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An Environmental Disaster in New Orleans Reuters September 6, 2005 
Katrina environmental issues "almost unimaginable" By Jim Loney Reuters Tue Sep 6, 3:18 PM ET BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - Hurricane Katrina left behind a landscape of oil spills, leaking gas lines, damaged sewage plants and tainted water, Louisiana's top environment official said on Tuesday. In the state's first major assessment of the environmental havoc in southern Louisiana, Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Mike McDaniel said large quantities of hazardous materials in damaged industrial plants, the danger of explosions and fires and water pollution were his main concerns eight days after the storm struck.
He said it would take "years" to restore water service to the entire city. "It's almost unimaginable, the things we are going to have to deal with," he said. Crews have found two major oil spills, one of 68,000 barrels at a Bass Enterprise storage depot in Venice and another of 10,000 barrels at a Murphy Oil facility in Chalmette, McDaniel said. But huge amounts of oil also oozed from cars, trucks and boats caught in the flood. "Everywhere we look there's a spill. It all adds up," he said. "There's almost a solid sheen over the area right now." High-level radiation sources, including nuclear plants, have been secured, and authorities were trying to determine the status of rail cars in the area as well as searching out large caches of hazardous materials in industrial plants. Although there is a disease risk from contaminated water in the streets of New Orleans, McDaniel said it was too early to call the stagnant liquid a "toxic soup." State and federal agencies had begun quality testing. "I'm saying that's a little bit exaggerated," he said. "To say it's toxic, it sounds like instant death walking in it. Let's get some better data." Independent experts have said the New Orleans flood water, may cause environmental damage as it flows from the city to Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. More than 500 Louisiana sewage plants were damaged or destroyed, including 25 major ones. There were about 170 sources of leaking hydrocarbons and natural gas, officials said. Katrina damaged large areas of wildlife habitat but it was too soon to assess the long-term impact, McDaniel said. "One thing about nature, it's resilient," he said. "Nature will recover." Few choices to rid New Orleans of poisoned water By Jim Loney Reuters Tue Sep 6,10:19 AM ET 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." Reuters ARTICLE CONTENT COPYRIGHT the Reuters. 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