my computer goes automatically to "mold," without prompting.

And I've discovered that mold is pretty gross stuff. It may, in fact, give the cockroach a run for its money.

A live mold spore can live behind your walls for more than a decade, waiting for a stray drop of water to help it pop to life. A dead mold spore contains the same toxic properties as a live one, meaning that it can sit in your carpet or behind your air vent waiting to start a sneeze or coughing fit.

Until they grow into that billion-member colony that looks like cotton candy on your Sheetrock, mold spores are invisible -- typical size is 2 to 20 microns. To get a sense of how tiny that is, consider that you could fit 20 million 5-micron spores on a postage stamp.

Like us, molds need water and food for sustenance. They love to eat leather, starch adhesives and anything that contains paper (like your cellulose-filled drywall or insulation).

But for my family, the worst thing about mold is the smell. Slightly sweet and cloying, it lingers not only in the nostrils, but in the brain.

"There's something moldy in this car," Stewart will say as we drive to the Palace for a movie.

"You brought something moldy in here, I can smell it," he said in our Uptown apartment after a recent trip to our driveway POD storage unit . "I am not," I retort, "that stupid."

Mold, you see, has become our Katrina icon: It is death and loss and destruction. And it will be around for long months to come.

BRUSH-UP ON MOLD

This is remedial reading for those of you who, like me, have become pros at gutting drywall and spraying bleach and water on plaster. But for those just starting the process, here are some things about mold worth knowing, all gleaned from interviews I've reported.

-- Mold, which is a fungus, is a naturally N'Awlins kind of thing: We have thousands of varieties in the local environment. What you don't want is to have more spores inside your house than outside.

-- In Louisiana, professional mold remediators must be licensed. For a list, see www.lslbc.state.la.us/search/cresults.asp. Mold remediators cannot, in this state, conduct post-clearance tests on their own remediation efforts to document spore counts.

-- Mold can be cleaned from nonporous surfaces, such as granite or glass, but not from porous ones, such as drywall or carpets. Semi-porous substances, such as wood, often can be cleaned.

-- The recipe for mold remediation is "clean, then disinfect." Clean any visible mold with detergent, then disinfect with a solution of a half cup of bleach to a gallon of water.

-- Mold infestation requires drastic measures: Moldy drywall and any wet insulation behind it must be removed. Studs must be cleaned, disinfected and, if necessary, shaved or wire-brushed to remove mold. Plaster walls can be saved, unless there is wet insulation behind them.

-- Drywall should be removed at a height of at least 2 feet above the water line. A "flood cut" at 4 feet is common, since drywall comes in 4-foot sheets that can then fit into the opening. But remember that the mold you see on the outer walls is probably half of what's behind them. Water "wicks" up to higher levels inside the cavities, and mold colonies follow.

-- Drying is paramount to success. Studs should contain less than 20 percent moisture (some experts recommend under 16 percent) before walls are closed. Invest in a pronged hygrometer, or moisture meter, that you stick into the wood to test it yourself.

-- Cleaning mold without the proper attire is like skydiving without a backup chute. My N-95 twin cartridge respirator has replaced the muddy soccer cleats and stray homework pages in the passenger seat well of my car.

DOING IT MY WAY

I probably went overboard on mold cleanup, but everyone in my family has an allergy or three. Anyone who sneezes at the sight of a dust ball or has a suppressed immune system can be particularly sensitive to potential mycotoxins in mold. Basic drywall gutting runs $2 or $3 a square foot; professional mold remediators cost three or four times that. We felt the peace of mind was worth the cost.

Here's what licensed local company Aire-Scrubbers did at my house over the course of eight work days, with a crew of four:

-- Around-the-clock operation of commercial negative air pressure differential machines ("air scrubbers") to remove airborne spore particles.

-- Around-the-clock use of industrial dehumidifiers to dry the environment.

-- Removal of all drywall -- and ceilings -- downstairs and one mold-infested room upstairs.

-- Cleaning and wire-brushing of each exposed wooden stud.

-- High efficiency particulate air (also know as HEPA) vacuuming with a commercial vacuum that goes over floors, wall cavities and studs.

-- Application of an Environmental Protection Agency-approved latex-based bio-growth inhibitor to all exposed wood. This keeps any embedded or overlooked spores from reproducing.

The professional air quality inspector who measured spore counts afterward found the indoor mold count to be 259 per cubic meter, well under the 1,300 that designates a building "moldy," according to the National Allergy Bureau. Better yet, the indoor air-spore count was 93 percent lower than the outdoor count. While there are no national numerical standards that decree what spore levels are "safe," the indoor air count should be a third or less of the corresponding outdoor count.

For more information on mold see www.epa.gov/mold/index.html or www.buildingscience.com.

Link to Reference: KEVIN SPEAR, The Orlando Sentinel, 12/24/05

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Highlights:
- Scientists still don't know whether the slug of germs and chemicals is floating toward Florida's coast, drifting out to the Atlantic or lurking somewhere in between.
- hurricane batterings will heighten threats to an ecosystem already burdened with dead zones, toxic algae and mysterious plumes of pollution-laden black water off Florida's coast.
- The scientists never found fish kills, tainted shellfish or the pollution. Perhaps toxic floodwaters were neutralized by exposure to sun, sank to the bottom, decayed or were diluted.

NEW ORLEANS - Spilled chemicals, leaking gas tanks and city sewage all mingled with floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina that eventually drained into the Gulf of Mexico.

The toxic soup went somewhere. But its destination remains a mystery. Scientists still don't know whether the slug of germs and chemicals is floating toward Florida's coast, drifting out to the Atlantic or lurking somewhere in between.

The massive dose of pollution stands as one of the storm season's critical environmental lessons: The Gulf roils with looping, whirling currents able to turn one shore's mess into another's lasting misery.

That message is growing more urgent with predictions that hurricanes will punch harder and more often in coming decades.

Potential damage to cities, chemical plants and industrial sites — now and in years to come — could spell calamity for the Gulf's treasured wetlands, beaches, coral reefs, surf and sea life.

At the very least, hurricane batterings will heighten threats to an ecosystem already burdened with dead zones, toxic algae and mysterious plumes of pollution-laden black water off Florida's coast.

"Where does the Gulf of Mexico reach the tipping point where it can no longer fix itself?" asked Enid Sisskin, legislative chair for the Panhandle's Gulf Coast Environmental Defense.

A mess for others
The Gulf of Mexico's expanse — the world's fifth-largest sea — is really an illusion. Shaped like a fishbowl, upside down and slightly canted, its widest span equals a line from Orlando to New York. But the distance is easily conquered.

A hummingbird migrates from Mississippi to Mexico in 18 hours. Ships laden with wheat steam from Beaumont to beyond Key West in 48 hours. Natural-gas molecules surge through a pipeline under the Gulf from Mobile Bay to Tampa Bay in 59 hours.

It's not hard to see how a mess in one part of the Gulf can arrive quickly in others.

At Padre Island National Seashore, near Corpus Christi, researchers have traced trash to offshore rigs, shrimp boats, recreational boaters and more-distant sources, such as Midwest farms, said park science chief Darrell Echols.

After Mississippi River floods in the 1990s, crews hauled off everything from cow carcasses to roof trusses. After Katrina, workers returned to the park for truckloads of storm debris.

Yet how currents morph and whirl remains such a mystery that scientists aren't certain about how pollution travels. Predicting serpentine movements in the Gulf isn't nearly as reliable as forecasting a tropical storm.

"We have lots of weather observations on land," said Steve Murawski, chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington. "In the Gulf, we have a handful of buoys."

66 billion gallons
The unknowns of the Gulf have contributed to the mystery of what happened to the slug of pollution that flowed out of New Orleans.

Nobody can say how fast or in what direction it traveled. But they know more than 66 billion gallons drained out of the city — more than enough to fill the 50-square-mile Lake Apopka west of Orlando.

The giant plume set off such worries that an unprecedented armada of oceanographers, marine biologists and chemists fanned out in several ships across the northern Gulf of Mexico, from Florida to west of the Mississippi River delta.

Health authorities already had reported that evacuees who waded in floodwaters in New Orleans were breaking out with rashes and blistered skin.

"We had no way of knowing what to expect," said Shailer Cummings, chief scientist for one of the cruises sponsored by NOAA.

A University of South Florida oceanographer, in a separate effort, offered a theory. Using computer calculations and satellite observations of sea-surface changes, he estimated the swiftest-moving New Orleans contamination could have traveled the Gulf in circular detours for a month before hooking around South Florida to the Atlantic Ocean.

NOAA deployed "drifters" — floating electronic buoys — that broadcast their locations while riding currents. Some migrated toward Texas. Others meandered toward Florida.

The scientists never found fish kills, tainted shellfish or the pollution. Perhaps toxic floodwaters were neutralized by exposure to sun, sank to the bottom, decayed or were diluted.

Robert H. Gore, a marine scientist who wrote a book about the Gulf's wonders and plight in the early 1990s, doesn't expect that many will see Katrina's mess as a warning. He has marveled at how communities and industries that continue to crowd the region are so blind to their environmental risk-taking and the harm they cause the Gulf. "You built your own nest," Gore said. "Now you have to sit in it."

Link to Reference: Cain Burdeau, The Associated Press, 12/18/05

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Highlights:
- Regulators said environmental rules had to be set aside to save the Gulf Coast from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
- Federal and state agencies waived environmental laws regulating open burning. They waived the laws regulating asbestos removal. They waived rules for landfills, gasoline and diesel fuel standards, and water and air pollution - all in the name of recovery and rebuilding.
- Records show the oil industry was quick to seek and receive waivers and exceptions from state and federal agencies. EPA said it would use discretion in its enforcement of emissions at refineries because of the gasoline shortage throughout the nation.

NEW ORLEANS - From the moment New Orleans' filthy floodwaters were pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, regulators said environmental rules had to be set aside to save the Gulf Coast from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
   Federal and state agencies waived environmental laws regulating open burning. They waived the laws regulating asbestos removal. They waived rules for landfills, gasoline and diesel fuel standards, and water and air pollution - all in the name of recovery and rebuilding.
   Meanwhile, Louisiana's U.S. senators pushed for long-term waivers of environmental laws in hurricane-hit states to quicken rebuilding, tacking the proposal onto a stalled $250 billion rebuilding plan presented to Congress.
   Mostly, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the waivers were harmless. But some say they went too far, padding the pockets of oil companies and creating long-term environmental hazards.
   ''What these waivers represent is the government waiving protections of the public's health,'' said Adam Babich, director of Tulane University's Environmental Law Clinic. ''A lot of this seems to be happening under the radar without any public participation.''
   In Louisiana, the waivers and variances to permits came fast and furious after Katrina hit Aug. 29, DEQ documents show. More exceptions were issued a month later after Hurricane Rita.
   Some waivers, like the one that allows the burning of dead animal carcasses, appeared harmless. But many others have raised questions.
   Records show the oil industry was quick to seek and receive waivers and exceptions from state and federal agencies. EPA said it would use discretion in its enforcement of emissions at refineries because of the gasoline shortage throughout the nation.
   Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at EPA and longtime whistle-blower within the agency, said EPA's move to allow refineries to take longer to report emissions and not comply with environmental rules helped the companies make the record profits.
   ''The bottom line is everyone is taking major hits across the country except for one sector that's become a profit center, and that's not right, that's not American,'' Kaufman said.
   Darrin Mann, a DEQ spokesman, said the permits did not allow the refineries ''to go hog wild'' and emit large amounts of pollutants. Instead, DEQ says the waivers were needed so the refineries could work through kinks in their systems when they were shut down by the storms.
   EPA and DEQ officials have said that air monitors have shown no problems with air quality at the refineries. But Anne Rolfes, a Louisiana activist, insists that EPA tests after Katrina showed high levels of benzene near oil refineries.
   ''We're asking the neighbors of these refineries to put up with a lot of increased risk, increased fears and increased noise from these refineries so that we can enjoy the benefits of cheaper gasoline,'' Babich said.
   Meanwhile, environmentalists are challenging state regulators for sending much of the waste from gutted homes and businesses in New Orleans to an old city landfill that is not lined to keep contaminants from leaching out.
   The trucks hauling debris into the landfill are inspected from towers at the dump's entrance, but there are concerns that contractors are trucking in paint, household cleaners and chemicals by hiding the hazardous material at the bottom of their loads.
   Similar questions abound. In hard-hit Plaquemines Parish, waste is being burned 24 hours a day and mounds of debris will be bulldozed into unlined pits.
   Out in the Gulf of Mexico, the National Marine Fisheries Service waived the requirement that shrimpers use devices on their nets that let sea turtles escape. The agency said debris littering the Gulf made the devices impractical.
   On land, a Georgia-Pacific paper mill was allowed to burn petroleum coke because of a shortage of natural gas. A chemical factory was given the go-ahead to dispose of a petroleum byproduct stuck in a storage tank by burning it off in a flare.
   In the marshes, officials got rid of oil spills from broken pipelines by burning it off.
   The bottom line, many say, was getting the job done.
   But environmentalists worry. ''We should do it right now rather than paying more money in the future to clean it up,'' said Darryl Malek-Wiley of the Sierra Club's Delta Chapter.

Link to Reference: Associated Press, 12/14/05

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Highlights:
- From the moment New Orleans' filthy floodwaters were pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, regulators said environmental rules had to be set aside to save the Gulf Coast from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
- Mostly, said officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the waivers were harmless. But some say they went too far, padding the pockets of oil companies and creating long-term environmental hazards.
- Records show the oil industry was quick to seek and receive waivers and exceptions from state and federal agencies. EPA said it would use "discretion" in its enforcement of emissions at refineries because of the gasoline shortage throughout the nation.


NEW ORLEANS — From the moment New Orleans' filthy floodwaters were pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, regulators said environmental rules had to be set aside to save the Gulf Coast from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.

Federal and state agencies waived environmental laws regulating open burning. They waived the laws regulating asbestos removal. They waived rules for landfills, gasoline and diesel fuel standards, and water and air pollution -- all in the name of recovery and rebuilding.

Meanwhile, Louisiana's U.S. senators pushed for long-term waivers of environmental laws in hurricane-hit states to quicken rebuilding, tacking the proposal onto a stalled $250 billion rebuilding plan presented to Congress.

Mostly, said officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the waivers were harmless. But some say they went too far, padding the pockets of oil companies and creating long-term environmental hazards.

"What these waivers represent is the government waiving protections of the public's health," said Adam Babich, director of Tulane University's Environmental Law Clinic. "A lot of this seems to be happening under the radar without any public participation."

In Louisiana, the waivers and variances to permits came fast and furious after Katrina hit Aug. 29, DEQ documents show. More exceptions were issued a month later after Hurricane Rita.

Some waivers, like the one that allows the burning of dead animal carcasses, appeared harmless. But many others have raised questions.

Records show the oil industry was quick to seek and receive waivers and exceptions from state and federal agencies. EPA said it would use "discretion" in its enforcement of emissions at refineries because of the gasoline shortage throughout the nation.

Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at EPA and longtime whistleblower within the agency, said EPA's move to allow refineries to take longer to report emissions and not comply with environmental rules helped the companies make the record profits.

"The bottom line is everyone is taking major hits across the country except for one sector that's become a profit center, and that's not right, that's not American," Kaufman said.

Darrin Mann, a DEQ spokesman, said the permits did not allow the refineries "to go hog wild" and emit large amounts of pollutants. Instead, DEQ says the waivers were needed so the refineries could work through kinks their systems when they were shut down by the storms.

EPA and DEQ officials have said that air monitors have shown no problems with air quality at the refineries. But Anne Rolfes, a Louisiana activist, insists that EPA tests after Katrina showed high levels of benzene near oil refineries.

"We're asking the neighbors of these refineries to put up with a lot of increased risk, increased fears and increased noise from these refineries so that we can enjoy the benefits of cheaper gasoline," Babich said.

Meanwhile, environmentalists are challenging state regulators for sending much of the waste from gutted homes and businesses in New Orleans to an old city landfill that is not lined to keep contaminants from leaching out.

The trucks hauling debris into the landfill are inspected from towers at the dump's entrance, but there are concerns that contractors are trucking in paint, household cleaners and chemicals by hiding the hazardous material at the bottom of their loads.

Similar questions abound. In hard-hit Plaquemines Parish, waste is being burned 24 hours a day and mounds of debris will be bulldozed into unlined pits.

"To get businesses and communities back and running, you have to kind of bend the rules to a certain extent, but not to the point where you are creating a situation where's it's unsafe for people," said William Serpas, the parish's director of public service.

Out in the Gulf of Mexico, the National Marine Fisheries Service waived the requirement that shrimpers use devices on their nets that let sea turtles escape. The agency said debris littering the Gulf made the devices impractical.

On land, a Georgia-Pacific paper mill was allowed to burn petroleum coke because of a shortage of natural gas. A chemical factory was given the go-ahead to dispose of a petroleum byproduct stuck in a storage tank by burning it off in a flare.

In the marshes, officials got rid of oil spills from broken pipelines by burning it off. Oil well operators hit by the storm were allowed to vent gas from their wells and move oil without filling out the usual paperwork.

The bottom line, many say, was getting the job done.

"We're kind of winging it," said Jeff Morgan, an independent debris removal inspector. He said Louisianans are "head-headed" people who "don't want to be told how to do it."

Michael Wascom, an environmental law expert at Louisiana State University, said the waivers were mostly limited in duration and related to an emergency.

"I don't see anything scandalous in there," Wascom said. "They all seem fairly innocuous and limited to their sites."

But environmentalists worry. "We should do it right now rather than paying more money in the future to clean it up," said Darryl Malek-Wiley of the Sierra Club's Delta Chapter.

And Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said regulators need to ensure that companies did not take advantage of the waivers and that when the next catastrophic hurricane hits, industries are better prepared.

"I understand that we may need to run around and do these deals," he said, "but the system has to shift."

Link to Reference: Kevin Spear, Sentinel Staff Writer, 12/12/05

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Highlights:
- Spilled chemicals, leaking gas tanks and city sewage all mingled with floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina that eventually drained into the Gulf of Mexico. The toxic soup went somewhere. But its destination remains a mystery.
- Potential damage to cities, chemical plants and industrial sites -- now and in years to come -- could spell calamity for the Gulf's treasured wetlands, beaches, coral reefs, surf and sea life. At the very least, hurricane batterings will heighten threats to an ecosystem already burdened with dead zones, toxic algae and mysterious plumes of pollution-laden black water off Florida's coast.
- The unknowns of the Gulf have contributed to the mystery of what happened to the slug of pollution that flowed out of New Orleans. Nobody can say how fast or in what direction it traveled. But they know more than 66 billion gallons drained out of the city -- more than enough to fill the 50-square-mile Lake Apopka west of Orlando.

NEW ORLEANS -- Spilled chemicals, leaking gas tanks and city sewage all mingled with floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina that eventually drained into the Gulf of Mexico. The toxic soup went somewhere. But its destination remains a mystery. Scientists still don't know whether the slug of germs and chemicals is floating toward Florida's coast, drifting out to the Atlantic or lurking somewhere in between.

The massive dose of pollution stands as one of the storm season's critical environmental lessons: The Gulf roils with looping, whirling currents able to turn one shore's mess into another's lasting misery. That message is growing more urgent with predictions that hurricanes will punch harder and more often in coming decades.

Potential damage to cities, chemical plants and industrial sites -- now and in years to come -- could spell calamity for the Gulf's treasured wetlands, beaches, coral reefs, surf and sea life. At the very least, hurricane batterings will heighten threats to an ecosystem already burdened with dead zones, toxic algae and mysterious plumes of pollution-laden black water off Florida's coast.

"Where does the Gulf of Mexico reach the tipping point where it can no longer fix itself?" asked Enid Sisskin, legislative chair for the Panhandle's Gulf Coast Environmental Defense.

Shared sea

The Gulf of Mexico's expanse -- the world's fifth-largest sea -- is really an illusion. Shaped like a fishbowl, upside down and slightly canted, its widest span equals a line from Orlando to New York. But the distance is easily conquered.

A hummingbird migrates from Mississippi to Mexico in 18 hours. Ships laden with wheat steam from Beaumont, Texas, to beyond Key West in 48 hours. Natural-gas molecules surge through a pipeline under the Gulf from Mobile Bay to Tampa Bay in 59 hours.

It's not hard to see how a mess in one part of the Gulf can arrive quickly in others.

At Padre Island National Seashore, near Corpus Christi, Texas, researchers have traced trash to offshore rigs, shrimp boats, recreational boaters and more-distant sources, such as Midwest farms, said park science chief Darrell Echols.

After Mississippi River floods in the 1990s, crews hauled off everything from cow carcasses to roof trusses. After Katrina, workers returned to the park for truckloads of storm debris.

Yet how currents morph and whirl remains such a mystery that scientists aren't certain about how pollution travels. Predicting serpentine movements in the Gulf isn't nearly as reliable as forecasting a tropical storm.

"We have lots of weather observations on land," said Steve Murawski, chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington. "In the Gulf, we have a handful of buoys."

Pollution travels

Stress on the Gulf of Mexico began in earnest decades ago as increasing development contributed polluted runoff, and industries found it a convenient dumping ground. Catastrophes not only added to the mess but proved how trouble in one area can extend for miles.

The world's second-worst ocean oiling issued a wake-up call in 1979. Workers on a rig near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula lost control of a well, unleashing 140 million gallons of crude into the Gulf during the next nine months.

Despite efforts to skim, burn and dissolve the spill, slicks smeared Mexico's coast and drifted 600 miles to Texas, washing onto 160 miles of shoreline. In Florida, 900 miles from the blowout, officials feared tar balls on beaches and petroleum poisoning of fish.

Scientists found encouraging but worrisome news.

Mexican oil hadn't traveled to Florida. But their research at the time showed that crude from other faraway parts of the Gulf had made the journey. It came from tankers scrubbing out their holds. It wasn't a small amount of oil. The discharged oil had been swallowed by turtles -- green, hawksbill and loggerhead -- that washed up dead on Florida shores.

It was a clear sign that Florida needs to keep a lookout far beyond its own share of the Gulf's blue depths.

Mysterious currents

The unknowns of the Gulf have contributed to the mystery of what happened to the slug of pollution that flowed out of New Orleans. Nobody can say how fast or in what direction it traveled. But they know more than 66 billion gallons drained out of the city -- more than enough to fill the 50-square-mile Lake Apopka west of Orlando.

The giant plume set off such worries that an unprecedented armada of oceanographers, marine biologists and chemists fanned out in several ships across the northern Gulf of Mexico, from Florida to west of the Mississippi River delta.

Health authorities already had reported that evacuees who waded in floodwaters in New Orleans were breaking out with rashes and blistered skin.

"We had no way of knowing what to expect," said Shailer Cummings, chief scientist for one of the cruises sponsored by NOAA.

A University of South Florida oceanographer, in a separate effort, offered a theory. Using computer calculations and satellite observations of sea-surface changes, he estimated the swiftest-moving New Orleans contamination could have traveled the Gulf in circular detours for a month before hooking around South Florida to the Atlantic Ocean.

NOAA deployed "drifters" -- floating electronic buoys -- that broadcast their locations while riding currents. Some migrated toward Texas. Others meandered toward Florida.

The scientists never found fish kills, tainted shellfish or the pollution. Perhaps toxic floodwaters were neutralized by exposure to sun, sank to the bottom, decayed or were diluted.

South Florida resident Robert H. Gore, a marine scientist who wrote a book about the Gulf's wonders and plight in the early 1990s, doesn't expect that many of the region's residents will see Katrina's mess as a warning.

He has marveled at how communities and industries that continue to crowd the region are so blind to their environmental risk-taking and the harm they cause the Gulf.

"You built your own nest," Gore said. "Now you have to sit in it."

Link to Reference: Matthew Brown, West Bank bureau, 12/10/05

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Highlights:
- The soil, air and water across the region is mostly free of the toxic contamination once feared to be Hurricane Katrina's lasting environmental legacy, federal and state officials said Friday, as they declared the majority of the New Orleans area safe to live in, work in or visit.
- Following extensive environmental tests to gauge the public health threat, state and federal officials are saying their earlier fears have not been borne out.
- The risk level used by the DEQ and EPA was based on a 1-in-10,000 to 1-in-1,000,000 chance of developing cancer or other illness based on a lifetime of exposure to contaminants. The EPA's internal guidelines are much stricter for some contaminants, including arsenic. The agency has been using DEQ standards during its Katrina response.

The soil, air and water across the region is mostly free of the toxic contamination once feared to be Hurricane Katrina's lasting environmental legacy, federal and state officials said Friday, as they declared the majority of the New Orleans area safe to live in, work in or visit.

After analyzing hundreds of air and water samples and testing floodwater sediments left behind when many neighborhoods were inundated for weeks, the officials said only a few areas remain a concern for short- or long-term health risks. In most neighborhoods, levels of arsenic, lead and petroleum products are typical of any urban area, they said.

"With the exception of a few oil spills, there really aren't the levels of chemical contamination that we had expected," said state health officer Jimmy Guidry. "Certainly there's no toxic soup or toxic gumbo. As far as the long-term risk of living in the city, it's not any worse than what we had before Katrina."

The exceptions include an estimated 1,800 properties potentially polluted by a million-gallon oil spill in St. Bernard Parish, and four sites in New Orleans where scientists found elevated levels of arsenic and petroleum products.

But for the rest of the metropolitan region, Friday's announcement could remove a sizable hurdle in the recovery effort.

In the weeks after the storm, unnerving descriptions of floodwaters as a "toxic soup" laced with deadly chemicals and bacteria were frequently offered by elected leaders and local and national media outlets. As a result, thousands of displaced residents and businesses have waited for an official all-clear before coming back.

Now, following extensive environmental tests to gauge the public health threat, state and federal officials are saying their earlier fears have not been borne out.

The announcement came from officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality, the Department of Health and Hospitals, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the federal Centers for Disease Control and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Report criticized

More tests are pending, and some environmental groups contend government agencies are ignoring serious health threats in their zeal to rebuild.

"We do not believe the tests done by DEQ and EPA are sufficient to make a statement like this," said Darryl Malek-Wiley, Louisiana environmental justice organizer for the Sierra Club. "To say that levels of lead and arsenic are similar to what they were before the storm, that doesn't make it OK. There was a big effort to try to reduce levels of lead in New Orleans before the storm."

But Andy Kopplin, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, seized on Friday's pronouncement as evidence southeast Louisiana is moving past the nagging question of whether living and working in the region poses a health hazard.

"Our families, taking appropriate public health precautions against mold and dust, can move back into hurricane-affected areas," Kopplin said. "That's very important in getting our economy up and off the ground."

The Louisiana Environmental Action Network, New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council and several other groups contend as much as 75 percent of the city still is marred by dangerously high levels of heavy metals, pesticides and petroleum products.

The groups conducted their own soil tests and also analyzed EPA data. They warned last week that a wave of cancer cases and other illnesses are inevitable in coming decades without a widespread cleanup of floodwater sediment. They also urged families to keep children out of areas of St. Bernard and New Orleans that flooded.

Monitored for years

In a first round of 430 soil samples taken by the EPA, 145 had levels of chemical contamination that exceeded cleanup guidelines. Only 14 of those sites were retested. The EPA said sediment depths were too thin -- less than a ½-inch deep -- for accurate readings at the remaining 131 sites.

Five of the 14, including one in the Murphy Oil spill area, showed elevated levels of arsenic or petroleum contamination. The others include two in Gentilly, near the intersections of Warrington Drive and Mirabeau Avenue, and Wickfield and Rapides drives; and two in the 9th Ward, near Poland Avenue and North Villere, and St. Ferdinand and North Rocheblave. None of the four had levels high enough to pose a serious health concern, according to Guidry and others.

But Guidry said state and federal agencies will continue to monitor contaminants for years to come.

"The question still remains: Are there going to be hot spots as we do these future tests?" he said.

DEQ Secretary Mike McDaniel dismissed criticism from the environmental groups as overblown. "They have a different way they interpret the risk standards," he said.

The risk level used by the DEQ and EPA was based on a 1-in-10,000 to 1-in-1,000,000 chance of developing cancer or other illness based on a lifetime of exposure to contaminants. The EPA's internal guidelines are much stricter for some contaminants, including arsenic. The agency has been using DEQ standards during its Katrina response.

'Very gray area'

Along Crescent Drive in Lakeview, homeowner Calvin Schnyder said he does not buy into claims that chemical contamination disappeared when his street was cleaned. The first round of soil samples taken near his house Sept. 26 showed levels of arsenic more than five times state standards. Diesel- and oil-related products slightly exceeded state standards.

During the second round of sampling Nov. 19 and 20, EPA workers could not find enough sediment for retest.

"They should come in (and test) a couple of houses," Schnyder, a 54-year-old retired BellSouth employee, said from his living room, where a thick layer of crust covered the floor. "They could get a bucket of it off the floor and test it. It's all right there."

Paul Templet, a professor at Louisiana State University's School of the Coast and Environment and former DEQ secretary under Gov. Buddy Roemer, said the conflicting messages coming from environmentalists and government leaves residents such as Schnyder in an awkward position.

"You're in a very gray area here. It isn't black or white," Templet said.

On one hand, he said the government agencies are being driven at least in part by the political goal of repopulating Louisiana's largest city. On the other, he said the environmentalists appear to be highlighting risks for maximum effect.

"What you're getting from the agencies is generalized advice. It may apply to you, it may not. It's a question of how much risk do you want to take, do you want to accept to be back in the New Orleans area," Templet said.

"At this point, there's so much gray area, you have to use common sense," he said. "If you feel bad, you should get out of there. If you're breathing a whole lot of dust, and you can tell that's what you're doing, you should do something about it."

Link to Reference: Saturday, December 10, 2005

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

Highlights:
- study looked for signs of chemical and microbial contamination in seafood tissues.
- “Hundreds of samples of fish and shellfish, collected and analyzed in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, show no reason for concern about the consumption of Gulf seafood,”
- he good news is that no pesticides or petroleum derivatives and low concentrations of metals have been found in water samples. No metals, PCBs or pesticides have been found in fish, shrimp or crabs. Bacteria levels are much lower than had been expected.

OCEAN SPRINGS (AP) - Tests by several state and federal agencies have yielded some encouraging results for the Gulf of Mexico's commercial fisheries and seafood health.

The Mississippi Department of Environment Quality on Thursday released results of a comprehensive seafood study conducted in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The study looked for signs of chemical and microbial contamination in seafood tissues.

“Hundreds of samples of fish and shellfish, collected and analyzed in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, show no reason for concern about the consumption of Gulf seafood,” the report concluded.

The report also showed hopeful signs for the heavily affected oyster industry.

While some oystering areas are still closed until they can be tested, “many oyster harvest areas have already been tested and reopened,” said Robbie Wilbur, a MDEQ spokesman.

Officials recommended that people take normal precautions when eating seafood, including thorough cooking and not eating the skin, fat or organs.

A group of state and federal agencies conducted the survey in Lake Pontchartrain, the Mississippi Sound, Mobile Bay and the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Henry Folmar, lab director for MDEQ's office of pollution control, said less than half of the data has been analyzed so far.

Folmar said the good news is that no pesticides or petroleum derivatives and low concentrations of metals have been found in water samples. No metals, PCBs or pesticides have been found in fish, shrimp or crabs. Bacteria levels are much lower than had been expected.

“Chemical contamination seems to be very limited,” he said. “The real damage seems to be physical habitat destruction.”

Water samples revealed dioxin, a compound known to cause cancer, in the Escatawpa and Pascagoula rivers and in St. Louis Bay, though the levels they detected were below the limit set for residential soil.

Researchers also found a low dissolved oxygen environment in the Escatawpa River and St. Louis Bay near Bayou Lacroix. Measuring dissolved oxygen in water is a common way to understand the relative health of the aquatic environment.

Read Hendon, a fisheries biologist with the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, said that spotted seatrout and striped bass populations fared the storm well.

Jim Franks, also with GCRL, said the Mississippi's commercial fishing industry, including fishermen, processors and dealers, received as much as $200 million in damage.

Link to Reference: CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer, 12/09/05

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Highlights:
- Federal and state agencies on Friday sought to quell fears that New Orleans was turned into a contamination zone by Hurricane Katrina by emphasizing few risks were found in the soil, air or water.
- From the outset of test results, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have denied that the region had become contaminated by arsenic, lead and other contaminants.
- Thousands of tests show there are no short- or long-term threats.

Federal and state agencies on Friday sought to quell fears that New Orleans was turned into a contamination zone by Hurricane Katrina by emphasizing few risks were found in the soil, air or water.

"We're pleased to be able to say that residents can return to the affected areas, that tourists can return to the affected areas," said Andy Kopplin, the executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

Friday's announcement that New Orleans and the rest of southern Louisiana are safe to return to was the latest round in an ongoing disagreement between environmental groups and government agencies over the effects of the hurricanes on the environment.

Since shortly after Katrina hit Louisiana on Aug. 29 and flooded New Orleans, state and federal agencies began monitoring how dangerous the air, water and ground was to rescue workers and residents.

From the outset of test results, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have denied that the region had become contaminated by arsenic, lead and other contaminants.

The agencies also have said flooded Superfund sites did not create major problems and that seafood from the Gulf of Mexico was safe to eat.

At Friday's news conference, Dr. Jimmy Guidry, Louisiana's medical director, agreed that there are few risks. But he did caution that returning residents and cleanup workers should use good hygiene and limit their exposure to sediment.

He said that mold remains a problem for people with respiratory problems and others who are sensitive to mold.

The news conference, which was headed by Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the head of the federal recovery effort, was billed as an "environmental summary."

Mike McDaniel, the DEQ secretary, said thousands of tests show there are no short- or long-term threats.

He added that, in fact, the air in New Orleans is cleaner than ever because so many industries are shut down and because of the lighter traffic. And he said bacteria levels are now so low that it would be safe to swim in Lake Pontchartrain.

"Most of the contaminants are at pre-Katrina levels and are not expected to present health risks," he said.

Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have urged a major cleanup of sediment in the hurricane-hit regions because flood waters churned up high levels of contaminants buried under industrial sites and urban neighborhoods.

But McDaniel said the data does not warrant a cleanup.

"These government agencies have shirked their responsibility to protect citizens," said Monique Harden, a lawyer with the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights.

Her group has been handing out protective gear to residents returning to the Lower Ninth Ward. She said the government should be handing out the suits and masks instead.

"It is safe for people to return if they are able to protect themselves and avoid contact with the sediment," Harden said.

Link to Reference: Melinda Liu, msnbc.msn.com, 12/6/05

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Highlights:
- Heads are rolling in the wake of the Harbin toxic spill, but it’s not Big Industry that’s getting the chop. Bungling, delay, cover-up.
- The flurry of finger-pointing isn’t just about local authorities blaming the central government—the same issues that erupted post-Katrina—in Beijing, the deeper controversy is also about economic priorities.
- China is notoriously polluted. Direct environmental damage is believed to cost the government nearly 10 percent of its $1.4 trillion economy.

Heads are rolling in the wake of the Harbin toxic spill, but it’s not Big Industry that’s getting the chop.
Bungling, delay, cover-up. When such missteps follow a major disaster, officials often have to resign.  We saw it unfold in the United States after the killer hurricane Katrina. Now we’re seeing heads roll in China, following the Nov. 13 chemical plant explosion that killed five people and spilled 100 tons of benzene-like carcinogens into the Songhua River.

