Link to site: Bob Marshall, Staff writer, March 17, 2006

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Highlights:
- The combination of forces that brought the structure down was its finding that one of the main triggers for that failure -- extremely low soil strengths under the toe of the levee -- would have been detected had the design team done soil borings in that area
- "The factor of safety would have been (low enough) to where they would have changed the design,"
- The task force said rising water pushed the wall away from the canal, eventually creating a crack, separating the wall from the canal-side levee. Water pressure building inside the crack began pushing down on soil layers under the wall, which required support from the levee on the land side of the canal and the soils adjacent to it. The weak soils beneath the toe of the levee couldn't stand up to the rising pressure and began slipping, bringing the levee and the floodwall down.


The key to learning why the 17th Street Canal floodwall failed during Hurricane Katrina may lie more in what designers didn't do than in what they could have foreseen, experts now say.

Lost in the controversy swirling around a government panel's comment last week that the designers of the floodwall could not have anticipated the combination of forces that brought the structure down was its finding that one of the main triggers for that failure -- extremely low soil strengths under the toe of the levee -- would have been detected had the design team done soil borings in that area, an official with the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

Had the weakness at the toe of the levee been included in the analysis system used by the project designers, "The factor of safety would have been (low enough) to where they would have changed the design," said Reed Mosher, a researcher at the corps' Engineering Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss., and a member of the corps-sponsored Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force that is investigating the failures. The options considered probably would have included a T-wall, or a much larger levee, he said.

The task force said rising water pushed the wall away from the canal, eventually creating a crack, separating the wall from the canal-side levee. Water pressure building inside the crack began pushing down on soil layers under the wall, which required support from the levee on the land side of the canal and the soils adjacent to it. The weak soils beneath the toe of the levee couldn't stand up to the rising pressure and began slipping, bringing the levee and the floodwall down.

Review team members said the designers did "few if any" soil borings at the toe of the levee, a finding John Greishaber, acting chief of the engineering division at the corps' New Orleans district, said was not normal. He said his office normally required designers to take borings at the center line as well as at the toe of levees.

"This is the preferred method," he said. "There are items when this is not done. You have to get into specifics (for each case) as to why it is not."

Greishaber said that when borings aren't made, engineers can estimate the soil strengths at the toe of a levee.

Engineers use a standard formula for estimating the soil strengths at the toe based on the known strength of soils at the center line of the levee, where the soil strengths are highest. That means soil borings at the toe usually aren't necessary unless the center line values are below a certain threshold, task force members said.

And that is where the designers made obvious mistakes, said J. David Rogers, a professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla who is a leading expert on levee failures and a member of a National Science Foundation investigation into the disaster.

"Looking at their calculations on the slope stability analysis, they used the same high figure from the center of the levee and projected it out to the toe, without any diminution in value," Rogers said. "That was one of the first things we picked up when we started working on this.

"When we tried to find out what factor they used for diminution with increasing distance from the toe, it didn't appear they used any. They were using maximum strength all the way to the toe. That's the part everyone will take issue with."

More surprising, Rogers said, is the fact that obvious mistake was missed by the corps in New Orleans, as well as its superiors in Vicksburg.

"I can't explain how this went through," he said.

Making waves

Although the quality of the engineering done by local firms and reviewed by the corps has been the focus of scrutiny since shortly after the walls collapsed, it was pushed from the headlines last week when the task force released an interim report identifying how the walls collapsed and saying the combination of forces responsible could not have been anticipated by the project designers. That provoked criticism from independent investigators.

But this week Ed Link, project director for the task force, said his panel's statements had been misconstrued by the media.

"Our position on this is that, very simply, whoever did the design just did not consider this particular mechanism," said Link, a University of Maryland senior fellow who is head of the corps-sponsored Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force. "We, IPET, made no value judgment whether it should have been considered or could have been considered.

"If that was inferred by our comments, it was inaccurate."

Link added that the corps has made no attempt to interfere or steer the investigation by the panel, which lists more than 150 members from academia, private industry and other state and federal agencies.

"The only pressure the corps has put on us is to find out what has happened and put it in the public domain," he said. "I'm telling you as an engineer, as a professional, I would not work in this environment if I felt there was anything political or adverse pressure on what we are doing."

The executive summary of the task force report, which Link said he wrote without input from the corps, said "this failure mechanism was not anticipated by the design criteria used."

When task force panelists and corps engineers were asked if that meant the design systems used by the engineers of the day could not have foreseen this type of failure, they answered "yes."

Link said that while the individual components of the failure are well documented as concerns for engineers doing stability analysis of levees and floodwalls, the combination of those factors coming together at the same time is not. He also said methods of analysis used by engineers at the time would not have included all those factors in testing a design for stability.

Point of contention

Task force panelists at the press conference also said a "search of the literature" turned up no examples of this specific failure mechanism.

Those claims were quickly challenged by members of the engineering community. Most notably Ray Seed and Bob Bea, University of California-Berkeley professors and members of the National Science Foundation team investigating the levee failures, issued a response calling the task force statements "unfortunate" and inaccurate. They called attention to a 1986 report done by the corps, known as the E-99 report, that showed the separation -- "tension cracking" -- of the wall as well as the build-up of high pressure at the base of the floodwall after the cracking.

They also cited two 1997 papers published in an industry journal analyzing the 1986 test. One of papers' authors was Mosher, who is a member of the task force.

Link said Thursday that his reference to the "literature" meant a review of the corps engineering manuals, which design teams are required to use.

"We were looking at the design criteria to see if there was a process like this described in the corps' design manuals that (the design team) missed," he said. "We didn't see anything that described this mechanism, that would have alerted (the design team) to look for this when doing their analysis."

Link and Mosher disagreed with Bea and Seed's analysis of the importance of the 1986 study. Mosher, who analyzed the E-99 report, said it was not designed to look at levee stability, but at how much a sheet pile "moved at the top as water increased."

