Pollution from the Gulf Coast’s petroleum refineries,
manufacturing industries and commercial and residential buildings poured
into floodwaters, polluting streets and homes with sewage and toxics. As
floodwaters recede, a host of public health challenges loom.
The level of destruction reflects decades of human intervention in natural
systems – environmental engineering decisions about the flow of the
Mississippi River, wetlands preservation and management, and development.
Some of these decisions were made before the knowledge of modern environmental
science was available, others reflect the favoring of development interests
at the expense of sound science and public health.
One curious and infuriating reaction to the hurricanes has been a rush
in Washington, DC to rollback environmental and public health protections.
Our environmental laws were designed with exemptions for emergency situations.
The proposed rollbacks are irresponsible attempts to use tragedy to undermine
the protections that Americans fought to gain. We must remain vigilant
as we rebuild. We must defend the laws that protect our communities, our
homes and our health.
Now is the time to plan for better infrastructure: we must move critical
facilities – power, sewer and gas – out of the storm surge
areas, insist new facilities are built to withstand real storms, and ensure
that old facilities are adequately prepared for the 2006 hurricane season.
Waterkeeper’s Gulf Coast programs – Atchafalaya Basinkeeper,
Louisiana Bayoukeeper, Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper, Mobile Baykeeper
and Galveston Baykeeper – made it through the storms and are now
working to rebuild.
Marylee and Paul Orr of Louisiana Environmental Action Network (home
of Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper) continued their work though the chaos
as environmental advocates and watchdogs. They conducted chemical sampling
of floodwaters in St. Bernard and Orleans Parishes in New Orleans. They
found contamination levels for known cancer-causing agents far exceeding
federal limits: arsenic at 75 times the permitted levels, and lead at
more than 13 times the standard. Marylee and Paul also provided relief
to those in need in the affected areas. With the support of Oxfam, they
have distributed thousands of “Re-entry Protection Kits” containing
protective clothing and eyewear, gloves, biohazard bags and particulate
respirators, as well as bleach, buckets and detergents to assist families
returning to their homes.
Louisiana Bayoukeeper Tracy Kuhns was spared major flooding, but was
caught in the chaos of the storm and the state and federal response.
She couldn’t find her son for nearly a week. (He had stayed in
New Orleans to help elderly folks in his apartment complex escape to
higher ground.) Tracy’s nine-months-pregnant daughter evacuated
to Florida, but had to return because her insurance wouldn’t cover
an out-of-state delivery, regardless of the emergency.
Tracy returned to her home several weeks after the storm to discover
that the sewer system had backed up, water had soaked into the wood floors
and her walls were covered in mold. Marylee Orr supplied Tracy and many
in her community with mold cleanup kits, as well as food and other necessities.
They have now removed kitchen cabinets and moldy sheetrock. “We
are in much better shape than many others,” Tracy is quick to point
out.
Dean Wilson, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, and Stacy Sauce also worked with
Marylee Orr to help get food, water and other assistance to people and
animals isolated or displaced by Hurricane Katrina and later, Hurricane
Rita. At the same time they fought an amendment by Louisiana Senator
David Vitter to allow timber companies to log our coastal forests without
a permit. Atchafalaya Basinkeeper sent a package to every Senator in
Congress in an effort to educate them about the severe threat that rollbacks
pose to wetlands in Louisiana – and the importance of wetlands
in protecting shorelines and cities from hurricane damage.
Mobile Baykeeper Casi Calloway lives in the sleepy town of Chickasaw.
The town’s power substation and their lagoon sewage treatment facility
are located behind a levy designed to keep the town safe and dry. But
when the levy failed during Katrina, their sewage treatment works was
flooded, knocking the electric pumping station out of operation.
During the storm the status of the sewage treatment facility was not
the first thing on Casi’s mind. That is, until it occurred to her
that with no electricity at the pump and lift stations, raw sewage was
simply collecting in the town’s sewer lines. With time, the system
would back up, and her neighborhood, streets and even her house would
become the sewage treatment storage area for the city.
Most of her neighbors were content with instructions from the mayor and
state environmental officials that they should simply “conserve
their flushes,” (though no one really knew what that meant). These
storms show serious flaws in wastewater infrastructure and public health
protection throughout the region. “Hurricanes are a fact of life
in Mobile,” says Casi. “We lose our wharfs and re-build them
every couple of years. We lose power and search desperately for a cool
breeze or a bag of ice. But Katrina was different. It has been a very
long time since we’ve had so much destruction. Most of us have
never seen anything like it.”
Sewer lines and treatment plants are the infrastructure that keep harmful
pathogens, such as those that cause typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis A
and cholera, out of our water supply. Most wastewater collection systems
depend on gravity to move wastewater through pipes to treatment plants,
an energy efficient system that tends to put treatment plants and large
volumes of raw sewage in the lowest lying areas – the first areas
to flood.
EPA and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) sampled
water and sediments for the presence of harmful pathogens in and around
New Orleans after the storm. In 85 percent of all samples, floodwaters
exceeded the water quality standards set for Louisiana beachgoers. The
highest pathogen level recorded was a whopping 263 times above the state’s
legal standards.
By September 7, five people had died from Vibrio vulnificus, the bacteria
that causes cholera. All of the victims had minor abrasions, the likely
route of infection. Additionally, public health officials reported “minor
outbreaks” of diarrheal diseases among evacuated children.
Federal environmental officials warn that skin contact with floodwater
should be avoided, and that if contact does occur that you should wash
with soap and clean water. Unfortunately, contact with the floodwater
and contaminated sediment was unavoidable for rescue and relief workers.
And now, as the city is repopulated and residents literally pick up
the pieces of their lives, contact with polluted water is inescapable.
Toxic, persistent and carcinogenic chemicals found in the floodwaters
represent a longer-term health threat to the Gulf region. Crippled
refineries, inundated factories and breached oil containers left an
environmental disaster. The equivalent of 160,000 barrels of oil leaked
from damaged storage sites in and around New Orleans. Authorities have
recovered only 50,000 barrels of oil.
While EPA and DEQ conducted water and sediment sampling for more than
100 pollutants in New Orleans, they did not test for all of the “primary
contaminants of concern” from the city’s five Superfund sites.
Highly dangerous chemicals such as hexavalent chromium, toluene, 2, 4-D
(a pesticide) and creosol were detected in floodwater. But EPA maintains
that the water is safe – as long as you don’t accidentally
ingest it and you wear protective equipment.
Most of New Orleans has now been dewatered, but the environmental health
of Lake Pontchartrain, where much of the floodwaters were pumped, is
tenuous at best. Despite EPA’s assurances that the lake is rebounding,
it certainly has been critically polluted with a toxic mix of persistent
contaminants. Booms and skimmers can remove the physical detritus and
petroleum sheen from the surface of the water. But what lies beneath
the surface will remain a nightmarish hazard for years to come if EPA
does not set forth a proactive strategy to address it.
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