There are sackings, and then there are sackings.  In China, who’s getting the axe and how—bureaucratically speaking, that is—holds greater symbolic and political significance than in many other countries.  Here, all eyes are focused on the fallout of the massive chemical spill that forced Harbin city’s four million residents go without running water for five days—and that now is slated to float by the Russian city of Khabarovsk this weekend.  

Much is at stake. Even Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, on an official visit to Paris, referred to the Harbin pollution in a lament over the high number of industrial accidents on the mainland, and confessed that he’d stayed up until nearly midnight “reviewing documents” about the chemical spill the night before leaving for France. “I was still reviewing them this morning before getting on the plane.”

In Beijing, the Chinese blame game is raging something fierce. The flurry of finger-pointing isn’t just about local authorities blaming the central government—the same issues that erupted post-Katrina—in Beijing, the deeper controversy is also about economic priorities. Which is more important: the helter-skelter red-hot growth of China’s GDP or more balanced and green efforts to save the environment?

China is notoriously polluted. Direct environmental damage is believed to cost the government nearly 10 percent of its $1.4 trillion economy. The post-spill personnel reshuffling, as one Beijing-based reporter put it, could signal whether mainland leaders intend to “sacrifice environmental protection for the sake of GDP growth, or vice versa.”  (The reporter refused to be quoted by name because the topic remains so sensitive that he could lose his job for speaking to a foreign journalist.)

In the behind-the-scenes tussle between the pro-environment faction and the pro-GDP lobby, the greens are losing so far. Oh sure, on Monday the general manager of Jilin Petrochemical was sacked by its parent company, the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), one of the country’s largest oil firms. Two workshop managers at the Jilin plant, where the blast occurred, were also fired.  Senior CNPC official Jiang Jiemin blamed the three for causing “great casualties and economic losses” which led to “bad publicity from the international community and hurt the whole image of CNPC.”

But by far the most senior official to lose his job, up to now, is the head of China’s State Environmental Protection Agency, Xie Zhenhua, 56. Xie’s forced resignation last Friday triggered a howl of protest among environmental activists and political analysts who fear he’s being made a scapegoat. Prof. Mao Shoulong, an outspoken mainland academic and an expert in governance, likened Xie’s fate to that of a traffic cop who responds to the scene of an accident only to be sacked even before anyone manages to figure out who’s at fault.

A high-level probe is underway. It’s already becoming evident that provincial authorities in Jilin—where the explosion took place—and senior CNPC figures downplayed the extent of the catastrophe, hindering official responses. The day after the blast, Xie had received a phone call from a senior Jilin provincial official who told the environmental protection agency head that the Songhua River contamination was not that serious and could be handled by provincial authorities on their own, says a source close to SEPA officials who requested anonymity because he wasn’t cleared to speak publicly about the incident.

The other problem, he says, is that the “local environmental protection department… reports to local authorities.” It’s supposed to notify SEPA in Beijing about environmental matters—but its salaries are paid by the government in its region, not by Beijing. So the local environmental protection department didn’t report the results of water quality tests from the Songhua River to SEPA until Nov. 17—a full four days after the explosion, according to SEPA deputy director Wang Yuqing, who also charged that China’s blind pursuit of economic growth has led to a quarter century of growing environmental degradation.

The state environmental protection agency didn’t immediately dispatch its own inspectors to Jilin. And while Jilin authorities informed downstream communities in their own province about the toxic spill, they at first neglected to inform their counterparts further downstream in neighboring Heilongjiang province. Jilin provincial authorities even ordered enormous amounts of water to be released from a dam into the Songhua river in an attempt to dilute the pollution within Jilin’s borders “which served to push the slick towards Heilongjiang even faster,” says the source.  When Premier Wen visited the region on an emergency inspection tour in late November, Xie was among a group of government and party officials who accompanied him. The same Jilin boss was among those who met Wen at the Harbin airport, and in a subsequent briefing he at one point turned to Xie and said something to the effect of "Didn't I call you right afterwards?", according to the source close to SEPA. Xie was reportedly stunned and could only stammer "Yes, yes" in response, says the source, who adds, "What else could Xie say?  That he knew [about the extent of the pollution] but helped the Jilin people cover it up?  This obviously made a bad impression on Wen."

Last Friday the State Council—the equivalent of China’s cabinet—stated that SEPA “has failed to pay sufficient attention to the incident and underestimated its possible impact.”  Still, Internet blogs and bulletin boards have begun to express sympathy for Xie. That may be due partly to SEPA’s surprising transformation from a toothless bureaucratic backwater into an agency that dares to challenge Big Industry. 

Recently, SEPA has been engaged in a David-and-Goliath tussle against powerful interest groups. Earlier this year, Xie’s outspoken deputy Pan Yue successfully waged a high-profile campaign to temporarily freeze 30 major construction projects, including prestigious hydropower plants on the Yangtze River, because they had proceeded illegally without the required environmental impact studies. Pan and SEPA were seen to have won the support of Premier Wen in this endeavor. But their success antagonized what political insiders call the “GDP lobby”, including key ministries and industry giants such as State Power, the Three Gorges Dam Group, CNPC and above all the State Development Planning Commission, a powerful super-ministry.

Will heads continue to roll within the ranks of local authorities and CNPC officials? Much depends on results from the current probe—and on how far President Hu Jintao intends to push his campaign to boost official accountability. In 2003, his regime sacked the then-health minister and Beijing mayor when they initially tried to cover-up China’s deadly SARS outbreak.

The big difference today is that some very important interests of some very important players—both government and industry heavyweights—hang in the balance. Even the speed of GPD growth may be affected; China’s pro-environment faction is pushing for adoption of a new measure called “green GDP” which would help gauge the health and sustainability of economic growth, not simply its speed.  All this is undoubtedly complicating the investigation. It make take some time for us to know precisely who knew what, and when—and what they didn’t do about it.

Link to Reference: MIKE KELLER, 12/3/05

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Highlights:
- "Based on over 40 samples I saw taken at the plant, contaminated areas were clearly subject to flooding and added to the contamination coming out of DeLisle. "
- FEMA surge inundation maps revealed a 25.1-foot outdoor high-water mark recorded within the plant, beyond several retention ponds known by a former DuPont employee to hold high levels of dioxin, a chemical by-product that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states is "one of the most toxic and environmentally stable" compounds in its class.
- "When the surge carries mud in, it carries it out, too," said Al Hopkins, a former Army general and one of the lawyers bringing suit against DuPont DeLisle. "The water came over those piles of ore and dust. TCDD (dioxin) was in those piles."

"Based on over 40 samples I saw taken at the plant, contaminated areas were clearly subject to flooding and added to the contamination coming out of DeLisle. " Some DuPont sampling results expected Monday

As Katrina's surge slammed the Coast, three ore and tank freight train cars sitting atop a 25-foot-high railroad berm careened a fifth of a mile inland. Speeding water laid Bay of St. Louis mud down in a thick coat on Diamondhead, Pass Christian and the DuPont plant at DeLisle.

As the surge receded, so did the water from the DuPont plant, located near the very edge of where land meets water.

Recently released FEMA surge inundation maps revealed a 25.1-foot outdoor high-water mark recorded within the plant, beyond several retention ponds known by a former DuPont employee to hold high levels of dioxin, a chemical by-product that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states is "one of the most toxic and environmentally stable" compounds in its class.

But dioxin is not the only concern. The DeLisle plant was the largest producer of toxic chemicals in the state and the 34th largest in the nation, according to the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory figures for 2003, the last year publicly available.

On Monday, an environmental chemist will release findings from an independent assessment of toxins around the DeLisle community.

The TRI program reported that DuPont's DeLisle plant pumped 12.6 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the ground through injection wells, almost 2.1 million pounds into the air and almost 300 pounds into the water in 2003. DuPont also put several hundred thousand pounds of heavy metals - including zinc, vanadium, and lead- into its landfills and into surrounding waters and pumped over half a million pounds of hydrochloric acid into the air.

"Based on over 40 samples I saw taken at the plant, contaminated areas were clearly subject to flooding and added to the contamination coming out of DeLisle," said Glenn Evers, a 22-year employee of DuPont who worked at its sister titanium dioxide plant in Delaware and who testified this summer in the first of 2,000 lawsuits brought against DuPont.

A jury awarded $14 million to a Bay St. Louis oyster fisherman for a rare cancer that his lawyers argued was a result of dioxin coming out of the DeLisle plant. "Any mud that went through that facility and came back out was contaminated," he asserted.

In 2000, 1,270 people lived within a three-mile radius of the plant, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. Just over a quarter of those people live below the poverty level. Over half are white, about a third are black and 15 percent are American Indian.

Over 50 percent of the population are children under the age of 18 and senior citizens, the two age groups most likely to suffer from pollution.

U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aerial photos reveal the wind-damaged and mud-covered plant, where raw ore, brought in by freight car from the port at Gulfport, is transformed into super-white titanium dioxide, a pigment used to whiten everything from paint to Oreo cookie filling.

The freight cars themselves tell a story of what happened that day, with entire lines of ore, coke and chlorine carriers knocked over by the velocity of the surge. The cars that were hurled into the facility were deposited into a watery part east of vital equipment and buildings.

Did any of the mud, possibly contaminated by plant chemicals and by-products, wash out of the facility? If so, where did it go?

"Our environmental containment and severe weather systems withstood the impact of Hurricane Katrina," wrote Nathan Pepper, a DuPont spokesman, in an e-mail response to questions about surge inundation. "As a result there was no release with any on-site or off-site impact. This has been confirmed by MDEQ and EPA inspections, and most recently by EPA and MDEQ's 10/28/05 Mississippi Bay and Estuary report. These agencies also have an on-site sampling report that is due to be completed soon. DuPont is confident that it too will reflect our determination of no environmental impact from Hurricane Katrina."

That response has been backed up by Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality, the government agency responsible for oversight and regulation of the DuPont plant.

"Debris went to the levels of the levees," said Rick Sumrall, who is in charge of compliance within the chemical manufacturing industry. "It was clear that impoundments had not been topped."

Sumrall also said that the landfill area, in the northwest corner of the plant and where some waste is stored, stayed above surge waters.

But Sumrall did not mention any of the open areas where dioxin-laced intermediary chemicals and products dusted the ground and buildings.

James Durant, an environmental health scientist with the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said that the government has taken samples around the DuPont plant and that they are finishing a report on the findings.

Even if the mud was contaminated, "getting it on the skin does not necessarily mean it is going to get in the body," Durant said. "My concern would be dioxin getting into the food chain."

Wilma Subra, an environmental consultant and chemist in Louisiana, took several soil and sediment samples in Mississippi and Louisiana, including several around DuPont. She will release her findings Monday.

Those samples will either vindicate the company and prove that they were able to maintain control of their plant through Katrina, or show that the community of DeLisle, and through the movement of coastal waters the rest of South Mississippi, has something more to worry about.

"When the surge carries mud in, it carries it out, too," said Al Hopkins, a former Army general and one of the lawyers bringing suit against DuPont DeLisle. "The water came over those piles of ore and dust. TCDD (dioxin) was in those piles."

Link to Reference: Patrick Jackson, BBC News,

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Highlights:
- The filthy floodwaters that have engulfed much of New Orleans are posing a fresh challenge for the city - where should the toxic mess be deposited?
- These images suggest the quantity of floodwater in downtown New Orleans on 2 September was 95 billion litres (21bn gallons, 25bn US gallons),
- As a rule of thumb, for every mile of wetlands that a storm surge passes, it reduces the flooding by a foot, the professor says.

The filthy floodwaters that have engulfed much of New Orleans are posing a fresh challenge for the city - where should the toxic mess be deposited? Fears are growing that the wrong choices now could spark environmental problems for decades to come.

Lake Pontchartrain, the large water mass north of New Orleans, is the focus of many of these fears. Engineers need to pump out the water which swept in when Hurricane Katrina's storm surges from the lake brought down sections of its floodwalls on 29 August. But the last thing the lake and the delicate wetlands of Louisiana and Mississippi need is a tide of urban filth.

The areas have already suffered decades of seeping pollution and erosion.

The Mississippi River might seem a more obvious channel than the lake for the mess, carrying it out to sea.

Yet the lake is the city's traditional drain, and it is impractical to try to pump all the water out to the south.

Sewage and unknown amounts of industrial chemicals float in the stagnant water - along with the unrecovered bodies of the victims. Oil, diesel and petrol from vehicles are adding to the mix.

And the facilities to treat the contamination before pumping the water away are just not there in a city without power.

Scientists cannot yet say for sure how poisonous the water actually is, and city officials have described reports of a "toxic soup" as exaggerated. New Orleans has no large industrial base, says John Day, a professor at Louisiana State University's (LUS'S) Department of Oceanology and Coastal Studies - but for now scientists "just don't know" what a full analysis of the waters will show.

If no major new source of toxins emerges, the biggest areas of concern will organic waste and oil slicks. While they may have a short-term impact, these elements should largely break down in the lake water in a matter of months, says Professor Day.

Scientists from LSU have already begun field trips to New Orleans to collect samples for monitoring the level of toxins in the water.

Aerial photographs are also helping them to establish the volume of floodwater.

These images suggest the quantity of floodwater in downtown New Orleans on 2 September was 95 billion litres (21bn gallons, 25bn US gallons), Hassan Mashriqui of the LSU Hurricane Center told the BBC News website.

Wildlife in the wetlands of the lake's basin includes otters and wild boar, ducks and eagles.

The lake is no stranger to pollution from its big city neighbour, but it had actually been getting cleaner in recent years. Six decades of dredging its shell beds to make asphalt and cement came to an end in 1991.

Pontchartrain's ecosystem may have been hit directly by Katrina at the very beginning, when surges of seawater from the Gulf of Mexico arrived, dangerously increasing its salt content.

Certainly, the hurricane itself did serious ecological damage further north, along the Gulf Coast, where a storm wave with a peak of nine metres (30ft) was recorded.

"On the Mississippi coast, the water went in and went out - in New Orleans, it went in and sat there," said Professor Day.

Warnings 'ignored'

The wetlands, which act as a natural brake on hurricane surges, have been reduced by about 25% over the last century by development.

As a rule of thumb, for every mile of wetlands that a storm surge passes, it reduces the flooding by a foot, the professor says.

He argues that if the US federal authorities had heeded ecological warnings and spent $20-25bn on restoring wetlands in the Mississippi Delta, America would not now be facing a bill of $100bn.

Washington, Professor Day says, must finally take global climate change seriously as the rising sea level and more frequent hurricanes many associate with it impact directly on low-lying areas like New Orleans.

Link to Reference: Melanie M. Sidwell, The Daily Times-Call, 11/26/05

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Highlights:
- it took two weeks for the waters to recede, and since then the remaining sludge has baked into toxic concrete.
- FEMA canceled the family’s claim after the agent found no one at home two weeks after the storm
- The children’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are all making new lives in Longmont.

Kristin and Tim Ellis’ only son, Ben, feared running water would fill his house to the rooftop in Kenner, La. As a toddler, he grew anxious when the bathtub filled too high. Once, a toilet overflowed, causing 6-year-old Ben to grow hysterical.

“He used to think the water would just keep going up to the roof,” Kristin Ellis said. “It’s like he had a premonition,” said his grandmother Karen Thorne.

The Ellises owned a house and an art studio, both sandwiched between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. They always thought the studio — which they had owned for two years and where Kristin and her 8-year-old daughter, Kindal, taught art classes and art appreciation to children, teens and young adults — was the most vulnerable.

That’s why they had moved supplies from the studio to their home before evacuating for Hurricane Katrina. But it was their home, two blocks from the levees of Lake Pontchartrain, that was hit hardest; floodwaters measured 3 feet high on the walls of the one-story home.

“Some say there may have been a breach (of the levees) in Kenner,” Tim Ellis told the Daily Times-Call in a phone interview from Louisiana.

A photographer, Tim Ellis has made several trips home from Colorado since the storm and was there for the past two weeks trying to finalize insurance claims. He said it took two weeks for the waters to recede, and since then the remaining sludge has baked into toxic concrete.

“There is a glaze on everything,” he said. On his latest trip to the New Orleans suburb, he has spent time gutting his home, showering by garden hose and sleeping on a top bunk bed mattress placed on top of a plastic sheet. Like his father-in-law, Tim Ellis has been trying repeatedly to contact insurance company and Federal Emergency Management Agency representatives.

Kristin Ellis said FEMA canceled the family’s claim after the agent found no one at home two weeks after the storm. The Ellises called FEMA the day of Hurricane Katrina to receive aid. They say they are now at the bottom of the list.

The Ellises, while in Longmont, said they received a $600 electricity bill for their Kenner home, which they hope to gut and sell.

Kristin Ellis and her family will move into her brother’s Longmont home in two weeks. Her brother, Lester Thorne Jr., and his family plan to move to Johnstown.

The destruction down South, though, is not far from the family’s thoughts. While in Louisiana, Tim Ellis has been busy chronicling the devastation with his camera. Blue tarps from FEMA cover damaged roofs. Mold spores carpet the drywall inside homes. Refrigerators conceal once-frozen cubes of rotted food.

The city does not mirror the photographs of New Orleans that Tim Ellis took two weeks before the devastation: a church steeple next to holy statues. A trumpet player on the street. Trolleys and bicycles in the French Quarter.

Tim Ellis had lived in the New Orleans area since he was 3 years old. His wife was born and raised in Kenner. So were their three children: Kindal, Ben and Kiley, who celebrated her first birthday in Longmont.

The true shock of the Thorne family’s exodus from Kenner is the Ellises’ decision to call the Front Range home.

“I’ve always said I’m a gypsy. I can always move around,” Kristin Ellis said. “But Tim, he wasn’t ever going to move. He loves New Orleans. He still does.”

Tim Ellis’ love for his children, however, supercedes any affinity for geography, especially considering the environmental consequences of Hurricane Katrina on soil, water and buildings.

“We wanted my kids to have as close to a normal life as possible,” he said. “And as I keep coming down here, I can’t see betting my kids’ futures on the unknown.”

The children’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are all making new lives in Longmont. The two older Ellis children are enrolled at Sanborn Elementary.

“I’m the baby sitter,” Kristin Ellis said, watching her brood and their cousins at the “big house” provided by the Margaret and Steve Strong.

The Strongs, who own Sun Construction, offered their six-bedroom home to the Thorne family in September.

The Ellises don’t want their children to inherit a lifetime of running from storms. But they also don’t want their children, or anyone else, to forget what a storm like Hurricane Katrina can do.

“I don’t want to harp on how bad the storm was, but how strong the people were here,” Tim Ellis said. “I want to teach (my children) that the people down there, in the face of the worst natural disaster of the United States, didn’t give up. That’s what I’m learning here.”

He sees the tenacity in residents who remain and in volunteers who want to rebuild.

“I’m lucky to live in a country where people step up and help if they can,” Tim Ellis said. “The people of Colorado have done this for us. People all over this country have done this, and they’re still doing it.

“When people need to look for hope, it’s there in the face of disaster.”

Link to Reference: Mackenzie Ryan, St. Cloud Times, 11/24/05

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Highlights:
- It's been three months since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, submerging Persons' house under 6 feet of water and forcing her to evacuate.
- Saltwater lines are apparent on streetlights, cars and building facades. Inside, mold is everywhere.
- "I just remember when the levies broke," Persons said, her voice falling to a whisper, "I was like, no, no, we were OK. We were hit, but we were OK."

When Natalie Persons flew to Minnesota on Monday and drove to St. Cloud to spend Thanksgiving with her family, she was struck by how clean the streets were.

No refrigerators or broken appliances line the curbs and no spray-paint marks were on buildings — all sights she's become accustomed to in New Orleans, where she lives.

It's been three months since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, submerging Persons' house under 6 feet of water and forcing her to evacuate. But life is not even close to being back to normal.

National Guardsmen still patrol the streets to curb looting of abandoned buildings and stores, and a city-imposed curfew is still in effect.

And while the water has receded, it has left its mark. Saltwater lines are apparent on streetlights, cars and building facades. Inside, mold is everywhere. People regularly use mouth covers to avoid the toxic fumes that have led many, including Persons, to catch the "Katrina cough."

"It smells like death," she said.

Moving ahead

The 26-year-old school teacher is in St. Cloud visiting her parents, Zena and Ken Persons, for the holiday. The Minnesota native moved to New Orleans four years ago as part of the Teach for America program, which places college graduates in low-income schools nationwide.

She now teaches fourth grade at Lake Pontchartrain Elementary in LaPlace, La.

The school re-opened about two weeks after the hurricane hit. And while the building received little damage — it's about 20 miles west of New Orleans — it swelled with the number of displaced children enrolling there. It went from about 650 students in the pre-kindergarten class through eighth grade to more than 1,100 students, she said. At one time she had 36 students in her class, and she quickly ran out of space and supplies.

Children sat in beanbag chairs, at computer stations and at her desk — wherever there was space, she said — and donations from across the country helped meet the need for notebooks and other supplies.

About seven of her students are from the New Orleans school district; their schools were flooded, damaged by the wind and remain unusable.

Many received counseling through the school, but Persons also incorporated their experiences into lessons.

They wrote and shared stories of escaping the flood, evacuating the city or losing loved ones, so the children know they are not alone, she said.

The school's staff was hit just as hard. Some teachers, forced from their homes, slept at the school.

Persons, homeless herself, lived with a woman who offered a room to hurricane victims on craigslist.com, she said.

"It was really hard for me to focus on teaching after finding out I had lost most of my belongings," Persons said, "but the kids needed the structure, more than anything ... to have some sense of normalcy."

All she had with her was what she packed: mostly T-shirts, flip-flops and tank tops. She bought work clothes that she wore several times a week those first few weeks.

Evacuation

Persons packed her house the Saturday before the hurricane. She moved furniture to walls to protect it from wind and stored important documents upstairs.

At the time, it was only a precaution — she thought Hurricane Katrina would follow the path of Hurricane Ivan, that it would take the turn and head to Florida.

But her parents called, prompting her to leave town.

"We were worried about it," her mother, Zena Persons, said. "My husband called her up to tell her to get (out of town)."

She made a reservation at hotels in Macomb, Ga., and Tupelo, Miss., before cramming the trunk of her '87 Nissan Maxima and leaving town with her boyfriend and her two dogs.

"It was very, very strange leaving. All the gas stations were running out of gas, there was long lines to get gas at the stations that still had it," she said.

But the most striking sight, Persons said, was the red glow of taillights.

"It's bizarre when you see the contraflow of traffic, where all the traffic was out of the city. ... That's when I really started getting worried," she said.

Once they reached the hotel, they were glued to CNN, she said.

"I just remember when the levies broke," Persons said, her voice falling to a whisper, "I was like, no, no, we were OK. We were hit, but we were OK."

On the Internet she found a flood map of New Orleans that showed water levels in different neighborhoods — she rents a house in Mid City, in the heart of New Orleans — and realized the extent of the damage, mostly caused when the 17th Street Canal levy broke.

"I was shocked," she said. "That's when I knew we weren't going to be able to live there for quite some time."

Damage

Persons returned to her house about five weeks after the hurricane struck. The house sits about 4 feet off the ground, but the water rose at least 6 feet — "just enough to get in," she said.

She wore a mask, rubber gloves and boots before going inside. She prepared for the worst.

"We had to kick the door open," she said, because the water warped the wood.

Mold grew up the walls so thick that the walls were dark green. Maggots grew out of her fridge. The smell was almost unbearable.

She lost most of her furniture, her books and other possessions. But her photographs, which she kept in a large plastic container, made it through.

Her three goldfish also survived — five weeks without food, but they were alive, she said.

Her neighbor hooked up the fish tank to his generator — a small but thoughtful type of gesture that was repeated by many neighbors in the city.

"Everybody's reaching out and helping everybody else," she said.

Neighborhoods are banding together to clean up debris, one street at a time. And there are small victories — people decorating their damaged homes for Christmas, or writing "free lunch" on an abandoned fridge — that have helped keep spirits lifted.

"I see progress every day. It's really exciting when you see power restored to parts of the city," she said.

It will be another three months before she can move back into her home, as contractors are ripping out most of the main floor and are replacing the pipes in the century-old house.

But despite the damage — she sublets a three-room cottage now in New Orleans — she said she plans to stay in the city.

"I want to be there to help rebuild and help clean up, to show people it's safe," Persons said. "The city will rebuild and it will be better than it was before."

Link to Reference: Gordon Russell, Staff writer

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Highlights:
- Since its reopening six weeks ago after a hiatus of nearly two decades, the Old Gentilly Landfill in eastern New Orleans has quickly become one of the area’s busiest landfills, with as much as 100,000 cubic yards of debris arriving on some days.
- reopening landfills that fall short of modern standards could create an ecological nightmare.
- Regulators deny that the landfill — the only one working in the city limits — was opened for expediency’s sake.

Since its reopening six weeks ago after a hiatus of nearly two decades, the Old Gentilly Landfill in eastern New Orleans has quickly become one of the area’s busiest landfills, with as much as 100,000 cubic yards of debris arriving on some days.

It has been a surprising resurgence for a landfill that sits atop an old city waste site built in the years before environmental regulation and one that still does not meet some basic state requirements.

Reopened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Old Gentilly is back on line despite the concerns of two U.S. senators — David Vitter, R-La., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate’s top environmental committee — who said they fear that reopening landfills that fall short of modern standards could create an ecological nightmare. They also wondered why Old Gentilly would be reopened given the relative abundance of other landfills in the New Orleans area. Those landfills meet tougher environmental regulations, and most charge lower fees than Old Gentilly.

Environmental groups have echoed the senators’ concerns, saying they fear runoff from the landfill will pollute nearby waterways and wetlands, and that the weight of the massive mountain of debris growing there will squeeze out toxins from the old, unlined household garbage underneath.

The state’s top environmental regulators have offered numerous, sometimes conflicting explanations for allowing Old Gentilly to reopen. On the one hand, they say, no rules were bent. On the other, they say some rules were temporarily relaxed, acknowledging that retaining walls around Old Gentilly are incomplete and that financial guarantees required for its future closure are still being worked out.

Regulators deny that the landfill — the only one working in the city limits — was opened for expediency’s sake. But at the same time, they also have said Old Gentilly is the best option because other landfills are too far away, even though a survey of local waste sites shows the differences in distance are not significant.

Regardless, regulators say there’s nothing to fear from Old Gentilly because it is accepting only relatively benign waste designated as construction and demolition, or C&D. In fact, Chuck Brown, assistant secretary of the state Department of Environmental Quality, who signed off on the landfill’s reopening, took the unusual step of holding a news conference on behalf of the landfill. Standing at Old Gentilly, Brown said, “We’re quite fortunate to have it.”

Brown is backed by a recent assessment by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which essentially gave the site an acceptable bill of health.

Still, environmentalists and others familiar with landfills are uneasy, noting troubling parallels between Old Gentilly’s reopening and the mass dumping of storm debris in 1965, after Hurricane Betsy, at the previously closed Agriculture Street Landfill. That area was later named a Superfund site, a federal designation that requires a massive cleanup.

If a similar situation were to recur with Old Gentilly, the city could be on the hook for millions of dollars in cleanup costs.

“My big question is: Why use a facility that has all these variables, that has a big question mark on it?” said Nannette Jolivette, a lawyer who served as city sanitation director from 1994 to 1996. “We’ve spent far too many of our tax dollars to defend the bad environmental decisions of the past. It seems people are almost doomed to repeat those mistakes. We’ve been down this road before.”

Though it sits amid a sea of illegal dumping grounds in far eastern New Orleans, at the edge of a city where trash assaults the nostrils at every turn, Old Gentilly still has the power to shock the senses.

Heavily loaded trucks, one after another, rumble through the dusty entrance, headed toward a growing mountain of debris that stands atop tons of foul waste piled up in the decades before 1986, when the site was closed. In the foreground is a cypress swamp where ducks, cormorants and teal hunt for food, ignoring the cacophony behind them.

The landfill dates to 1964, when the area near Old Gentilly Road and Almonaster Avenue was nearly unspoiled wetlands. It was in full use until 1982, when the state Department of Natural Resources ordered it closed. Though efforts to shutter it began in earnest the following year, the closure never was fully completed.

In the 1990s, city voters passed a bond issue to help pay for the cost of covering the landfill with a layer of clay, with the job going to Durr Heavy Construction, a partner in the joint venture that now runs the landfill. But the money was insufficient to complete the job.

Mayor Marc Morial’s administration, in its final months, advanced a new goal: to reopen the site as a C&D landfill. The idea was to generate some revenue for the city, which would help pay for capping the remaining sections. It would also give the city a place to dump its own demolition debris — at the time, the debris of blighted houses — for free.

Morial awarded a potentially lucrative contract to AMID Metro Partnership LLC, a joint venture between two businessmen with a long history of working relationships with city agencies. The venture would secure the permits if possible and then run the site, keeping 97 percent of the money and giving the rest to the city, which owns it.

AMID’s principal, Stephen Stumpf, also is the chief executive of Durr, a leading beneficiary of local programs for disadvantaged business enterprises. Though Stumpf is a white man, the company has qualified for the programs because his wife, Donna, owns a majority of stock in the firm, although regulators have questioned whether Donna Stumpf actually controls the company. Stephen Stumpf did not return a call seeking comment.

Metro Disposal, whose principal is Jimmie Woods, has long held part of the city’s residential trash pickup contract reserved for minority firms. The firm’s records were subpoenaed by federal prosecutors last year in connection with a wide-ranging probe into contracts let by the Morial administration. Woods has not been charged with any wrongdoing. He did not return a call seeking comment.

The Nagin administration continued the effort to reopen the old site. Last December, DEQ’s Brown issued the city a permit, but one that came with several conditions that had to be satisfied before the landfill could begin accepting waste.

In an interview, Brown said the landfill had met all those requirements and that the storm played no role in his Sept. 29 decision to issue an order authorizing the landfill to begin operating.

“No conditions were waived,” he said. “Had there not been this natural disaster, it would still be a permitted landfill. It’s required to meet the same standards every facility of its type is required to meet.”

But critics say otherwise, and Brown conceded that certain regulations have been at least temporarily suspended because of the disaster.

For instance, when asked whether the landfill is surrounded by the retaining berms required of all C&D sites to keep polluted stormwater from leaving the property, he said Old Gentilly has berms “on three sides.”

The final containing wall is about to be built, he said.

The EPA report differs a bit, saying berms are in place on the north and east but not the south and west sides. It, too, says walls will soon be built. Regulations dictate that berms be in place on all sides before such facilities can accept waste.

State laws also require landfills to provide “financial assurances”: insurance policies, bonds or other security to ensure that money will be available for possible remediation or closure. To satisfy that, Brown’s order said that “all income derived from the disposal of materials into the landfill” will be put into a trust fund to ultimately accomplish closing Old Gentilly.

Regulators typically require that financial assurances be made upfront.

Brown said the trust fund hasn’t been created yet, though the landfill has been operating for six weeks. For now, he said, the city — with its coffers nearly bare in the wake of the storm — has provided the necessary guarantees.

“We’re still working it out,” he said. “At this point, we’re relying on the permit as financial assurance, but we’re going to change the method to a trust fund. That will be done shortly. And it will be very transparent. We’re just working out the details.”

Brown acknowledged the storm was a factor in the decision to relax those conditions. “The enormity of the situation has caused us to deal with some issues in ‘real time,’°Ë” he said.

The Sept. 29 order itself recognizes Katrina as a factor. It cites “the extenuating circumstances and the need for immediate available disposal for construction/demolition debris and woodwaste generated in the Greater New Orleans area by the hurricane” as reasons for opening the landfill.

There is a belief, apparently widely held, that there isn’t enough space in local landfills to handle Katrina’s debris. During Mayor Ray Nagin’s recent appearance before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where he was questioned about the reopening of Old Gentilly, he testified that “every other landfill in the area, it is my understanding, is being fully utilitized.”

Inhofe, the chairman, said he believed there were other, “more modern” sites available. He and other committee members expressed concern that the placing of debris on ancient landfills such as Old Gentilly could result in the “creation of new Superfund sites.”

Nagin responded: “Well, we’d like to know where (the other landfills) are.”

Inhofe and Vitter wrote a letter Sept. 26 to the EPA requesting a list of all landfills in the New Orleans region with available capacity and a “plan to ensure that such capacity will be utilized” before any old sites are reopened.

Three days after the letter was mailed, the Old Gentilly Landfill was in business. An EPA spokesman said the DEQ has full jurisdiction over the matter.

Despite Nagin’s testimony and Brown’s remarks about the need for new sites, it appears that other local landfills — built in more suitable sites and according to more modern guidelines — could easily handle the volume of debris caused by the storm.

And while the sites are farther away, the differences are not great. Moreover, most charge less for tipping fees — a cost that is picked up by the federal government — than does Old Gentilly.

For instance, River Birch’s U.S. 90 landfill in Avondale is just four miles farther from central New Orleans than the Old Gentilly site. Its owners charge $2.50 per cubic yard versus $3.50 at Old Gentilly. The Industrial Pipe Landfill in Belle Chasse also charges $2.50 and is just eight miles farther.

A bit more distant are the KV Landfill in Killona, which charges $2.50 a cubic yard, and the Slidell Landfill, which charges $5. Those four landfills could take in the estimated 14 million cubic yards of debris created by Katrina and have plenty of room to spare. All meet current landfill guidelines.

The alternative landfills are much closer than DEQ Secretary Mike McDaniel, Brown’s boss, suggested in a recent letter to The Washington Post.

“If the Old Gentilly Landfill were not in operation, the nearest landfill that would be allowed to take construction and demolition waste would be nearly 30 miles away,” he wrote. “To move many millions of tons of debris through heavy traffic areas within New Orleans to be processed at a facility nearly 30 miles away would be inefficient and environmentally unsound.

Hundreds of trucks would have to travel farther, consume more fuel, create more emissions, and wait several hours before their load could be processed, then turn around and drive the 30 miles back to pick up another load.”

DEQ spokesman Darin Mann said McDaniel was speaking about how far other landfills are from Old Gentilly, not estimating distances from where the debris is being collected.

Brown denies environmental regulations are being relaxed in the name of expediency but says speed and convenience can’t be overlooked as factors.

“It’s all about efficiency, not capacity,” he said. “The more facilities we have processing waste, the sooner the cleanup can be completed.”

In keeping with that line of thinking, the DEQ is considering allowing several other old landfills to reopen, including the Crescent Acres site in St. Bernard Parish and the old Recovery 1 Landfill in eastern New Orleans.

Environmentalists and even some regulators see that as a dangerous idea. In a recent letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expressed a series of concerns about the possible reopening of Recovery 1, which is next to the Bayou Sauvage Urban National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest bird rookeries on the Gulf Coast.

“We are .°Ë.°Ë. very concerned about the possible future use of that facility for the disposal of demolition/construction debris for several reasons,” the letter states in part, noting that Recovery 1— like the Old Gentilly Landfill — is not equipped with a protective liner.

“Given the scope and nature of the flooding events and the age of many of the buildings in question, we believe that the delivery of materials containing numerous environmental contaminants such as lead-based paint, asbestos, creosote, arsenic-based wood-treatment chemicals, various petroleum products, and a variety of household pesticides and cleaning chemicals would be unavoidable,” the letter says.

“Placement of such materials in an un-lined landfill, particularly within coastal wetlands, would likely result in leaching and resultant contamination of ground water, surface water and adjacent wetland habitats. We believe that disposal of demolition/construction debris must be conducted based on a thorough and rigorous analysis of all available landfills to avoid the potential for creating a new Superfund site, such as the Agriculture Street Landfill.”

Though the Fish and Wildlife Service’s letter was aimed at Recovery 1, other observers say the concerns apply to Old Gentilly. The city and state are ignoring such warnings at their peril, critics say.