The fact that the test also showed there was evidence of tension cracking and high pressure at the toe of the wall was not given much attention at the time, Mosher said, "because the study was not designed to look at the stability of the levee." He also said the evidence of cracking and increased pressure was minimal.

Rethinking strategies

Mosher said Katrina has made the report important today.

"When I go back now and look at E-99 knowing the other pieces of information about the 17th Street failure, I can make a better interpretation of what's in E-99," he said. "Now I can say I understand how all this relates."

Mosher and Link said the lessons learned from the investigation already are being put to work.

"We're going back and doing borings at the toes of the levees in the system anywhere we think this failure mechanism might be present," he said. "We're already doing re-evaluations of the stability analysis done by the (original design teams).

"Now that we know what to look for, we're out there looking for it."

. . . . . . .

Bob Marshall can be reached at rmarshall@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3539.

Link to site: Bob Marshall, Staff writer, March 11, 2006

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Highlights:
- Unique combination of stresses that engineers could not have predicted caused the 17th Street Canal floodwall to fail and flood thousands of homes and businesses during Hurricane Katrina, according to an interim report of the task force investigating the disaster for the Army Corps of Engineers.
- Evidence points to forces that came together in a combination unique to the science and thus could not have been anticipated by the system's design teams.
- Interagency task force members said experiments with sophisticated computer models show the 17th Street Canal floodwall came down in a four-step process:

A unique combination of stresses that engineers could not have predicted caused the 17th Street Canal floodwall to fail and flood thousands of homes and businesses during Hurricane Katrina, according to an interim report of the task force investigating the disaster for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The report also points to soil subsidence that left floodwalls and levees lower than design specifications as contributing to the other failures and breaches that helped flood 80 percent of New Orleans and killed more than 1,100 residents in August.

Although independent analysts have blamed the 17th Street Canal failure on faulty engineering, including flawed soil investigations by local firms, the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, composed of experts from academia and industry as well as state and federal agencies, said evidence points to forces that came together in a combination unique to the science and thus could not have been anticipated by the system's design teams.

"I would say it's certainly going to come as a surprise to many people, if not most people," said Ed Link, University of Maryland professor and task force project director.

The group said the causes of the London Avenue canal floodwall collapses are not yet known and emphasized that its findings are preliminary.

Bob Bea, a University of California professor who is part of a National Science Foundation investigation into the failures, said the task force's explanation of the 17th Street Canal breach is lacking.

"It's our jobs as engineers to anticipate the failure points, and when that doesn't happen, breakdowns like this occur," Bea said, emphasizing that he is speaking only for himself and not the NSF team. "The corps has a documented history where they say, 'We couldn't have anticipated this, therefore it was an act of God.'

"An experienced engineer knows he can't accept that."

Four steps to hell

Interagency task force members said experiments with sophisticated computer models show the 17th Street Canal floodwall came down in a four-step process:

-- As water in the canal rose to 10 feet -- an unprecedented but not unplanned height -- the pressure from the water and wind-driven waves in the canal began to push, or deflect, the concrete floodwall and its subsurface supporting steel sheet piling away from the canal and toward Lakeview.

-- The deflection created space between the wall and the levee on the canal side.

-- Such flexing is expected by designers, as is a small opening between the wall and the levee. But what happened in this case, and was not expected, was the separation extended the entire length of the sheetpile wall to 17.5 feet below sea level. Water rushed into this opening quickly, creating a channel separating the floodwall from the levee on the inside of the canal and allowing high water pressure to travel directly down to the soil layers beneath the wall.

-- The final blow came when a layer of clay about 15 feet below sea level that extended beyond the toe of the levee began slipping toward Lakeview, causing the levee to collapse and the wall with it.

'Failure mechanism'

The fatal flaw in the weak soils beneath the structure was not the now-notorious layer of peat widely cited by independent analysts for months, the task force said. In fact, the failure surface, as engineers call it, did not occur under the levee or canal, but at a level beneath the toe of the levee and in the yards of homes adjacent to the canal.

Link said task force tests showed the soil-strength estimates done by local firm Eustis Engineering when the walls were built proved to be more conservative than actual results. Further, he said there was no method of testing the plans for a combination of forces that caused the collapse -- called the "failure mechanism" by engineers.

"We've searched the literature and found nothing that resembles this," he said. "I'm not saying nothing exists, but so far we haven't found it."

There was disagreement on that point.

Bea said a 1986 corps study showed such separations could occur.

"That report was done by the Vicksburg (Miss.) research station for the New Orleans District, but there's no evidence it ever made its way to the (engineering) firms doing the work," said Bea, who added that a full discussion of the report would be in the National Science Foundation study to be published next month.

Corps officials acknowledged the report, titled "E-99 Sheet Pile Wall Field Load Test Report," but disputed Bea's interpretation.

Neither the interagency task force nor the corps dismissed the long-standing criticism that sheet pilings should have been driven at least to the bottom of the canals -- a standard engineering practice -- rather than stopped at 17 feet. While they agreed deeper pilings generally make stronger walls, they have yet to run simulations to determine whether deeper pilings would have prevented this collapse given the other conditions now known.

Sinking floodwalls

Soil subsidence levels in a region that was largely marsh and swamp fewer than 100 years ago is well known, but the rate of sinkage, which left many structures below the heights built to guard against storm surges, apparently took the panel by surprise. For example, the Industrial Canal floodwall that was built to 15 feet actually measured just above 12 feet when Katrina hit, a loss of 2.7 feet.

Task force teams "documented that many sections of the levees and floodwalls were substantially below their original design elevations, an effective loss in protection," the report said.

Corps officials said the Bush administration has budgeted almost $3 billion to repair and restore all levees and floodwalls in the region up to design heights during the next two years.

Louisiana State University professor Ivor van Heerden, a member of the state team investigating the failures, said he was not surprised by the report and generally agreed with its findings. He said the corps started using updated elevation data only five years ago, even though the state had been urging a change for years.

