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Floods' Pollutants Within the Norm
Joon Choi walks a once-flooded site in Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish while taking samples for the Environmental Protection Agency.
(By Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)
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The most obvious pollutant in the floodwater is fecal bacteria. The city's sewage-treatment plant is not operating, and the standing water is mingling with the sewage in the underground system. Tests from Sept. 3 to 5 found that some sites had bacteria levels above the EPA's measurement scale. From Sept. 7 to Sept. 10, however, the amount of bacteria was falling.
Fecal bacteria have a limited life span in the open water and will not cause lasting contamination. On land, the bacteria dies once the residue dries out.
"The stuff will desiccate and you can clean it up. You fertilize your lawn? It's the same thing," Fenner said.
While the environmental findings so far have not been surprising, many potentially hazardous areas remain to be assessed. They include five Superfund sites in New Orleans. EPA inspectors have visited four, but one remains underwater. "One of the things we need to do is make sure that these sites have not been compromised," Johnson said.
The agency and local officials are also evaluating numerable small spills and hazards, including more than 5,000 "orphan containers" found floating in the water. These include everything from gas cylinders to a drum containing medical waste, he said.
A U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman said there have been seven oil spills of more than 100,000 gallons since the storm. The biggest is at the Meraux Refinery, operated by Murphy Oil Corp. in St. Bernard Parish, southeast of the city.
During a sampling trip there two days ago, the EPA's Paul Doherty said the company estimated that about 9,600 of the 16,000 barrels of oil that leaked were recoverable and most of the rest had evaporated.
In a housing development nearby, workers in yellow safety suits scooped up samples of fine-grained mud that smelled partly of sulfurous decay and partly of petroleum.
The houses were severely damaged. At several, the flood floated cars that came to rest with their rear ends on the roof and the front ends on the lawn. Even without the spill, the neighborhood seemed unlikely to be habitable anytime soon.
