- NEW ORLEANS -- The high-stakes
effort to bail out New Orleans is sending plumes of contaminated, brown,
stinking water into Lake Pontchartrain, setting back years of effort to
restore the environmentally sensitive home to Gulf Coast marine life.
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- After festering for two weeks in residential neighborhoods,
commercial districts and industrial zones, the water is laden with bacteria,
silt, petroleum products and possibly toxic substances.
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- City officials have confirmed that they also are releasing
untreated sewage into the Mississippi River from one of two treatment plants
operated by the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans
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- Hurricane Katrina has forced the abandonment of normal
environmental and sanitation practices as workers scramble to preserve
what's left of the city and to prevent a breakdown of public health.
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- The floodwaters have high levels of fecal material, silt
and other substances that could damage the marine environment.
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- `Tremendous dead zone'
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- Martha Sutula, a senior scientist at the Southern California
Coastal Water Research Project who has studied the ecology of Louisiana
wetlands, said nutrients in the floodwaters, such as nitrates and ammonia,
will likely cause algae and phytoplankton blooms in the shallow lake and
surrounding estuaries. The blooms can deplete oxygen and suffocate marine
life.
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- "I would imagine that you're going to have a pretty
tremendous dead zone," Sutula said. "This is going to set them
back quite a few years."
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- Al Naomi, a senior project engineer for the Army Corps
of Engineers agreed.
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- "It will take years to clean up our estuaries. The
lake was coming back with manatees and fish," Naomi said. "Twenty
years of effort has been wiped out in an afternoon storm surge."
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- While few experts criticize the extreme measures being
taken to save New Orleans, the practices most likely violate federal laws
in normal times.
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- "We have multiple disasters in Hurricane Katrina,"
said William Freudenburg, an environmental professor at the University
of California, Santa Barbara. "Much of the disaster was caused by
the initial decision of where to put the city's levees. It was turned into
a human disaster by the worst response I have ever seen by the government.
Now we have a disaster on one of the most environmentally sensitive and
valuable wetlands in America."
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- So far, the storm is not thought to have caused toxic
pollution.
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- The flood inundated at least one Superfund site, the
Agriculture Street landfill. The cleanup was completed before the flood,
though some toxic residues remained in the soil. Tens of thousands of inundated
homes are thought to have solvents, pesticides and other toxic substances
stored in garages and under sinks that could be leaking.
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- Toxins not registering
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- Floodwaters in six locations have been tested by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for more than 100 chemicals; only
one chemical has exceeded EPA standards. Lead in floodwaters near an exit
ramp off Interstate Highway 10 was 15 times greater than the level allowed
in drinking water.
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- Most of the hazardous chemicals, including polychlorinated
biphenyls found in electrical equipment, and benzene found in crude oil
and gasoline, were undetectable, according to the EPA's first round of
tests conducted Sept. 3.
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- Later testing, on Sept. 4 and Sept. 6, showed continued
high levels of lead, as well as arsenic and hexavalent chromium, the EPA
said Wednesday. Thallium was detected at slightly elevated levels at one
sampling location, the agency said.
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- The second tests indicated higher levels of E. coli and
other coliform bacteria too, the EPA said.
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- Lake Pontchartrain, a shallow body of brackish water
that is affected by ocean tides, is normally blue. But the view from a
helicopter this week showed at least three large plumes of brown water
leaving the 17th Street Canal, the London Avenue Canal and the Inter Harbor
Navigation Channel. Those waterways are the main outflows for about 6.5
billion gallons of floodwaters per day from the city's pumping stations.
Even several hundred feet above the city, the air stinks of sewage.
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- Marcia St. Martin, executive director of the Sewerage
and Water Board, said there was no evidence that the water being pumped
into Lake Pontchartrain is a "toxic brew."
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- Though the water may contain bacteria, she said, the
city never treated storm water routinely pumped in great quantities into
Lake Pontchartrain.
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- "Fecal coliform in floodwater is normal," she
said.
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