Safety of Post-Hurricane Sludge Is Disputed
Government Has Minimized Public Health Threat of Toxic Contaminants in New Orleans, Group Says

By Spencer S. Hsu and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 23, 2006

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 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.

The NRDC report, which was obtained by The Washington Post, comes as a new internal report of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggests that as much as 350,000 gallons of hazardous materials are threatening the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana as a result of Hurricane Rita.

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 M. Solomon and Miriam Rotkin-Ellman. "It would be best to keep children out of the city until cleanup has occurred."

Tami Frazier, a spokeswoman for Mayor C. Ray Nagin (D), referred questions to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

Tom Harris, administrator of the department'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 prompt further investigation rather than an automatic cleanup, and would have to be greatly exceeded before young children are harmed.

"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."

The two new reports intensify a simmering debate over Katrina and Rita's environmental legacy and what was left in the soil once the waters receded. With at least 8 million gallons, Katrina produced the second-largest oil spill in U.S. history, after the 11 million-gallon Exxon Valdez tanker spill off Alaska in 1989. Unlike raw crude oil in the Alaska spill, however, the storm released more refined fuel, which evaporated, dissolved or was diluted more readily.

Rita was not as fierce a storm, but it devastated wildlife refuges in southwestern Louisiana. The report on Sabine, which was commissioned by Fish and Wildlife but has not been publicly released, found that more than 1,400 barrels of toxic liquids and gases blown in by the hurricane are sinking into the low-lying marsh that is home to hundreds of thousands of migrating waterfowl each winter.

Don Voros, who oversees four national wildlife refuges in southwestern Louisiana, said a stretch of debris spanning six miles across Sabine reflects a mix of industrial and household waste from areas flattened by Rita.

"Hurricane Rita has dealt all of southwestern Louisiana a pretty bad hand, and we're trying to recover from that," he said. "There are some unpleasant things in the refuge we've never had to deal with. . . . More and more of it is sinking into the marsh, and it's going to be harder and more expensive to clean it up."

Asked whether agency officials have enough money to clean up the refuges, Voros responded, "We don't. There's just not enough resources to go around."

Government officials estimate the two hurricanes took a toll of up to $250 million on national wildlife refuges. Congress has appropriated $30 million for cleanup and repair so far and is considering whether to grant the Bush administration's recent request for an additional $132 million in emergency funding.

"There is a critical need to get that money on the ground and start moving," said Evan Hirsch, who chairs the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement, a nonprofit coalition. "We're going to have a national wildlife refuge looking like a Superfund site."

All four wildlife refuges in southwestern Louisiana are now closed to the public, but federal officials hope to reopen Lacassine National Wildlife Refuge by March 15. Sabine, which may experience a widespread fish kill this summer because of the dead vegetation in its waters, was especially vulnerable to Rita because it lies near oil and gas platforms that were damaged by the hurricane.

Voros -- who gave a tour of refuge damage this week to aides from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the House Resources Committee -- is considering appealing for Superfund money, but first he is seeking state and federal money that would not have to be repaid.

"It's not like we're here sitting on our hands," he said. "There are a lot of people trying to figure out how to make this [cleanup] happen."