“To do this when there’s so many other options to me is shortsighted,” Jolivette said. “It’s a no-brainer. It’s déjà vu. We’ve made this mistake before.”

Forty years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy, the shuttered Agriculture Street Landfill was brought back to life. Debris was hauled there, burned and eventually covered, with houses and schools ultimately built atop and near the site.

It later was named a Superfund site, with residents complaining of various health problems. The site has exacted a financial cost as well as a human one. The city has spent decades in litigation, running up legal bills in the millions of dollars in defending itself.

Though there are parallels between Old Gentilly and Agriculture Street, there are clear differences too. For one, the steps the operators of Old Gentilly are being required to take are far more stringent than the ones imposed in 1965.

Also, the area around Old Gentilly is essentially unpopulated, and one could argue that the area already is an environmental hazard given the proliferation of illegal dumps nearby.

That reality is noted in the EPA report, which essentially offers an argument that Old Gentilly can’t be blamed for all the toxins in the area because of the number of illegal dumps. It says the area includes “other landfills, dumps, automotive junk yards and polluted storm water and industrial discharge sewers,” and concludes: “Contaminants in ground water cannot be traced solely to the Old Gentilly Landfill.”

The EPA report acknowledges that its own tests found some problems at the site on at least one occasion. A series of soil samples in 1997 found levels of arsenic, vanadium, aluminum and magnesium that “met observed contamination criteria.”

Unacceptable thresholds of arsenic and aluminum also were found in groundwater samples at the time. But the recent EPA report noted that the 1997 tests “did not consider potential sources of groundwater contamination from other commercial and industrial facilities in the vicinity of the site.”

Even if the area is already polluted and sparsely populated, critics of the newly opened landfill say it’s a poor place for a landfill because of its location next to wetlands and waterways.

“It’s right in the middle of a classic swamp,” said Robert Wiygul, who has sued the DEQ on behalf of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network in hopes of forcing it to close.

Moreover, the bottom of the old municipal waste site underneath the new landfill is unlined, and the weight of millions of tons of new debris may force toxic runoff, called leachate, out into those waters, Wiygul and others say.
Brown, again, disagrees.

“That is not a concern,” he said. “We’ve done soil samples, and they’ve all indicated that the waste in place there (underneath the new landfill) has totally decomposed. There’s no danger of leachate. We did water sampling where we drilled through the cap, and we didn’t find anything. At this point, we feel any risk from the facility is at best minimal.”

Brown is backed by the EPA assessment, which says the old waste “is unlikely to expel fluids, particularly leachate in such quantities as to flow some distance from the landfill. The weight loading of this landfill with Katrina waste and potential squeezing of leachate that would contaminate ground water or surface water is of limited concern.”

Critics say there’s nothing stopping rainwater from running off-site from the new material, which may not be quite as benign as traditional construction and demolition debris. An emergency order issued by the DEQ expanded the definition of construction debris to include mattresses, carpet, furniture, treated lumber and other items, meaning the permitted waste could include items such as furniture covered in lead paint.

Allowing the site to open without retaining berms “violates three laws,” said Oliver Houck, professor of environmental law at Tulane Law School. “The berm ought to come first, or the C&D is just getting dumped in the marsh.”

Houck said he rejects the claim that regulators will be able to limit the material being dumped to even those types of construction debris, particularly given the volume at which it is arriving.

“C&D in this town tends to carry everything from batteries to asbestos shingles,” Houck said. “It’s not the hauler’s fault they’re in there. But there are many facilities available for that kind of stuff. This one is in a wetland, so it’s the worst kind of stuff going into the worst kind of environment. Maybe it’s all C&D. Maybe the moon is made of green cheese, too.”

Though Houck questions the ability of officials to effectively screen trash coming into Old Gentilly, Brown disagrees.

“There are no less than four pairs of eyes that see every load,” he said. “And there are monitors in the back that watch the loads as they’re dumped. We’ve made every effort to segregate the waste streams. White goods and hazardous materials, they’re being separated out. I feel there’s a yeoman’s effort being made to make sure commingling doesn’t exist.”

The EPA report also concluded that efforts to segregate and monitor the trash coming into the landfill were adequate.

The results of the dumping — which could total millions of cubic yards and create a mountain as high as 130 feet under the permit — may not be known for many years.

But Jolivette and others worry the city is putting itself in a precarious position for a relatively small return.

The city’s 3 percent cut of the revenue from the landfill could bring in a little more than $2 million in the first year of operation, given current volumes. The operators, meanwhile, stand to gross about $75 million if the dump continues to hum along.

“You’ve got to look long-term at what the costs will be to the environment and the area,” she said. “I know we’re in a state of emergency, but you cannot let the risks far outweigh the benefit.”

Gordon Russell can be reached at grussell@timespicayune.com or at (504)°Ë826-3347.

Link to Reference: Daniel DeNoon, WebMD Medical News, Aug. 31, 2005

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Highlights:
- Hurricane Katrina is gone. But the disaster left in its wake continues to evolve.
- Contaminated Water
- Contaminated Food

Hurricane Katrina is gone. But the disaster left in its wake continues to evolve.

Public health officials are still scrambling to find stranded people and treat the injured. In the immediate aftermath, aid workers are struggling to provide basic human needs: shelter, drinking water, food, clothing, and sanitation. Also in short supply are the daily medicines needed by people with chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

Disasters are humbling events. America is big, rich, and deep in resources. Yet the public health aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will continue for days, weeks, months, and years. What can we expect as time goes by?

Contaminated Water
Floodwaters inevitably are contaminated with raw sewage. Even so, this water is not particularly dangerous unless a person drinks it or unless it gets into untreated wounds.

With water systems inoperative, sanitation becomes very difficult. Hand washing is the best way to prevent disease -- but even hand washing is difficult in the absence of clean water. If available, alcohol-based hand sanitizers are very effective.

And water can be disinfected. This can be done by boiling water (a rolling boil for one minute) or, if boiling is impossible, by disinfection (1/8 teaspoon unscented chlorine bleach per gallon of clear water, 1/4 teaspoon per gallon of cloudy water; mix and let sit for 30 minutes). One often overlooked source of contamination is bottled water from unsafe sources. If the source of bottled water is not known -- especially if the seal on the bottle is not intact -- it's a good idea to disinfect it.

Children's toys are also a source of contamination. If the toys come into contact with floodwater, they must be disinfected.

Once floodwaters recede, the risk of waterborne illness remains until municipal and home water systems can be fully disinfected. Most infections come from drinking water contaminated with fecal matter.

Waterborne illnesses have similar symptoms: diarrhea, cramping, fever, and/or vomiting. The specific symptoms -- and their severity -- depend on the type of illness and on the infected person's health. Common waterborne diseases in the U.S. include:
• Amebiasis
• Campylobacteriosis
• Cryptosporidiosis
• Giardiasis
• Hepatitis A
• Salmonellosis
• Shigellosis
• Viral gastroenteritis (such as norovirus and rotavirus infections)

The good news is that widespread disease rarely follows modern U.S. disasters.

Contaminated Food

In the days following a disaster, fresh food is in short supply. And with the power down, foods go bad very quickly. Any perishable food left out for more than two hours is unsafe. So is any food that has come into contact with floodwater.

Home-canned food that has come into contact with floodwater should not be eaten unless boiled. This holds true for all food containers with screw-top lids, snap lids, soda bottles, and other foods or beverages with crimped caps, flip-top, or snap-open tops.

Other canned foods can still make people sick if they come into contact with floodwater and are not disinfected before being opened. This means removing the label, washing the cans, and dipping them in a solution made of one cup of bleach and five gallons of water. It's a good idea to discard cans that have been tossed about by winds or water -- their seals may have weakened and allowed contamination or spoilage.

Babies may become ill if fed powdered formula prepared with treated water. Only preprepared, canned baby formula is considered completely safe.

Mosquito-Borne Disease

With power down, windows open, and many people exposed to the elements, mosquitoes will have a field day.

Mosquitoes carry a number of diseases. West Nile virus season was just peaking when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Link to Reference: Matthew Brown, West Bank bureau, November 11, 2005

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Highlights:
- an estimated 1,700 homes around the Murphy Oil spill in Chalmette are considered unsafe to enter without protective gear, after soil samples showed the widespread presence of toxic chemicals,
- it's unknown whether that nagging cough going around town is caused by harmful mold, carcinogenic dust or simply a mild cold.
- They repeated warnings that anyone returning to homes or businesses in proximity to the refinery should wear protective gloves, boots and clothing. Left unsettled was whether work being done now in those neighborhoods will be enough to make them habitable again.


Is it safe yet to live and work in flood-stricken areas? More than 10 weeks after Hurricane Katrina, the answer remains largely unclear, federal health and environmental officials said Thursday, leaving thousands of on-the-fence residents lacking crucial information at a pivotal juncture in the region's recovery.

Soil, water and air samples released Thursday confirmed a small number of sites as obvious hazards. For instance, an estimated 1,700 homes around the Murphy Oil spill in Chalmette are considered unsafe to enter without protective gear, after soil samples showed the widespread presence of toxic chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

Harmful substances including heavy metals and unspecified chemicals also were detected in water samples taken near the Bayou Bonfouca Superfund site in Slidell and the Delatte Metals site in Tangipahoa Parish, although no public drinking water sources have been tainted, the EPA said.

But more subtle concerns affecting a broader slice of the region's populace linger. For example, it's unknown whether that nagging cough going around town is caused by harmful mold, carcinogenic dust or simply a mild cold.

"I don't think we can tease that out right now," said Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, during a news conference Thursday on the latest round of environmental testing after Katrina.

Monitoring of hospital admissions has revealed widespread "anecdotal reports" of coughing and respiratory problems, Frumkin said. But how many people have been affected and how severely has not been nailed down. "That may emerge as one of the environmental challenges in coming months," he said.

Looking out for children

Critics of the federal government's response to Katrina's environmental toll say Frumkin's lack of certainty underscores an alleged failure to protect storm-wracked residents.

"The very question everybody needs an answer to is the question they're avoiding: Is it safe?" said Anne Rolfes with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an environmental group. "I know mothers and fathers trying to make a decision: Should we come back with our small children? Schools are open now. People are asking life-and-death questions, and EPA is hiding from answering it."

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said his personnel are working diligently to answer public safety questions, on a scale one EPA official said has not been seen since the Sept. 11, 2001, collapse of the World Trade Center buildings in Manhattan.

In conjunction with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and several other state and federal agencies, the EPA is taking air, water and soil tests on a regular basis. Yet Johnson said, "the sheer volume of debris is staggering and will take many months to deal with."

That debris includes a thick layer of dried mud that cakes much of St. Bernard and lower Plaquemines parishes and vast areas of Lakeview, the 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans. As the mud crumbles to dust and goes airborne or people come into contact with it on the ground, there is increasing concern it could be harmful to humans. Some sediment samples have contained arsenic, lead and petroleum products, and EPA officials said residents should avoid contact if possible.

An EPA spokeswoman said the agency is working with the Army Corps of Engineers to draft a disposal plan.

Dwight Bradshaw, senior scientist with the state DEQ, said children are most at danger of exposure. Whereas adults can follow simple precautions such as washing after contact with sediment and avoiding ingesting it, Bradshaw said that could be difficult for young children.

But he cautioned that sweeping conclusions about health threats are impossible, and said many issues must be addressed on a house-by-house basis.

"There's such a huge range of impacts. You'd have to say: This house is OK, but that one is not," he said. That process generally will be left to homeowners and their insurance companies.

Over the long term, EPA officials singled out the Murphy Oil spill as perhaps the most glaring public health threat. Testing around the refinery has revealed high levels of arsenic, diesel fuel and other petroleum-based chemicals.

Stuck in limbo

They repeated warnings that anyone returning to homes or businesses in proximity to the refinery should wear protective gloves, boots and clothing. Left unsettled was whether work being done now in those neighborhoods will be enough to make them habitable again.

"The question of whether those properties can ever be occupied again, that's a work in progress," said Richard Greene, EPA Region 6 administrator. "I'm sure many of the people would like to rebuild and get their lives back to normal. We'll see how that process works out. But as of now . . . there are many questions that we do not have answers to today."

A spokeswoman for Murphy Oil, Mindy West, said scrubbing of home exteriors marred by the Meraux oil slick began Wednesday. She declined to give a timeline for completion or to say how many homeowners have enrolled in the cleanup. The Murphy spill has spawned several lawsuits against the refinery.

Link to Reference: MIKE DUNNE, Advocate staff writer, 11/12/05

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Highlights:
- nitial sampling told the agency that "floodwaters were contaminated with bacteria and lead and a variety of other materials.
- a lot of environmental sampling is showing results below federal action levels
- reiterated that residents returning to their homes should avoid direct contact with oil-contaminated sediments and should wear protective clothing. Children and pets should not be allowed into the area as they are more likely to be harmed by any contamination.


Environmental monitoring in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is telling state and federal officials that some areas present possible health problems, some appear to be clean and some need additional investigation.

"This is a natural disaster the likes we have never seen before," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson said Thursday in a conference call with reporters. He said initial sampling told the agency that "floodwaters were contaminated with bacteria and lead and a variety of other materials."

Sediment testing around expected environmental hot spots, such as the massive Murphy Oil refinery spill in St. Bernard Parish, tells officials that there are some dangers and concerns. But a lot of environmental sampling is showing results below federal action levels. Dr. Howard Frumkin of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said "it is very hard to say in a broad brush way" whether Katrina was the environmental disaster people predicted in early September.

"There are some areas that appear to be quite clean and quite safe. There are some areas where we are concerned and some areas still need investigation," Frumkin said.

Frumkin said some health tracking in clinics and hospitals around the New Orleans area has turned up anecdotal evidence of coughing and other respiratory problems and that is "exactly what is expected." The agency expected more cases of communicable diseases, but that concern never materialized.

A lot of injuries connected to the hurricane have been reported, such as carbon monoxide poisoning from use of generators in enclosed areas and cuts from chain saws. "I wish we had better data," he said. For example, the agency can't discern the impacts of molds versus contaminated dust.

"We have more questions than answers," he said. "It is plausible that some people are having reactions to mold and other substances there," Frumkin said.

Routine air sampling doesn't measure mold, he said.

EPA has conducted sampling around five Superfund sites flooded by Katrina. The Agriculture Street Landfill in New Orleans, Southern Shipbuilding in Slidell and Madisonville Creosote Works sites "were not affected by the hurricane, Johnson said.

Testing at the Bayou Bonfouca site in Slidell showed some water contamination, but all at levels below drinking water action levels, Johnson said.

At Delatte Metals near Ponchatoula, tests showed some elevated levels of metals, but none of the area's drinking water wells were contaminated, he said.

A storage tank on the Murphy Oil Refinery in Meraux collapsed during Katrina and about 1,700 St. Bernard Parish homes were contaminated. The oil company is working on cleaning up the area, Johnson said.

Murphy has taken about 1,500 samples and EPA has independently analyzed about 10 percent of them.

Many samples show levels of oil products that exceed safe levels for residential soils, he said.

He and Frumkin reiterated that residents returning to their homes should avoid direct contact with oil-contaminated sediments and should wear protective clothing. Children and pets should not be allowed into the area as they are more likely to be harmed by any contamination.

EPA Region 6 Administrator Richard Greene said he thinks some homeowners around the Murphy refinery will want to rebuild, but he said he doesn't know whether that will be reasonable or allowable.

"We do not have answers today," Greene said. "We expect Murphy to be responsible" and clean up the contamination to meet standards, he said.

Link to Reference: RANDY LEE LOFTIS / The Dallas Morning News, 11/10/05

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Highlights:
- The suburban New Orleans neighborhood hit by a million-gallon oil spill after Hurricane Katrina is still a dangerous, toxic mess
- estimate that more than 1 million gallons of crude oil spilled.
- Murphy Oil, based in El Dorado, Ark., has assured residents that after a planned cleanup, the neighborhood would face no short- or long-term risks from the spilled oil. However, EPA and Louisiana officials said the contamination in the square-mile spill area is a serious health risk.

The suburban New Orleans neighborhood hit by a million-gallon oil spill after Hurricane Katrina is still a dangerous, toxic mess, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.
It's not known when the area around Murphy Oil Corp.'s refinery in St. Bernard Parish will be safe or whether some of the 1,700 oil-soaked homes can ever be re-occupied, EPA Administrator Steve Johnson and other officials told reporters.
"We have serious concerns about potential exposure to Murphy Oil contaminated sediment," Mr. Johnson said. New Orleans' Ninth Ward neighborhood is also a concern, he said.
"Avoid direct contact with the sediment," he said. "Avoid direct contact with the floodwater. That has been our message since the very beginning."
A tank at the Murphy Oil refinery in Meraux, southeast of New Orleans, came loose Sept. 4 in the floods after Katrina. Officials estimate that more than 1 million gallons of crude oil spilled.
Murphy Oil, based in El Dorado, Ark., has assured residents that after a planned cleanup, the neighborhood would face no short- or long-term risks from the spilled oil. However, EPA and Louisiana officials said the contamination in the square-mile spill area is a serious health risk.
Parish officials went against the state's recommendation when they let people start repairing their homes, said Dwight Bradshaw of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
The cleanup is the responsibility of Murphy Oil, under government supervision, said Richard E. Greene, regional administrator of the EPA.
A decision on whether the worst hit homes can be reoccupied "is a work in progress," he said.
A Murphy Oil spokesman declined to comment.
The EPA offered hopeful signs on some other fronts. Monitoring has uncovered few if any problems with toxic air pollution in the Gulf Coast hurricane zone or chemical contamination in gulf bays, the agency said.
Three of the five federal Superfund toxic-waste sites in the hurricane zone came through with no release of contamination, while at two others, no contamination reached drinking water wells, the EPA said.
But, problems remain, Mr. Johnson said. They include contaminated flood sediment, oil spills, mold in formerly flooded buildings, damaged drinking- water and wastewater systems and massive amounts of debris.
E-mail rloftis@dallasnews.com

Link to Reference: Randy Lee Loftis, The Dallas Morning News, November 6 2005

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Highlights:
- Altogether, government test samples contained at least 77 of the nearly 200 chemicals tested for. Although most were below the screening levels, at least 15 were higher.
- Among the most significant: Arsenic, Diesel fuel, a component of creosote, Dieldrin, Lead,
- Local environmentalists complain that they and other members of the public have been shut out of the decisions.

DALLAS · The Army Corps of Engineers is planning one of the biggest environmental cleanups ever attempted: scraping miles of sediment laced with cancer-causing chemicals from New Orleans' flooded neighborhoods. Contaminants in the sediment include toxic metals, industrial compounds, petroleum byproducts and a banned insecticide, all at levels that signal potential cancer risks, a Dallas Morning News review of government tests shows.

The cleanup plans would involve crews using front-end loaders to scoop up contaminated sediment that Hurricane Katrina floods left in yards, playgrounds and other locations throughout the Greater New Orleans area.

Altogether, government test samples contained at least 77 of the nearly 200 chemicals tested for. Although most were below the screening levels, at least 15 were higher.

The sampling plan assembled in mid-September by the Environmental Protection Agency and quickly reviewed by outside scientific experts, targeted toxic substances in sediment left by the receding water. Eight of those that were higher than screening levels are known, probable or possible causes of cancer in people.

Among the most significant:

Arsenic. A known human carcinogen, it was the most common substance found, appearing at virtually every site tested. All but one of the sites that contained the toxic metal had more than the Environmental Protection Agency's cancer-risk screening level for arsenic in residential soil, which is 0.39 parts per million. The highest arsenic level found was 78 parts per million, 200 times the screening level. The vast majority of the sites tested had 10 times the cancer screening level.

Diesel fuel. About 150 residential tests sites had as much diesel as the soil around a leaking underground tank.

A component of creosote. Called benzo(a)pyrene, this substance occurred above the screening level at 100 sites. The highest was 570 times the screening level. A related chemical, benzo(b)fluoranthene, was above the screening level at 68 sites. The EPA says those two chemicals probably cause cancer, while California state officials say they definitely do.

Dieldrin. A banned insecticide, it was used against termites until 1987. It showed up at 58 locations. As with arsenic, virtually all the samples were higher than the EPA guideline for safe neighborhood soil.

Lead. It exceeded the EPA guideline at 17 sites.

The task of cleanup would be complex and huge, with crews covering almost an entire city and its suburbs while maneuvering around the remaining debris and damaged houses.

Decisions are still evolving on whatever follow-up testing might occur to check the long-term health of the New Orleans environment after the sediment is gone, said William H. Farland, the EPA's acting deputy administrator for science.

Local environmentalists complain that they and other members of the public have been shut out of the decisions.

"We've cooperated with the EPA on a great many things over the years," said Wilma Subra, a consulting chemist in New Iberia, La., who is monitoring the hurricanes' environmental impact for the Louisiana Environmental Action League, an advocacy group. "Now, we're having a hard time getting our calls returned."

EPA spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said the agency is releasing information as quickly as possible, but she and other EPA officials emphasized that they can offer only their best advice. Decisions, such as repopulating New Orleans, are strictly up to city officials, she said.

Information about the possible long-term risks in dozens of New Orleans neighborhoods is crucial as people decide whether to return home and as the city decides where or whether to rebuild

Link to Reference: Steven Reinberg, HealthDay Reporter Fri Nov 4, 2005

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Highlights:
- continued sampling going on of drinking water, surface water and soil sampling,
- The so-called toxic soup of contaminated water and sewage wasn't as hazardous as feared, Lichtveld said. "The drinking water is virtually all on line, the sewer system is being repaired."
- one million pounds of household hazardous waste has been collected in Louisiana as of the end of October. This waste consists largely of cleaning products, lawn and garden products, pesticides and herbicides, fuels and paints, as well as car batteries.


FRIDAY, Nov. 4 (HealthDay News) -- While Hurricane Katrina took a heavy toll on New Orleans, the city is making steady progress returning to normal, even while some health dangers remain. Experts say the major health problems are mold, hazardous waste and injuries suffered during the cleanup.

"There is continued sampling going on of drinking water, surface water and soil sampling," said Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, chairwoman of environmental health sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. "For all of those, there are no indications of public health dangers," she added.

The so-called toxic soup of contaminated water and sewage wasn't as hazardous as feared, Lichtveld said. "The drinking water is virtually all on line, the sewer system is being repaired."

In addition, seafood and fish have been sampled in Lake Pontchartrain and other areas and found safe, Lichtveld said. "That is the good news," she said. "We need to continue to monitor on a long-term basis."

According to Lichtveld, mold remains the one major area of concern. "The advice from the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention is that if you go home, you need to use gloves and masks if you are going to remove the mold," she said.

Lichtveld warned that people with health conditions such as asthma or compromised immune systems should stay away from mold and not attempt to get rid of it themselves.

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that New Orleans doctors are seeing a rise in what locals are calling "Katrina cough," believed to be caused by allergies to the mold and dust resulting from the storm.

"It started out as a sore throat and scratchy eyes. That turned into a cough again, and that's where it's stayed," affected resident Christophe Hinton, 38, told the newspaper. Dr. Kevin Jordan, director of medical affairs at New Orlean's Touro Infirmary and Memorial Medical Center, told the Times the center had seen a 25 percent rise in such cases since Katrina.

"The mold problem is a very large one in terms of the number of structures that have had flooding and are probably going to have mold damage as a consequence," said Dr. Stephen Redd, chief of the air pollution and respiratory branch at the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health.

The CDC has advised people working in homes infested with mold to wear gloves and face masks, added CDC spokeswomen Bernadette Burden. "People need to protect themselves," she said. "If a person has any type of sensitivity or a compromised immune system, or any type of allergy or preexisting respiratory condition, there is a likelihood of having a sensitivity to mold."

Even though the magnitude of the mold infestation is greater than seen before, local experts say that dealing with the problem is not new, Burden said. "They have worked alongside CDC experts for years and are capable of dealing with the situation," she said.

If a home wasn't flooded, it's unlikely there would be a significant mold problem, Lichtveld said. But, if a house was flooded, residents will have to remove all the mold before the house is safe to live in. This means stripping carpet, sheet rock and insulation. If the job is extensive, Lichtveld recommended working with people experienced in removing mold.

Burden said local experts are making house-by-house assessments to determine the extent of mold infestation and whether a home can be saved.

The CDC has guidelines for when individuals can live in a home with mold without having to "wear respiratory protection on an ongoing basis," Redd said. "A lot of it boils down to what the level of mold in the house is and whether you can be in the house while remediation is being done," he added.

Lichtveld also cautioned that discarded material needs to be disposed of properly to avoid exposure to hazardous waste. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that about one million pounds of household hazardous waste has been collected in Louisiana as of the end of October. This waste consists largely of cleaning products, lawn and garden products, pesticides and herbicides, fuels and paints, as well as car batteries.

Redd cautioned that the burning of debris can also cause air pollution problems. "There are discussions going on that are aimed at reducing the volume of debris and at the same time being protective of human health by minimizing exposure to particulate matter from smoke from burning debris," he said.

On a brighter note, Lichtveld said more hospitals are reopening. "The hospitals and clinics are coming on line," she said. In addition, the city has been inspecting restaurants and declaring them safe to eat in, she said. "There are pink signs in the windows of all the restaurants, she said. "You can feel comfortable going in and eating."

As for the long-term outlook, Lichtveld sees the rebuilding of New Orleans as a chance to make important infrastructure changes. "There are a number of wonderful opportunities for the city as it rebuilds to do things right," she said.

Link to Reference: Environmental News Network, Dr. James Martin, The Martin Clinic November 03, 2005

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Highlights:
- the "toxic soup" contained in the floodwaters of New Orleans has been making headlines around the world, but this recipe is served up daily in practically every city throughout the United States. While the recipes differ from state to state, the "backbone" ingredients -- pesticides, heavy metals, petroleum products and other industrial chemicals -- are virtually everywhere.
- Toxic chemicals are in our air, our water, our fruits, vegetables, meats, fish and poultry. They're in everyday products like household cleaners, nail polish and remover, make-up, lotions and cigarettes. And now they're showing up in newborn babies.
- The days are gone when we can spray chemicals without a thought of where these chemicals end up because they end up in our air, our water, our soil and in our children.

News of the "toxic soup" contained in the floodwaters of New Orleans has been making headlines around the world, but this recipe is served up daily in practically every city throughout the United States. While the recipes differ from state to state, the "backbone" ingredients -- pesticides, heavy metals, petroleum products and other industrial chemicals -- are virtually everywhere.

Americans watched in horror and shame as our government -- on every level -- did not live up to our expectations and as a result so many suffered in New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast following hurricane Katrina. Yet this same travesty continues with the toxic assault on our environment that affects everyone within our borders.

So many have put their trust, along with the health and well being of our country, in government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Institute of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the proverbial levee won't hold here either. To date the EPA has approved over 80,000 synthetic chemicals that continue to be released into the environment. We are told that these toxins are at "acceptable" levels but common sense tells us otherwise.

Toxic chemicals are in our air, our water, our fruits, vegetables, meats, fish and poultry. They're in everyday products like household cleaners, nail polish and remover, make-up, lotions and cigarettes. And now they're showing up in newborn babies.

A study released this summer by the Environmental Work Group (EWG) tested umbilical cord blood of infants born in the U.S. and found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants. In total, tests identified 287 chemicals of which 180 cause cancer, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system and 208 are linked to birth defects or abnormal development.

These findings refute the assertion by some that the placenta shields cord blood (and the fetus) from most chemicals and other toxins in the environment. But we don't need a researcher's study to tell us what we already know -- carrying around these toxins in our systems is not acceptable.

For those who need a little more convincing, consider this: A Washington State University study reported in the June 3 issue of Science Magazine indicates that exposure to environmental toxins impacts health far greater than anyone ever imagined. Researchers found that the effects are passed along to offspring for as many as four generations.

It's time for the national spotlight to shine on the actions we must take to reduce our exposures to these toxins in our homes, schools and businesses. First and foremost -- ignore the chemical industry's assault on our lives. Don't buy into the current "better living through chemistry" mind set. We need to be conscious of our actions. The days are gone when we can spray chemicals without a thought of where these chemicals end up because they end up in our air, our water, our soil and in our children.

There are plenty of all-natural alternatives to keep any surface clean and germ free. The same is true for pesticides. Buying organic fruits, vegetables and meats may be a bit more costly, but what price do you put on the hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and other chemicals in non-organic foods we consume?

We don't have to wait for Congressional confirmation to recognize that our children are facing problems like asthma, leukemia, autism spectrum disorders, ADD/ADHD and diabetes in alarmingly high numbers. And the rates keep rising. There are safe, accessible and effective methods available to eliminate these toxins from the body. This information must be mainstreamed into our national healthcare system and national media.

It's time for America to take a long hard look at our actions -- and inaction -- over the past centuries. Some view our toxic environment as an unavoidable byproduct of our industrialized world; others claim it is callous greed -- the need for power and money at any cost. No matter where we ultimately choose to lay blame, we owe it to our children and to the planet they must inherit to do all we can to clean up our act.

Link to site: permission to dredge into a trapped body of nasty water in a residential area of Gautier so the tide can clean it out.

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Highlights:
- During Katrina, sewage and debris surged into the lake and left it filled with sewage, nasty water and appliances.
- digging a trench to the body of water and letting the Sound flush it out was like "running your sewer pipe to the Gulf."
- The proposal was to dredge a 10-foot swath, 6 feet deep for about 50 feet to connect the lake to the Sound.

Karen Nelson, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss., Nov. 01, 2005
PASCAGOULA - Jackson County supervisors have discussed asking the Department of Marine Resources for permission to dredge into a trapped body of nasty water in a residential area of Gautier so the tide can clean it out.

Supervisor Tim Broussard, whose district contains the problem, said DMR offered to use its post-Katrina emergency authority to allow the dredge work. The lake once was connected to the Sound and subject to the tide, but access has filled in over the years with storms. During Katrina, sewage and debris surged into the lake and left it filled with sewage, nasty water and appliances.

Supervisor Frank Leach said that digging a trench to the body of water and letting the Sound flush it out was like "running your sewer pipe to the Gulf." He questioned whether the county wanted to do it, even if it did have permission from the DMR. Supervisors decided late Monday to get more information on the project and check out the environmental liabilities before making a decision.

Broussard said residents around the water are suffering with the smell and fear possible health hazards. The proposal was to dredge a 10-foot swath, 6 feet deep for about 50 feet to connect the lake to the Sound.

The project was on the list of areas to be dredged by the county in the coming years, but the hurricane debris has made it more urgent, Broussard said. It is located in the Pointe Clear subdivision at the end of Tarpon Street.

Bill Walker, executive director of the DMR, said he based his decision on that fact that it is a little amount of "funky" water going into the Sound compared to other breaches the Coast has had to deal with since Katrina. It's very short-term pollution, he said.

"We weighed the pros and cons and the benefits outweigh the fact that a small amount of pollution will enter the Sound," he said. Walker said the lake actually is still subject to the tide at high tide. "It's not like the body of water doesn't communicate with the Sound," Walker said. But at the rate the tide enters the area, it will never be cleaned out, Broussard said.

Link to site: Gulf of mexico waters thus far appear free of chemical contaminants that could have been washed from the land by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, state and federal scientists report.

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Highlights:
- sampling Gulf waters to determine whether the two hurricanes swept pollutants from land into coastal waters.
- Water samples analyzed thus far contain no toxic chemicals attributable to runoff following the hurricanes, he says.
- concerns about the toxicity of the sediments coating formerly flooded areas, especially in New Orleans.

Cheryl Hogue, Chemical and Engineering News, Volume 83, Number 44October 31, 2005
Gulf of mexico waters thus far appear free of chemical contaminants that could have been washed from the land by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, state and federal scientists report.
Steven A. Murawski, a senior scientist for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, says federal and state agencies are sampling Gulf waters to determine whether the two hurricanes swept pollutants from land into coastal waters. Water samples analyzed thus far contain no toxic chemicals attributable to runoff following the hurricanes, he says.

As part of their analyses, scientists are checking coastal waters from eastern Texas to Alabama for the presence of brominated flame retardants, which Murawski says is an indicator of “acute urban runoff.” Thus far, scientists have detected none of these brominated compounds in Gulf waters, he says. It is likely, therefore, that the low levels of pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls found in the water did not come from the storm surges, Murawski adds.

Meanwhile, on Oct. 20 public health officials said at an Institute of Medicine (IOM) conference that, currently, the greatest potential threat to human health in the wake of the hurricanes may be exposure to mold. They also expressed concerns about the toxicity of the sediments coating formerly flooded areas, especially in New Orleans.

Among IOM conference speakers was Paul J. Lioy, a professor at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Piscataway, N.J., who has extensively studied health effects stemming from the World Trade Center attacks, including ailments linked to dusts that coated building interiors. Noting that sediments dry out and can end up as airborne dust, Lioy urged officials to analyze the sediments as soon as possible.

“Know what’s in there,” he said, so returning residents and workers doing demolition and cleanup can be told how to protect themselves appropriately.

Link to site: the latest pollution data in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina indicated for the first time that the Mississippi Delta was again a safe place to swim.

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Highlights:
- Sediment left behind should be avoided because of fecal bacteria, chemicals, metals and other contaminants it might contain, officials said Friday.
- EPA has been allowing raw sewage not fully disinfected to flow into the Mississippi River in at least two places because of broken treatment facilities
- all the federal data sampling and test results have been coordinated through the White House's Council on Environmental Quality.


JOHN HEILPRIN, The Associated Press, 10/21/2005 
WASHINGTON (AP) — While casting a nervous eye at Hurricane Wilma, federal and state officials reported Friday that the latest pollution data in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina indicated for the first time that the Mississippi Delta was again a safe place to swim.
"This is encouraging for recreational uses, but the data should not be used for assessing the safety of consuming shellfish," Benjamin Grumbles, head of the Environmental Protection Agency's water office, told reporters.

Environmental and health officials had previously recommended that people avoid contact with floodwaters that have since been pumped into Lake Pontchartrain and should use soap and clean water to decontaminate themselves if contact couldn't be avoided. Sediment left behind should be avoided because of fecal bacteria, chemicals, metals and other contaminants it might contain, officials said Friday.

Water samples from 20 locations in the Gulf of Mexico's river channels and near shorelines were collected aboard The Bold, EPA's sole ship for monitoring ocean and coastal waters. The data from Sept. 27 to Oct. 2 showed the presence of a type of sewage-related bacteria, Enterococcus, but at levels that didn't violate freshwater or marine water standards, the agency said.

EPA was awaiting further analysis for another type of sewage-related bacterium, Clostridium perfringens, which also causes diarrhea, nausea and other stomach illness.

The agency on Friday dispatched officials to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's regional headquarters in Atlanta and EPA's own emergency center in Tallahassee, Fla., to deal with any oil or hazardous material spills from Wilma.

FEMA and other federal and local agencies urged residents in Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to watch closely Wilma's path. Some areas of the Florida mainland were ordered evacuated ahead of the powerful, slow-moving hurricane.

"We, like everyone else, have our eyes on the tracking of Hurricane Wilma," Grumbles said.

In New Orleans, EPA has been allowing raw sewage not fully disinfected to flow into the Mississippi River in at least two places because of broken treatment facilities, said Chris Piehler, senior environmental scientist for Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality.

Grumbles said EPA was "closely monitoring the situation."

There have been no such identifiable releases of sewage contamination in the Gulf of Mexico's waters along Mississippi, said Phil Bass, director of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality's Office of Pollution Control.

