A month ago, I posted an update on the latest information on the environmental effects of Hurricane Katrina, including where to go to get the test results EPA was, belatedly, accumulating and posting. Unfortunately, it appears one caution I posted at the time was appropriate (note the italics):
…The levels in New Orleans are in the range that they do not pose an immediate threat if you’re wearing protective gear and not drinking the water, or splashing it into your mouth.
No comment was made about whether the levels are sufficiently high that they would preclude rehabitation later; I suspect a risk assessment by ATSDR/CDC is underway in that regard. They are very careful to keep saying there is no immediate threat to health, which begs the question of “What are the long-term threats? My gut instinct is that when they demolish the 9th ward and other heavily affected areas (which they will have to do anyway because of the incredible levels of mold being found) they’re going to have to remove the top 3 inches of soil as well while they’re bulldozing for debris removal.
Was I over-concerned? Hop over the fold to see.
We haven’t yet heard from ATSDR-CDC, but reports in the press are starting to come out, and, unfortunately, I seem to have been on the right track in my suspicions. MSNBC posted a story yesterday on their website, for instance, headlined “Did some in New Orleans return too soon? Activists say EPA should have been more vocal, visible about health risks.”
A similar story is reported on the website of the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The magazine has numerous links to information on both human health and environmental effects:
All the water that entered New Orleans was later pumped into nearby Lake Pontchartrain, a shallow, brackish lake with a surface area of more than 640 square miles. The lake is regularly used for recreation and commercial crabbing and is a catch basin for New Orleans’ storm water runoff. Pardue says that although the concentrations of metals in the water pumped into the lake were normal for floodwater, the lake has absorbed the equivalent of many years of runoff in only a few weeks.
Concentrations of zinc and copper, Pardue says, may pose a problem for fish that have less tolerance for these metals than humans. “So the metals going back into the lake are at much more toxic levels than we report for humans,” he says.
Because more than 100,000 houses were flooded, Pardue says that he is now beginning to look for other chemicals that might not normally be detected in mud left behind after a flood. He is also working with horticulturists to see whether this muck, which contains salt and other chemicals, may kill off the city’s plants and trees.
Just as after 9-11 in New York, there is considerable pressure on government officials from local residents who just want to go home, and from the business community who realize that the longer things go without vigorous rebuilding commencing, the more likely that we will end up with a smaller, less economically viable city in the future. Mayor Nagin for his part had the right idea, but apparently didn’t ask the right questions; he asked for and eventually received written assurances from EPA.
MSNBC illustrates the problem by citing the example of benzene, a carcinogen found in petroleum products, including gasoline:
Figuring emergency responders would not face long exposures to contaminants, the EPA compared initial benzene samples to the limits for one-day exposure.
That limit is 50 parts benzene per billion parts air. Anything below that is considered safe if exposure is just for one day. The limit drops to 4 parts per billion when exposure is over a two-week period.
Only one tested site was above 50, a neighborhood in the suburb of Chalmette where floodwaters damaged a refinery storage tank, causing a major spill.
But activists say that most residents aren’t likely to return home for just a day, and that limits for two-week exposure should have been used — and publicized.
In testimony before Congress in September, Erik Olson, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that the initial EPA sampling found 14 sites with benzene levels twice the two-week limit of 4 ppb standard, ranging from 8.2 to 21 ppb.
Similarly, toluene, a related chemical used in paint and adhesives, was found at up to 170 ppb, which is 40 times over the two-week health standard.
Community activists have taken to performing their own sample collection and analyses in St. Bernard Parish, and found contaminant concentrations there that added to the calls for action based on long-term health-based criteria:
“If this was a waste site, EPA would require a cleanup to a certain level before they let anyone go back in,” says Wilma Subra, president of Subra Co., Inc. [a technical consultant working with area residents] To address the concerns of local residents, Subra is conducting her own tests of the sediments. She advises residents to not enter the city unless they wear a respirator, boots, and gloves. She notes that Wal-Marts within 100 miles have sold out of such equipment.
As for the city and state officials, she says, “All they know is that their people want to go home. They’re looking for EPA to establish criteria that are safe for people, and EPA is not doing that.”
There are increasing reports of respiratory illnesses in the area hit by Katrina, due to exposure to various chemicals and also high levels of mold.
But a longer-term hazard could be the lawns and playgrounds laced with contaminated sediment.
New Orleans officials have yet to decide on a plan for what’s been called “debris management.”
“The whole question of debris management is an open one,” Olson [lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council] said. “Are you going to replace half the topsoil of New Orleans?”
Meanwhile, the New York Times today talks about the slow pace of debris removal; the businesses that are trying to reopen but find no customers; how the Army Corps of Engineers may put together temporary, inadequate levees with a lick and a promise that are not even as good as the previous levees, because of the monumental reconstruction job needed; how competing funding priorities are resulting on only a fraction of the funds needed to do the job adequately being earmarked for New Orleans – in other words, all the problems you’d expect from a lack of leadership.
What concerned me in the NYT story, however, was the disconnect with the NBC piece; the Times doesn’t mention the environmental problems in rebuilding at all. The focus of the Times’ report is that reconstruction cannot proceed for a lack of housing the workers to do the job. Forty percent of the city’s housing stock was flooded, and up to 50,000 homes may need to be demolished.
Under one notion that is being discussed by a leading member of Mr. Nagin’s rebuilding commission, the city could take control of a house, fix it up and then lease it out. The original owner would have the right to come back eventually and re-establish ownership claims. The idea, based on an old Louisiana legal concept known as usufruct, has already encountered some political opposition, but proponents say that local government may have no choice but to step in.
While a number of professional groups (e.g. architects, community planners) meet with residents and bedrocks of the community like its universities to plan for reconstruction, we may face a situation where reconstruction is going to be limited in scope for the next several years until issues like environmental decontamination and levee reconstruction are addressed, which in turn cannot be addressed until funding and, especially, leadership issues are resolved. Delay on the terms of years will mean that displaced residents will have established new lives in the cities they were relocated to – new jobs; kids in new schools with new friends.
As the city is slowly reopened for business, it may be a generation before the city’s population is more than a fraction of its pre-Katrina levels. Which will leave plenty of time to sort out on whose watch the wetlands were allowed to degrade to the point that they couldn’t protect the city, or which party was most responsible for short-changing levee design and construction. Looking back over the last three months, it appears the lessons aren’t sinking in yet…
