Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - September 2005
Comments? send them to the editor.
Katrina will leave Gulf States grappling
with a toxic legacy
The true environmental impact of
Hurricane Katrina, including oil
spills, chemical leaks and toxic
waste, will remain unknown for
months. "Unless you've seen it, you can't
comprehend the scope of the damage,"
Jean Kelly of Louisiana's Department of
Environmental Quality (DEQ) stressed.
The August 29 hurricane wrecked a
huge area in southern Louisiana and
Mississippi, with scores of towns flattened
and unaccounted for. More than
4.5 million homes and businesses were
without power at one point. Satellite
photos taken after the storm show that
the Chandeleur Islands southeast of
New Orleans, the home of the Beeton
National Wildlife Refuge, have vanished.
In fact, the photos show that the
coastline of the state has been significantly
altered, requiring new maps and
navigation charts.
A 3.5-million gallon spill from
leaking refinery storage tanks in
Chalmette has contaminated much of
the town and surrounding wetlands,
the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) reported.
“Ruptured storage tanks at the
mouth of the Mississippi River in
Venice, 75 miles south of New Orleans,
have dumped an estimated 3.3 million
gallons of crude oil into the surrounding
wetlands and Gulf,” said Kelly,
adding that there are likely other spills
of oil, gasoline, diesel and chemicals
throughout the region. Until all the
floodwaters are gone, it is impossible to
know for certain.
At least 525 sewage treatment plants
in Louisiana were also damaged, many
of them flooded. More than 1,200
drinking water treatment plants were
knocked out in Louisiana, Mississippi
and Alabama.
Health and environmental officials
are sampling floodwaters throughout
the region but had only released results
from New Orleans, as of September 9,
2005. At that time about 60 percent of
New Orleans remained under water,
and those waters were highly contaminated
by bacteria from human and
other wastes.
Leaves have turned brown on many
trees in the city and it is not known if
they will recover. There have also been
media reports of dead birds falling out
of the sky. However, EPA says that its
air quality testing has not found any
hazardous levels of pollutants or airborne
toxins despite numerous fires
and natural gas leaks.
As for other toxins in the floodwaters,
only high levels of lead have been
found in preliminary testing, Kelly
said. "We haven't found
high levels of pesticides,
heavy metals, PCBs or
other toxic materials."
Fuel from thousands
of fuel tanks at gasoline
stations and leaking gasoline
from flooded cars
and boats has given the
water an oily sheen. In
addition, there are flooded
industrial areas and
160,000 households with
their cans of paints, solvents,
fertilizers and pesticides
stewing in flooded
garages and basements.
Despite all the contamination,
New Orleans'
filthy floodwaters are
being pumped into Lake
Pontchartrain, which is
actually a huge estuary
that opens directly into
the Gulf of Mexico and
has some unique and rare species,
including the endangered manatee.
"We're hoping that by the time the
contaminated water gets into the Gulf it
will be diluted enough to not have any
impact," Kelly said.
Not surprisingly, state and federal
environmental laws have been temporarily
suspended.
Randy Lanctot, executive director of
the Louisiana Wildlife Federation, an
environmental group, agreed with the
suspension. "We don't have any choice,
at least until all the water is pumped
out," Lanctot said. "I hope environmental
officials are staying on top of what's
in the water," he added, with a view to
the eventual final cleanup of contaminated
shorelines and sediments on the
lake bottom.
Once dry, New Orleans itself will
require disposal of an estimated 60 million
tons of debris and extensive decontamination
that may take years and billions
of dollars. A major restoration
effort will also be needed for the natural
environment. No one knows how
much at this point because the full
extent of the damage is unknown.
Source: Global Information Network
See our home page on how to order your subscription. We regret we can
only accept orders from Canada.