"We're still advising, not because of water contamination, but because of debris primarily in our waters, to stay out of the (Mississippi) Sound," Bass said. "We're happy to report that some of our shrimping is back in operation. Our fin fishery appears to be healthy and that's beginning to come back."

Federal officials emphasized they were only commenting on the safety of swimming or boating in Mississippi Delta waters and accidentally swallowing a gulp. They still recommend not drinking the water and expressed caution about consuming undercooked or raw shellfish such as oysters.

The Food and Drug Administration "has no reason to question the safety of commercially available seafood from Mississippi, Louisiana or Alabama," said Donald Kraemer, the acting head of its seafood office. Kraemer said none of the pollution data shows contamination "at or above levels of concern" for crab, shrimp and most fish with fins.

Steve Murawski, chief science adviser to the Commerce Department's National Marine Fisheries Service, said all the federal data sampling and test results have been coordinated through the White House's Council on Environmental Quality.

Murawski noted that all the results were preliminary, since some of the contaminants might take time to work their way through the water, air and land, and into the food chain.

Link to site: New Orleans's public health director marveled publicly Thursday over the absence of any disease outbreak in the wake of the strike by Hurricane Katrina

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

Highlights:
- estimated that New Orleans contains enough debris to fill the Superdome 40 times.
- there are the questions of draining all areas of the city, providing drinkable water for the public, controlling disease carriers such as mosquitoes and rats, ensuring a food supply, debris disposal, sewage treatment, indoor air quality, disposal of toxic chemicals and the safety of people working to improve conditions, Guidry said.
- Raw sewage is being dumped into the Mississippi River

RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, The Associated Press, 10/20/2005
WASHINGTON (AP) — New Orleans's public health director marveled publicly Thursday over the absence of any disease outbreak in the wake of the strike by Hurricane Katrina.

"I was just amazed," Dr. Kevin Stephens told an Institute of Medicine workshop on the health impact of natural disasters. Thousands of people crammed into the Superdome with no water, overflowing toilets, heat and stress could have provided ideal conditions for lowering resistance and beginning the spread of an infectious disease, he noted.

Stephens said in the aftermath of the storm he instituted monitoring of emergency care and other medical centers in hopes of quickly detecting outbreaks such as influenza, meningitis, hepatitis, E. coli infections and even tetanus, but there were no major increases.

At one point there was a jump in respiratory infections, he said, which was quickly traced to a virus being spread at one of the emergency medical centers. Sanitation measures were tightened and the outbreak was halted, Stephens said.

On the other hand, communications among authorities was a problem.

"Anything that could go wrong in communications went wrong in Katrina," said Stephens. And as the cleanup progressed, he said, there was an increase in injuries such as chain saw cuts.

Dr. Lynn Goldman, vice chairman of the workshop, said the goal is to learn from what happened there.

The nation is facing a series of threats — terrorism, the spread of diseases such as SARS, West Nile virus and bird flu, as well as natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, said Goldman, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University.

She praised the work of local emergency officials who struggled to help others even as their own homes and families were affected.

Indeed, Stephens and his family were forced to move in with his parents because of storm damage, he told the IOM meeting. The Institute is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

The work to protect public health is continuing 51 days after the hurricane made landfall, said Dr. Jimmy Guidry, Louisiana's medical director.

With thousands of people evacuated from the city, the question is where to put those coming back, Guidry said. "We are looking at the neighborhood of 100,000 trailers to house people."

In addition there are the questions of draining all areas of the city, providing drinkable water for the public, controlling disease carriers such as mosquitoes and rats, ensuring a food supply, debris disposal, sewage treatment, indoor air quality, disposal of toxic chemicals and the safety of people working to improve conditions, Guidry said.

And, he noted, more storms are possible with Hurricane Wilma currently under way, although it appeared Thursday as a greater threat to Florida.

"Every time one of them is out there in the Gulf my blood pressure goes up a little bit," Guidry said. He estimated that New Orleans contains enough debris to fill the Superdome 40 times.

That means it is too much for landfills and some will have to be burned, he said, which raises questions about air quality.

The volume of debris is so great that it will take months to handle, commented Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson.

Disposal of spoiled food from homes and the city's many restaurants is another problem, Guidry said, estimating that 300,000 refrigerators in the city will need to be replaced or refurbished after weeks without electricity.

Raw sewage is being dumped into the Mississippi River, he added. This is not a good practice but the EPA permitted it to get the sewage out of the city so the treatment plant can be repaired, he said.

After days or weeks under water, mold is a growing problem in many buildings, he added, raising serious health problems from breathing indoor air.

"How do we get back to a sense of normalcy, a sense that we can go on with our lives," Guidry asked.

Link to site: A plume of green runoff from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters has spread from the Louisiana coast and across the Gulf of Mexico.

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Highlights:
- The runoff, visible from U.S. weather satellites, contains algae, slightly elevated levels of metals and large amounts of fresh water. Fishermen also have reported seeing oil slicks and occasional debris such as tree branches, 2-by-4s and cattle carcasses.
- Much of the plume has drifted toward the center of the Gulf of Mexico and been diluted,
- concerned that fertilizer and other nutrients in the runoff might intensify a prolonged outbreak of toxic "red tide" algae that has hit patches of the Florida Gulf Coast

Matt Reed, USA TODAY Wed Oct 19,
A plume of green runoff from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters has spread from the Louisiana coast and across the Gulf of Mexico. One 7-mile-wide band has drifted more than 500 miles toward southwestern Florida, where the Gulf Stream, a powerful ocean current, is likely to dilute it and carry it up the Atlantic Coast.

The runoff, visible from U.S. weather satellites, contains algae, slightly elevated levels of metals and large amounts of fresh water. Fishermen also have reported seeing oil slicks and occasional debris such as tree branches, 2-by-4s and cattle carcasses.

A round of tests by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, taken Sept. 12-16 off Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, found no threats to human health in the water or the fish swimming in it. Results of tests taken Oct. 6 through Sunday haven't been finalized.

Hurricane Katrina struck the Louisiana and Mississippi coast Aug. 29. The next day, flood barriers failed along Lake Pontchartrain, inundating large sections of New Orleans with water 10 feet deep. As Katrina's storm surge ended and New Orleans was pumped dry, polluted water fed into the Gulf.

"What's in that water, I don't know," says Mitch Roffer, a private oceanography consultant who uses satellite images to track fisheries and currents for clients that include fishing outfits and oil companies.

Sport fishermen from Fort Walton Beach, Fla., who cruised the cloudy green water reported poor catch rates and dead fish, Roffer says. Those who worked in clean water outside the plume caught plenty of fish, but many fish had empty or shrunken stomachs.

NOAA reported that 154 fish and crab samples found normal levels of pesticides and industrial chemicals and no traces of E. coli bacteria from human or animal feces.

Much of the plume has drifted toward the center of the Gulf of Mexico and been diluted, Roffer says. Some runoff drifted about 80 miles off southwest Florida. A computer model at the University of South Florida in Tampa projected it would drift into the Atlantic and north past Cape Canaveral and Daytona Beach by today. By Tuesday, nothing had come ashore along the east coast of central Florida.

Plenty of storm debris washed up on the Texas coast, says Greg Gawlikowski, a satellite image analyst who works for Roffer's fishery and current-forecasting service. Some beaches along South Padre Island were strewn with lumber, gas cans, household appliances and other junk, he says.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was concerned that fertilizer and other nutrients in the runoff might intensify a prolonged outbreak of toxic "red tide" algae that has hit patches of the Florida Gulf Coast from Naples north to the Panhandle, spokesman Willy Puz says. The algae kills fish, smells bad and can make beachgoers' eyes and throats sting.

Mike Bomar, manager of Capt. Mike's Parasail in St. Pete Beach, says media coverage about red tide has hurt tourism almost as much as the outbreak itself. St. Pete Beach hasn't experienced fumes or dead fish in nearly a month, he says.

The Alden Resort, a few yards east of Bomar's beach kiosk, continues to receive telephone inquiries about red tide from prospective guests, assistant manager Tony Dilley says.

"It's frustrating because you can't fight perception," Bomar says of the downturn in demand for cabanas, paddleboats and parasail rides. "We probably lost 30% or more this summer."

Contributors: Reed reports daily for Florida Today in Melbourne

Link to site: New Orleans is dumping 26.1 million gallons of raw sewage into the Mississippi River every day,

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Highlights:
- The sewage is not processed as it is collected from toilets and drains
- river water is sucked up and treated to become drinking water.
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted a six-month variance to allow the city to dump sewage into the river

MARK BALLARD, mballard@theadvocate.com Capitol news bureau
New Orleans is dumping 26.1 million gallons of raw sewage into the Mississippi River every day, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

The sewage is not processed as it is collected from toilets and drains. But it is diluted with water before flowing into the river, DEQ Secretary Mike McDaniel said. His staff is monitoring the Mississippi River water and testing the intake valves at Belle Chasse, where river water is sucked up and treated to become drinking water. McDaniel said no dangerous levels of toxins have been found.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted a six-month variance to allow the city to dump sewage into the river because Hurricane Katrina knocked out the sewer system. "We are not able to treat sewage. Our treatment plant was decimated," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said. But as early as next week, he said, two motors could be repaired that would allow for at least some treatment of the sewage. The motors that feed the sewage into the water-treatment plant were flooded with 12 feet of water.

The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans announced Friday that the motors could be repaired as early as next week. Though much of the treatment plant is still inoperable, the hope is that initial processing, such as emulsifying and diluting solids, could be done before the waste is dumped into the river.

The city's sanitary sewer system consists of 1,450 miles pipes ranging in size from 8 inches to 7 feet in diameter. Sewage is lifted and moved by 82 pumping stations throughout the city.

Sewage Pumping Station A is collecting discharge from three smaller stations that gather effluvium from the city's Central Business District, the French Quarter and Uptown neighborhoods. Usually Station A feeds sewage collected from the city into a treatment plant. For the past week, it has been moving raw, unprocessed waste directly into the river near the French Quarter.

Harold Leggett, DEQ's assistant secretary for environmental compliance, said the six other treatment facilities were flooded and require at least four months to repair motors and electrical systems, he said.

"I think probably six months is a more accurate estimate," Leggett said.

About 60,000 people have returned to the Uptown area alone, said state Sen. Derrick Shepherd, D-Marrero, who questioned McDaniel at a legislative committee hearing on environmental issues raised by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The units that serve the neighborhoods of Gentilly, Lakeview and New Orleans East are not repaired and cannot be linked to the A pumping station. No sewer service is available for those parts of the city, so residents cannot flush toilets there.

Link to site: Katrina-churned toxic tar balls, poisonous pollutants and debris washing ashore Brevard County beaches appear unfounded.

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Highlights:
- protruding pollution plume appears to have largely dissipated.
- There was no strong signature from the satellite indicating algae blooms and such
- eyeing a mass of nutrient-rich water swirling around an eddy about 80 miles offshore from the Texas-Louisiana border.

RICK NEALE, FLORIDA TODAY rneale@flatoday.net
INDIAN HARBOUR BEACH - So far, sickening scenarios of Hurricane Katrina-churned toxic tar balls, poisonous pollutants and debris washing ashore Brevard County beaches appear unfounded.
Scientists worried last week that a tendril of contaminated water, measuring 5 to 7 miles across, could sweep eastward from the Gulf of Mexico. This ribbon of sludge could flow north of Cuba and hit the Gulf Stream, turning northward to befoul Florida's eastern coast.

The protruding pollution plume appears to have largely dissipated. "We know that the water went by the Keys and up the east coast of Florida. But the water that went up there had been significantly diluted from what was there before," said Mitchell Roffer, founder of Roffer's Ocean Fish Forecasting Service.

"There was no strong signature from the satellite indicating algae blooms and such," he said. The Miami oceanographic firm uses satellite imagery, water sampling and fishermen's reports to track the movements of Katrina runoff in the Gulf of Mexico. It appears coastal damages could be confined to areas west of the Panhandle.

More specifically, Roffer is eyeing a mass of nutrient-rich water swirling around an eddy about 80 miles offshore from the Texas-Louisiana border. According to a report received Sunday by ROFFS, beaches along South Padre Island in Texas received an unwelcome batch of waterborne hurricane junk.

"They said they found a bunch of lumber, refrigerators, propane gas canisters, staircases, a boat and a bunch of other debris," said Greg Gawlikowski, satellite image analyst.

Amid the Texas wreckage, Gawlikowski said, was a ring buoy from a boat in Grand Isle, La. -- a 750-mile drive up the coast.

Satellite images notwithstanding, Melbourne Beach resident Tim McGlen believes Katrina debris could be reaching Brevard. He became suspicious Sunday about four miles south of Ocean Avenue.

"The plastic, in addition to all the other stuff, was predominantly water bottle caps -- hundreds of them. Where'd they come from?" McGlen asked. "All the bottled water they've been drinking down there."

McGlen also found six hypodermic needles.

Monday morning, Indialantic resident Pam Lee visited Paradise Beach with her 12-year-old granddaughter, Katelyn Doyle of Kansas City, Mo. Lee noticed increased beach debris over the weekend, but attributed it to the pounding waves.

"We've been out here the last three days, and I haven't seen any poop or anything like we were supposed to," Lee said. "There's been a lot of stuff (on the beach), but the surf's been really rough."

About 100 yards to the south, Howard Heidel of Indialantic fished for pompano. He said he hopes Katrina contaminants stay far from Brevard.

"As far as fishing goes, I'm just out here to relax and have a good time. Catching fish is secondary," Heidel said.

Contact Neale at 242-3638 or rneale@flatoday.net

Link to site: assessment of the water quality of the Katrina floodwaters, is good news for those who’ve been exposed directly to the floodwaters

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Highlights:
- LSU researchers caution that the same floodwaters that were pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain contain high levels of some toxic metals, especially copper and zinc, and could pose a long-term danger to the area’s aquatic life
- 38 floodwater samples from widespread sections of New Orleans, primarily in the area of the city known as the "East Bank," where the main human contact with the floodwaters occurred. The samples, which included both surface waters and bottom samples, were taken within five to nine days after flooding occurred. Additional samples were also obtained from the 17th Street drainage canal, after pumping of the floodwater began, to evaluate the flood’s impact on Lake Pontchartrain, the receiving body for the pumped floodwaters.
- found high levels of bacteria, most likely from fecal contamination resulting from sewage. Levels were within the range of typical storm water runoff in the city, the scientists said. They also detected high levels of lead, arsenic and chromium and noted that levels of these toxic metals were also similar to those typically found in the area’s storm water. In general, these particular findings were similar to those obtained by the Environmental Protection Agency in their initial assessment
- Gasoline was also a significant component of the floodwaters, as measured by elevated levels of three of its components: benzene, toluene and ethylbenzene.
- Compounds found in common household chemicals were also detected in the floodwaters, Pardue said. The waters contained chemical compounds from aerosol paints, insecticides, caulking compounds, rubber adhesives and other common substances, but at levels that typically do not create concern for human health.
- While serious toxicity to human life was largely avoided, the floodwater may pose a chemical risk to aquatic life in the area,


The American Chemical Society    October 14, 2005
The floodwaters that inundated New Orleans immediately following Hurricane Katrina were similar in content to the city’s normal storm water and were not as toxic as previously thought, according to a study by researchers at Louisiana State University. Their study, the first peer-reviewed scientific assessment of the water quality of the Katrina floodwaters, is good news for those who’ve been exposed directly to the floodwaters, the scientists said.

But the LSU researchers caution that the same floodwaters that were pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain contain high levels of some toxic metals, especially copper and zinc, and could pose a long-term danger to the area’s aquatic life, which are more sensitive to the metals than humans. Their findings appeared in the Oct. 11 online issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology.

"What we had in New Orleans was basically a year’s worth of storm water flowing through the city in only a few days," said study leader John Pardue, Ph.D., an environmental engineer and director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at LSU in Baton Rouge. "We still don’t think the floodwaters were safe, but it could have been a lot worse. It was not the chemical catastrophe some had expected."

Some experts had predicted that the floodwaters from Katrina could potentially destroy chemical plants and refineries in the area, releasing a deadly brew containing toxic levels of benzene, hydrochloric acid and chlorine. Instead, high levels of bacteria and viruses were the biggest human threat, not exposure to chemicals, Pardue and his associates said.

The researchers obtained 38 floodwater samples from widespread sections of New Orleans, primarily in the area of the city known as the "East Bank," where the main human contact with the floodwaters occurred. The samples, which included both surface waters and bottom samples, were taken within five to nine days after flooding occurred. Additional samples were also obtained from the 17th Street drainage canal, after pumping of the floodwater began, to evaluate the flood’s impact on Lake Pontchartrain, the receiving body for the pumped floodwaters.

The researchers found high levels of bacteria, most likely from fecal contamination resulting from sewage. Levels were within the range of typical storm water runoff in the city, the scientists said. They also detected high levels of lead, arsenic and chromium and noted that levels of these toxic metals were also similar to those typically found in the area’s storm water. In general, these particular findings were similar to those obtained by the Environmental Protection Agency in their initial assessment of the floodwaters, the researchers said.

Gasoline was also a significant component of the floodwaters, as measured by elevated levels of three of its components: benzene, toluene and ethylbenzene. These compounds were somewhat elevated in comparison to typical storm water runoff, the researchers said. The chemicals most likely came from cars and storage tanks submerged in the floodwaters, they added.

Compounds found in common household chemicals were also detected in the floodwaters, Pardue said. The waters contained chemical compounds from aerosol paints, insecticides, caulking compounds, rubber adhesives and other common substances, but at levels that typically do not create concern for human health.

If the floodwaters had occurred in another location near more industrial sites in the city and if the wind damage or water surge had been more severe, then the resultant floodwaters could have been a more serious toxic threat, Pardue said. "Instead, the city filled slowly, like a bathtub, and the water velocities and forces on the buildings, including chemical storage facilities, were relatively benign." The large volume of floodwater also diluted the potency of many of the chemicals, he added.

While serious toxicity to human life was largely avoided, the floodwater may pose a chemical risk to aquatic life in the area, Pardue said. He believes that low oxygen levels in the water that is being pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain could result in fish kills. He also said that heavy metals being discharged into the lake, particularly copper and zinc, can be toxic to fish and other marine life and may bioaccumulate and contaminate seafood collected from the region. More studies are needed to assess the long-term impact of the flood on aquatic life, Pardue said.

Funding for this study was provided by the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute and the LSU Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes

Link to site: Chemicals in New Orleans floodwater from residential neighborhoods posed little risk to people but may raise a long-term hazard to wildlife in Lake Pontchartrain

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

Highlights:
- Virtually all the floodwater that once covered New Orleans has been pumped into Lake Pontchartrain,
- As for the impact of the pumped water on the lake, Pardue said it didn't introduce any new chemicals but provided a large dose in a short time.
- Copper, zinc, cadmium and lead found in the floodwater could build up in the lake sediment and pose long-term hazards for wildlife.

MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer, October 11, 2005
Chemicals in New Orleans floodwater from residential neighborhoods posed little risk to people but may raise a long-term hazard to wildlife in Lake Pontchartrain, a new study reported Tuesday.

In general, water samples taken soon after the flood caused by Hurricane Katrina found that the water resembled normal rain runoff in its chemical makeup, said the study's lead author, John Pardue. "We don't feel anything we've seen will point to any kind of a problem on the chemical side" for human exposure, said Pardue, director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at Louisiana State University. Still, people returning to their homes should protect themselves from germs that may be left behind in the sludge, he said.

The study, funded by the institute, found high levels of fecal bacteria in the water, just as previously published testing by the federal Environmental Protection Agency did. Normal rainwater in the area has high levels too because of leaky sewers, but Katrina flooding was different because of its sheer volume, Pardue said.

The study didn't sample water from industrial areas, and researchers cautioned that their results can't be used to assess non-residential areas. Their findings were published online Tuesday by the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Virtually all the floodwater that once covered New Orleans has been pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, and Pardue said he and his colleagues are now analyzing the sediment it left behind.

As for the impact of the pumped water on the lake, Pardue said it didn't introduce any new chemicals but provided a large dose in a short time. He noted that all rainwater that falls in New Orleans is eventually pumped into the lake.

"What this really represented was a year or two's worth of rain being pumped out in a very short time," he said.

What's more, Pardue said that chemicals left behind in the sediment will eventually find their way to the lake as the sediment is cleaned up and rain washes it into the canals that feed Pontchartrain.

Copper, zinc, cadmium and lead found in the floodwater could build up in the lake sediment and pose long-term hazards for wildlife. The study can't evaluate that, Pardue said, but the results suggest officials should keep an eye out for trouble.

Pardue noted that the state Department of Environmental Quality is studying the problem and said he's satisfied with their efforts.

Link to site: Experts and residents express frustration with EPA’s bumbling response.

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Highlights:
- Based on no reported data, these stories nevertheless seemed reasonable;
- Samples collected from various depths of the water column were later measured for several parameters, including turbidity, pH, and concentrations of organics, nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, and metals. Surface waters were depleted of oxygen, whereas lead, arsenic, and, in some cases, chromium exceeded drinking-water standards. Pardue reports that the values were normal for storm water, as were the levels of fecal coliform.
- Experts say that EPA posted confusing and irrelevant information on a website few could access or understand.
- “If this was a waste site, EPA would require a cleanup to a certain level before they let anyone go back in,”

PAUL D. THACKER, Science News October 11, 2005
Experts and residents express frustration with EPA’s bumbling response.
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coast, flooding the city of New Orleans, journalists began reporting on a “toxic soup” of chemicals and dangerous microbes bathing the city. Based on no reported data, these stories nevertheless seemed reasonable; the city’s sewer system had flooded, and thousands of cars, houses, and chemical storage tanks lay beneath water, which in part of the city reached more than 3 meters in depth. In addition, 24 Superfund sites are in the affected area, and the U.S. EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard have tallied more than 400 oil and hazardous chemical spills.

Pardue’s study looked at water taken from street intersections close to the levee breach and near the Superdome, where thousands of residents sheltered from the hurricane.

However, research posted to ES&T’s Research ASAP website (es0518631) finds that the water that drowned New Orleans was no more toxic than typical floodwater washing down an urban street after a hard rain. Researchers expressed surprise at the findings but warned that it is still unknown whether the muck left behind is toxic.
“We don’t see the very elevated levels of toxics that would make you think of this water as toxic waste,” says the study’s lead author, John Pardue, director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at Louisiana State University (LSU). “What was so unique about this event was that we had such a large volume of water and so many people wading around in it for extended periods,” he says.
Danny Reible, chair of environmental health engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, says the study presents the first comprehensive data that he has seen on the floodwaters. “The bottom line is that it’s not a chemical environmental disaster, although you can’t rule out areas that might be impacted from local chemical spills,” he says.
Five days after the hurricane hit land on August 29, Pardue’s team boated into New Orleans with police protection and collected water samples from street intersections in the Lakeview neighborhood, near the levee break, and in Mid-City, close to the Superdome. Four days later, on September 7, he collected more water in Tulane–Gravier, a neighborhood just blocks from the Superdome, where thousands of residents sought refuge from Katrina.
Samples collected from various depths of the water column were later measured for several parameters, including turbidity, pH, and concentrations of organics, nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, and metals. Surface waters were depleted of oxygen, whereas lead, arsenic, and, in some cases, chromium exceeded drinking-water standards. Pardue reports that the values were normal for storm water, as were the levels of fecal coliform.
The LSU researchers also failed to detect extremely high levels of benzene and other carcinogens found in gasoline, although coauthor Louis Thibodeaux, a professor of chemical engineering at LSU, says that he expected to see higher levels. However, he calculates in the paper that most of these chemicals quickly evaporate.
“All of us around the world watched those people on television wading through oily water, but the benzene and many volatiles were gone,” says Thibodeaux. He adds that oil spreads out across water in a layer only millimeters thick, which tricks people into believing that a huge quantity of petroleum has contaminated the water. “It only takes a few drops to make sheen on the water surface,” he adds.
However, Thibodeaux says that many of the chemicals that did not evaporate may be bound to particles deposited in the mud and grime left behind.
Pardue raises similar concerns. “People are absolutely crazy to be going back into their homes,” he says. Because mold is an increasing problem in the houses left standing and sediments are still essentially unexamined, Pardue says that he is not certain the city is safe to inhabit.

Where are you, EPA?
The LSU findings are particularly important because experts are charging that EPA is failing to provide adequate, timely information that can be understood by the public. After people had been trudging through the water for more than a week, EPA began posting data from water samples on a website. This action raised an obvious question about how people stranded in New Orleans, many of whom are poor and without electricity, were supposed to access the information.
And data that EPA made available were often confusing, even to those with technical expertise in water chemistry. “They should certainly be capable of providing some context for this information,” says Pardue.

EPA
Experts say that EPA posted confusing and irrelevant information on a website few could access or understand.

“All EPA did was put the information on the web without any information of what it meant.” says Mark Schleifstein, an environment reporter with the New Orleans Times–Picayune. “Information afterwards was in the context of certain standards, but it was uncertain why those standards were chosen.” Schleifstein later filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act to force EPA to provide details of chemical leaks into the water.
Pardue says that he had initially planned to release his data to Schleifstein and other reporters but decided to go through a peer-review process after seeing that EPA was performing so poorly and providing no context other than drinking-water standards. “That really doesn’t have any kind of relevance,” he says.
When contacted by ES&T about Pardue’s research, EPA would only respond with an emailed statement from an unnamed EPA scientist: “The findings in the article are consistent with what we have been finding in our sampling and what we have been saying about the conditions in New Orleans.”
On September 29, a month after the hurricane hit land, Marcus Peacock, EPA’s deputy administrator, told the U.S. Congress, “I don’t think you can say from what’s been assessed so far that there will be long-term effects.” Peacock added that contaminants may cause localized effects in areas close to spills.
However, Peacock offered little help when asked whether EPA was taking charge to ensure that citizens are safe. “That is up to local health officials and the city’s office to determine whether or not a particular room or neighborhood is safe for someone to go back into,” he said.
Mayor William Rutledge of Pontotoc, Miss., along with others, saw the problem differently. Referring to EPA, Rutledge testified, “The problem has been communication—getting out the word and stepping up to the plate and deciding that it’s safe. We don’t think [EPA] has been fulfilling that obligation.”

Further research
All the water that entered New Orleans was later pumped into nearby Lake Pontchartrain, a shallow, brackish lake with a surface area of more than 640 square miles. The lake is regularly used for recreation and commercial crabbing and is a catch basin for New Orleans’ storm water runoff. Pardue says that although the concentrations of metals in the water pumped into the lake were normal for floodwater, the lake has absorbed the equivalent of many years of runoff in only a few weeks.
Concentrations of zinc and copper, Pardue says, may pose a problem for fish that have less tolerance for these metals than humans. “So the metals going back into the lake are at much more toxic levels than we report for humans,” he says.
Because more than 100,000 houses were flooded, Pardue says that he is now beginning to look for other chemicals that might not normally be detected in mud left behind after a flood. He is also working with horticulturists to see whether this muck, which contains salt and other chemicals, may kill off the city’s plants and trees.
“If this was a waste site, EPA would require a cleanup to a certain level before they let anyone go back in,” says Wilma Subra, president of Subra Co., Inc. To address the concerns of local residents, Subra is conducting her own tests of the sediments. She advises residents to not enter the city unless they wear a respirator, boots, and gloves. She notes that Wal-Marts within 100 miles have sold out of such equipment.
As for the city and state officials, she says, “All they know is that their people want to go home. They’re looking for EPA to establish criteria that are safe for people, and EPA is not doing that.”

Link to site: NOAA completed additional analyses of fish, water and sediment samples collected from coastal and offshore marine waters

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Highlights:
- The 154 fish and crab samples harbored no E. coli (Escherlchia coli), a bacteria associated with human or animal fecal contamination
- Analyses of water samples for indicators of human sewage or agricultural runoff found levels that are below the Environmental Protection Agency's safety limits for bathing beaches
- Sediment analyses found that three of eight offshore marine sediment samples contained greater than 15 E. coli cells per gram and one contained about 36 Enterococcus cells per gram

NOAA Magazine Oct. 11, 2005 — NOAA completed additional analyses of fish, water and sediment samples collected from coastal and offshore marine waters of the Gulf of Mexico two weeks after hurricane Katrina, September 12-16. The latest tests were conducted to determine the level of fish, water and sediment exposure to bacteria and to determine the level of exposure to pesticides and other contaminants, such as PCBs and DDTs. Last week, NOAA tests of these same fish found no oil contamination.

The 154 fish and crab samples harbored no E. coli (Escherlchia coli), a bacteria associated with human or animal fecal contamination. Additional testing on shrimp samples taken from Mississippi Sound is ongoing.

Analyses of water samples for indicators of human sewage or agricultural runoff found levels that are below the Environmental Protection Agency's safety limits for bathing beaches. These limits constitute the most stringent government standard for recreational waters.

Fish muscle tissue analyzed for pesticides and other industrial chemicals, such as PCBs and DDTs show very low levels that are likely not related to hurricane runoff. The levels of PCBs ranged from 2.5 - 15 parts per billion and the levels of DDTs ranged from 0.8 - 2.2 parts per billion. The PCB levels found in these samples are far below the Food and Drug Administration's safety standards for commercial seafood and are similar to levels detected in fish in non-urbanized areas. (FDA's PCB limit is 2000 ppb, and their DDT limit is 5000 ppb).

Nevertheless, the public may wish to consult their state or local health agencies or the EPA's more stringent guidance on consumption frequency for non-commercial seafood when contaminants are present. This advice is particularly relevant for recreational and subsistence fishers that repeatedly harvest seafood from the same area. Analyses show no detectable level of brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) in most fish samples.

Sediment analyses found that three of eight offshore marine sediment samples contained greater than 15 E. coli cells per gram and one contained about 36 Enterococcus cells per gram. Like E. coli, Enterococcus is a bacteria normally found in feces of people and many animals. While testing positive for the presence of these bacteria, the levels are considered low. However, no data or standards currently exist regarding the public health risk of these two bacteria found in marine sediments.

NOAA announced on September 29 that the first tests showed no elevated exposure to hydrocarbon contaminants, which are common in marine life after exposure to oil spills. Agency scientists collected this first round of samples from aboard the NOAA research vessel Nancy Foster September 12-16. (Click NOAA image for larger view of the areas where the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster collected samples as of Sept. 12-16, 2005. Click here for high resolution version. Please credit “NOAA.”)

The vessel sailed from Pensacola, Fla., along the coastlines of Alabama and Mississippi, and then around the southern tip of Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi River and back.

During the cruise, oceanographers, toxicologists and microbiologists collected water, fish and sediment samples to determine whether hurricane Katrina released elevated levels of viruses, bacteria and toxic materials in the ocean. NOAA will continue to collect and test samples over the next two months to monitor for changes in contaminant and bacteria levels. The second round of samples was collected last week and testing is currently underway. Sampling has been extended to the coastal and offshore areas affected by Hurricane Rita.

NOAA's environmental impact research is part of a government-wide effort to keep the American people safe and to help stabilize the region's economy in the aftermath of the Gulf hurricanes. The area is known for its valuable seafood production and coastal way of life.

NOAA also is conducting a comprehensive analysis of fishing infrastructure damage caused by the hurricanes. The agency has teams surveying the region's fishing fleets, seafood processing plants, fish markets and bait shops. The survey will take months to complete, although NOAA will release preliminary information as it becomes available.

The NOAA Fisheries Service is dedicated to protecting and preserving the nation's living marine resources and their habitats through scientific research, management and enforcement. The NOAA Fisheries Service provides effective stewardship of these resources for the benefit of the nation, supporting coastal communities that depend upon them, and helping to provide safe and healthy seafood to consumers and recreational opportunities for the American public.

NOAA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of the nation's coastal and marine resources.

Relevant Web Sites
NOAA Hurricane Katrina Environmental Impacts

NOAA Fisheries Service

Link to site: Katrina's contaminated floodwaters contain toxins that pose a long-term danger to fish in Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain, according to a study of samples.

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Highlights:
- copper, zinc and arsenic sampled from waters pumped into the lake were 20 times the levels known to harm sea trout, shrimp and other fish life living in the lake,
- This was two years' worth of contamination that was pumped out in a week's time
- Water pumped back into the lake from the city contained fish-killing metal concentrations and high levels of bacteria that had consumed most of the oxygen content, said the study

Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Katrina's contaminated floodwaters contain toxins that pose a long-term danger to fish in Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain, according to a study of samples. Levels of copper, zinc and arsenic sampled from waters pumped into the lake were 20 times the levels known to harm sea trout, shrimp and other fish life living in the lake, said John Pardue, director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at Louisiana State University, who led the study.

``This was two years' worth of contamination that was pumped out in a week's time,'' he said today in a telephone interview from his office in Baton Rouge. ``The question is whether the marine life there can assimilate the contamination without loss of fish species.''

Lake Pontchartrain swamped 80 percent of New Orleans after Katrina's storm surge hit about three miles from the city, submerging more than 160,000 homes for weeks. Water pumped back into the lake from the city contained fish-killing metal concentrations and high levels of bacteria that had consumed most of the oxygen content, said the study, published today in the online version of Environmental Science & Technology.

Fish may have fled those oxygen-poor waters and thus escaped poisoning by zinc and copper that can damage fish organs, Pardue said. The high levels will recur when sludge removed from homes are washed into the lake during rains, he said.

``People are treating this material like you might treat snow,'' he said. ``They're shoveling it out and taking it to the curb.'' Rain and other marine disturbances may also stir up metal particles from Lake Pontchartrain's bottom, threatening fish again and again, Pardue said.

New Orleans' flooded areas include more than 60 chemical plants, oil refineries and petroleum storage facilities, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency records. The cleanup costs may far exceed the $62 billion in direct aid approved by Congress so far, Philip Clapp, head of the Washington-based National Environmental Trust, said Sept. 16.

The study sampled water being pumped out of New Orleans and a variety of locations starting on Sept. 3, five days after Katrina hit the city. Copper levels were as high as 209 parts per billion, about 20 times the level known to be toxic to fish. Zinc concentrations were as high as 1667 parts per billion, or more than ten times the accepted fish-killing level, the study said.

Not Toxic to People

Those levels aren't toxic to humans, who can tolerate levels of up to 1300 ppb of copper and 5000 ppb of zinc, Pardue said. People should still wear gloves and masks to protect themselves as they clean away flood debris, as it may contain high levels of flame retardant chemicals -- called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDE's -- whose health effects are still being studied, he said.

``These may mimic the effects of estrogen,'' the female hormone, Pardue said. ``We don't know completely what the health effects would be in humans, and we're starting to see more and more accumulation in the bloodstream and food of people living in the West.''

The study's results may also be used to predict the effects of the storm on manatees and other marine mammals living in the lake, Pardue said.

Link to site: pollution washing into the sea after Hurricane Katrina's deadly landfall more than a month ago are untrue, so far, according to two government agencies.

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Highlights:
- Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have found little evidence Katrina produced an environmental catastrophe in the gulf.
- Taking surface and near-bottom water samples, as well as sediment from the seafloor, the conservation commission found expected levels of, among other pollutants, mercury, pesticides and nutrients such as phosphorous.
- Scientists also reported little or no debris in the water, though it remains a hazard to watch for

Mladen Rudman, Northwest Florida Daily News October 11, 2005
DESTIN, Fla. — Rumors the Gulf of Mexico and its critters have been harmed by pollution washing into the sea after Hurricane Katrina's deadly landfall more than a month ago are untrue, so far, according to two government agencies.

Monitoring continues, but scientists at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have found little evidence Katrina produced an environmental catastrophe in the gulf.