"So the fact that the corps have found some levees lower than they should be reflects local subsidence but also that they built them lower than they should be because they would not update their datum," van Heerden commented by e-mail. "It is cheaper to make a wall 12.8 feet tall rather than one 14 feet tall!"

Further, van Heerden wrote, "whether the fail plane (on the 17th Street Canal) was in peat or clay is really academic. The structure underwent catastrophic structure failure, the same for the two breaches on the London Avenue Canal."

Hassan Mashriqui, an engineer and storm modeler at the LSU Hurricane Center, said he would be cautious about estimates of wave forces inside the 17th Street Canal because his findings show that a huge pile of debris that stacked up against the Old Hammond Highway bridge across the canal probably blocked much of that force.
Bob Marshall can be reached at rmarshall@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3539.

Link to site: March 7, 2006

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Highlights:
- Federal engineers in Vicksburg have begun tests to determine exactly what caused the levees to fail in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
- Engineers want to learn what part waves played in breaching a floodwall on the 17th Street Canal, where Hurricane Katrina's storm surge pushed water from Lake Pontchartrain and where water poured into the city after the storm hit

VICKSBURG, Miss. (AP) - Federal engineers in Vicksburg have begun tests to determine exactly what caused the levees to fail in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

Engineers on Sunday gathered to watch a centrifuge spin a tiny model of the 17th Street Canal.

Wayne Stroup, a spokesman for the Engineering Research and Development Center's Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, said more tests may be conducted later this week on a 14,000-square-foot model about a third the size of a football field.

Engineers want to learn what part waves played in breaching a floodwall on the 17th Street Canal, where Hurricane Katrina's storm surge pushed water from Lake Pontchartrain and where water poured into the city after the storm hit on Aug. 29.

Stroup said the larger model will be flooded with water. Engineers will use data, along with that from the centrifuge and other tests, to draw conclusions.

The work is part of the Corps' Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, which is investigating why levees and floodwalls in the New Orleans area failed during Katrina. The task force commissioned the work in Vicksburg under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The centrifuge, similar to those used in astronaut training to test the effects of increasing gravity, is three stories below ground.

It was manufactured in France and installed at the federal research station in Vicksburg more than 10 years ago. It remains one of the largest in the world.

Link to site: Matthew Brown, West Bank bureau, March 06, 2006

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Highlights:
- Six months after Katrina, the mark left on the natural world by last year's blockbuster hurricane season is a complex mix of more fish and shrimp, less habitat for them to live and breed in, and millions of gallons of oil possibly lost forever in south Louisiana's marshes.
- In terms of habitat, however, the storms sharply accelerated a coastal erosion problem already responsible for a decades-long decline in seafood production. And a lasting stain was left by at least nine major oil spills and countless hazardous-material containers strewn from Mississippi to Texas.
- Meanwhile, federal and state biologists report stocks of shrimp, fish and crabs are at their highest levels in years: a phenomenon attributed to a combination of lighter fishing pressure and a jolt of nutrients stirred up by the storms that served to stimulate the food chain.

Six months after Katrina, the mark left on the natural world by last year's blockbuster hurricane season is a complex mix of more fish and shrimp, less habitat for them to live and breed in, and millions of gallons of oil possibly lost forever in south Louisiana's marshes.

The central Gulf Coast was spared the massive fish kills that followed Hurricane Andrew in 1992. While some die-offs occurred, evidence has emerged of a spike in the populations of several saltwater species -- perhaps a result of the region's shattered fishing fleet.

In terms of habitat, however, the storms sharply accelerated a coastal erosion problem already responsible for a decades-long decline in seafood production. And a lasting stain was left by at least nine major oil spills and countless hazardous-material containers strewn from Mississippi to Texas.

Just as significant, however, is what the storms did not do. Federal scientists say the 224 billion gallons of foul floodwaters pumped out of New Orleans after the storms quickly dissipated in Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico.

Researchers from the Battelle Seattle Research Center in Seattle, who attempted to mimic the floodwater's movement through computer simulations, have suggested much of the pumped-out water may be trapped in Lake Borgne. But extensive analyses of potential contaminants in seafood by state and federal fisheries scientists have turned up only trace amounts of chemicals such as PCBs and petroleum.

That contrasts sharply with news reports that continue to depict a grimmer situation. As recently as December, an article appearing in the Orlando Sentinel described the pumped-out floodwaters as a "slug of germs and chemicals . . . floating toward Florida's coast, drifting out to the Atlantic or lurking somewhere in between."

"By and large, the facts don't necessarily follow a lot of the speculation that was out there early, in terms of the chemicals that were out there and the threat to human health," said Steven Murawski, a senior scientist at the National Marine Fisheries Service, which has conducted nine rounds of seafood sampling from Texas to Florida.

Meanwhile, federal and state biologists report stocks of shrimp, fish and crabs are at their highest levels in years: a phenomenon attributed to a combination of lighter fishing pressure and a jolt of nutrients stirred up by the storms that served to stimulate the food chain.

Louisiana's inland waterways still are recovering from localized fish kills, but the scope of that damage is considered far narrower than the estimated 184 million fish that died in the Atchafalaya Basin during Hurricane Andrew.

Excess oxygen caused by heavy loads of organic material entering rivers after flooding caused fish kills along the Blind, Amite and Tchefuncte rivers after Katrina. Toward the coast, additional fish kills caused by an influx of saltwater were reported near Venice and Caernarvon in the southeast corner of the state, in the Atchafalaya Basin in south-central Louisiana and in Grand Lake and White Lake in the southwest, said John Roussel, assistant secretary for the Wildlife and Fisheries Department.

Plans are being made to restock the waterways with bass, catfish, bream and other species. For Grand and White lakes, however, Roussel said salinity levels -- the amount of salt in the water -- are still too high, keeping fish from returning and also threatening to kill off aquatic plants.

The direst story emerges from the physical toll the storm took on Louisiana's wetlands. Louisiana's coastal marshes comprise about 80 percent of the Gulf's wetlands, estuary systems that are vital for reproduction of shrimp, redfish, speckled trout, blue crabs, bluefish, menhaden and many other recreationally and commercially important species. The wetlands also serve as a natural buffer against hurricanes.

Rita and Katrina washed away or flooded about 118 square miles of wetlands, or about 75,500 acres.

Beyond those losses, oil spills caused by Katrina totaled 8 million gallons across southeast Louisiana, according to the Coast Guard. The most publicized spill, about 1 million gallons at the Murphy Oil refinery in St. Bernard Parish, occurred in a residential area. The rest were concentrated in rural areas or along the Mississippi River.

More than 2.3 million gallons of spilled oil have not been recovered.

As for other hazardous substances displaced by the storms, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has collected almost 4,200 tons of materials in 2.2 million hazardous material containers, from gasoline cans to drums of highly toxic industrial chemicals. That includes 675,000 containers from the coastal parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Lafourche and Vermilion and from Grand Isle in Jefferson Parish.

But many containers, as well as fishing boats and vehicles laden with fuel, were likely lost in marshes or water bottoms, state and federal officials have said. And in western Louisiana, about 1,400 hazardous-materials containers with up to 350,000 gallons of liquids and gases remain out of the EPA's reach.

The containers were found in the federally operated Sabine National Wildlife Refuge. Under the Stafford Act, which is driving the federal response to the recovery, that makes them off-limits to retrieval by agencies under the direction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA emergency money can be spent only on state and local needs, according to EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Fanning.

. . . . . . .

Matthew Brown can be reached at mbrown@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3784.

Link to site: Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer, March 6, 2006; Page A01

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Highlights:
- Experts monitoring the $1.6 billion reconstruction project say large sections of the rebuilt levee system will be substantially weaker than before the hurricane hit.
- These experts say the Corps, racing to rebuild 169 miles of levees destroyed or damaged by Katrina, is taking shortcuts to compress what is usually a years-long construction process into a few weeks.
- And they say the Corps is deferring repairs to flood walls that survived Katrina but suffered structural damage that could cause them to topple in a future storm.


NEW ORLEANS -- The Army Corps of Engineers seems likely to fulfill a promise by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans's toppled flood walls to their original, pre-Katrina height by June 1, but two teams of independent experts monitoring the $1.6 billion reconstruction project say large sections of the rebuilt levee system will be substantially weaker than before the hurricane hit.

These experts say the Corps, racing to rebuild 169 miles of levees destroyed or damaged by Katrina, is taking shortcuts to compress what is usually a years-long construction process into a few weeks. They say that weak, substandard materials are being used in some levee walls, citing lab tests as evidence. And they say the Corps is deferring repairs to flood walls that survived Katrina but suffered structural damage that could cause them to topple in a future storm.

Louisiana State University researcher Ezra Boyd examines a crack in a flood wall in Jefferson Parish, west of New Orleans. Scientists say many levees that survived Hurricane Katrina are compromised and may fail in another storm. (By Joby Warrick -- The Washington Post)
Graphic
Levee Rebuilding: Ready or Not?
The Army Corps of Engineers is racing to rebuild 41 miles of broken levees and patch up damage along an additional 128 miles before the hurricane season officially starts June 1. But some independent experts are questioning whether New Orleans's hurricane-protection system will be truly ready.

The Corps strongly disputes the assertion -- by engineers from a National Science Foundation-funded panel and a Louisiana team appointed to monitor the rebuilding -- that substandard materials are being used in construction. Agency officials maintain that the new levees are rigorously inspected at each step. But they acknowledge that much more work will be needed after June 1, the beginning of hurricane season, and that the finished system still will not be strong enough to withstand a storm the magnitude of Katrina.

"The people of New Orleans need to get back to at least the level of hurricane protection we had before Katrina," Corps spokesman Jim Taylor said. "We were authorized to do that, and do it quickly. It's up to Congress to decide to take it to a higher level."

But Ivor van Heerden, a Louisiana State University engineering professor and leader of a state-appointed team of experts investigating the failure of the levee system during Katrina, charged that "the government is trying to create a sense of security that doesn't exist."

"What we have today," he added, "is a compromised levee system that failed during a fast-moving Category 3 hurricane. Absolutely nowhere are the levees ready to stand up to the same kind of test."

The Corps said several steps that could help the levee system survive a major hurricane will have to wait until next year. For example, systematic testing for weak soils beneath the levees will not be completed until 2007. Two of the most devastating flood wall breaches during Katrina have been blamed in part on weak, peatlike soils beneath the walls' foundations.

In addition, a plan to line the bases of certain critical levees with a protective layer of rock or concrete -- a process known as "armoring" -- is not expected to begin until summer, and then only if Congress provides additional money. Levee armoring significantly lowers the risk that a levee will collapse when it is overtopped by floodwaters.

A recent report by a prestigious panel of the American Society of Civil Engineers described the lack of armoring in New Orleans's levees as a "fundamental flaw" that demands urgent attention. The same report also faulted the Corps for making predictions about the system's safety before the agency officially determined what caused the levees to fail in the first place.

"Overtopping during Katrina caused catastrophic flooding and destruction of the levees themselves," said David E. Daniel, president of the University of Texas at Dallas and a member of the engineers panel. "It is inevitable that the levees will again be overtopped -- the only question is when."

Katrina breached the region's 350-mile levee system in dozens of places, blasting out huge chunks of concrete flood walls in central New Orleans and obliterating miles of earthen levees south and east of downtown. The breaches put 75 percent of New Orleans under water and transformed Katrina from a destructive but ordinary storm to a monumental disaster that claimed more than 1,300 lives.

The Bush administration has requested about $3.1 billion for repairing and strengthening the region's hurricane defenses. In addition to the $1.6 billion approved by Congress for rapid repairs to broken levees, the administration is seeking additional money for armoring, new floodgates and more pumping stations.