Conservation commission researchers, among others, sampled water at seven spots off Panama City in mid-September. "We found out, at that point and time, the water was normal," said conservation commission spokesman and biologist Willie Puz. He added the agency hopes to take part with NOAA in upcoming research trips.

Taking surface and near-bottom water samples, as well as sediment from the seafloor, the conservation commission found expected levels of, among other pollutants, mercury, pesticides and nutrients such as phosphorous. The samplings happened about two weeks after Katrina's Aug. 29 landfall at points west.

"We were looking at water currents at that time and it looked like the currents were moving along the North Florida coast," Puz explained.

NOAA plans to release results of tests checking for dangerous contaminants DDT and PCBs, as well as troublesome bacteria such as E. coli, shortly. It used 13 sampling sites from south of Pensacola to the Mississippi River delta in Louisiana.

The federal agency has already posted results of its first Katrina gulf survey, which focused on oil compounds.

Sampling bile from Atlantic croakers and a juvenile bigeye tuna, NOAA researchers concluded the fish showed no "elevated exposure" to oil or petroleum pollution.

Scientists also reported little or no debris in the water, though it remains a hazard to watch for, a Destin charter boat crewman indicated.

Pescador III went out about three days after Katrina passed and has fished plenty since.

"There's been lumber and stuff like that," said Inan Smith, first mate aboard the boat. "Big pilings that you could barely see."

Other floating obstacles included trash cans and a capsized boat.

"We saw debris out there," Smith continued. "It came off, mostly, beach houses ... You just had to watch where you were going."

To see more of the Northwest Florida Daily News -- including its homes, jobs, cars and other classified listings -- or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.nwfdailynews.com.

Link to site: Fishery disaster declarations for the Louisiana coast following hurricanes Katrina and Rita could result in federal help to rebuild the state’s seafood industry.

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Highlights:
- U.S. secretary of commerce announced a fishery failure in Louisiana and Texas
- damages to the seafood industry at more than $1 billion from Hurricane Katrina.
- a “virtual fishery shutdown” in Louisiana and other states due to major flooding, damage to fishing boats and fishing ports, waterways clogged with debris and closed processing plants.
Laura McKnight, NYT Regional Newspapers, October 10. 2005
HOUMA -- Fishery disaster declarations for the Louisiana coast following hurricanes Katrina and Rita could result in federal help to rebuild the state’s seafood industry.

The U.S. secretary of commerce announced a fishery failure in Louisiana and Texas following Hurricane Rita, and the same for Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and parts of Florida after Hurricane Katrina. The department declares a “fishery failure” when a natural disaster significantly harms an area’s fishing industry, shutting it down for a period of time, said Susan Buchanan with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service public affairs.

The declaration sends Congress a message that the fishing industry in that region received major damages, and the commerce department believes federal aid would be appropriate, Buchanan said.

Hurricane-recovery bills working their way through the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives include measures to direct federal money to Louisiana to rebuild seafood-industry infrastructure.

Preliminary estimates by Louisiana economists place damages to the seafood industry at more than $1 billion from Hurricane Katrina.

Terrebonne and Lafourche fishing industries have an annual economic impact of millions of dollars, said David Bourgeois, a local fisheries agent with the LSU AgCenter.

In Lafourche, the wildlife and fisheries industry makes an annual $32 million impact, Bourgeois said, with shrimp contributing about $15 million, crabbing $5 million, finfish $4.5 million, and oysters $2 million.

In Terrebonne, the industry creates an annual $70 million impact. Shrimping makes an impact of about $27 million, oyster fishing $8 million, crabbing $8 million and commercial finfish $6 million.

The hurricanes hit the southern-most communities hardest, damaging many fishermen’s homes, as well as seafood processors and docks. The state’s oyster beds remain shut down. Shrimpers and other fishermen just started venturing back on the water, and docks just began re-opening late last week.

The federal government declared a fishery failure for Louisiana after Hurricane Rita due to major flooding and fishery-infrastructure damage.

“Hurricane Rita has added to the difficulties of fishing communities in Louisiana and Texas,” Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in a news release.

Gutierrez declared a fishery failure in the Gulf of Mexico Sept. 9, following Hurricane Katrina, in response to a “virtual fishery shutdown” in Louisiana and other states due to major flooding, damage to fishing boats and fishing ports, waterways clogged with debris and closed processing plants.

Though the extent of the damage to Gulf fishing industries is not yet known, fishing in the region was essentially halted after the Aug. 29 storm.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies are still assessing Hurricane Katrina’s impacts to the actual seafood, said Buchanan, and started more tests after Hurricane Rita. Preliminary test results show no contamination of seafood or water from oil, the agency’s main concern, said Buchanan. Results from other tests are pending, she said.

Link to site: Hurricane Katrina battered six of the nation's most seriously polluted hazardous waste sites. Now the effects of Hurricane Rita on five other "Superfund" sites are causing even more concern.

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Highlights:
- State and federal authorities still haven't finished analyzing test results from sites flooded by the hurricanes.
- Inspectors who visited the sites after the storms saw either minor damage or none at all
- But environmental experts worry that floodwaters have seeped into contaminated soils, potentially spreading toxic chemicals over a wide area or depositing them in streams and aquifers used for drinking water.
- Only the most heavily poisoned real estate earns a place on the EPA's Superfund high-priority list, which today includes more than 1,000 sites.
Traci Watson, USA TODAY Mon Oct 10, 2005
Hurricane Katrina battered six of the nation's most seriously polluted hazardous waste sites. Now the effects of Hurricane Rita on five other "Superfund" sites are causing even more concern.
State and federal authorities still haven't finished analyzing test results from sites flooded by the hurricanes. Some waste sites that Katrina roared through on Aug. 29 were hit again, often harder, by Rita about a month later.

Inspectors who visited the sites after the storms saw either minor damage or none at all, says Thomas Dunn, acting chief of the Environmental Protection Agency's solid waste division. But environmental experts worry that floodwaters have seeped into contaminated soils, potentially spreading toxic chemicals over a wide area or depositing them in streams and aquifers used for drinking water.

At many sites, "with this flooding there's the potential for ... groundwater to be contaminated and waste to be disrupted to the point that an additional remedy would be needed," says Wilma Subra, head of an environmental consulting firm in New Iberia, La.

Only the most heavily poisoned real estate earns a place on the EPA's Superfund high-priority list, which today includes more than 1,000 sites. Properties on the list are eligible for federal cleanup funds and usually require several years and millions of dollars to fix.

The region struck by the two storms is one of America's most industrialized and polluted zones, dubbed "Cancer Alley" for the variety of cancer-causing chemicals produced and emitted by local facilities. Oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico helped spawn a boom in refineries and chemical plants along the coasts of Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi.

Many of the Superfund sites suffering damage from Katrina and Rita are tied to the petroleum or chemical industries. They include dumping grounds for byproducts of well drilling, maintenance yards for barges and storage depots for oil. Some have been cleaned up and removed from the Superfund list, though they are still monitored.

Among the most common chemicals once found at the sites:

•Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are found in coal, creosote and tar. These chemicals can impair immune systems and cause cancer in lab animals.

•Barium, an ingredient in lubricants for drilling rigs. It can damage the heart, liver and kidney.

•Benzene, widely used in the chemical industry to make plastics and other materials. It causes cancer and damages bone marrow.

The EPA often decides that it would be unnecessary or too expensive to haul away every last bit of toxic sludge and sediment from a Superfund site. In such cases, the waste is often partially treated and then buried beneath a "cap" of clean soil or other materials.

Such caps were in place at a number of the Superfund sites damaged by Katrina and Rita. That has led to worries that floodwaters may have eaten through to create an outlet for the buried materials.

A disrupted cap will provide some protection but may need to be shored up, says environmental consultant Dan Mueller, a board member of the Air & Waste Management Association.

"A cap is designed to keep rainwater from infiltrating whatever material you're protecting," he says. "Certainly they're not designed for catastrophic flooding."

The Agriculture Street Landfill in New Orleans, for example, was inundated for weeks by floodwaters unleashed by Katrina. The site served as a dumping ground for garbage and construction debris starting in 1910 and took in the detritus from Hurricane Betsy's pummeling of New Orleans in 1965.

But the site also includes a school and a neighborhood housing 1,000 people, all built on top of contaminated soil capped with a thick layer - 5 feet in some places - of clean dirt. Activists worry that the cap may have been compromised.

Remaining contaminants "could've spread to other neighborhoods ... and it could've spread contaminants right into living quarters," says Darryl Malek Wiley, the Sierra Club's New Orleans representative. "I would hope that they finally just relocate people out of the area."

Subra has visited more than a half-dozen of the Louisiana sites - she declines to say how she gained access - and says she saw evidence of disturbed caps at three. One of them was Gulf Coast Vacuum Services in Vermilion Parish, which was hard hit by Rita.

"People drink from wells all the way around the site," Subra says. "We'll need EPA to go in and evaluate the cap, evaluate the status of the waste and evaluate the wells around it."

Link to site: Lack of warnings likened to 9/11 air safety notices

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Highlights:
- The Bush administration was accused Thursday by senators in both parties of minimizing health hazards
- Samples of floodwater and sediment in the Gulf Region have shown high levels of bacteria, fecal contamination, metals, fuel oils, arsenic and lead.
- Though EPA officials have warned of serious health hazards from the region's floodwaters and sediment, they haven't taken a position
Lack of warnings likened to 9/11 air safety notices
JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration was accused Thursday by senators in both parties of minimizing health hazards from the toxic soup left by Hurricane Katrina, just as they said it did with air pollution in New York from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

More than a month after the storm, Environmental Protection Agency officials said 1 million people lack clean drinking water in New Orleans. About 70 million tons of hazardous waste remains on the Gulf Coast.

Samples of floodwater and sediment in the Gulf Region have shown high levels of bacteria, fecal contamination, metals, fuel oils, arsenic and lead. Air monitoring has shown high levels of ethylene and glycol. EPA said the results are "snapshots" that can quickly change.

Though EPA officials have warned of serious health hazards from the region's floodwaters and sediment, they haven't taken a position on New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's aggressive push to reopen the city.

"EPA may not be providing people with the clear information they need," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. "EPA should be clear about the actual risks when people return to the affected areas for more than one day."

A week ago, on a visit to the Gulf Coast, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson stopped short of judging Nagin's plan to allow certain New Orleans residents and business people home. Johnson said it created numerous potential health concerns, and the agency is "very concerned about the opening of those parts of the city."

Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee also were skeptical of post-Katrina work being done by EPA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. The committee's chairman, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., expressed skepticism about the two-page government handouts on environmental and public health risks that EPA helped compile.

"It bothers me a little bit," Inhofe said. "How many people are going to see the report?"

EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock said thousands of copies are being delivered door-to-door, at relief centers and other public places.

Peacock did acknowledge "room for improvement" in handling the Katrina cleanup and recovery. Agency workers first helped save 800 people's lives, then shifted to contaminant monitoring before focusing on long-range cleanups. "We've been through a sprint, and now we're staging a marathon," he said.

Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., called the government's response to Katrina "apparent chaos."

Some recalled the Bush administration's response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when the White House directed EPA officials to minimize the health risk posed by the cloud of smoke from the World Trade Center collapse.

Within 10 days of the attacks, EPA issued five news releases reassuring the public about air quality without testing for contaminants such as PCBs and dioxin.

It was only nine months later — after workers cleaning up the debris and residents of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn exhibited respiratory ailments — that EPA could point to any scientific evidence, saying then that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels.

Link to site: Tests showing that the water isn't as toxic as was once feared

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Highlights:
- water samples were taken in the canals before they were actually pumped into Lake Pontchartrain,
- After 48 hours in the water, all of the fish survived. Only one of the 12 invertebrate test samples had more than a 50 percent mortality rate when exposed to a solution of 39 percent flood water,
- more recent testing came back with better results

AMY WOLD and MIKE DUNNE, Advocate staff writers
More testing on the flood water being pumped out of New Orleans seems to confirm earlier tests showing that the water isn't as toxic as was once feared, according to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

On Tuesday, DEQ released results of recent biotoxicity tests done in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. These tests involve placing aquatic invertebrates and fish in floodwater samples being pumped from New Orleans. The water samples were taken in the canals before they were actually pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, Chris Piehler, a senior environmental scientist at DEQ, said.

After 48 hours in the water, all of the fish survived. Only one of the 12 invertebrate test samples had more than a 50 percent mortality rate when exposed to a solution of 39 percent flood water, Piehler said.

Two additional samples showed a 50 percent mortality rate with a water sample that was 100 percent flood water, he said.

However, more recent testing came back with better results. "The ones we found problems with previously have been retested and came back OK," Piehler said.

These tests are part of ongoing sampling of the water in Lake Pontchartrain, including parts of the north shore and the south shore, which is closer to where the pump water is being placed.

On Tuesday, DEQ also announced plans for future testing of Lake Pontchartrain waters and aquatic life.

DEQ and other agencies will sample fish from Lake Pontchartrain to make sure contamination in the water and sediment pumped from flooded sections of the city have not make aquatic life inedible, Piehler said.

It may be two to three weeks before those tests results come back.

So far, chemical contamination has not been a widespread problem, he said.

There are some toxic hot spots, such as near Murphy Oil in Meraux, where a tank spilled, coating about 1,000 homes with oil-contaminated water and sediments, Piehler said.

In some spots, including Claiborne Avenue and Audubon Boulevard in New Orleans, pesticides were found in the sediment samples. Many of the pesticides found, such as chlordane, Dieldrin and DDT, are banned.

Piehler said pesticides at those levels are not a concern unless someone ingests them "for long periods of time."

But he said it's notable that the pesticides were found even though they have been banned.

Water in the area continues to test high for coliform bacteria, which indicates the presence of sewage or animal fecal matter.

Residents returning home should use "good hygiene" when exposed to the mud and water left behind the hurricanes.

"Don't get it on you, and if you do, just wash off very carefully," Piehler said.

Those cleaning up need to take plenty of clean drinking water, he added. Much of the water available in the once-flooded areas is still unsafe to drink, he said.

Link to site: Nothing to match the alarming predictions that the floodwater could alter the habitat of the lake permanently and damage the fisheries that depend on it

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Highlights:
- there is no "toxic soup" in Lake Pontchartrain.
- most damage so far seemed to come from the hurricane itself, rather than from the floodwaters being pumped out of New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, October 3, 2005 (ENS) - Pumps set up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been working 24/7 for weeks to remove the flood waters from New Orleans' streets left in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Now the job is close to completion.

....
Initial water samples from 24 sites in Lake Pontchartrain show higher-than-normal bacteria after Hurricane Katrina, but nothing to match the alarming predictions that the floodwater could alter the habitat of the lake permanently and damage the fisheries that depend on it, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality said.

Carlton Dufrechou, director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, said there is no "toxic soup" in Lake Pontchartrain. The lake can recover from the damage caused by bacteria, toxins, pesticides and metals being pumped out of the city into the lake, state environmental officials said last week at a briefing on the lake's status.

Al Hindrichs, water quality coordinator for the Louisiana Environmental Quality Department, said most damage so far seemed to come from the hurricane itself, rather than from the floodwaters being pumped out of New Orleans. The biggest hits to the lake seem confined to the shore areas, officials said. Fish kills were found on the north shore because of low oxygen levels, not toxins or oils, Hindrichs said.

The New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau points hopefully to those who are optimistic that most of New Orleans could be "safely resettled in a few months."

Crews from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been conducting sampling continued on flood, outfall, and surface water, and sediment in the New Orleans area.

EPA's soil and sediment sampling in affected areas along the Gulf Coast is scheduled to begin today. EPA's ocean water testing vessel, the Bold, is surveying the waters of the Mississippi Sound and the Gulf of Mexico in the plume of the Mississippi River.

There are 15 Superfund sites in the hurricane Katrina-affected area of Louisiana, six in Alabama and three in Mississippi. Initial assessments have been conducted on these sites. The EPA is still in the assessment phase, and will continue to monitor all the impacted Superfund sites. Water and sediment samples have been collected at the Agriculture Street site.

Many drinking water facilities have been damaged by the storms. The EPA says in Louisiana, there are a total of 1,591 drinking water facilities that served approximately five million people. As of Friday, EPA crews have determined that 378 of these facilities are operational, 80 are operating on a boil water notice, 32 are not operating. Further information is being gathered on 1,101 of the facilties, but the EPA says most of these are in unaffected areas.

In Mississippi, there are a total of 1,368 drinking water facilities that served some 3.2 million people. EPA has determined that 1,253 of these facilities are operational, 79 are operating on a boil water notice and 36 are inoperable. It should be noted that operational facilities may still be in need of repair or reconstruction. EPA's Water program is continuing to assess all drinking water plants in the affected area.

In the Louisiana affected area, there are a total of 173 public owned wastewater treatment Works. As of Thursday, the EPA determined that 140 of these facilities are operational and 33 facilities are either not operating or their status is unknown.

In the Mississippi affected area, there are a total of 118 public wastewater facilities. The EPA has determined that 114 of these facilities are operational and four are either not operating or their status is unknown.

In the Alabama affected area, seven facilities are operating and one is not operating. It should be noted that operational facilities may still be in need of repair or reconstruction. EPA's Water program continues to assess wastewater treatment plants in the affected area.

In the heart of the populated, 300,000-acre Louisiana rice growing and milling industry, the Mermentau River Basin is being drained of Hurricane Rita floodwater through two locks, one on either side of the basin.

Fallen superhero lies in the muck of New Orleans' Ninth Ward. (Photo by Patricia Brach courtesy FEMA)
As of Friday, EPA has collected over 50,000 household hazardous waste and orphan containers throughout the affected region. Collection sites are in place in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. EPA personnel are offering technical assistance in the disposal of hazardous waste and other debris left behind by the storm.

The draft Debris Removal Plans for Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, are in final review. The plans will enable federal agencies and the states to comprehensively manage large scale and complex debris.

In Baton Rouge today, Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco plans to meet with local and parish officials from South Louisiana to discuss how the federal government can help local governments get back on their feet after the hurricanes.

Governor Blanco and local officials will discuss amending the Stafford Act to allow the federal government to pay the salaries of critical public safety and other local government employees.

Governor Blanco has said that without federal assistance to pay for restoring critical public services, including law enforcement and public safety, the restoration of many local governments cannot begin.

"Part of getting our communities and our businesses up and running again is having our local governments providing basic services. Every community must have police and fire protection, sewage and water service," said the governor.

"That’s why I’ve asked President [George W.] Bush and congressional leaders to change the rules of the Stafford Act. We need to allow federal aid money to cover more than overtime for public employees.

"Our cities and parishes need to make payroll. They must pay the men and women who provide those basic services," Blanco said. "Changing the Stafford Act will allow them to provide those basic services."

Link to site: The toxic brew of chemicals and human waste in the New Orleans floodwaters will have to be pumped into the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain

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Highlights:
- State and federal agencies have just begun water quality testing
- Gasoline, diesel, anti-freeze, bleach, human waste, acids, alcohols and a host of other substances must be washed out of homes, factories, refineries, hospitals and other buildings.
- "We're not happy about it. But for the sake of civilization and lives, probably the best thing to do is pump the water out,"

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) -- The toxic brew of chemicals and human waste in the New Orleans floodwaters will have to be pumped into the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain, raising the specter of an environmental disaster on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, experts say.

The dire need to rid the drowned city of water could trigger fish kills and poison the delicate wetlands near New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi. (Full story)

State and federal agencies have just begun water quality testing but environmental experts say the vile, stagnant chemical soup that sits in the streets of the city will contain traces of everything imaginable.

"Go home and identify all the chemicals in your house. It's a very long list," said Ivor van Heerden, head of a Louisiana State University center that studies the public health impacts of hurricanes.

"And that's just in a home. Imagine what's in an industrial plant," he said. "Or a sewage plant."

Gasoline, diesel, anti-freeze, bleach, human waste, acids, alcohols and a host of other substances must be washed out of homes, factories, refineries, hospitals and other buildings.

In Metairie, east of New Orleans, the floodwater is tea-colored, murky and smells of burnt sulfur. A thin film of oil is visible in the water.

Those who have waded into it say they could see only about 1 to 2 inches into the depths and that there was significant debris on and below the surface.

Experts said the longer water sat in the streets, the greater the chance gasoline and chemical tanks -- as well as common containers holding anything from bleach to shampoo -- would rupture.

Officials have said it may take up to 80 days to clear the water from New Orleans and surrounding parishes.

Van Heerden and Rodney Mallett, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, say there do not appear to be any choices other than to pump the water into Lake Pontchartrain or the Mississippi River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, a key maritime spawning ground.

"I don't see how we could treat all that water," Mallett said.

The result could be an second wave of disaster for southern Louisiana, said Harold Zeliger, a Florida-based chemical toxicologist and water quality consultant.

"In effect, it's going to kill everything in those waters," he said.

How much water New Orleans holds is open to question.

Van Heerden estimates it is billions of gallons. LSU researchers will use satellite imagery and computer modeling to get a better fix on the quantity.

Bio-remediation -- cleaning up the water -- would require the time and expense of constructing huge storage facilities, considered an impossibility, especially with the public clamor to get the water out quickly.

Mallett said the Department of Environmental Quality was in the unfortunate position of being responsible for protecting the environment in a situation where that did not seem possible.

"We're not happy about it. But for the sake of civilization and lives, probably the best thing to do is pump the water out," he said.

The water will leave behind more trouble -- a city filled with mold, some of it toxic, the experts said. After other floods, researchers found many buildings had to be stripped back to concrete, or razed.

"If you have a building half full of water, everything above the water is growing mold. When it dries out, the rest grows mold," Zeliger said. "Most of the buildings will have to be destroyed."

Link to site: A bit of good news: The Gulf Coast hasn't seen epidemics of disease.

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Highlights:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public Health Service and Environmental Protection Agency, rushed experts to the region. They apparently did better coordinating with state and local colleagues than did the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
- Six people died from bacterial infections associated with floodwaters, 30 people got staph infections, rescue workers suffered serious skin infections from floodwater exposure, one infant got whooping cough and many evacuees contracted a digestive illness.
- it's time to pause and tell the public health agencies: Good job.


The ruckus over what went wrong after Hurricane Katrina has overshadowed a bit of good news: The Gulf Coast hasn't seen epidemics of disease.

After the monster storm, conditions in New Orleans were ripe for infectious illnesses spawned by floodwaters, broken sewers and polluted drinking water. Cholera and typhoid only topped a long list of potential horrors. For a time, the floodwaters held E. coli bacteria levels 10 times what's considered safe.

Federal agencies, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public Health Service and Environmental Protection Agency, rushed experts to the region. They apparently did better coordinating with state and local colleagues than did the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

A key concern was that rescue workers and residents who couldn't leave were at risk from exposure to floodwaters and disease-carrying insects. Some 200,000 evacuees also were sent to 750 shelters in 18 states, creating opportunities for diseases to spread. Health workers were particularly keen on finding tuberculosis patients and ensuring that they got proper medicines.

In an interview with Voice of America, CDC chief Julie Gerberding compared the post-Katrina public health response to international efforts launched after the Indian Ocean tsunami. Health professionals "got in early, they set up the systems to try to prevent these infectious diseases and ultimately were remarkably successful," she explained. "That's what we're trying to do here in this country in the context of the shelters and certainly in the city of New Orleans."

The post-Katrina record so far: Six people died from bacterial infections associated with floodwaters, 30 people got staph infections, rescue workers suffered serious skin infections from floodwater exposure, one infant got whooping cough and many evacuees contracted a digestive illness.

That toll is orders of magnitude less than it might have been. There were fears the public might be exposed to dangerous disease if Katrina damaged biological research labs in the area, but that didn't happen. (Voters might ask why such labs are allowed in a city so vulnerable to natural disasters.)

Health agencies can't relax, as diseases that take time to enter human populations, like West Nile virus, could yet appear. Many New Orleans homes now have mold, which has been linked to several ailments. Experts are studying what toxic chemicals got into the water or soil.

Nevertheless, it's time to pause and tell the public health agencies: Good job.

Link to site: The neighborhoods of St. Bernard Parish reek of oil.

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Highlights:
- An estimated 190,000 barrels, or nearly 8 million gallons of oil spilled into Louisiana's waterways — and into some of its neighborhoods.
- A pair of storage tanks at a Bass Enterprises South facility ruptured, spilling 3.78 million gallons of crude in nearby Plaquemines Parish.


Jennifer Brooks, Gannett News Service
CHALMETTE, La. — The neighborhoods of St. Bernard Parish reek of oil. More than a month after Hurricane Katrina, environmental workers are still struggling to clean up the 50 oil spills along the Gulf Coast. An estimated 190,000 barrels, or nearly 8 million gallons of oil spilled into Louisiana's waterways — and into some of its neighborhoods. For blocks in every direction around the Murphy Oil Corp. facility in Meraux, houses — as many as a thousand of them, according to environmental officials — are marked by dark brown oily bands, where the receding floodwaters mixed with 1.4 million gallons of oil that spilled from a holding tank and into suburban streets and canals.

"It's all oil. You're never going to get that clean," said Sheppard Bowman, who worked at Murphy and lived just a five-minute walk away in Chalmette.

During the storm surge that hit the low-lying parish southeast of New Orleans, water rose to the rafters of the family's one-bedroom bungalow home. Everything below knee level was soaked in oil — thick, viscous, smelly oil that stings the skin and clings to every surface it touches.

It was the last straw for Bowman, his wife Cheryl and their children Eugene, 8, and Emily, 6. The couple pulled a few treasures that had stayed dry in the attic and loaded their truck, ready to settle permanently in Pensacola, Fla., where they had evacuated and where the children are already settled in school.

"We're going to go ahead and start life again," Cheryl Bowman said. "The water wouldn't have been so bad, but the oil is too much."

The oil company took out full-page ads in local newspapers last week, pledging $5 million to help St. Bernard Parish recover from the spill. Some 648,396 gallons of oil have been recovered already and the company's cleanup crews were out Saturday, deploying skimmers in the neighborhood canals, trying to recover even more.

The Bowman's street, Jacob Drive, was covered with sand to prevent cars from skidding on the oil. Cars and trucks had been tossed around yards like tinker toys by the flood surge. The sidewalks were buried beneath a thick crackle-glaze of oil and silt. The grass was dead and the trees were dying.

Down the street, Ray Abney sat in his driveway and cried over the grave he'd just dug for his cat. He'd been clearing debris from his home for three days before coming across the cat, which had been left behind in the rush when his ex-wife evacuated their children. Through the open door of his home, an American flag was peeling slowly away from the mold-covered walls, above a mirror engraved with the greeting, "Home Sweet Home."

"The oil, it just gets into everything," said Abney, a bartender who has no idea what he will do or where he will go next. His collections of rare coins and paper money and his family's genealogy records were all soaked with water and oil.

The Murphy spill wasn't the largest in the state. A pair of storage tanks at a Bass Enterprises South facility ruptured, spilling 3.78 million gallons of crude in nearby Plaquemines Parish.

On Thursday, the Coast Guard reported that most of the spills have been contained and the cleanup efforts are well underway. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality are in the process of collecting and testing soil and water samples from the contaminated areas.

Until test results come in, Richard Greene, EPA administrator for Louisiana, advised the public to take precautions before they came in contact with the polluted soil and residue. Residents have been advised to cover exposed skin and wear heavy boots, gloves and breathing masks before entering their homes.

"It's a matter of common sense in most cases," he said. "If the soil is black, brown and oily, it's petroleum sediment and you should avoid making contact with it."

Link to site: Environmental damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita is unparalleled

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Highlights:
- Nature is resilient, and most scientists agree that the Louisiana coast will recover
- the Valdez spill was easier to deal with, cleanup and environmental officials say, because it came from a single source and largely stayed in one place.
- One-hundred forty oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were damaged by Katrina

Beth Daley, Boston Globe October 03, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — The environmental damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita is unparalleled in its scope and variety, scientists say, with massive oil spills blanketing marshes, sediment smothering vast fishing grounds, and millions of gallons of raw sewage scattered in New Orleans and along the 400-mile Louisiana coast.

The catastrophe extends from the heart of the Big Easy, where streets, sidewalks, and floors are coated with a thick mud mixed with human waste, to the fringe of protective marshland, sugarcane fields, and citrus groves along the Gulf Coast that are beginning to die from the sea's salty surge. Thousands of acres seem to have been swallowed forever by the ocean.

"This is an unprecedented event in terms of devastation and scale," said Harry Roberts, director of the Louisiana State University's Coastal Studies Institute. He says it will take time to fully evaluate the storms' impact. "It's not like a spill on a river or a beach; you have small channels, canals, towns, levees. Everything here is complicated . . . and it's not a simple environment to assess damage in."

The scope of the cleanup ahead is most evident when seen from a plane. In a three-hour flight, a Globe reporter documented scores of examples of environmental damage from New Orleans 60 miles south: A shrimp boat, one of more than 100 observed tossed on roads and earthen levees, leaking a thin rainbow film of oil into the marsh. Two large white oil-storage tanks, one partially crumpled like a soda can, leaning precariously over the Mississippi River with remnants of its black goo smeared on a nearby beach. Boxcars, barges, and car ferries -- their contents oozing -- piled in canals and along the riverbank. Acres of marsh grass, beaten down by 100-mile-per-hour-plus winds and poisoned by salt water, turning brown.

Nature is resilient, and most scientists agree that the Louisiana coast will recover, as it has after past hurricanes. Oil will evaporate, toxic compounds will be diluted, and fish will return. But it could take several years or longer, and by then fishermen, hunters, and farmers could be ruined, as duck hunting falls off because of the loss of wetlands, crawfish farms fail because of saltwater in ponds, and high salinity in the soil turns rice and cane fields barren. Finding new uses for the land could take years.

"It will always come back to some stable system; we'll have shrimp and oysters again . . . but the shock effect of the change and recovery time could be great," said Paul Coreil, vice chancellor for the Louisiana State University Agriculture Center.

The most immediate concern is more than 8 million gallons of spilled oil in Louisiana -- a total that could grow significantly in coming days as Coast Guard officials continue to survey the spills. Just one Murphy Oil Corp. tank spilled 1.5 million gallons that mixed with sea water and washed into marshes, canals, sewers, and swimming pools over a square mile of the community of Chalmette, southeast of New Orleans. The Exxon Valdez -- until now considered the nation's worst environmental disaster -- poured 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.

Despite the bigger volume, the Valdez spill was easier to deal with, cleanup and environmental officials say, because it came from a single source and largely stayed in one place. In Louisiana, oil has been found seeping from pipes, tanks, and other containers at more than 48 locations. Floodwaters allowed some of it to mix with the contents of underground gas storage tanks and the hazardous contents of thousands of homes and schools, including asbestos, paint thinner, and bleach, complicating the cleanup.

Near the oil spill in Chalmette, a thick sludge coats a cul-de-sac and the tread marks of cars that tried to escape its clutches are visible from 1,500 feet in the air. Katrina's storm surge picked up the Murphy Oil tank and pushed it 30 feet, buckling it and opening a leak. The neighborhood resembles a war zone from Katrina, with roofs blown off and sheds resting on their sides. Through it all, the sheen of oil snakes into canals and a marsh. Federal officials have classified the neighborhood as a "hot zone" -- making it off-limits as they try to scrub oil from sewage pipes and mailboxes, and decide whether the neighborhood is salvageable.

So far, cleanup workers have siphoned or removed more than 2.5 million gallons of oil from marshes, canals, and land that spilled in the biggest leaks. Most of the oil, however, has evaporated or was carried out to the Gulf on Katrina's and Rita's retreating storm surge where it was broken up and diluted, and will eventually biodegrade. Given the circumstances, cleanup officials say, it was far better for the oil to go to sea than to get caught in sensitive marshland.

"It could have been much worse," said Charlie Henry, lead scientific adviser for the Katrina and Rita response for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Response and Restoration. Fewer than 100 birds have been recovered with oil on them, according to a US Fish and Wildlife official, but assessments are not complete.

One-hundred forty oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were damaged by Katrina -- 43 severely, including some that floated away or sank. While oily sheens were reported in the Gulf after Katrina, the amount of oil from platforms and pipelines appears to be negligible, federal officials say. While rigs and pipelines have been reported damaged during Rita -- and some small amounts of oil spills -- no final numbers exist yet.

Many Louisiana fisheries, which produce 15 percent of US seafood and 50 percent of the nation's oysters, are believed to be devastated. Katrina dumped a thick layer of sediment east of the Mississippi Delta that probably smothered oyster beds, and Rita did the same in the western part of the state. Brown and white shrimp that spawn offshore and move inland to live in marshes have had much of their habitat destroyed. Officials say they believe the worst is yet to come: Decaying organic matter that is being stirred up or washed into lakes and the Gulf will probably cause oxygen levels in the water to drop, killing off fish.

In New Orleans, the mess could take years to scrub clean. Federal and state teams are fanning out across the city, looking to identify and plug up thousands of "orphan" 55-gallon drums and barrels that floated out of industrial facilities. The barrels, many with labels peeled off by wind and weather, litter banks of canals and warehouse sites. Worries about breathing in particles released from the muck on the streets eased with Rita's dousing, but as a dry-out occurs, federal officials are sampling air again while residents complain of coughing. More than 22 million tons of debris will have to be disposed of and workers are combing through streets trying to separate hazardous waste from regular debris.

"I'm a glass-is-half-full kind of person, and there is significant environmental impact," said Coast Guard Captain Frank Paskewich, the commander of the New Orleans District who is overseeing the oil spill cleanup. But he said many of the polluted areas have been contained, making them easier to scrub clean. "I am optimistic we are going to mitigate it."

To see more of The Boston Globe, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.boston.com/globe.

Link to site: The first samples of fish taken from the Gulf of Mexico two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck showed no exposure to spilled oil,

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Highlights:
- Water and sediment samples taken off the Florida Panhandle, meanwhile, also showed little effect from Katrina,
- about 8 million gallons of oil were released by the storm - onshore and offshore Louisiana, including pipelines and drilling platforms.
- The long-term environmental harm from Katrina and Rita may take years to measure.
- Other hurricane-related issues NOAA will consider include loss of wetlands and the effects of saltwater intrusion and oil pollution in those areas


GARRY MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer September 30. 2005
The first samples of fish taken from the Gulf of Mexico two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck showed no exposure to spilled oil, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday.

Water and sediment samples taken off the Florida Panhandle, meanwhile, also showed little effect from Katrina, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported.

NOAA scientists aboard a ship conducted the fish testing on a voyage from Pensacola, Fla., to an area southwest of New Orleans. Additional testing for exposure to other contaminants continues.

Some oily sheens were reported in the gulf after Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Russ Tippets in Baton Rouge said about 8 million gallons of oil were released by the storm - onshore and offshore Louisiana, including pipelines and drilling platforms.

He said a lot of it was contained at the storage facilities. Almost 2 million gallons evaporated, he said, but about a million gallons could not be recovered.

Tippets said no spills have been reported as a result of Hurricane Rita's hit on Texas and southwest Louisiana.

The Florida study done off Panama City Beach indicated that Mississippi River water had not moved into the gulf in that area, about 100 miles east of the Florida-Alabama state line.

Conservation Commission officials said in a news release that Hurricane Rita affected surface currents in the southeast gulf, probably diluting contaminated water flowing out of the Mississippi after Katrina.

More NOAA tests are planned as the toxic floodwaters pumped out of New Orleans seep into the waterways that drain into the gulf. The long-term environmental harm from Katrina and Rita may take years to measure.
But Ted Cleveland, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Houston, said the long-term harm is "probably less than we're all concerned about because it was a single impulse into the system."