Link to site: Jim Motavalli, Green Living March, 2006

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Highlights:
- The Bush administration had other funding priorities. President Bush committed $22 million over five years to Army Corps of Engineers flood control efforts, but the Corps and the state of Louisiana had asked for five times that much.
- National Geographic report from 2004: “The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.”
- The environmental community is anticipating that politicians will twist the oil shortage to their own ends.


In an interview with TV anchor Diane Sawyer, President Bush proclaimed confidently, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” The statement had about as much grounding in reality as one made a few days later by his mother, Barbara Bush, who was visiting Houston as part of Republican spin control and was favorably impressed with conditions inside the Astrodome: “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this is working very well for them,” she said. As blogger Andrew Sullivan noted, it was her Marie Antoinette moment.

We knew not only that the levees could breach, but that they were likely to do so. We even knew what to do about it, but the Bush administration had other funding priorities. President Bush committed $22 million over five years to Army Corps of Engineers flood control efforts, but the Corps and the state of Louisiana had asked for five times that much. “For years, Congress has consistently approved far more for New Orleans-area projects than the White House has proposed,” said the San Jose Mercury News.

Absent such preparation, we knew what to expect. New Orleans' Time-Picayune ran an exhaustive series on the impending disaster. Here’s a brief excerpt from a National Geographic report from 2004: “The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.”

The article quotes Joe Suhayda, a retired coastal engineer at Louisiana State: “The killer for Louisiana is a Category Three storm at 72 hours before landfall that becomes a Category Four at 48 hours and a Category Five at 24 hours--coming from the worst direction.”

Nobody anticipated a horrific flooding of New Orleans? Here’s National Geographic’s graphic but imaginary scenario from 2004, which was only too painfully realized. The actual storm differed only in details: “The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back [Lake Pontchartrain] and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level--more than eight feet below in places--so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.”

Here’s another warning, from the pages of Mike Tidwell’s newly timely Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast, published in 2003 by Pantheon. The state’s coastal wetlands, Tidwell pointed out, were disappearing at a rate of 25 square miles per year, meaning that “hundreds of Louisiana towns and cities, all just a few feet above sea level, lie increasingly prone to that deadly wrecking ball of hurricane force known as the storm surge. Coastal wetlands, it turns out, provide more than just a critical nursery for shrimp, crabs and fish. Every 2.7 miles of marsh grass absorbs a foot of a hurricane’s storm surge, that huge tide of water pushed inland by the storm’s winds. For New Orleans alone, hemmed in by levees and already on average eight feet below sea level, the apron of wetlands between it and the closest Gulf shore was, cumulatively, about 50 miles a century ago. Today that distance is perhaps 20 miles and shrinking fast. With very slow evacuation speed virtually guaranteed (there are only three major exit bridges that jump over the encircling levees for central New Orleans’ 600,000 people, it’s not implausible that a major hurricane approaching from the right direction could cause tens of thousands of deaths.”

We still don’t know the full human toll from Hurricane Katrina. The full extent of the environmental damage may be long in coming, too. Environmental reporters say the EPA has so far been unresponsive in providing an overview on oil spills, chemical releases, fires and other accidents. Tanks capable of holding two million barrels of oil were seen to be leaking into the Mississippi River near the Louisiana town of Venice, Reuters reported.

The oil industry was still largely out of commission at presstime, with 70 percent of normal oil production and half of natural gas output shut down. Twenty oil platforms were reported missing. Eight major refineries--vital to produce gasoline from crude oil, and already strained before the hurricane struck--were out of commission. As the Associated Press noted, the hurricane disabled 10 percent of U.S. refining capacity and “contributed to a surge in retail gasoline prices and spot shortages around the country.”

The environmental community is anticipating that politicians will twist the oil shortage to their own ends. New York Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jeanine Pirro called for a suspension of the federal gas tax, which would surely put more people on the road, increasing demand and exacerbating the problem. Calls to drill in Alaska weren't far behind. The Sierra Club’s David Willet: “Some members of Congress have already used Hurricane Katrina--which killed untold hundreds or thousands of people to advance their narrow political agenda. Now because Hurricane Katrina seriously affected the production, refinery capacity and price of oil in the United States, some in Congress are trying to use it as an excuse to renew calls to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and our fragile coastlines. Have they no shame? Are they so bankrupt of ideas?”

The Chicago Tribune called the environmental after-effects of the storm a “creeping catastrophe,” though it noted that, according to early reports, the chemical plants and refineries to the south and east of New Orleans had mostly escaped serious damage. And of course, the floodwaters themselves were hardly benign. “Even before the storm hit, many of the region’s waterways were among the dirtiest in the nation,” the Tribune said. “Louisiana ranks fourth in the nation for releases of toxic chemicals into rivers and streams, and it leads the nation in releases of chemicals that persist in the environment and build up in the human body, according to government data.” There was concern about tetanus spreading through the area, and contaminated sediment being left behind when the floodwaters recede.

It wasn’t surprising that the media suddenly took an interest in Mike Tidwell’s prescient Bayou Farewell book. E spoke to an impassioned Tidwell in the midst of a barrage of calls from major news outlets:

TIDWELL: I think that the fact that the President can make a comment like “no one anticipated the breach of the levees” in New Orleans is all the evidence America needs to see how profoundly out of touch this President is with basic homeland security issues here in America. How can you have homeland security when you don’t have a home, like a million people along the Gulf Coast? How can you have homeland security when those people have no security whatsoever? How can you have homeland security when people can’t even afford to drive their cars because gas is $1.50 more a gallon?

Author of Bayou Farewell, Mike Tidwell.
This President says he didn’t know the levees could break, but his own administration was virtually besieged with urgent requests for levee restoration and building by the State of Louisiana and by New Orleans itself for years. They heard repeated urgent pleas for federal money contributed towards the $14 billion coastal restoration plan, which is a plan to reengineer the coast of Louisiana and recreate the islands and the wetlands that have disappeared. This President ignored or dramatically under-funded all requests for federal involvement in that plan.

So there is a paper trail that is as tall as Mount Everest. Governor Kathleen Blanco met with Bush just a few months after she was elected. She brought up three issues, the most important of them was that our coast is imploding, it’s disappearing, it’s outlandishly vulnerable to hurricanes. The President’s response was, “I’d like to help you as long as the science is sound.” And they then proceeded to do nothing. You know that same phrase “sound science” was used to do nothing about global warming, even though the science is irrefutable.

JIM MOTAVALLI: I edited the book <&src=QHA022" >Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Climate Change, which came out last year and details the global warming effects that are already underway and measurable. There’s a chapter that I wrote looking at barrier islands and what they do, and why we’re losing them because of global warming. It focuses on the vulnerability of the New Jersey and Florida coasts, which are doubly in danger because development has removed wetlands and housing extends right to the shore.

TIDWELL: I’m trying to bend the discussion towards climate change. I’ve been given a platform and, my God, every media outlet in the country is contacting me. I will be on MSNBC and CNN tonight, and NPR’s Morning Edition tomorrow morning. I owe a call to the Wall Street Journal. What I’m saying to them is that the same Bush administration that ignored the warnings about the levees in New Orleans also ignored the warning about the barrier islands and the wetlands buffering the coast in Louisiana. They did nothing, and now we have a million refugees and tens of thousands of people probably dead and who knows how much economic damage. Their negligent policy led to or contributed to this catastrophe. They’re now ignoring the same iron-clad data from their own agencies saying that climate change is real. And one of the impacts is going to be one to three feet of sea level rise in the 21st century.

If we continue to ignore these warnings, every coastal city in America and around the world could turn into a New Orleans. Whether the land sinks three feet in a century or the sea level rises three feet a century, you get the same effect. So if we want to know what Shanghai, Bombay, Miami and New York are all going to be like 50, 70 or 100 years from now, turn on your television right now: It’s on full graphic display.

MOTAVALLI: Let me just ask you one more question, because I know you have to go. What do you think really needs to be done not just to rebuild New Orleans, but to save it from another such tragedy?

TIDWELL: We can rebuild New Orleans: A lot of those structures are still there and can be either rebuilt or refurbished. We could rebuild the levees, and make them much bigger. We can do all that, but in my view it would be immoral and irresponsible to repair a single broken window or pick up a single piece of debris to repair a single cubic foot of levee without simultaneously committing to a full coastal restoration plan. You’ve got to repair the barrier islands at the same time that you fix the windows; you have to replenish the wetlands at the same time you drain New Orleans. To do one without the other is an invitation for another nightmare.

Link to Reference: Larry Wheeler, DEMOCRAT WASHINGTON BUREAU, 2/26/06

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Highlights:
- More disasters of Hurricane Katrina-proportions are a certainty because the United States has no policy to control growth in danger zones at the water's edge.
- The number of Americans living near the shore increased by 23.6 million between 1980 and 2005,
- The 3,000-square-mile Gulf of Mexico ''dead zone'' off the Texas-Louisiana coast is well-known. Aquatic life there has perished. Spawning has halted.

PART ONE OF TWO: GROWTH AND OUR SHORES

More disasters of Hurricane Katrina-proportions are a certainty because the United States has no policy to control growth in danger zones at the water's edge.

In a single generation, land along the nation's fragile coasts has been gobbled up, concentrating wealth at the shore, threatening the environment and putting at risk millions of people and property worth billions of dollars.

A three-month Gannett News Service examination found:

Already crowded retirement havens like Palm Beach have packed hundreds of thousands of newcomers into condos and homes overlooking the water.

About 23 percent of the nation's estuaries do not meet state and federal clean-water standards for swimming, fishing or supporting marine species.

Pollution-related closings and swimming advisories at U.S. beaches hit an all-time high in 2004.

The National Flood Insurance Program is $18 billion in debt and lacks the ability to repay the money it borrowed from the U.S. Treasury to cover property losses from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The communities around the Great Lakes - America's freshwater coast - still struggle with industrial pollution as they face continuing cleanup costs and the beginnings of revitalization.

In many seashore towns, commercial fishing and shipbuilding industries have been replaced by tourism-driven economies and lower wages.

Demand for waterfront property has driven home prices so high that workers who staff the shops, restaurants, schools and police departments can't afford to live nearby.

"If we kick this down the street, the crisis five years from now will be irreversible," said James Watkins, a retired Navy admiral who was chairman of the 2004 U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.

"We better get our act together," Watkins said.

Population growth

The number of Americans living near the shore increased by 23.6 million between 1980 and 2005, according to a Gannett News Service analysis of population trends in counties nearest to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes.

If runaway land consumption and relentless growth in automobile use continue unchecked, many healthy shore communities could face sharp declines over the next 25 years, according to Dana Beach, director of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League and an authority on coastal sprawl.

Beach authored a report for the Pew Oceans Commission that concluded many coastal watersheds may trip from healthy to damaged over the next two decades unless coastal communities adopt growth policies that slow land consumption and minimize polluted runoff from impervious surfaces.

''Part of the dilemma is that there is vast ignorance across the country about ecology,'' Beach said. "When we modify watersheds (with roads and buildings) we are changing the physical attributes, the biological attributes of the water bodies embedded in those watersheds."

Estuaries and bays

Most coastal communities recognize their bays and estuaries are in severe decline.

The 3,000-square-mile Gulf of Mexico ''dead zone'' off the Texas-Louisiana coast is well-known. Aquatic life there has perished. Spawning has halted.

Texas officials are trying to prevent further loss of habitat by limiting development along the 367-mile coast through state and federal coastal and wetland protection programs, according to the state's Center for Policy Studies and Environmental Defense.

Hazardous bacterial contamination caused more than 20,000 closings and health advisory days at beaches across the country in 2004, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council most recent report.