While he hasn't examined NOAA's data, Cleveland still expects any chemicals in the Katrina floodwaters will be diluted in larger waterways around New Orleans.

"Once you dilute the chemicals, it's not going to be detectable. Now right where the pumps are discharging over the levees, I wouldn't want to be an oyster or crawfish right there," he said.

A continuous discharge of chemicals, he said, could be harmful, comparing it to a person drinking too much alcohol.

NOAA also tested gulf waters and marine life, including shrimp, for potential exposure to bacteria, pesticides and other toxic chemicals. Those results will be released later. Shrimp samples were taken from the Mississippi Sound, the area between the barrier islands and mainland.

On the NOAA voyage, oceanographers, toxicologists and microbiologists collected water, fish, and sediment samples to determine whether Katrina resulted in elevated levels of contaminants in the waterways.

Dr. Steve Murawski, director of scientific programs and chief science adviser at NOAA, said Friday he's encouraged by the first fish test results, but there are still a lot of "very small spills originating from the many, many (storm-damaged) vessels on the Mississippi coast."

He said a majority of Katrina spills were in and around the Mississippi River, so NOAA's strategy is to concentrate on that region.

Other hurricane-related issues NOAA will consider include loss of wetlands and the effects of saltwater intrusion and oil pollution in those areas, Murawski said in a telephone interview.

He said Rita didn't cause as much damage as Katrina.

Analyzing the damage to the fishing industry, NOAA teams also are surveying fishing fleets, seafood processing plants, fish markets and bait shops. The survey will take months to complete, although NOAA will release preliminary information as it becomes available.

Link to site: Great uncertainties remain about the health risks from contamination left by Hurricane Katrina

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Highlights:
- Exposure to contaminated sediments and widespread mold in water-logged homes as well as people breathing unhealthy air that includes fine, contaminated dust.
- Samples of floodwater and sediment in New Orleans have shown high levels of bacteria, fecal contamination as well as arsenic and lead
- "The EPA ... will not lift the evacuation order and tell people it's safe to go back,"
- growing concern about contaminated dust getting into the air from dried sediment, or mold-contaminated structures
H. JOSEF HEBERT, The Associated Press, September 29, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Federal officials acknowledged great uncertainties remain about the health risks from contamination left by Hurricane Katrina but said Thursday the decision on whether people should return to New Orleans is a local one.

As water is drained from the city, among the new worries cited at a congressional hearing are exposure to contaminated sediments and widespread mold in water-logged homes as well as people breathing unhealthy air that includes fine, contaminated dust.

Ed Mendel, of Palm Beach, Fla., surveys a wrecked neighborhood in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans Thursday, Sept. 29, 2005. Mendel, a volunteer firefighter, brought his homemade deep water rescue vehicle to the city Wednesday after helping with rescue operations in Cameron, La., in the wake of Hurricane Rita. One month after Hurricane Katrina hit, the Ninth Ward remains partially flooded after a levy broke following both Katrina and Rita. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) (Charlie Riedel - AP)

"This a very complex environmental situation -- sediment, mold, debris removal," Dr. Henry Falk, director for environmental health and injury prevention at the Centers for Disease Control, told a House hearing on Katrina's environmental impacts.

While 80 percent of the drinking water systems in the region affected by Katrina were again operating, water systems that once served 2.3 million people, many in New Orleans, remain shut down, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Samples of floodwater and sediment in New Orleans have shown high levels of bacteria, fecal contamination as well as arsenic and lead and the EPA acknowledges those samples are "snapshots" that do not give a total picture and may miss contamination hotspots.

Falk and Deputy EPA Administrator Marcus Peacock told the House hearing that environmental conditions vary in different parts of the city and decisions to allow people back should be made on a neighborhood basis.

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., wondered why the EPA should not make the decision on whether it's safe for people to return to New Orleans.

"The EPA ... will not lift the evacuation order and tell people it's safe to go back," replied Peacock, adding that is the responsibility of local officials.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is pushing aggressively to reopen the city and have people return.

Visiting the stricken Gulf region on Thursday, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson declined to take a position on Nagin's approach, but noted the city's bacteria-laden floodwaters, lack of drinking water and sewage system as areas of continued concern.

Falk, testifying before the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee, said there could be long-term chronic health problems for some people as a result of returning to New Orleans.

"The potential for any long lasting effects depends on the degree of exposure. ... How long people are exposed" to contaminated sediments, bacteria-laden floodwater or other health hazards, said Falk.

As floodwater recede, there is growing concern about contaminated dust getting into the air from dried sediment, or mold-contaminated structures, environmentalists said.

Peacock said that EPA's ground-based air monitoring is only beginning, although an extensive sampling program is planned "to assess potential inhalation risks from particulates."

Environmentalists and citizen advocates said the EPA is understating the health risks in New Orleans and that federal and local officials are not providing people with information they need to decide whether to return.

Erik Olson, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said the EPA monitors showed unhealthy levels of benzene and other toxic chemicals in the air in some areas of the city.

"Returning citizens and many responders do not understand the risks," Olson told the subcommittee.

"If you read the (EPA) web site (showing sampling results) you practically have to have a degree in chemistry to understand it," he said, adding that most people seeking to return to New Orleans don't have computers to even get that information.

Peacock said the EPA and Coast Guard responded to more than 400 reported oil or chemical spills, including five major spills in the New Orleans area, releasing more than 8 million gallons. Environmentalists contend those numbers understate the situation and do not include oil that has leaked from some 350,000 motor vehicles and toxic chemicals from industrial sources.

In a bit of good news, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday that tests on fish caught in the Gulf of Mexico two weeks after Hurricane Katrina showed no increases in contamination by oil.

Additional tests for exposure to bacteria, pesticides and other toxic chemicals have not been completed. Testing of shrimp samples from Mississippi Sound also are still underway.

Link to site: Optimistic that New Orleans has avoided its two biggest environmental threats

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Highlights:
- brackish lake along the city's northern edge - and flood sediment in the city contain dangerous levels of bacteria
- water and sludge contained toxic chemicals, they weren't at levels that would make people sick with short exposure
- Oil products are the most prevalent contaminant in the water and sludge
- Sampling now is shifting to assessing the long-term health threats in the city
- Untreated floodwater is pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, the lake has taken on a distinct septic smell

DAVID SNEED, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BATON ROUGE, La. — State environmental health officials are cautiously optimistic that New Orleans has avoided its two biggest environmental threats: sludge that's so contaminated the city is uninhabitable, and Lake Pontchartrain turned into a toxic soup.

But as the first steps of repopulating the city resumed Monday, tests showing whether there could be long-term health risks haven't been completed yet.

Preliminary testing shows that Pontchartrain - the huge brackish lake along the city's northern edge - and flood sediment in the city contain dangerous levels of bacteria. But these should diminish quickly as the city dries out and pumping into the lake stops.

Officials stress, however, that the testing so far has concentrated on dangers that would make people sick immediately. They haven't done the testing that would show the health risks of long-term exposure.

"The numbers don't show any smoking guns, but I am concerned about people setting up shop in there before that question is answered," said John Pardue, the director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute, an independent public safety group.

Pardue said that although the water and sludge contained toxic chemicals, they weren't at levels that would make people sick with short exposure.

However, Hurricane Rita reflooded areas of the city and added a new layer of sludge, said Ivor van Heerden, the director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes at Louisiana State University.

The most immediate threat is bacteria. E. coli and other harmful bacteria exceed health standards by a factor of 10.

Katrina flooded 25 major and 32 minor sewage-treatment facilities, releasing hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage into the city. Decaying animal and human remains also are contributing bacteria.

As a result, health and rescue workers being sent into the city must be vaccinated for tetanus and other serious infectious diseases, said Darin Mann, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Quality. They wear rubber gloves and boots that have puncture-proof soles to prevent nails and other objects from penetrating.

Health officials recommend that everyone in the city wear a respirator mask. As the city dries out, dust will be a problem. Breathing dust under any circumstances is unhealthy, but the dust in New Orleans may contain contaminants, they said.

Oil products are the most prevalent contaminant in the water and sludge, coming from refineries along with submerged cars and gas stations.

Testing also has found slightly elevated levels of lead, arsenic and other metals, as well as pesticides and herbicides. These come from flood runoff as well as household and industrial sources.

Sampling now is shifting to assessing the long-term health threats in the city - problems that may arise as a result of repeated exposure to low levels of contaminants, said Dana Shepherd, the Katrina data-assessment team leader with the state Department of Environmental Health.

Cleanup efforts will have to reach the lowest layers of sediment and debris before long-term health threats can be determined, a process that will take weeks.

As untreated floodwater is pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, the lake has taken on a distinct septic smell, Mann said. Like the floodwater and sludge in New Orleans, the lake has lots of bacteria but doesn't have high levels of toxic chemicals.

"It's a bacterial, or septic, soup, but it's not a toxic soup," Mann said.

At 630 square miles, Pontchartrain is the nation's second-largest saltwater lake, behind the Great Salt Lake. Experts estimate that floodwater from New Orleans will displace no more than 10 percent of the lake's volume, meaning pollution from pumping will be limited.

Most of the damage to the lake was caused by natural sources. Katrina washed tons of leaves, branches and other natural debris into the lake and the streams that feed it. This debris is rotting, sucking oxygen out of the water and killing fish.

"I expect a total fish kill in streams up to 15 miles above the lake due to low dissolved oxygen," said Mark Lawson, inland fisheries biologist for 13 parishes in eastern Louisiana. Limited fish kills in the lake also have been reported.

Link to site: it would appear that government agencies are now taking seriously the threats posed by environmental hazards left in Hurricane Katrina’s wake

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Highlights:
- from the dated and incomplete data available, it would appear that there is no Gulf Coast “environmental disaster” at all.
- Risks to human health posed by hazardous chemicals likely to be present in flood-ravaged areas are also conspicuously excluded from publicly available information.
- right thing for our agencies to do now is to level with the American people
- by focusing on damage control and silencing legitimate concerns, agencies only endanger American lives and further tarnish their own credibility.
From their recent statements, it would appear that government agencies are now taking seriously the threats posed by environmental hazards left in Hurricane Katrina’s wake.  The tone of official statements has changed markedly in the past week. From the head of FEMA’s relief effort to EPA and OSHA officials, the new order of the day is caution and concern. But in light of the glaring absence of both timely and accurate information about risks and a coherent plan to address hazards from these agencies, it seems their statements reflect the need for damage control and responsibility dodging. It is troubling that, in the midst of one of the worst environmental disasters in our nation’s history, such considerations would take precedent over public health and safety on the agendas of the very agencies charged with protecting American workers and families.

Indeed, from the dated and incomplete data available, it would appear that there is no Gulf Coast “environmental disaster” at all. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released test results for toxic chemicals in flood water for less than 30 sites, all in downtown New Orleans, far from “hot spots” in outlying areas.  Even these limited results were weeks old, despite ever-increasing numbers of clean-up crews and residents pouring into the surrounding region.  EPA’s “Response to Katrina” webpage indicates only a few hazardous chemicals having been found in qualities over their acceptable limit, none of which present a substantial risk to the public. 

Risks to human health posed by hazardous chemicals likely to be present in flood-ravaged areas are also conspicuously excluded from publicly available information.  EPA’s website provides no information that would help someone identify symptoms of potentially life-threatening or debilitating exposures to hazardous chemicals, as they do for bacterial contaminant exposure.  And recent EPA press release acknowledged the presence of 'fuel oils' in soil deposits left behind by flood waters, but the agency has still not released detailed data about the chemicals found. Many 'fuel oils' and other petroleum byproducts are known carcinogens—some can even breach protective gear—yet the release fails to warn of these potential cancer risks.

In the stew of contradictory and confusing information floating around about post-Katrina toxic hazards, legitimate concerns that acknowledge the magnitude of potential problems are going unnoted and unaddressed.  But these concerns should be taken seriously.  Massive amounts of toxic chemicals were present in the area before the storm.  Thousands of sites in the storm’s path used or stored hazardous chemicals, from the local dry cleaner and auto repair shop all the way to Superfund sites and oil refineries in Chalmette and Meraux, La., with huge stores of ultra-hazardous hydrofluoric acid.

And some of those sites were damaged and leaked.  From the day Katrina passed over the Gulf Coast, reports from residents and media in the area told of oil spills, obvious leaks from plants, storage tankers turned on end, and massive fires.  National organizations and folks on the ground, picking up the slack left by government agency reporting, have helped shed light on the “toxic gumbo” left in the Katrina aftermath and the inadequacy of relying on industry to take care of that mess.

What’s going on with leaks, spills and releases should be everyone’s concern.  No one knows the cumulative effects of and health risks presented by the mixing of chemicals that the EPA, state and local agencies, and environmental and community groups need to work together to protect residents and clean-up crews.  Yet the EPA appears to be following the same dysfunctional pattern it did after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the agency—caving to White House pressure—withheld warnings about the health risks of asbestos and other airborne chemicals at Ground Zero.

What you don’t know can hurt you.  We saw this with rescue workers at Ground Zero, many of whom continue to experience health consequences from their unwitting exposure.  And we’re seeing it again now with Katrina rescue workers, like Steve Dombrowski, who showed up last week to a clinic in Mississippi with chemical burns on his legs from wading in flood water, according to The New York Times.  

The right thing for our agencies to do now is to level with the American people, so that, before returning to their homes or sending their children back to school, area residents will have the information they need to make the best possible choices.  By expanding chemical testing, being more timely and forthcoming with test results, and engaging stakeholders, the EPA and other government agencies might actually carry out their charge of protecting the public.  But, by focusing on damage control and silencing legitimate concerns, agencies only endanger American lives and further tarnish their own credibility.  In recent weeks, we’ve seen how essential access to information is to our ability to deal with crisis; this is a lesson our agencies should take to heart. 

Link to site: where should the toxic mess be deposited?

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

Highlights:
- wrong choices now could spark environmental problems for decades to come.
- Scientists from LSU have already begun field trips to New Orleans to collect samples for monitoring the level of toxins in the water.
- That represents about 2% of the volume of the lake.

Patrick Jackson, BBC News, The filthy floodwaters that have engulfed much of New Orleans are posing a fresh challenge for the city - where should the toxic mess be deposited?

Fears are growing that the wrong choices now could spark environmental problems for decades to come. Engineers need to pump out the water which swept in when Hurricane Katrina's storm surges from the lake brought down sections of its floodwalls on 29 August. But the last thing the lake and the delicate wetlands of Louisiana and Mississippi need is a tide of urban filth.

The areas have already suffered decades of seeping pollution and erosion. The Mississippi River might seem a more obvious channel than the lake for the mess, carrying it out to sea. Yet the lake is the city's traditional drain, and it is impractical to try to pump all the water out to the south. Sewage and unknown amounts of industrial chemicals float in the stagnant water - along with the unrecovered bodies of the victims. Oil, diesel and petrol from vehicles are adding to the mix.

And the facilities to treat the contamination before pumping the water away are just not there in a city without power. Scientists cannot yet say for sure how poisonous the water actually is, and city officials have described reports of a "toxic soup" as exaggerated.

On the Mississippi coast, the water went in and went out - in New Orleans, it went in and sat there
Professor John Day, Louisiana State University. New Orleans has no large industrial base, says John Day, a professor at Louisiana State University's (LUS'S) Department of Oceanology and Coastal Studies - but for now scientists "just don't know" what a full analysis of the waters will show.

If no major new source of toxins emerges, the biggest areas of concern will organic waste and oil slicks. While they may have a short-term impact, these elements should largely break down in the lake water in a matter of months, says Professor Day.

Field trips
Scientists from LSU have already begun field trips to New Orleans to collect samples for monitoring the level of toxins in the water.

Aerial photographs are also helping them to establish the volume of floodwater. These images suggest the quantity of floodwater in downtown New Orleans on 2 September was 95 billion litres (21bn gallons, 25bn US gallons), Hassan Mashriqui of the LSU Hurricane Center told the BBC News website. That represents about 2% of the volume of the lake.
LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN
1,632 sq km (630 sq miles) - second-largest US saltwater lake
Home to 125 aquatic species including anchovies and sharks
Named in 1699 after a French minister
Covering 1,632 sq km (630 sq miles), Pontchartrain is home to more than 125 species of aquatic life, from anchovies to alligators. Wildlife in the wetlands of the lake's basin includes otters and wild boar, ducks and eagles.

The lake is no stranger to pollution from its big city neighbour, but it had actually been getting cleaner in recent years. Six decades of dredging its shell beds to make asphalt and cement came to an end in 1991.

Pontchartrain's ecosystem may have been hit directly by Katrina at the very beginning, when surges of seawater from the Gulf of Mexico arrived, dangerously increasing its salt content.

Certainly, the hurricane itself did serious ecological damage further north, along the Gulf Coast, where a storm wave with a peak of nine metres (30ft) was recorded. "On the Mississippi coast, the water went in and went out - in New Orleans, it went in and sat there," said Professor Day.

Warnings 'ignored'
The wetlands, which act as a natural brake on hurricane surges, have been reduced by about 25% over the last century by development.

As a rule of thumb, for every mile of wetlands that a storm surge passes, it reduces the flooding by a foot, the professor says. He argues that if the US federal authorities had heeded ecological warnings and spent $20-25bn on restoring wetlands in the Mississippi Delta, America would not now be facing a bill of $100bn.

Washington, Professor Day says, must finally take global climate change seriously as the rising sea level and more frequent hurricanes many associate with it impact directly on low-lying areas like New Orleans.

Link to site: New Orleans prepared a second time to reopen a neighborhood to residents.

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

Highlights:
- Rita spared most of the city but left its mark on the lower 9th Ward

Laura Parker, USA TODAY
NEW ORLEANS — The sun came out Sunday, and convoys of utility trucks that had taken cover for Hurricane Rita reappeared. New Orleans prepared a second time to reopen a neighborhood to residents.
Rita spared most of the city but left its mark on the lower 9th Ward, the ruined neighborhood east of the French Quarter that once was home to the city's poorest residents. Water from Rita's torrential rains cascaded into the neighborhood again after breaches appeared in the levee along the Industrial Canal. The Army Corps of Engineers piled rocks and sandbags to close the breaches. Mitch Frazier, a corps spokesman, said the 9th Ward could be pumped dry again within a week.

Mayor Ray Nagin wants to return residents to Algiers, across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter downtown. Power, sewer and water service has been restored there for at least a week. And businesses had been reopening until the city was evacuated again late last week to wait out Rita.

The streets here were virtually deserted over the weekend as Rita's outer bands lashed the city. Soldiers patrolling neighborhoods took cover, and work crews disappeared. Two cruise ships housing 6,000 city employees sought refuge in the Gulf of Mexico, which forced Nagin to find temporary quarters for them.

Nagin said he hoped, if things go smoothly in Algiers, to press ahead and bring residents back into the Uptown neighborhood. That neighborhood includes the Garden District and Tulane University, west of the French Quarter. Finally, he would open the French Quarter. But unlike his first attempt to repopulate the city, he did not announce a timetable and said he would wait to see how things go.

"We're talking about people who are mobile. We're not asking people to come back who have a lot of kids, a lot of senior citizens," he said. "That's going to be the reality of New Orleans moving forward."

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who is in charge of the federal disaster effort in the city, agreed that the city can resume its efforts to bring business owners and residents back to the least-damaged neighborhoods. But he urged a cautionary approach.

"The mayor needs (to take) some thoughtful approach to ... the areas that have been reflooded and the areas that may remain uninhabitable for safety, health and other reasons," the admiral said Sunday on ABC's This Week. "And I think a timetable associated with that still needs to be worked out."

The city is filled with tree branches and other debris. Power lines still dangle. Only a few traffic lights are operating, and no stores or gas stations have reopened.

Northwest of the French Quarter in the Mid City neighborhood, water had risen above porches. On Sunday, Scott Casey, 39, came back to pick up a few things from his house. He was shocked by what he saw. He empathized with the mayor's effort to repopulate the city, but he said there's no need for anyone to rush home until there's something to come home to. "They're going to have to bring them back to the neighborhoods a block at a time," Casey said. "When you come here, you realize it's like a desert. There's nothing. It's too soon."

Link to site: Coastal managers are concerned that the runoff from Hurricane Katrina New Orleans' Katrina runoff may float by on way to Atlantic

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

Highlights:
- couldreach Florida shores or affect its coastal environment.
- concern about Tropical Storm Rita hooking a right after it passes the Keys
- NOAA and the Environmental Protection Agency say they are coordinating a sampling effort with boats
CATHY ZOLLO, A massive plume of toxic water washed from New Orleans into the Gulf of Mexico is sliding south on its way to becoming a Florida problem.

Coastal managers are concerned that the runoff from Hurricane Katrina -- rich in chemicals, pesticides, petroleum products, pathogens and a host of unknowns -- couldreach Florida shores or affect its coastal environment.

There's also some concern about Tropical Storm Rita hooking a right after it passes the Keys, which could have dire consequences for the Gulf Coast.

"If this other hurricane tracks up into that same area, ... it could provide the mechanism to push the water right into" the Florida coast, said Peter Ortner, director of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. "That's what we're watching like hawks."

A preliminary research cruise took samples last week along the northern Gulf Coast from Pensacola to the Mississippi Sound. And officials with the NOAA and the Environmental Protection Agency say they are coordinating a sampling effort with boats from both agencies that will take in northern Gulf Coast areas and open water.

Results from initial testing won't be back for about three weeks, Ortner said.

The noxious brew spewing from a flooded New Orleans is taking two paths to the state, oceanographers say.

One is heading east out of Lake Pontchartrain toward the Panhandle along the shore. Another that could threaten the Dry Tortugas and the Keys reef track got caught in the northern tip of the loop current that flows up between Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula into the Gulf.

The current looks like a bent bobby pin, jutting north, then looping back south along the Florida coast roughly 150 to 300 miles offshore. It then moves past the Keys into the Atlantic.

"I'm more concerned for the Keys than I am for Sarasota," said Robert Weisberg, professor of physical oceanography at the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science. "Anything that may get into that strong permanent loop current flow will go to the vicinity of the Florida Keys, the vicinity of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and then off to North Carolina."

Coastal managers in the Keys already know that the water picked up by the current could become trapped in an eddy adjacent to the Dry Tortugas Ecological Reserve. It has happened with Mississippi River water in the past, though nothing as as toxic as what's headed south now.

The reserve "is an area that has remained relatively pristine because it's isolated from major population areas," said Cheva Heck, spokeswoman for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. "We're concerned about the water coming down from the Mississippi area, and we are watching it."

Weisberg, who is part of the Southeast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System, or SEACOOS, began modeling what the water might do almost immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

Using virtual drifters, Weisberg's modeling takes some of the water south to the Keys and out along the the Keys reef track, then up along the state's east coast. Some, possibly the most potent since it comes out of Lake Pontchartrain, heads east toward the Florida Panhandle.

Some observers say the federal government waited too long to begin monitoring the plume.

"There always should have been a plan for this," said Mitchell Roffer, a biological oceanographer from Miami. "Everyone should have been ready to do these kinds of things. ... It wasn't until the public started to complain that the agencies responded."

EPA officials say they're doing the best they can with a volume of pollution unlike anything seen before, and they vow to stay on top of it.

"We're taking it seriously," said EPA spokeswoman Laura Niles. "It's an unprecedented event. It's hard to compare it to anything else."

Link to site: Toxins common in most urban environments that made their way en masse into the water

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

Highlights:
- the stagnant waters are contaminated because they’ve soaked up “legacy” pollutants
- water in contact with the urban environment, all the potential contaminants that stayed around in that environment are now back in the water
- runoff from an elevated section of Interstate 10 in Baton Rouge contained some contaminants at levels “greater than those found in untreated municipal wastewater from the same service area,
- If you pick up this potentially toxic material before it gets into the hydrological cycle, it is far more economical than if you try to take it out of the water after the fact

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Broken sewers, flooded industrial plants and dead bodies are all likely to blame for poisoning the waters being drained from New Orleans. But the water – and the muck it is leaving behind — also owes its contamination to a source as mundane as it is unexpected: Toxins common in most urban environments that made their way en masse into the water as it stagnated atop the city.

So says a University of Florida professor who has spent years studying the harmful contaminants that turn up in urban runoff, or rainwater that washes across streets and other hard surfaces in cities. Environmental engineering professor John Sansalone’s perspective is especially relevant because it is based on field research in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, where he was a professor at Louisiana State University before taking a job at UF this summer.

“What we see in New Orleans is that when you put a lot of water in contact with the urban environment, all the potential contaminants that stayed around in that environment are now back in the water – definitely, to our horror,” Sansalone said.

Federal and Louisiana officials continue to sound alarms about the contaminated waters and scum left behind by the retreating flood. Early September test results released late last week showed high levels of bacteria, lead and harmful levels of chemicals including arsenic, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

While the sources of these and other contaminants remain under investigation, public scrutiny has focused on broken sewer pipes and other major failures in the city’s infrastructure attributed to Hurricane Katrina. Though these are certainly real problems, it’s also highly likely that the stagnant waters are contaminated because they’ve soaked up “legacy” pollutants that accumulated during normal conditions on the city’s streets, sidewalks, roofs and other impermeable surfaces, Sansalone said.

These pollutants, which normally appear in urban runoff, are more toxic than commonly understood, he said. In a study published last month in Water Environment Research, Sansalone and three co-authors report that runoff from an elevated section of Interstate 10 in Baton Rouge contained some contaminants at levels “greater than those found in untreated municipal wastewater from the same service area,” according to the study.

The findings were based on periodic analysis of runoff that drains off Interstate 10 into Baton Rouge’s City Park Lake just below the highway. Based on data first gathered in 1999, they revealed high levels of particulates, or microscopic- to millimeter-sized particles of material, as well as high chemical oxygen demand, an indicator of the presence of organic chemicals in oil, gas, grease, cigarette filters and other pollution.

Other research on urban runoff, meanwhile, has detected high levels of toxic metals and nutrients including phosphorus thought to leach from building materials, Sansalone said.

Organic chemicals are particularly dangerous to fish and other aquatic life because they reduce the levels of oxygen in the water, impinging on its ability to support life. Particulates cloud water, reducing sunlight penetration and plant growth. Once they cross a certain threshold, organic chemicals and metals also can be harmful to people.

New Orleans officials remain extremely concerned about bacterial contamination in the flood waters. Typically the result of contamination from untreated sewage, bacteria also can come from urban runoff, Sansalone said. Although it was not measured as part of his published study, other studies have found that such runoff contains heightened levels of bacteria stemming from bird and animal droppings, among other sources.

Sansalone said based on his studies of urban runoff alone, it’s critical that environmental officials scour the city of flood residue. “How we clean up this residual matter – which will not be easy – will be a chronic issue to the health of the city,” he said.

He said the contamination in New Orleans also highlights the need for other cities nationwide to do more to remove the toxins in urban runoff before, rather than after, it gets washed into waterways. There are several good strategies, he said. Increasingly affordable “permeable pavements” allow runoff to be stored, evaporate or percolate through pavement and into the ground, where soil and microorganisms can help filter the contaminants. Planting vegetation and especially trees also creates aesthetically pleasing buffer zones, providing storm water flooding control and other benefits. Finally, cities can use high-tech street sweeping equipment that is very effective at capturing pavement contaminants.

“If you pick up this potentially toxic material before it gets into the hydrological cycle, it is far more economical than if you try to take it out of the water after the fact,” he said.

Link to site: low levels of harmful bacteria in the waters around Harrison and Jackson counties.

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

Highlights:
- six Coast locations last week show surprisingly low levels of harmful bacteria in the waters
- did not test for industrial chemical contaminants
- not show the effects on water quality from the millions of cubic yards of debris that washed into Mississippi Sound and surrounding waters when Katrina's storm surge receded.
- limits for a single measurement of enterococci are 104 bacterial colonies for every 100 milliliters of water.

MIKE KELLER, Sun Herald, Sep 18, 2005
SOUTH MISSISSIPPI - Water samples taken by the Sun Herald at six Coast locations last week show surprisingly low levels of harmful bacteria in the waters around Harrison and Jackson counties.

"I would have expected these numbers to be much higher under the circumstances," said Henry Folmar, lab director for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality's Office of Pollution Control. "I'm really pleasantly surprised."

The samples were taken to show a snapshot of the health of coastal waters after Hurricane Katrina struck last month. The results cannot be viewed as a comprehensive picture of storm-related environmental problems.

In addition, the analysis only tested for possible sewage in the water; it did not test for industrial chemical contaminants.

It also would not show the effects on water quality from the millions of cubic yards of debris that washed into Mississippi Sound and surrounding waters when Katrina's storm surge receded.

The samples were analyzed by Envirochem of Mobile, Ala., an analytical laboratory certified by the states of Alabama and Mississippi to conduct such analyses. The lab looked for colonies of enterococci bacteria, a pathogenic bacteria that indicates sewage pollution in fresh and salt water.

Mississippi's Department of Environmental Quality normally monitors beaches and waterways for enterococci bacteria, though those efforts have not resumed since the storm. Folmar said DEQ and the U.S. Geological Survey will begin water testing later this week when a USGS mobile lab arrives in the area.

Government limits for a single measurement of enterococci are 104 bacterial colonies for every 100 milliliters of water. When that threshold is exceeded, the government shuts down beaches, because human contact with the water could cause serious illness.

The six samples were taken from both inland and coastal surface waters. The sites were selected to get an indication of any potential dangers to residents. From west to east, samples were taken from: Saint Louis Bay, at the northern tip of Pass Christian; inside Gulfport harbor, just south of the Copa Casino; Biloxi beach, at U.S. 90 and DeBuys Road; Biloxi Bay, north of Bayview Avenue and the state office building; the Escatawpa River in Jackson County, under Highway 63; and the west bank of Bayou Casotte, north of Halter Marine and across from Mississippi Phosphates.

Each site had its own peculiar rancid smell. One place smelled like sewage, while another smelled like chemicals and still another smelled like a combination of the two.

The two samples taken in Saint Louis Bay and Biloxi beach yielded results of 136 and 400 colonies respectively.

The beach sample was almost four times greater than DEQ's limit and the Saint Louis Bay number would have caused authorities to shut down the beach and issue warnings to avoid contact with the water.

In Gulfport harbor 60 colonies showed up and in the Back Bay there were 46 colonies. There were 40 colonies in Jackson County's Escatawpa River sample; Bayou Casotte yielded only six colonies. Both Jackson County sites were located in sparsely populated industrial areas, possibly accounting for the low results.

According to Folmar, the amount of harmful bacteria found on any one day can be very different from those found on another. Southern Mississippi has been fortunate with weeks of full sun after Katrina, which served to evaporate standing water from the land. The next time the area gets a heavy rain, much of the organic matter that dried up will wash into surrounding waterways.

Though some bacteria levels measured in the water samples were high, they were nowhere close to what they could be, Folmar said.

Recent EPA water tests in New Orleans showed in some samples over 13,000 colonies of coliform bacteria, another indicator of sewage in the water.

"We've got water-quality problems here on the Coast, but I don't believe it's anywhere near the magnitude they're seeing in New Orleans," Folmar said.

Link to site: not became a hazardous waste site coated in a toxic stew

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

Highlights:
- New Orleans has not became a hazardous waste site coated in a toxic stew as originally feared
- So far there are no big issues long-term
- Water is clearly contaminated with raw sewage because many sewage pumping stations are not working.
- a few heavy metals in the water but not dangerous levels, the EPA said.
- three samples had slightly elevated arsenic and lead levels.

Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent Fri Sep 16, 2005

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - New Orleans has not became a hazardous waste site coated in a toxic stew as originally feared, although many flooded areas are coated with a smelly sludge, experts said on Friday. They said that while the water in New Orleans was far from pristine, they had not found much evidence of the widespread contamination that had been feared.

"So far there are no big issues long-term," said Jerry Fenner, a public health analyst with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The water is clearly contaminated with raw sewage because many sewage pumping stations are not working. But if people do not drink or soak in the water, there are few concerns, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

There are high levels of E. coli bacteria, which suggest there potentially could be other diarrhea-causing microbes, but there have been no serious outbreaks of disease, the CDC says.

Some areas of Jefferson Parish, which partly surrounds New Orleans, have clean, contaminant-free drinking water. In the areas that are not yet clean, residents who return are being cautioned not to drink the water although they may use it to flush toilets.

There are also a few heavy metals in the water but not dangerous levels, the EPA said.

"The levels of metals detected were below levels that would be expected to produce adverse health effects. Overall, three samples had slightly elevated arsenic and lead levels. The level of lead detected is typical of that found in urban areas," the EPA said in a statement on Monday.

There had been fears that other chemicals such as oil, dry-cleaning fluids and solvents such as benzene would be spread widely but the EPA said testing so far had not indicated this had actually happened.

"Volatile organic compounds were detected at very low levels," the EPA said. Prolonged contact with such compounds can cause a rash but once they dry they are unlikely to pose a health risk, the experts said. "People feared there would be toxic pits," Fenner said in an interview. "The data we have seen so far doesn't support it." Fenner said oil spills were being contained well. "We went out there and they are doing an amazing job cleaning it up," he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard said the oil spilled in six major Louisiana incidents after Hurricane Katrina had been contained and almost none of it flowed directly into the Mississippi River. A total of 160,000 barrels of oil leaked from tanks and pipelines at the six principal sites damaged by the August 29 hurricane, including Murphy Oil Corp.'s refinery in Mereux, just east of New Orleans. Of that, teams have recovered some 50,000 barrels, each of which equals 42 gallons.

"Much of the oil has already dispersed naturally or has evaporated, said Capt. Frank Paskewich, federal on-scene coordinator for the Coast Guard.

Link to site: Environmental expert warns residents about the hazards of returning

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

Highlights:
- Contaminated floodwaters and air pollution have devastated the Gulf Coast ecosystem.
- they’ll breathe bacteria, viruses and volatizing toxic chemicals.
- lot of political spin but no valid environmental assessment
- But the work to protect the public health and the environment—not just that the people who [survived] and the heroes—that was just as much a disaster as it was after 9-11.


An environmental expert warns residents about the hazards of returning to New Orleans—now home to a dangerous brew of toxic chemicals and bacteria.

Bao Ong, Newsweek, Updated: 7:05 p.m. ET Sept. 16, 2005

Sept. 16, 2005 - Contaminated floodwaters and air pollution have devastated the Gulf Coast ecosystem. As Hurricane Katrina victims try to rebuild their lives after one of the worst natural disasters in American history, the environmental impact remains a looming threat.

It’s still unclear how long it will take for the environment to recover, as officials weigh the possible risks to returning residents. Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response with 35 years of experience at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, addressed his concerns with NEWSWEEK’s Bao Ong. Excerpts:
Online Newshour
Hugh Kaufman
NEWSWEEK: What do you think about the mayor of New Orleans saying he’ll reopen the city in the coming days?
Hugh Kaufman: The mayor said New Orleans will “breathe again.” Yeah, they’ll breathe bacteria, viruses and volatizing toxic chemicals. There is no environmental assessment. I mean, you can’t even make a determination of the risk factor. But more important, we don’t know what to tell the public in terms of what their risk is when they come back. The public thinks it’s safe. It’s one of the more reckless and irresponsible government decisions made in the last decade. Second only to [former EPA chief] Christie Todd Whitman after [the] World Trade towers came down [saying], “We’ve tested the air and it’s safe. So ya’ll come back.” And now [some] of the people that came back are sick as dogs.

What do you think the government is basing its decisions on?
There is no environmental characterization that has been accomplished. There’s been a lot of political spin but no valid environmental assessment to determine the amount of hazardous material, bacteria and viruses that are in the air, in the muck and in the dust that the people would be exposed to 24/7 when they go back.