That's the most since the environmental group began tracking 15 years ago, said Nancy Stoner, director of council's Clean Water Project. Some of the increase is due to greater monitoring.

In 2005, Gulf Coast beaches from Texas to Florida were hit with dangerous algae blooms and fouled by fish kills. The algae blooms have forced local governments to post ''No Swimming'' signs while dead fish have sullied the beaches.

Patchwork of programs

The federal government has a patchwork of regulations and agencies that focus on pollution, flood control, the environment and growth patterns.

Some federal efforts, like the National Flood Insurance Program and beach restoration projects run by the Army Corps of Engineers, contribute to the growth of waterfront communities.

The value of property covered by the flood program is $555 billion, more than five times what it was 25 years ago. It generates about $2 billion in annual revenues, mostly from premium payments.

Hurricane Katrina demonstrated how a single disaster can overwhelm the flood program.

The federal government's lead agency on ocean and coastal issues now offers programs to help shore communities learn about the natural disasters that threaten their communities so they can make smarter decisions about growth.

However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's budget has remained relatively flat since 2000, limiting the reach of its small teams of coastal specialists. The agency's budget for the current year is $3.86 billion, down 4 percent from 2005.

Nevertheless, NOAA has teamed up with experts at the Environmental Protection Agency to address the problem.

''Our role is to provide coastal communities with the best information possible so they can make informed decisions about where and how to grow,'' said Tim Torma, a manager of the environmental agency's Smart Growth Program.

Pricing workers out

But many beach communities are now playgrounds for the wealthy while the working class is pushed out.

Karen Krafft, a single mother with two children, is typical.

She can barely make ends meet living in Nags Head, N.C., on the annual salary of $25,000 she makes as a credit counselor. Her summer weekends are spent cleaning vacation homes to make more money.

Krafft's story is not unusual, said Charles Colgan, chief economist for NOAA's National Ocean Economics Program. Large job losses in traditional ocean industries like shipbuilding, offshore energy production and commercial fishing have been offset by the growth in tourism and recreation, Colgan said.

Before Katrina, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama had seen the nation's largest percent gains in coastal tourism and recreation employment.

However, average annual wages in these sectors ($16,321) were less than half the average U.S. wage ($34,647).

Others who have the financial means are reluctant to leave paradise even after repeated assaults from dangerous hurricanes.

"It's just a wonderful place to be," said Lee Shrewsbury, a Nashville, Tenn., businessman who owns a house on Pensacola Beach that was battered but not destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Solutions await action

In its final report, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy made more than 200 recommendations to highlight coastal issues and coordinate 11 Cabinet-level departments and four independent agencies that oversee some portion of the nation's ocean and coastal policy.

The ambitious agenda has received little attention from the White House or Congress. President Bush partially followed one recommendation and formed a Cabinet-level "Committee on Ocean Policy." The panel mostly serves as a clearinghouse for information on existing programs.

Contact Larry Wheeler at lwheeler@gns.gannett.com.

Originally published February 26, 2006

Link to Reference: Todd Horneck, Associate Editor, Feb 2006

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Highlights:
- Water systems that are now operating and able to maintain pressure in their distribution systems are no longer being significantly affected by coliform bacteria.
- In some heavily flooded areas, local officials may postpone repairs to water systems pending their decisions on how and when rebuilding may proceed. Most small public water systems have been able to repair or replace damaged infrastructure.
- Water systems in Louisiana that have lost pressure below 15 psi are placed on boil-water advisories, and about a dozen public water systems, predominantly non-community systems, remain in boil-water advisory status, although most of the water systems in boil-water advisory status are not currently operating.

Summary: Six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf region, many are still struggling with the aftermath. Blake Atkins, chief of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 6 Drinking Water Section, based in Dallas, TX, sat down with Water Technology in January to discuss the impact Katrina has had on water quality and treatment issues in the affected states and what the future holds.

Water Technology®: In rural areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, what were some of the most problematic contaminants that needed to be removed from the water to make it suitable for drinking?

Blake Atkins: In rural areas largely impacted by the hurricanes, coliform bacteria were the most prevalent and problematic contaminants. This was due to pressure loss in distribution systems.

Water systems that are now operating and able to maintain pressure in their distribution systems are no longer being significantly affected by coliform bacteria.

WT: At what point do you think most or all of the larger public water system infrastructures will be fully repaired in the region? How about small public systems or private wells?

BA: The larger public water systems have been able to repair impacted water treatment facilities to return them to operational status, and the vast majority of damaged distribution systems have been repaired.

In some heavily flooded areas, local officials may postpone repairs to water systems pending their decisions on how and when rebuilding may proceed. Most small public water systems have been able to repair or replace damaged infrastructure.

Some of the smaller public water systems associated with businesses that are no longer operating may never [be repaired or replaced].

WT: Are there any public systems still on boil-water orders?

BA: Water systems in Louisiana that have lost pressure below 15 psi are placed on boil-water advisories, and about a dozen public water systems, predominantly non-community systems, remain in boil-water advisory status, although most of the water systems in boil-water advisory status are not currently operating.

WT: Is federal financial assistance available to assist consumers or water treatment professionals to buy or repair treatment systems for individual homes or businesses? If so, how do they find out about it?

BA: FEMA s Public Assistance Program, which provides reimbursement funding to not-for-profit water systems, has funds for returning water infrastructure to pre-hurricane damage status. For-profit public water systems can apply to the Small Business Administration for loans.

WT: News reports about the hurricane s aftermath emphasized the large amounts of hydrocarbons, industrial chemicals, sewage, and other contaminants that the receding waters left on and in the ground. Will these pose long-term problems for treating groundwater in the region? Are you or other agencies making any special recommendations in this regard to consumers or treatment professionals?