So have you been down there?
No. I’ve done thousands of cases like this. They’re all the same. The only difference between this and other cases is the size of it.

How does the environmental damage of Katrina compare to other hurricanes?
The hurricane did allow for the breakage of the sewer systems which put into the environment everything that was in the sewer, which was human waste and industrial waste. It also caused breakage of containers that store hazardous materials. It’s [a] toxic gumbo.

What are the possible long-term effects on the environment?
Oh, boy. First of all, you’re going to wipe out shellfishing, shrimp fishing and parts of the water down there because of the discharge into Lake Pontchartrain, the Mississippi [River] and moving down to the gulf. You’re going to have a tremendous amount of toxic waste that has to be cleaned up and disposed of. You’re going to have air pollution that will make some people sick initially and increase the risk of cancer 10, 20, 30 years down the line in the areas that have been contaminated with the oil and chemical waste. It’s uncountable, the amount of environmental and public-health problems that most folks down there are going to see for years to come. If Love Canal is a fly, then this is an elephant—in terms of environment and public-health effects.

Can you talk more specifically about these toxins and they risks they pose?
You’ve got oil and petroleum products, which have toxic constituents that have been documented to cause cancer. You have other chemicals coming from landfills and Superfund sites that haven’t been documented. You’ve documented chromium, arsenic and lead, which with some of the other toxic chemicals can cause birth defects, spontaneous abortions, illness—short term and long term—and asthma. Until a thorough assessment is completed of the three pathways—air, direct contact and ingestion of hazardous materials—until that assessment has been done, nobody can quantify how many more cancers, how many more deaths will occur down the line as a result of precipitous interaction with these hazardous and toxic materials that are ever present in that region of the country.
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What kind of assessment and how long will it take?
There are some areas that you can do some quick assessments where there has not been major water damage and [which] have not been impacted by waterborne waste and toxic material, like the French Quarter. You could make decisions in a couple of weeks. I’m not against allowing the public back. They just need to be given the information on what type of risks they’re taking [for] when they go back. Right now there’s a lot of spin that’s coming out of politicians that things are safe. That’s irresponsible and reckless public policy because of the pollution in that area.

What kind of timeline would you give a resident in a flooded area for coming back?
It depends where they are. Areas that have been submerged and exposed to high volumes of toxic materials, it would be years before they could go back. Other areas with much less contamination, it would be months where they could go back safely. My view is as long as you characterize the area so they know what they’re being exposed to, I have no problem with them going back at any time. It’s their choice. As long as they’re told what risks they’re taking and are told what protective measures they should take. They have to be told environmental facts and the truth.

Have you heard from flood victims?
I’m getting some e-mails from folks who have been evacuated wanting to talk about the assessment, and I try to answer them and give them information. But I think most of the people down there are getting their information from the news media, and of course you’re getting conflicting information because everybody is spinning. You’ve got government agencies speaking from both sides of their mouth. You’ve got trouble.

What kind of rebuilding programs will these Gulf Coast cities need to recover?
They’ll need tens of billions of dollars of federal money to clean up and rebuild and to take care of the folks who have been harmed by this. It’ll be like the Marshall Plan was in Berlin. Or like we said we were going to do for Iraq.

You dealt with the environmental impact in New York after 9/11. How does Hurricane Katrina compare?
It’s very different. You’ve got a very large number of people spread out over a broad area who can’t get out. In 9/11, people could get out and they did. But [the government is] making the same mistakes as they did after 9/11. There’s no difference. You’ve got the rescue work being done by the military, by the Coast Guard and local heroes. That’s been very good, [as expected]. But the work to protect the public health and the environment—not just that the people who [survived] and the heroes—that was just as much a disaster as it was after 9/11.

Link to site: Bacteria from sewage and chemicals are lurking in the floodwaters of New Orleans

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Highlights:
- dangerous amounts of sewage-related bacteria and lead
- high levels of chemicals such as hexavalent chromium, used in industrial plating, and arsenic, used in treating wood
- flooded areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, there are 31 such sites that are part of the federal government's "Superfund" program


CBS/AP) New government tests show dangerous amounts of sewage-related bacteria and lead from unknown sources in the floodwaters in New Orleans, and high levels of chemicals such as hexavalent chromium, used in industrial plating, and arsenic, used in treating wood.

Environmental Protection Agency officials are taking samples daily at sites around New Orleans for biological pathogens and more than 100 chemical pollutants, including pesticides, metals and industrial chemicals.

Amid progress in restoring power and water service and the day after the release of government tests showing that the floodwaters still contain bacteria and chemicals, but that the air is safe to breathe, Mayor Ray Nagin announced that large parts of the city will reopen early next week. The French Quarter is set to reopen the week after that.

"The city of New Orleans will start to breathe again," he said.

Elevated levels of E. coli and other coliform bacteria that can cause vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain and fever have been found at up to 109 times the EPA's safe swimming limit.

Lead, which can cause nerve damage, was found in one sample at 56 times the EPA's limit for drinking water; two other samples had it at nearly twice and more than three times the limit.

A preliminary round of water and air tests done more than a week ago indicated that floodwaters in New Orleans contained bacteria at more than 10 times the acceptable levels, making direct contact by rescue workers and remaining residents dangerous.

"Human contact with the flood water should be avoided as much as possible," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said last week.

Also found in the first round of testing were elevated lead levels, a risk if people, particularly children, were to drink the water.

Signaling a bacteria contamination, the floodwater changed color drastically in the first week after Katrina struck, Nagin told Harry Smith on The Early Show.

Five sites in the region containing some of the nation's worst toxic messes were flooded, and one of them, a landfill where residents took trash for decades, remains underwater and can't be reached.

Among all the flooded areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, there are 31 such sites that are part of the federal government's "Superfund" program to clean up hazardous waste.

There have been five oil spills in the New Orleans area. Some hazardous waste railcars are believed to be flooded, with water at least up to the wheels, although federal rail officials say they've had no reports of leakage so far.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, who called the hurricane flooding the biggest disaster his agency has ever faced, said the lead contamination is a mystery.

"Whether it's lead paint or lead from batteries, we don't know what the source is. But we know we've got a high level, and that's of concern to us," he said Wednesday, revealing test results from samples taken during the past two weeks. Johnson said he has convened a panel of outside experts to advise the agency on how to assess and clean up the flood damage.

Johnson briefed reporters after giving the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee what Sen. James Jeffords called "a grave and sobering assessment" of the trouble.

"We heard that the degree of environmental damage is considered catastrophic," Jeffords said. "We also heard that the EPA is still in the very early stages of collecting the soil and water samples that are needed to determine whether it is safe for residents to return to the area."

Tests of the city's air, which has a strong stench even from a couple hundred feet up, indicated no potential health issues. Only a few air pollutants were detected, such as methanol, a wood alcohol, isobutylene, a flammable gas, and freon, a refrigerant.
Federal agencies aren't predicting when the city will be habitable.

The latest chemical samples were drawn Sept. 4 and Sept. 6 by the EPA and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

Like previous tests, they turned up high levels of chemicals such as hexavalent chromium, arsenic and lead. A slightly elevated level of thallium was detected at one sampling location, but it was not enough to harm the public.

Link to site: Health risks are many but the measurements are inconclusive

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Highlights:
- The worst environmental calamity in U.S. history
- More than three-quarters of the oil from the Katrina spills had not been recovered by yesterday,
- The magnitude of the oil spills came into focus with word that laboratories trying to test sediment from newly drained areas were having a problem:


By Randy Lee Loftis, The Dallas Morning News
 
EPA head Stephen Johnson acknowledged the scope.

DALLAS — Hurricane Katrina rapidly is becoming the worst environmental calamity in U.S. history, with oil spills rivaling the Exxon Valdez, hundreds of toxic sites still uncontrolled, and waterborne poisons soaking 160,000 homes.
New Orleans' neighborhoods are awash with dangerous levels of bacteria and lead, and with lower but still potentially harmful amounts of mercury, pesticides and other chemicals. Much will wind up in the soil or in Lake Pontchartrain.
Across southern Louisiana, the Coast Guard reported seven major oil spills from refineries or tank farms that totaled 6.7 million gallons, or 61 percent as much as the 11 million gallons that leaked into Alaska's Prince William Sound from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
The total does not count gasoline from gas stations and the more than 300,000 flooded cars, likely to add an additional 1 million to 2 million gallons. Nor does it count oil from hundreds of smaller or undiscovered spills.
More than three-quarters of the oil from the Katrina spills had not been recovered by yesterday, the Coast Guard said.
The magnitude of the oil spills came into focus with word that laboratories trying to test sediment from newly drained areas were having a problem: There was so much petroleum in the dirt that they couldn't test for anything else.
The Exxon Valdez became the benchmark for U.S. oil spills by leaking North Slope crude into Alaska's cold isolation. This time, the danger includes untreated sewage, cancer-causing compounds, nameless black gunk from rail yards, chemicals used to kill plants or insects, substances that are poisonous even in the tiniest amounts, and decomposing remains.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson acknowledged the scope of the problem during a news conference in Washington, D.C. He wouldn't speculate on when residents could return or on whether the EPA might sanction lesser cleanups in some residential areas.
"All of us ... want New Orleans to return to the thriving city that it was before Katrina," he said, but only if the job is "done right and (is) proactive of public health."
Besides the water, the city must deal with a mass of hazardous debris that Johnson described as "enormous."

Link to site: Health risks are many but the measurements are inconclusive

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Highlights: - Array of serious health threats, including lack of clean drinking water, astronomically high bacteria counts and unsafe levels of several toxic metals in floodwaters - Nearly 1,000 drinking-water systems remain disabled or impaired because of power outages or structural damage - Suspicious of the reliability of the EPA's tests because they have reported no detectable amounts of benzene or several other substances in petroleum products, even though oily sheens are visible on the floodwaters.

Marla Cone, Times Staff Writer
Calling Hurricane Katrina the largest disaster that the Environmental Protection Agency has ever encountered, the nation's top environmental official said Wednesday that the Gulf Coast was still facing an array of serious health threats, including lack of clean drinking water, astronomically high bacteria counts and unsafe levels of several toxic metals in floodwaters.

EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said it was impossible to estimate how long the cleanup would take because no one knows the magnitude of the problems. Signs are emerging that there could be widespread hazardous waste in New Orleans that could delay rebuilding efforts, although the EPA so far says it has detected just three chemicals in the floodwaters at unsafe levels.

Hexavalent chromium and arsenic, which are known human carcinogens, were reported Wednesday in floodwaters in some New Orleans neighborhoods at levels that are unsafe for drinking water. The latest available samples were taken Sept. 4 through Sept. 6. The chromium compound is used in metal plating. Arsenic, found naturally in the Earth's crust, occurs in pesticides and wood preservatives.

Since Sept. 3, the agency has reported unsafe lead levels in floodwaters, including one sample that exceeded the drinking-water standard 15-fold. Lead can damage the brain of a fetus or child if it is ingested.

The health standards for arsenic and chromium are based on long-term dangers — the risk of cancer associated with a child drinking a liter of tainted water a day — so there is little immediate danger because people are not drinking the floodwaters. But the findings suggest that significant amounts of at least a few contaminants have polluted the area and probably pose a long-term threat to public health and the environment.

Nearly 1,000 drinking-water systems remain disabled or impaired because of power outages or structural damage. Many people have been told to boil their water.

Some environmental researchers are suspicious of the reliability of the EPA's tests because they have reported no detectable amounts of benzene or several other substances in petroleum products, even though oily sheens are visible on the floodwaters.

But Johnson said petroleum residue has been absorbed into the dirt. He said the soil and other sediment contain so much petroleum-based material that it is hard to isolate specific compounds in the tests. Johnson said the EPA has requested assistance from a panel of scientific experts on how to analyze the samples.

The visible oily waste in the sediments could mean massive amounts of soil may have to be excavated or treated, and perhaps taken to special landfills. Chemicals left in the soil can leach into groundwater and contaminate the air and drinking-water supplies, as well as crops and gardens.

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has said the EPA test results will be a key factor in determining how quickly residents can return.

Johnson would not speculate on whether the contamination will delay rebuilding parts of the city.

"Our top priority is to assess what the impacts are and conduct a cleanup operation — just as quickly as possible — that is done right" and protective of public health, he said.

The floodwaters in New Orleans' residential neighborhoods are being continuously tested for more than 100 compounds, including pesticides and industrial chemicals. But most have not been detected, and other than the chromium, arsenic and lead, none has been detected in concentrations that exceed drinking-water standards, according to data that the EPA released from sampling at 29 sites.

However, other chemicals are showing up in the water at low levels, including some pesticides; mercury; copper; barium, a metallic element used in the oil industry; thallium, another metallic element; and toluene, which is found in paint, gasoline and other petroleum products.

Some experts have questioned whether the tests can adequately assess the hazards.

John Froines, director of UCLA's Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, said just comparing the chemicals to drinking-water standards may not be enough to protect public health. Some, such as toxic ingredients in petroleum products and pesticides, can be absorbed through the skin and others can cause allergic reactions.

"There must be over 100,000 volunteers and National Guardsmen and other officials there," Froines said. "These people are likely to be wading in water, and they may have some of the most significant exposures.

"We know you can get massive uptake [of some chemicals] through the skin in certain occupational settings. I don't have a sense that anybody is thinking about that," Froines said.

Because the highest concentrations found so far are metals, the region "may have been spared" exposures similar to the World Trade Center disaster, where smoke and dust were toxic, he said.

"The question is what is going to happen to those metals?" Froines said. "There are long-term issues with respect to hazardous waste and plants taking up sediments, and people with gardens."

Federal and state officials, he said, should assemble a group of scientists and regulatory officials to determine which people may have been highly exposed and then consider testing their bodies for chemicals.

Although the nation has suffered other large floods, "this is not comparable at all, because of the scope and how high the water was and for how long, and the size of the population. We didn't have people wading in 25 feet of water for five days" after floods in the Midwest, said Roger Lewis, director of the St. Louis University School of Public Health's Environmental Health Research Lab.

Johnson acknowledged Wednesday that the EPA's floodwater tests offer "just a snapshot."

He said there is no doubt that the floodwater is unsafe, largely due to high bacteria counts. Bacteria counts remain much higher than acceptable levels for human contact, which indicates that raw sewage is still in the streets, according to samples collected Saturday.

The EPA has advised emergency crews and the public to avoid contact with standing water when possible and to wash exposed skin with soap and clean water.

He said the EPA has enough money for its emergency work, with more than 600 employees at the scene, mostly in Louisiana.

Environmental officials are also concerned that chemicals might be flowing off five Superfund sites — among the nation's most hazardous dumpsites — near New Orleans. One Superfund site, the Agriculture Street landfill, remains underwater. A cleanup occurred there in 2000, but some residue remains and the EPA has not tried to assess whether contaminants have flowed off the site.

Five major oil spills have been discovered in the New Orleans area since the hurricane, according to the EPA.

Maj. George Stejic, a member of the Army Corps of Engineers team that is in charge of pumping water from the area, said Wednesday that one spill involved a large tank that shifted, releasing 250,000 gallons of a petroleum product into floodwaters. He said the corps was working with the EPA to contain the spill and was using booms to keep the product from reaching pumps.

Link to site: Bacteria and chemicals are flowing into Lake Pontchartrain, and raw sewage is being released into the Mississippi

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Ralph Vartabedian and Marla Cone, Times Staff Writers, Sep 14, 2005

NEW ORLEANS — The high-stakes effort to bail out New Orleans is sending plumes of contaminated, brown, stinking water into Lake Pontchartrain, setting back years of effort to restore the environmentally sensitive home of Gulf Coast marine life.

After festering for two weeks in neighborhoods, commercial districts and industrial zones, the water is laden with bacteria, silt, petroleum products and possibly toxic substances.

City officials confirmed Tuesday that they were also releasing untreated sewage into the Mississippi River from one of two treatment plants operated by the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board.

Hurricane Katrina has forced the abandonment of normal environmental and sanitation practices as workers scramble to preserve what's left of the city and prevent a breakdown of public health.

"We are still trying to save lives," said Col. Richard Wagenaar, who heads the Army Corps of Engineers' New Orleans district.

The floodwaters are overrun with fecal material, silt and other substances that could damage the marine environment.

Martha Sutula, a senior scientist at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project who has studied the ecology of Louisiana wetlands, said nutrients in the floodwaters, such as nitrates and ammonia, would probably cause algae and phytoplankton blooms in the shallow lake and surrounding estuaries. The blooms can deplete oxygen and suffocate marine life.

"I would imagine that you're going to have a pretty tremendous dead zone," Sutula said. "This is going to set them back quite a few years."

Al Naomi, senior project engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers, agreed. "It will take years to clean up our estuaries. The lake was coming back with manatees and fish. Twenty years of effort has been wiped out in an afternoon storm surge."

Although few experts criticize the extreme measures being taken to save New Orleans, the practices are believed to violate federal laws in normal times.

"We have multiple disasters in Hurricane Katrina," said William R. Freudenburg, a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Barbara. "Much of the disaster was caused by the initial decision of where to put the city's levees. It was turned into a human disaster by the worst response I have ever seen by the government. Now we have a disaster on one of the most environmentally sensitive and valuable wetlands in America."

Much of the nation's seafood catch spends some portion of its life in the marshes of Louisiana, areas that were damaged by the storm surge. On the east flank of New Orleans, marshlands have been stripped clean of vegetation. "It looks like the surface of the moon," Wagenaar said.

So far, tests have not discovered any toxic pollution.

The flood inundated at least one Superfund site, the Agriculture Street landfill. The cleanup was completed before the flood, although toxic residue remained in the soil. Tens of thousands of inundated homes are thought to have solvents, pesticides and other toxic substances stored in garages and under sinks that could be leaking.

The Environmental Protection Agency has tested floodwaters in six locations for more than 100 chemicals. Only one chemical has exceeded EPA standards. Lead in water near an Interstate 10 exit ramp was 15 times higher than the level allowed in drinking water.

Most of the hazardous chemicals — including polychlorinated biphenyls, found in electrical equipment, and benzene, found in crude oil and gasoline — were undetectable in the EPA's first round of tests conducted Sept. 3.

Lake Pontchartrain, a brackish, shallow body of water that is affected by ocean tides, normally appears blue. But the view from a helicopter this week showed at least three large plumes of brown water leaving the 17th Street Canal, the London Avenue Canal and the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal.

Those waterways are the main channels for billions of gallons of floodwaters per day from the city's pumping stations. Even several hundred feet above the city the air stinks of sewage.

The water pumped into the 630-square-mile lake eventually drains through two narrow outlets to Lake Borgne and then to the Gulf of Mexico. The sewage going into the Mississippi River flows into the gulf at the river's mouth, about 80 miles from downtown.

Marcia St. Martin, executive director of the sewage board, said there was no evidence to support the contention that the water was a "toxic brew."

Link to site: Floodwaters remain contaminated with E. coli and other bacteria, high levels of lead, oil products and other dangerous chemicals

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Steven Reinberg, HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 14 (HealthDayNews) -- As the death toll from Hurricane Katrina surged past 650 on Tuesday, federal officials said floodwaters in the devastated Gulf Coast region remain contaminated with E. coli and other bacteria, high levels of lead, oil products and other dangerous chemicals.

Drinking water must be boiled. And land is also contaminated with debris that runs the gamut from toxic waste to tree limbs, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said at a news conference.

"We continue to sample the flood water," Johnson said. "We are seeing a range of chemicals from 24D barium, chromium, copper, sodium and iron."

"This is one of the biggest environmental challenges in our agency's history. Since we haven't seen anything of this scale before, it's hard to make specific predictions," said Eryn Witcher, an EPA spokeswoman. The agency's top priority is a quick cleanup that protects people's health, she told the Associated Press.

The death toll continues to climb in the flood-ravaged Gulf Coast, with Louisiana's count rising to 423 after the discovery of the bodies of 34 elderly patients -- presumed drowned -- at a Chalmette nursing home.

Proprietors Salvador and Mable Mangano now face homicide charges for the deaths, with authorities claiming they did not heed warnings to evacuate their patients as Katrina came ashore Aug. 29. The two reportedly also turned down an offer of evacuation help from St. Bernard Parish officials.

Johnson noted that drinking water systems throughout the region are still not working properly. "In some cases, they are not working because there is no electricity," he said. "In other cases, such as New Orleans, they are operating, but there are 'boil-water advisories' because the water is unsafe."

Young children are most susceptible to illness because their immune systems are still developing. But, the EPA said the amount of chemicals found in the water would pose a risk to children only if a child were to drink a liter of floodwater a day, the AP said.

Nonetheless, officials from the EPA and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly urged people not to wade in or drink standing water. If contact can't be avoided, soap and water to clean exposed areas should be used, the news service said.

Waste-treatment facilities remain crippled, Johnson said, with many systems in Louisiana and Mississippi not operating, he said.

"Drinking water systems need attention," Johnson said. "Waste-water systems need attention. We are on the scene trying to help state and local communities bring them back up."

The EPA and state authorities are also testing the water in the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. To prevent further contamination from oil and gasoline and other pollutants, the EPA has placed booms in these and other waterways where floodwater is draining.

In terms of the land, Johnson said there is an enormous amount of debris. "The kind of debris we are seeing ranges from trees to hazardous materials," he said. "We have recovered over 5,000 orphan containers that range from gas cylinders to medical waste disposal drums."

Another problem is the sediment left behind by flooding, he said.

"We have begun to sample the sediment from New Orleans," Johnson said. "We don't have any results yet. Our labs have had difficulty doing the analysis because the sediment samples are so laden with petroleum products -- it is hard to get those products out of the sediment so that you can look for other chemicals or bacteria."

Johnson also noted that hazardous waste and superfund sites -- uncontrolled or abandoned places where hazardous waste is located -- were disrupted by the hurricane. "We are now looking at what steps to take to assure the public that these sites have not been compromised. One superfund site remains underwater."

The EPA has also received numerous reports of chemical odors and oil spills. "There have been five oil spills in New Orleans to date," Johnson said.

So far, air sampling has not detected any serious chemical or radioactive releases, he said, adding that the EPA will continue to work with state and local agencies to monitor environmental conditions.

More information

The EPA can tell you more about environmental testing in the hurricane affected areas.

Link to site: dentified at least six serious oil spills and numerous smaller incidents in southern Louisiana

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Steve Levine, Christopher Cooper and Michael Corkery, The Wall Street Journal
Monday, September 12, 2005
MERAUX, La. -- Now that water has receded from some of the most heavily damaged areas of New Orleans, it is becoming increasingly clear that Hurricane Katrina has left a major environmental mess in its wake.

Assessment teams and local emergency officials have identified at least six serious oil spills and numerous smaller incidents in southern Louisiana, but they are most concerned about a leak of an estimated 672,000 gallons of crude oil from a storage tank at a Murphy Oil Corp. refinery, some of which seeped into densely populated neighborhoods on the southeastern outskirts of New Orleans.

Federal officials told area leaders in private meetings over the weekend that they have designated the location around the Murphy refinery in Meraux in St. Bernard Parish as a "hot zone," or a potentially deadly hazard. Official access to the area has been restricted, but reporters from The Wall Street Journal who drove through city streets in the area saw block after block of homes within a mile of the refinery that had been inundated with what appears to be a mixture of oil and mud. Streets and much of the ground are covered in several inches of oozing muck.

Only limited work has been performed to remove the spilled crude since water began to recede from the area this past Thursday. As more of the crude sinks into the earth, officials say, the probability grows that as many as 4,000 homes will have to be razed and two to three feet of soil removed before the area could be inhabited again. Government officials say oil sludge spread across an area of three square miles.

The company believes most of the spilled oil was trapped behind a containment dike around the storage tank, and "we don't think very much oil got out of our refinery property, as far as we can tell," says Kevin Fitzgerald, a Murphy spokesman. The U.S. Coast Guard says Murphy estimated that 672,000 gallons of crude oil leaked out of the partially filled, 3.6 million gallon storage tank. The company says the tank may have dislodged from its foundation during the flood, floated as far as 15 feet and was punctured. Murphy says the containing wall around the tank was damaged during the storm, causing an unknown amount of oil to spread into the neighborhood.

Mr. Fitzgerald says he thinks much of that flowing liquid was muddy water containing a range of pollutants other than oil. Cleanup crews were using vacuum trucks and drum skimmers to suck up the oil, the Coast Guard says.

Crude oil is an unrefined form of oil that contains several harmful substances, including benzene, says Dr. Lynn Goldman, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Most spills occur outdoors, where the sun and air help break down the oil, causing it to evaporate. But if the crude from the Meraux tank seeps inside homes it will take longer to vaporize. "If it winds up inside structures it can stay there for a long time," says Dr. Goldman, a former assistant administrator at the EPA. She adds that the oil could seep into storm drains and sewers and spread through the city. "Literally the environment around the city would become polluted from it," she says.

The U.S. Coast Guard says it is helping clean up as many as six separate oil spills in Louisiana, including the one in Meraux. The other spills occurred along the Louisiana coast, south of New Orleans at facilities owned by Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch/Shell and others. Most of the discharged oil -- totaling more than 5.4 million gallons, according to the Coast Guard -- was contained by retaining systems around the storage tanks, although there was some reported leakage beyond the protective walls. (By comparison, the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound in Alaska was about 11 million gallons.)

Other areas of concern to environmental officials in New Orleans include a federal Superfund site near the Industrial Canal where a school and housing were built on top of a former landfill. That area was underwater for days. Before the hurricane, cleanup crews had removed soil that may have been contaminated with arsenic and lead and capped the area with a special covering. The site was in the process of being taken off the Environmental Protection Agency's national priority list of polluted sites when the hurricane hit. While the EPA won't speculate on whether the flood may have stirred up buried pollutants, "we don't know what lies before us with regard to that site," said Stephen Johnson, head of the agency.

The Washington, D.C.-based National Environmental Trust has identified 66 chemical plants and petroleum refineries and storage facilities in the Louisiana parishes hardest hit by the hurricane.

Last Tuesday, a team of eight scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the EPA, led by Dr. Henry Falk, a government expert in environmental hazards and their health effects, arrived in Baton Rouge, La., to assess the environmental hazards in New Orleans in the wake of the hurricane, and what needs to be done so people can return safely to their homes. The plan, Dr. Falk says, is to compile a list of those hazards, define who is responsible for addressing them, and pinpoint the obstacles toward fixing them or cleaning them up.

The team plans to deliver a report to the CDC and EPA soon, says Dr. Falk. Its observations and EPA testing so far show the hazards run the gamut from toxic chemicals in the floodwaters and soil to municipal issues such as making the drinking water clean again, getting sewage disposal working, and checking for gas leaks, he says. Houses will be examined for structural problems and mold damage, he says.

"I've worked on Three Mile Island, Mount St. Helens, Hurricane Hugo and Hurricane Andrew, but this is a unique situation," Dr. Falk says. "It involves a large urban area. There's a lot to coordinate. There's a staggering amount of debris."

The EPA's Mr. Johnson said that the agency is testing the floodwaters, soil and air in New Orleans for bacteria and more than 100 chemicals. So far, results of tests of the floodwaters in residential areas have consistently revealed high levels of ecoli and similar sewage-related bacteria, along with unsafe levels of lead. Mr. Johnson said he couldn't give an assessment about the overall environmental impact of the hurricane. "There are so many unknowns. We have to get the floodwaters out," he said.

Local leaders in Meraux had their first indication of the spill when a wildlife official noticed oil floating on the floodwaters after the hurricane, says Jeff McClain, director of the St. Bernard Parish Port. Little could be done since communications were cut off -- for five days no outside assistance came. When water levels dropped last week, sludge clung to trees and grass, houses and buildings. Cars and boats are scattered haphazardly on rooftops and streets. Abandoned dogs, many slick with oil, walked feebly along the median of Judge Perez Drive.

Three men in yellow hazardous material slickers used large squeegees to push through a petroleum slush that was as deep as a foot along Judge Perez Drive late last week. The men worked about a half-mile away from the refinery, piling up the sludge so it could be vacuumed into a pair of waiting tanker trucks. The sludge had the consistency of pudding, and the smell of petroleum hung heavy in the air.

On side streets, what appeared to be oil was thinner and ran deep in the streets. The brown stain of oil marked the high water points on buildings in the neighborhood, which run up to the boundaries of the refinery. A burnt line of grass on the main street's median marked the level the oil had reached when the water disappeared, well over a foot deep. On the southeast end of the refinery property, two men emptied the contents of a tanker truck, using a small pump to drain it into a canal. Mr. Fitzgerald, the Murphy spokesman, says he didn't know whether the canal was part of the spill-containment system or whether the workers were employed by Murphy.

The Coast Guard said Friday that more than 67,200 gallons had been recovered from the spill. For the last several days, volunteer emergency crews from Macon, Ga., Baltimore and other parts of Louisiana have donned protective gear in Meraux, searching for hurricane survivors or the bodies of victims whose presence could hamper the cleanup. Bulldozers have spread sand on the street to soak up the crude. Meraux's toxicity level is so high that vehicles leaving the area must pass through a decontamination spray.

Stragglers found in recent days have been given decontamination baths. "It's about as apocalyptic as you can imagine," St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens says.

Link to site: Harardous chemical worries

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IAN URBINA and MATTHEW L. WALD, the New York Times
Published: September 9, 2005

DeLISLE, Miss., Sept. 8 - When Hurricane Katrina's 13-foot storm surge crashed through the houses and businesses of this town on the Gulf Coast, it also rushed through a plant where DuPont stored dioxins and other hazardous materials. Now that the floodwaters have receded, local residents, deciding whether to rebuild, worry about what happened to those chemicals.

"Would you rebuild your home if it had been on Three Mile Island?" asked Paul Stewart, whose house, across the street from the DuPont plant, was destroyed. "I'm nervous about even rummaging through the rubble to find my things."

DuPont officials said that even though the plant sustained extensive damage from high winds and flooding, no harmful chemicals escaped the plant, which is about 60 miles northeast of New Orleans near the St. Louis Bay.

"We had advance notice the storm was coming, and we went through an orderly, disciplined procedure to shut down," said F. Edmund Johnston, the safety, health and environmental manager for DuPont's titanium business, in a telephone interview from his office in Wilmington, Del.

Before Hurricane Katrina, the Environmental Protection Agency had identified nearly 400 sites in the counties now declared disaster areas as possibly needing cleanup because of their potential impact on human health. Those sites contained toxic materials that may have been redistributed by the winds and water.

Robbie Wilbur, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, said in an e-mail message that personnel from his department had visited the DuPont site and that he had no reports of a spill.

But some local residents remain unconvinced.

"I don't know how they can say nothing got out when I was down on the bayou the day after the storm and I saw white film all over things down there," said Lena Lizana, a housekeeper who lives across the street from DeLisle Elementary School on Whitman Road. The plant produces titanium dioxide, a pigment for white paint.

In some form, the dispute in DeLisle will probably be repeated in about a thousand other places that, according to recent federal records, produce, store or manufacture toxic chemicals in the counties declared disaster areas in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and parts of Florida. Of those, 290 produce dioxins, like the DuPont plant, or other chemicals known to accumulate in the body. Like so much else in this battered region, the amount of chemicals that were dispersed by the floodwaters is unknown.

Even before the storm, the DuPont plant had been regarded with suspicion. Nearly 2,000 lawsuits are pending against the plant, and last month a jury awarded $14 million to a local oyster fisherman with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer. The company is appealing.

Across the Gulf Coast - the petrochemical heart of America - regulators are only now beginning to inspect a variety of factories damaged by the storm. And while the rancid floodwaters being pumped out of New Orleans are laden with human waste, oil slicks and the household chemicals stored in the cabinets of hundreds of thousands of kitchens and garages, there are other places - like the one here in DeLisle, where the eye of the storm came ashore - with far more toxic hazards.

The E.P.A. is flying a three-seat, single-engine plane around the Gulf Coast, looking for environmental problems.

In a telephone interview, Stephen L. Johnson, the agency's administrator, said, "Obviously we are concerned about a lot of things, including chemical plants, the oil facilities, the gas facilities, the fact that we've got raw sewage in the floodwaters of New Orleans."

The agency has taken water samples in New Orleans and elsewhere and is preparing to take soil samples, he said. Many houses that were damaged or destroyed used asbestos and lead paint, adding to contamination problems, he said.

"We're going to be looking at chemical plants, and some Superfund sites in the path of the hurricane," he said. One site, the Agriculture Street Landfill, in New Orleans, is under water, he said.

But when E.P.A. personnel first launched boats in flooded areas to look for environmental problems, he said, their first task was more immediate, to rescue 700 stranded people.

Philip B. Bedient, a flood expert who is a professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at Rice University in Houston, said most chemical plants were not required to build waste pools in plateaus above ground level. Instead, he said, they usually built three- to six-foot earthen levees around the waste pools for protection.

"Still, even if the levees worked as barriers, and the floodwaters didn't wash over these ponds, the 100-mile-an-hour winds hitting the surface of the ponds likely sprayed large amounts of the liquids from them into the surrounding area," he said. "On the other hand, the only upshot of the massive amounts of water and wind that came ashore is that it probably spread these chemicals far and wide and diluted them in the process."

Becky Gillette, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club in Ocean Springs, Miss., said, "I think there is good reason for people to be concerned along the whole industrial corridor here in Mississippi."

Ms. Gillette said that along the Bayou Casotte Road in East Pascagoula, at least five major chemical plants had been flooded by storm surges above 20 feet. "Do you really think these places were sealed that tight?" she asked.

Link to site: Three Superfund toxic waste sites in and around New Orleans were flooded

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Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 10, 2005

Three Superfund toxic waste sites in and around New Orleans were flooded by Hurricane Katrina and one remains underwater, Environmental Protection Agency officials said yesterday, adding that they will soon start investigating whether hazardous materials are leaching into the environment.

Although the agency is focused on conducting search-and-rescue missions and taking floodwater samples from the city at large rather than from waste sites, officials have begun to monitor the potential danger. The Agriculture Street Landfill in New Orleans, where city residents dumped their trash for decades, is still underwater. In the nearby suburbs, the Bayou Bonfouca site in Slidell, La., and the Madisonville Creosote Works site also sustained flooding.

Local environmental activists, who are concerned that two Superfund sites in neighboring Mississippi may also have sustained water damage, said federal authorities are not moving fast enough to assess the public health threat.

The uncertainties surrounding how the storm affected hazardous waste sites -- EPA administrator Steve Johnson said his agency had yet to determine if any of their protective shields had been degraded -- highlights the challenges facing any future cleanup. The Gulf Coast has long been a magnet for chemical plants and waste dumps, some of which shut down after becoming too contaminated in recent years.

"We don't know if there's a problem or not," Johnson said, adding that officials will begin sampling soil and water from the sites when they have a chance. "We are taking appropriate steps to understand what we're dealing with. There's just a lot of work to be done."

Darryl Malek-Wiley, a Sierra Club organizer in Louisiana who has spent years working on the cleanup of the Agriculture Street Landfill two miles north of the central business district, said he is particularly concerned about that site because the city encouraged first-time black home buyers to move there in the 1970s. Federal officials placed the site on Superfund's National Priorities List in 1994.

"What's happening, we don't know. If EPA says they know, they're lying," Malek-Wiley said, adding that the agency has done more to protect Superfund sites in wealthier areas. "What it says is the federal government's approach to cleanup is that they do a better job in rich counties than in poor counties."

Several scientists and environmental experts said it was likely the rush of water, much of which remains trapped inside New Orleans, had infiltrated the waste sites and absorbed a range of contaminants. In the Agriculture Street Landfill, federal authorities replaced the top two feet of contaminated soil in residents' yards and laid down a layer of protective sheeting four years ago, but standing water could leach into the dirt over time.

"Very few facilities are designed to withstand this kind of severe flooding," said Lynn Goldman, who served as assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances under President Bill Clinton and now teaches at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "You have to get in there and do an assessment of what the damage is."

Randy Deitz, an attorney adviser in the EPA's Office of Solid Waste Management and Emergency Response, said federal officials took steps when cleaning up the Gulf Coast sites to protect them from future storm damage. But he added, "In the case of a catastrophe, sometimes all the engineering in the world is not going to prevent some erosion."

Although federal authorities have yet to conduct a formal count, several former EPA officials said they could not recall a single flood affecting so many Superfund sites since at least the early 1990s, when the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers overflowed simultaneously.

Sylvia Lowrance, who headed the EPA's hazardous waste management program and worked at the agency for nearly a quarter-century, said she could not remember a time when a Superfund site "was literally underwater. This is certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, environmental and public health disasters we've faced in modern times."

The flooded Superfund sites in Louisiana and Mississippi contain a range of contaminants that include heavy metals linked to increased cancer risk and developmental problems and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are carcinogens.

Richard T. Di Giulio, who heads Duke University's Superfund Basic Research Center, said when a toxic site is flooded, the contaminants could seep into surface water and the surrounding soil.

EPA officials said they could not determine whether serious flooding had affected two waste sites in Mississippi, a wood treating plant in Picayune and a chemical fixation facility in Harrison County along the Louisiana border. Both areas were hit by massive storm surges during the hurricane, but local activists said they had not had a chance to survey the sites.

Environmentalists said they feared many functioning chemical plants in the area also experienced damage during the storm, but dozens of operators have reported they have emerged unscathed. Dorothy Kellogg, director for security and operations at the American Chemistry Council, said of the 40 companies she had surveyed, none had reported environmental releases.

"In terms of the environment, things seem to be pretty good," Kellogg said, adding that plant operators took precautions before the hurricane hit to protect their supplies. "The companies had plans in place, and the plans worked."

Link to site: Health of Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain is not at stake

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DELTHIA RICKS, Staff Writer, NEWSDAY
September 9, 2005

The health of Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain is not at stake despite 2 million gallons of fetid floodwaters being pumped per minute into the vast inland body of water, experts said yesterday.

The Army Corps of Engineers is pumping the contaminated floodwater into the lake, and its technicians are not adding chlorine or other disinfectants.

"You can't chlorinate the water going into the lake," said Edward Bouwer, a professor of environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University, "because that would create other problems" that could possibly damage the lake's health and alter its ecosystem, he said.

New Orleans' drinking water comes from the Mississippi River, though many inhabitants drink bottled water.

An EPA analysis of the stagnating floodwater conducted earlier this week revealed a veritable zoo of microorganisms mixed with toxins, such as lead.

Bouwer and other scientists yesterday emphasized that human bacteria, such as E. coli and other intestinal coliform species, will not live long. Pumping the water into the lake disperses the bacteria and exposes them to ultraviolet light.

"Once they are outside of us, these pathogens do not survive too long," Bouwer said, adding that sunlight and age destroy the microbes. Coliform bacteria normally aid digestion.

Dr. Richard Besser, director of the CDC's response to Hurricane Katrina, yesterday said a bacterium related to three deaths in the storm's aftermath probably will not harm lake waters or the fish. Vibrio vulnificus is common in shellfish often in the Gulf of Mexico.

"This organism lives in brackish water. It likes the warm brackish water along the coast," Besser said. He added that V. vulnificus often is found in oysters and other shellfish from the gulf and can cause a rare but potentially fatal infection in people with a weakened immune system. Besser nevertheless underscored that all shellfish should be thoroughly cooked to avoid the possibility of gastrointestinal illness.

Meanwhile, other experts pointed to additional organisms that might flow into Lake Pontchartrain that can persist despite the presence of sunlight.

"There is a possibility of cryptopsoridium and giardia being detected in the [flood]water" flowing out of New Orleans, said Charles O'Melia, a water quality expert at Johns Hopkins University. While those two organisms originate in soil and were not reported Wednesday when the EPA released its list of bacteria and toxins, it is possible that they may be found as further water samplings are taken. They can surface in unhygienic, crowded conditions.

O'Melia said the organisms are of concern when they are ingested because of the severe gastrointestinal illnesses they cause.

In Washington, Candy Walters, spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said pumps are running 24 hours a day to drain toxic floodwater out of New Orleans. "Not all of the pumps are up and running," Walters said, adding that it will take at least 80 days to get all of the floodwater out of the city.

Link to site: Long-term environmental effects remain unclear

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Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer
Thursday, September 8, 2005
 
The dark waters now covering New Orleans constitute a nasty brew of toxic chemicals and harmful bacteria, but the long-term environmental effects of the city's inundation by Hurricane Katrina remain unclear, scientists say.

Certainly, the Mississippi Delta and its environs hardly made up a pristine Eden before the hurricane. The region supported one of the great oil and gas extraction and petrochemical refining complexes on the planet, and pollution has long been a hot-button issue there.

"This is an area known as Cancer Alley, and there's a good reason for that," said David Lewis, the executive director of Save the Bay, an Oakland environmental group that maintains a liaison with a Louisiana wetlands preservation organization. "Contaminants were already a problem (in local waters)."

Still, said Tina Swanson, the senior scientist with the Bay Institute in Novato, the delta of the Mississippi and the surrounding waters of the gulf are biologically rich, supporting robust fisheries for shrimp, oysters, crabs and a wide array of fish.

"True, there were problems, but you had thriving operations producing fish and shellfish that were presumably safe to eat, given government regulations," Swanson said.

Now, Katrina has vastly increased the amount of potentially dangerous substances in the local aquatic environment.

Some figures are already coming in. The results of the first government pathogen tests on water obtained from New Orleans were made available Wednesday, and they showed coliform bacteria counts 10 times higher than safe levels. Elevated coliform bacteria levels correspond with increased risks of contracting gastrointestinal disease.

In effect, much of the coastal gulf has been turned into an open sewer. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 212 wastewater treatment plants have been disabled or impaired -- 114 in Louisiana, 85 in Mississippi and 13 in Alabama.

The hazards to human health from the effluent are real and immediate, said Bob Perciasepe, the chief operating officer for the National Audubon Society, and the same can be said for the gasoline that casts a rainbow sheen off the surface of the lake that is now the Crescent City.

But those dangers most likely will prove temporary, Perciasepe said: Gasoline is a light, highly unstable compound and will volatilize quickly. The pathogens in the sewage will disperse with dilution and die from exposure to sunlight. Nutrients in the effluent may contribute to oxygen depletion and subsequent fish kills, but they, too, will be a passing phenomenon.

More troublesome are the quantities of unknown compounds seeping into the water from petrochemical refineries and chemical warehouses, from dry-cleaning shops and home garages.

"These great industrial areas are normally isolated from the hydrologic process, and now they're very much a part of it," said Lester McKee, an environmental scientist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute, an organization that monitors toxic compounds in San Francisco Bay.

"Now you have tanks leaking directly into the water," McKee said. "Or, say there is an area of ground that has been saturated with chemicals leaching from a tank for many years -- now it's (flooded), and the chemicals are released into the water."Additionally, McKee said, many thousands of home garages and toolsheds must be considered de facto toxic dumps.

"Old packages of now-outlawed pesticides like chlordane, solvents, even old computers," he said. "The human environment has an incredible number of chemicals laced through it. It's a chemical cocktail."

Swanson of the Bay Institute said such heavily contaminated water presents a threefold problem to fisheries and wildlife. First, she said, some susceptible species may be killed outright. Included in this category, she said, are creatures destroyed by the physical force of the hurricane.

"I hear many of the oyster beds have been buried with silt, and that will wipe them out," she said. "They're filter feeders, and they can't survive being covered with mud."

Second, she said, are sublethal impacts: reproductive and developmental problems caused by chemicals that can affect certain species of fish, shellfish or birds over time, significantly reducing their populations.

"And finally, we have bio-accumulation," she said. "Certain toxic substances concentrate in the fatty tissue, accumulating in greater quantities the higher you go on the food chain. So a big, predatory fish has much more of the chemical than a little fish. And the bird, animal or person that eats that big fish can get the biggest dose of all."

Right now, however, such concerns must remain secondary as New Orleans attempts to drain the water from its streets. This is largely being accomplished by pumping the water back into Lake Pontchartrain, the huge saltwater lake that flooded the city when its levees were breached.

The project is basically refilling the lake's basin with toxic effluent, reversing years of effort to clean up the water. But there are few, if any, dissenting voices -- even from the environmental community. There simply seems to be no other alternative.

"It's an acute emergency, so I'd be surprised if anyone was against it," said Lewis of Save the Bay.

Mike McDaniel, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, expressed optimism that an ecological catastrophe can be avoided.

"The wonderful thing about nature is its resilience," McDaniel told reporters.

Thomas Miller, a water quality specialist at the University of Maryland who specializes in contamination problems after natural disasters, agreed with McDaniel that "nature is pretty good about self-recovery," but added much depends on whether humans assist or stymie the process.

"The nice thing about wetlands is that they can cleanse and filter water as it moves through," Miller said. "But too much contamination can overwhelm this natural filtering system and destroy it."

Link to site: the blackish-green water with an oily sheen

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Stephen Smith and Beth Daley; The Register-Guard
Wednesday, September 7, 2005
NEW ORLEANS - Weary Army engineers succeeded in switching on 10 of about 40 pumping stations throughout Greater New Orleans on Tuesday, but the machines were draining only a small fraction of the fetid water needed to dry out the city.
As a putrid stench wafted up from the blackish-green water with an oily sheen, officials worked frantically to pump the water away from the nearly deserted city and into adjacent Lake Pontchartrain. The water, still 15 feet deep in spots, is contaminated with chemicals, gasoline, pesticides and human waste, and could be harmful to people who come in contact with it, officials said.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials estimated that it would take 24 to 80 days to drain the water from the below-sea level city. Hurricane Katrina caused breaches in many spots of the intricate levee system designed to protect New Orleans, flooding the city with billions of gallons of storm water.
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The four pumps working within city limits Tuesday gave a hint of the massive cleanup task facing officials not only in the Big Easy, but along the Gulf Coast. Plagued with power and mechanical problems, the pumps were operating at reduced capacity. More than 140 other pumps remained offline in the city, with many submerged, broken or uninspected by cleanup workers. Pumping stations can include many pumps.
``It's enormous,'' said Kenneth Crumholt, a project manager for the 17th Street Canal repair, where a major breach in a levee was plugged successfully Monday. ``It's not just New Orleans; you are talking about other cities ... the whole Southern Gulf Coast really.''
Throughout the region, officials struggled to plug holes, drain water and get public drinking water and sewage systems operational. Damage was reported to 1,097 water systems in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including 460 systems where residents were urged to boil water before drinking it, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In New Orleans, where the damage is widespread, Army Corps officials were cautiously optimistic Tuesday, saying holes they punched in parts of the levee to drain water out of the city in recent days helped lower water in some spots by as much as 4 feet.
Contractors today are expected to finish building an access road at the London Avenue Canal to bring in construction material, sandbags and 70-foot-long steel sheets to drive into the ground to close a 600-yard breach there. The water levels in the city and Lake Pontchartrain are at the same height now, but officials need to shore up many levee walls before pumping more water out of the city into the lake.
``We are making a lot of progress,'' said Walter Baumy, a top Corps engineering official. ``We are starting to see things on the ground, we are getting access to areas we have not been able to get to.''
But as federal officials and New Orleans residents welcomed the drainage of the murky, turbid water, other worries arose.
Baumy said buildings may have been weakened structurally from the pressure of the 20-foot storm surge and subsequent standing water, damaging them in ways that may not be apparent until the water is drained.
Meanwhile, others worried that another set of environmental problems was being created by the massive drainage into Lake Pontchartrain. The shallow lake can take months to flush into the Gulf of Mexico. Conservationists are worried that pumping polluted water

Link to site: Army Corps Says Lake OK

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BY DELTHIA RICKS NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER
September 9, 2005
The health of Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain is not at stake despite 2 million gallons of fetid floodwaters being pumped per minute into the vast inland body of water, experts said yesterday.

The Army Corps of Engineers is pumping the contaminated floodwater into the lake, and its technicians are not adding chlorine or other disinfectants.
"You can't chlorinate the water going into the lake," said Edward Bouwer, a professor of environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University, "because that would create other problems" that could possibly damage the lake's health and alter its ecosystem, he said.

New Orleans' drinking water comes from the Mississippi River, though many inhabitants drink bottled water.

An EPA analysis of the stagnating floodwater conducted earlier this week revealed a veritable zoo of microorganisms mixed with toxins, such as lead.

Bouwer and other scientists yesterday emphasized that human bacteria, such as E. coli and other intestinal coliform species, will not live long. Pumping the water into the lake disperses the bacteria and exposes them to ultraviolet light.

"Once they are outside of us, these pathogens do not survive too long," Bouwer said, adding that sunlight and age destroy the microbes. Coliform bacteria normally aid digestion.

Dr. Richard Besser, director of the CDC's response to Hurricane Katrina, yesterday said a bacterium related to three deaths in the storm's aftermath probably will not harm lake waters or the fish. Vibrio vulnificus is common in shellfish often in the Gulf of Mexico.

"This organism lives in brackish water. It likes the warm brackish water along the coast," Besser said. He added that V. vulnificus often is found in oysters and other shellfish from the gulf and can cause a rare but potentially fatal infection in people with a weakened immune system. Besser nevertheless underscored that all shellfish should be thoroughly cooked to avoid the possibility of gastrointestinal illness.

Meanwhile, other experts pointed to additional organisms that might flow into Lake Pontchartrain that can persist despite the presence of sunlight.

"There is a possibility of cryptopsoridium and giardia being detected in the [flood]water" flowing out of New Orleans, said Charles O'Melia, a water quality expert at Johns Hopkins University. While those two organisms originate in soil and were not reported Wednesday when the EPA released its list of bacteria and toxins, it is possible that they may be found as further water samplings are taken. They can surface in unhygienic, crowded conditions.

O'Melia said the organisms are of concern when they are ingested because of the severe gastrointestinal illnesses they cause.

In Washington, Candy Walters, spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said pumps are running 24 hours a day to drain toxic floodwater out of New Orleans. "Not all of the pumps are up and running," Walters said, adding that it will take at least 80 days to get all of the floodwater out of the city.

Link to site: Early Water Sampling Indicates Contamination

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By Traci Watson and Tom Kenworthy, USA TODAY

Federal officials warned rescue workers and the public Wednesday not to touch New Orleans floodwaters because of sewage contamination and said four people have died from contact with bacteria-infested seawater.

Infections with Vibrio vulnificus, a bacterium naturally found in salt water, have killed an evacuee in Texas and three people in Mississippi, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesman Tom Skinner. He said the numbers came from state and local health officials.

Healthy people infected with the bacterium usually suffer nothing worse than diarrhea, but the bug can be lethal to those with weak immune systems. Humans are infected by swallowing infested water, through exposed wounds or by eating infected shellfish. The bug does not spread between people.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson said samples of the water that Hurricane Katrina sent rampaging through New Orleans contain at least 10 times the acceptable levels of bacterial strains common in sewage. The tests can't detect higher levels.

The water also contains enough lead, perhaps from paint or pipes, to make it unsafe to drink. The EPA found low levels of roughly 100 other chemicals, including pesticides and solvents.

"Contact ... should be avoided as much as possible," Johnson said.

"This water is still a very important threat," CDC Director Julie Gerberding said. "For the evacuees who haven't left the city yet, you must do so. This water is not going away any time soon."

Gerberding said the germs in sewage can cause a variety of gastrointestinal illnesses, some through skin contact alone.

CDC spokesman Skinner said an outbreak of norvovirus, a type of virus that causes stomach symptoms such as vomiting and that has erupted on cruise ships, has struck evacuees living in Houston's Astrodome. The virus is usually not life-threatening.

Johnson and Gerberding emphasized that water sampling is far from complete. The results made public Wednesday are based on water samples from less than two dozen sites. Most of the samples were from flooded residential neighborhoods, and many were taken close to the breached levees.

The EPA also found slightly elevated levels of eight pesticides and toxic metals in the water. The levels did not violate health standards. Testing by the state confirmed the EPA results, finding a "bacterial soup" in the floodwaters but no high levels of chemicals, said Darin Mann of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

Link to site: Unknowns in the floodwater

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Lauran Neergaard,  Associated Press
September 8, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Floodwaters in New Orleans contain levels of sewage-related bacteria that are at least 10 times higher than acceptable safety limits, endangering rescue workers and remaining residents who so much as walk in it, federal officials said Wednesday.

Results of the first round of testing by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were no surprise, and they reinforced warnings that everyone still in the city take precautions to avoid getting the water on their skin -- especially into cuts or other open wounds -- much less in their mouths. "Human contact with the floodwater should be avoided as much as possible," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said.

Health hazards from that water make it imperative that remaining residents comply with evacuation orders, added Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "If you haven't left the city yet, you must do so," she said.

State and local officials had reported three deaths in Mississippi and one in Texas from exposure to Vibro vulnificus, a waterborne pathogen common in the Gulf of Mexico, the CDC said. A fifth case was under investigation, spokesman Tom Skinner said.

Gerberding said it is not an outbreak. "We see it from time to time along the coast," she said.
Also found were elevated levels of brain-harming lead, a risk if people, particularly children, were to drink the water.

The first tests for more than 100 chemicals and other pollutants so far turned up elevated levels of E. coli and other coliform bacteria -- markers for sewage contamination -- and lead. "We don't know what else is contained in that water," Johnson warned. The first testing was done on samples from residential neighborhoods, not industrial sites where more toxic contaminants may lurk. Moreover, oil is in the water, and it's likely that chemicals such as asbestos will be in debris from older buildings, he said. Officials are focusing on immediate health threats, he said, but soon will assess the long-term environmental risks.

Link to site: Katrina legacy: Pollution

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Mike Hasten and Ellyn Ferguson Gannett News Service
September 7, 2005

BATON ROUGE, La. - The waters that flooded New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina contain a wide variety of bacterial and chemical pollutants whose long-term effects on human health are unknown. Oil, diesel fuel, gasoline, fertilizers, residential cleaning fluids, sewage plant overflow, sludge and bacteria from corpses are all mixing in the floodwaters.

"It's almost unimaginable the things we have to plan and deal with," said Mike McDaniel, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Quality.

Environmental quality inspectors have found that practically every submerged vehicle and boat leaked oil and fuel and some of the estimated 6,000 underground fuel storage tanks leaked.

McDaniel anticipates major fish kills in Lake Pontchartrain from the wastewater being pumped out of Orleans and Jefferson parishes. But he added Tuesday, "We have no choice but to pump it out. We have to get the water out of the city or the nightmare gets worse." Once the water is pumped out of New Orleans, McDaniel and other officials could face big environmental challenges in trying to rebuild the city.

The Environmental Protection Agency is asking experts to review its plan for determining where toxins may have settled in the 350-square-mile city.

More... Katrina legacy: Pollution

Link to site: Canada.com Health

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Canadian Press September 7, 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) - Floodwaters in New Orleans contain bacteria associated with sewage that are at least 10 times higher than acceptable safety levels, making direct contact by rescue workers and remaining residents dangerous, the first government tests confirmed Wednesday.

"Human contact with the flood water should be avoided as much as possible," said Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson. Also found in the first round of testing were elevated lead levels, a risk if people, particularly children, were to drink the water.

Residents have been told since hurricane Katrina to avoid drinking the water.

But EPA's first tests - which tracked levels of E. coli and other coliform bacteria that are a marker for sewage contamination - emphasize a risk from skin contact as well. The bacteria can cause infections if people have cuts or other open wounds, or if the water is splashed into their mouths, noses or eyes.

The EPA didn't test how much sewage was in the water, but quit when analyses hit the 10-fold mark.

The first round of tests searched for more than 100 chemicals and other pollutants, but only coliform and lead so far exceeded EPA safety levels, the agency said.

But this was just a first test, of water in some residential neighbourhoods, not industrial areas - and didn't include tests for petroleum products because oil in the water is obvious, Johnson said.

"We don't know what else is contained in that water," he stressed, saying that daily samples from different parts of the city were being taken - and that chemicals such as asbestos are likely to be in debris from older homes and businesses.

The health hazards from this water make it imperative that remaining residents comply with evacuation orders, said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"If you haven't left the city yet, you must do so," she said.

Link to site: Clinical Window Journal

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The US Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are cautioning the public and all responders about the potential hazards associated with flood waters. Every effort should be made to limit contact with flood water due to potentially elevated levels of contamination associated with raw sewage and other hazardous substances. EPA has collected and sent New Orleans flood water samples to labs in Lafayette, LA and Houston, TX for analysis. Daily sampling is ongoing, and test results are expected later this week.

Recovery - EPA search and rescue operations continue. Food and water were distributed and an additional 120 people were rescued. Approximately, 770 rescues have been made by EPA in LA. Sixty-five EPA watercraft are currently available for rescue efforts.

Public Advisory - On 9/4, EPA issued an advisory to the public urging caution when disposing of household hazardous waste and asbestos-containing debris from storm-damaged homes and other buildings. The advisory was issued as a press release from EPA headquarters and regions 4 and 6.

Water Assessment - EPA estimates the number of water systems affected by the hurricane is now 73 in AL , 555 in MS and 469 in LA. In AL , many water systems were disabled or impaired by loss of electrical power. Eight systems in AL currently have boil water advisories. EPA is continuing its assessment of damage to local drinking water systems in MS, and providing technical assistance to help restore safe drinking water to those systems. Boil water notices have been issued to 404 water systems in MS. Samples from these systems will be analyzed for total fecal coliform bacteria before the systems restore service. EPA is assisting the LA Department of Health and Hospitals in assessing drinking water and will deploy 30 more EPA personnel to LA during this week. There are approximately 378 drinking water systems that are not in operation in LA with another 48 systems on a boil water notice.

Wastewater Treatment Facilities - EPA continues to assess wastewater treatment facilities in LA, MS and AL. EPA estimates the number of wastewater treatment facilities affected is now 13 in AL , 114 in LA and 85 in MS.

Air Surveillance - EPA's environmental surveillance aircraft (ASPECT) is being used to assess spills and chemical releases. On 9/4, a large oil spill was surveyed in Chalmette , LA (Murphy Oil). A 250,000 barrel tank containing 85,000 barrels of oil released beyond secondary containment and extended into a residential area. The company and its contractors are working with EPA and the Coast Guard to repair the storage tank, contain the oil and begin cleanup. EPA and state officials continue to collect air quality information from daily aerial helicopter inspections of facilities. On-the-ground inspections of these facilities will provide additional information in the coming weeks. Air assessments of spills and chemicals releases in New Orleans and surrounding area continued via helicopter on 9/5.

More.... Clinical Window Journal

Link to site: CNN.com International

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CNN Wednesday, September 7, 2005 Posted: 1122 GMT

Polluted New Orleans water could be major health hazard
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Despite reporting five deaths from a bacteria-caused illness, public health officials said Tuesday they are more concerned about the possibility of toxic chemicals in the water covering New Orleans than they are about a cholera outbreak.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that more than a week after Hurricane Katrina hit the region health officials still don't know if the water contains toxic chemicals.

"We don't know if chemical and petroleum industries in the region have survived," she said during a conference call that included Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and Surgeon General Richard Carmona. "We have a comprehensive environmental health team there. We're just putting together a picture now."

Gerberding downplayed the risk of cholera, saying it has not been found in the region for years, and is not likely to emerge now as a threat.

Instead, public health officials are preparing for possible outbreaks of infectious disease. They are focusing on E. coli and other diseases that can cause diarrhea, including Norwalk viruses, which have caused outbreaks on cruise ships.

Floodwater in New Orleans is contaminated with E. coli bacteria, a mayor's office employee who declined to be identified told CNN. Drinking E. coli-contaminated water can lead to serious illness and death.

Laboratory tests of water samples in New Orleans found it loaded with fecal material.

CNN gave three samples to Analytical and Environmental Testing Inc., in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which found 20,000 fecal coliform colonies per 100 milliliters of water, the highest the lab could count. That's 100 times the normal count found in water runoff from storms, the company said.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services warned of the hazards associated with flood waters: "Every effort should be made to limit contact with flood water due to potentially elevated levels of contamination associated with raw sewage and other hazardous substances."

The CDC said that five people who survived Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans died after becoming infected with Vibrio vulnificus, caused by a form of the bacteria that also causes cholera. One of the deaths occurred in Texas; the other four were in Mississippi, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

"These were all either elderly or had chronic, underlying health conditions," people considered most at risk for suffering complications from such infections, he said.

The bacteria are in the same family as the bacteria that cause cholera, and the victims apparently became infected through open cuts on their skin.

Officials said they are taking steps to limit the outbreak of disease in the crowded shelters, whose residents could prove susceptible.

Authorities also are watching for respiratory illnesses, such as the common cold, influenza and tuberculosis.

Gerberding credited some shelters for taking steps to minimize those risks, citing one that had set up a long line of portable sinks for evacuees to wash in and others that gave evacuees alcohol-soaked hand wipes.

Within the crowded compounds of various shelters, health officials are working to make sure children's immunizations of measles and rubella are up to date, she said.

For adults, the focus is on tetanus, and flu vaccines, when they become available.

Gerberding reiterated what she has said in prior disasters: Bodies, while perhaps horrifying to see, pose little threat of infectious disease. The only concern would be if there was direct blood contact with a body hosting a blood disease, she said.
Reports of diarrhea, tuberculosis investigated

Reports of diarrhea and tuberculosis have emerged in Texas, though it was not clear whether the cases were more widespread than they would have been among a normal population, she said.

The reports of tuberculosis are being investigated, as some evacuees were diagnosed with the disease before to the hurricane, and were being treated for it. Ensuring they get put back on their medications is a priority, Gerberding said.

An evacuee at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, was taken to a hospital after he began coughing up blood, Skinner said. The case has not been confirmed to be tuberculosis, he noted.

The CDC has deployed more than 140 people, and eight more teams are prepared to augment shelter staffs.

A joint task force has been set up at Kindred Hospital in New Orleans to monitor the public health situation in the city and to determine when the area might be safe to reinhabit, Leavitt said. That also will be the location for the HHS field command and the city of New Orleans public health department.

Still, meeting the immediate needs has stressed the nation's public health system, particularly in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which has seen its population rise from 500,000 to 850,000 since last week, Leavitt said. "The hospitals are under significant pressure."

There is reason to hope that a major health problem can be averted. Last December, after a tsunami inundated much of South Asia, health officials predicted that "any number of infectious diseases" would emerge, Gerberding said.

But efforts proved successful in warding off "what could have been a second wave of infectious disease," she said. "That's exactly what we're working to do here in this country."

Surgeon General Richard Carmona said hospitals are more prepared now than they would have been before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Hospitals are now required to have "bona fide disaster plans" to obtain certification, he said.

Link to site: Traces of E. coli indicator bacteria

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Christina Ficara - All Headline News Staff Reporter
September 6, 2005 10:00 p.m. EST

New Orleans city official says traces of E. coli bacteria have been discovered in the contaminated floodwater left behind by Hurricane Katrina.

E. coli originates from human and animal waste and can be found in untreated sewage. Drinking water contaminated with E. coli can lead to serious illness and death if not properly treated.

Failures of the levee system after Hurricane Katrina have left about 80-percent of the city flooded with water up to 20 feet deep. The water has quickly become a toxic mix of chemicals, garbage, corpses and human waste. Authorities warn it will take weeks to drain the toxic water covering a majority of the city.

Link to site: Dallas Morning News

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Retreating floodwaters unveil oil tank leak.
Cleanup of spill in New Orleans suburb could take three months
MICHAEL GRABELL / The Dallas Morning News
Tuesday, September 6, 2005
CHALMETTE, La. – Tons and tons of thick sludge. Homes swamped, streets slickened and medians dyed a shiny black. That was the scene as the floodwaters receded in this eastern New Orleans suburb Tuesday, revealing for the first time the damage wrought by a major leak in a 250,000-barrel refinery tank that was about a third full.

"It is almost unimaginable the things we will have to deal with," Mike McDaniel, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality secretary, said Tuesday.
That echoed Sunday's assessment by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff: "We're going to have to clean probably the greatest environmental mess we've ever seen in this country," he said on NBC's Meet the Press.
Bill Turnage, safety manager for the Murphy Oil USA refinery, which provides gas for Wal-Mart, said he expected about 20,000 barrels – enough to fill a hundred tanker trucks – seeped into the northwest part of Chalmette.

But cleanup workers said supervisors told them the spill could be four times as much. And with more than a dozen refineries in the affected area, the environmental effect is only starting to emerge.
"We suspect when a tidal surge came in and the water level just pushed the wall in, the wall of the tank caved in," Mr. Turnage said. "Seeping oil can pollute waters and cause skin irritation," he said, but because nearly everyone has evacuated Chalmette, the company has received no reports that anyone was contaminated.

Meanwhile, doctors warned of disease outbreaks from contact with contaminated floodwaters. Environmental officials struggling to get drinking-water systems operating urged everyone to boil water until their water is declared safe.

Late Tuesday, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they will recommend that everyone exposed to floodwaters be vaccinated for hepatitis. Among the concerns: bacteria, heavy metals and hazardous building materials in the floodwaters.
Murphy USA discovered the spill on Saturday, Mr. Turnage said. An Environmental Protection Agency plane with pollution-detecting equipment surveyed the spill on Sunday. But the extent of the damage showed for the first time on Tuesday.
The reeking petroleum odor hung in the hot air. Dogs trudged along, their paws and ears covered in oil.

Vacuuming oil
Cleanup crews began vacuuming the oil along Judge Perez Drive, the main east-west road through St. Bernard Parish, one of the areas hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina.
"It's bad, real bad," said David Toups, who wore a white protective suit and maneuvered a giant hose along the mud-caked curb in front of Lou's Sports Bar.
"It's bad for the environment," he said. "It kills plants, and it kills animals. It's bad for your health."
ES&H Consulting of Houma, La., where Mr. Toups works, had about 25 two-person teams trying to suck up the oil. A boat called the Goo-Gobbler floated in a drainage ditch to absorb the oil-water mix into its 25-barrel tank. Mr. Toups said it could take two to three months to clean up the spill. The tank is still underwater, and crews have not been able to inspect the damage.

EPA officials said about 378 drinking-water systems in Louisiana were still shut down Tuesday, and another 48 were providing water that wasn't confirmed as safe. People using those systems were being urged to boil water before drinking it. The EPA said nine systems were approved to resume operations in St. Tammany Parish, just north of Lake Pontchartrain. But in an indication that the process was going slowly, the agency said it would send 30 more people to Louisiana this week.

Environmental police will be dealing with a long list of potential problems, including:
•6,600 facilities, mostly gasoline stations, that average three underground storage tanks each
•Hundreds of industrial facilities that could have leaks or operational problems, releasing air and water pollution
•The wreckage of old houses that have hazardous building materials
•The disposal of 60 million to 90 million tons of debris
•525 damaged sewerage disposal facilities, including 25 major treatment plants.
Challenges for workers
The Murphy Oil tank was about one-third full when the hurricane hit, Mr. Turnage said. Over the weekend, the company used about 400 sandbags to plug a hole in the barrier intended to contain such spills. But the damage was already done, he said. Mr. Turnage explained that it has been difficult for the refinery in neighboring Meraux to fix the problem. Every refinery vehicle was destroyed in the hurricane. Many employees were left homeless. And 12 workers are still unaccounted for, he said. "We're doing everything humanly possible to get the mess squared away," he said.

In addition, the neighborhood north of Judge Perez Drive remains flooded, making it tough to get vehicles in to clean the spill. "There's oil and water and mud and gunk everywhere," said a cleanup worker whose house was many flooded with oil. The employee, who declined to be named, said he expected that his house, and much of the neighborhood, would have to be bulldozed. Further down the road, Preston Williams, 39, and Wesley Jenkins, 19, vacuumed a large oil puddle across the street from the boarded up "Today's Ketch Seafood" as an oil-slicked dog that resembled a Shih Tzu hung around. Despite the amount of oil on the dog's light-brown fur, Mr. Jenkins kneeled down and found a clean spot on the back of her head. "She'd be a good little house dog," Mr. Williams said. "Hopefully the little guy will make it. I may even take her home myself."

Staff writer Randy Loftis and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Link to site: MSNBC News

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BATON ROUGE, La. - The brew of chemicals and human waste in the New Orleans floodwaters will have to be pumped into the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain, raising the specter of an environmental disaster on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, experts say.

The dire need to rid the drowned city of water could trigger fish kills and poison the delicate wetlands near New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi.

State and federal agencies have just begun water-quality testing but environmental experts say the vile, stagnant chemical soup that sits in the streets of the city known as The Big Easy will contain traces of everything imaginable.

“Go home and identify all the chemicals in your house. It’s a very long list,” said Ivor van Heerden, head of a Louisiana State University center that studies the public health impacts of hurricanes.

“And that’s just in a home. Imagine what’s in an industrial plant,” he said. “Or a sewage plant.”

Gasoline, diesel, anti-freeze, bleach, human waste, acids, alcohols and a host of other substances must be washed out of homes, factories, refineries, hospitals and other buildings.

“There is a disease risk," Mike McDaniel, head of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, told reporters Tuesday. He added, though, that it was premature to call the floodwaters toxic, and that better data should be available Thursday.

“Initial indications are that they are showing large numbers of contaminants,” McDaniel said. “We are taking samples ... We expect you're going to see quantities of fuel and gasoline. There are sheens wherever you look.”

Rupture dangers
In Metairie, east of New Orleans, the floodwater is tea-colored, murky and smells of burnt sulfur. A thin film of oil is visible in the water.

Those who have waded into it say they could see only about 1 to 2 inches into the depths and that there was significant debris on and below the surface.

Experts said the longer water sat in the streets, the greater the chance gasoline and chemical tanks — as well as common containers holding anything from bleach to shampoo — would rupture.

Officials have said it may take up to 80 days to clear the water from New Orleans and surrounding parishes.

Van Heerden and Rodney Mallett, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, say there do not appear to be any choices other than to pump the water into Lake Pontchartrain or the Mississippi River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, a key maritime spawning ground.

“I don’t see how we could treat all that water,” Mallett said.

The result could be an second wave of disaster for southern Louisiana, said Harold Zeliger, a Florida-based chemical toxicologist and water quality consultant.

“In effect, it’s going to kill everything in those waters,” he said.

How much water New Orleans holds is open to question.

Van Heerden estimates it is billions of gallons. LSU researchers will use satellite imagery and computer modeling to get a better fix on the quantity.

Rush to get it out
Bio-remediation — cleaning up the water — would require the time and expense of constructing huge storage facilities, considered an impossibility, especially with the public clamor to get the water out quickly.

Mallett said the Department of Environmental Quality was in the unfortunate position of being responsible for protecting the environment in a situation where that did not seem possible.

“We’re not happy about it. But for the sake of civilization and lives, probably the best thing to do is pump the water out,” he said.

The water will leave behind more trouble — a city filled with mold, some of it toxic, the experts said. After other floods, researchers found many buildings had to be stripped back to concrete, or razed.

“If you have a building half full of water, everything above the water is growing mold. When it dries out, the rest grows mold,” Zeliger said. “Most of the buildings will have to be destroyed.”
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