BA: While some levels of contaminants were detected in floodwaters in the New Orleans area, water systems in that area rely on surface water treatment, and monitoring of treated water in these areas revealed no contaminants of concern. Most groundwater sources are located far from where chemical releases were possible, and fortunately, most of the groundwater sources are protected by geologic strata.

The US Geologic Survey intends to monitor some groundwater sources that are recharged by the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, but no special recommendations have been made at this time. Hundreds of bacteriological samples were analyzed free of charge to private well owners, and private well owners were advised of disinfection and flushing procedures following a flood.

WT: What technical advice would you have for water treatment businesses in the Gulf region trying to help their customers restore or improve water supplies affected by the hurricane? Are there are any specific treatment methodologies that appear to have been particularly well suited for post-hurricane recovery?

BA: From a lessons-learned standpoint, water systems should focus on backup and contingency plans. Most water systems lost pressure and were subsequently placed on boil-water advisories due to power loss.

If these water systems had an emergency connection to another water system that was able to maintain pressure, or if these systems had their own backup power generators, most boil-water advisories would have been averted. Disinfection and flushing were the treatment methodologies that were most effective in returning water systems to safe operations.

WT: How would you assess the response of the water treatment industry so far to the problems caused by the hurricane?

BA: [It] could be characterized as generous. In order to help maintain public health protection, many vendors were offering equipment and services at reduced or no cost to water systems.

Link to Reference: Matthew Brown, West Bank bureau, February 06, 2006

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Highlights:
- 100 Louisiana oyster farmers facing hard times since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed their oyster reefs are headed back to the water, as newly minted state contractors charged with assessing the storms' long-term damage.
- The only money so far in the pipeline is $199 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Emergency Conservation Program. That money will be split between farmers and oyster growers across six states that had hurricanes in 2005: Louisiana, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.
- Thousands of acres of oyster reefs were smashed by Katrina and Rita. The hurricanes also churned up millions of tons of silt in areas such as Lake Borgne and Black Bay. As the silt settled, it smothered about 60 percent of the shellfish crop east of the Mississippi.

More than 100 Louisiana oyster farmers facing hard times since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed their oyster reefs are headed back to the water, as newly minted state contractors charged with assessing the storms' long-term damage.

The work is a welcome change for the commercial fishers, who in many cases lost houses and boats on top of severe damage to the resource they depend on.

"It is more or less raining in a dry bucket for these fishermen to go out and do this. They can go out there and in a couple of weeks make 10 grand they didn't have," said Ricky Melerine, a St. Bernard Parish councilman coordinating the damage assessment in his parish.

Participants test the consistency of water bottoms using long poles, gathering information the state can use to decide where to rebuild reefs. The state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is spending about $1.2 million on the program.

That pales against the $2.2 billion economic blow Louisiana's seafood industry suffered in the storms. And John Roussel, assistant secretary for fisheries, said his cash-strapped agency has little more to offer fishers unless the state's call for $700 million in federal fisheries assistance is answered.

The only money so far in the pipeline is $199 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Emergency Conservation Program. That money will be split between farmers and oyster growers across six states that had hurricanes in 2005: Louisiana, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi. The money will be split again among various agricultural interests, including oysters, poultry and swine, according to state and USDA officials.

"When you start breaking that $200 million amongst all those, I don't know what kind of share oysters might get," Roussel said.

Thousands of acres of oyster reefs were smashed by Katrina and Rita. The hurricanes also churned up millions of tons of silt in areas such as Lake Borgne and Black Bay. As the silt settled, it smothered about 60 percent of the shellfish crop east of the Mississippi.

"In some cases reefs that were there for 40, 50 years are not there anymore," said Port Sulphur oyster farmer Pete Vujnovich Jr.

The oyster grounds east of the river are some of the top oyster-producing areas in the country, accounting for about one-sixth of all oysters harvested nationwide annually. Historically, Louisiana oyster growers working 2.3 million acres of public and private leases have provided more than a third of the nation's oysters.

State officials are hoping the USDA money will pay for future efforts to rebuild ruined reefs, an expensive endeavor that involves laying down thousands of tons of limestone or broken oyster shells.

First, however, the oyster farmers have been asked to pinpoint exactly what areas are salvageable. That work already has begun in St. Bernard and is expected to begin this week in Plaquemines.

The oyster farmers are surveying 550 plots east of the Mississippi River. The state is paying $2,000 per plot, and each plot takes about two days to survey, according to participants.

Water-bottom hardness is gauged by sticking poles into the mud at 400 locations within each plot.

To provide suitable oyster habitat, the bottom must be hard enough so that new reef material does not sink. Tidal currents must be present to bring a steady flow of nutrients that oysters consume by filtering from the water.

"Right now we're going to have to concentrate on what Katrina left us to work with that's viable or that could be easily restored," Vujnovich said. "The places that took extensive damage, if we don't have any help, we're going to have take care of over the years. It will be a lifetime."

. . . . . . .

Matthew Brown can be reached at mbrown@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3784.

Link to Reference: Natalie Chambers, The Mississippi Press, February 01, 2006

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Highlights:
- Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, told local officials that unless a spill is determined intentional or negligent, fines will not be assessed.
- During the 90-minute session, county supervisors repeatedly mentioned an inability to get straight answers from federal authorities, particularly on debris removal issues.
- "If we can improve the flow of monies, then certainly that would be better. As we all know that stream of money, from Federal Emergency Management Agency to Mississippi Emergency Management Agency then to reimburse us, that continues to be a bit of a nightmare and it is placing us all in a significantly restrictive financial capacity for what we are trying to accomplish,"

PASCAGOULA -- When Hurricane Katrina hit Jackson County on Aug. 29, it left Moss Point's lift stations battered. The city's inability to have total repairs in place has caused Mayor Xavier Bishop concern that an unavoidable spill could mean major fines for Moss Point.

Bishop was able to relax just a little Tuesday.

Phil Bass, head of the Office of Pollution Control for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, told local officials that unless a spill is determined intentional or negligent, fines will not be assessed.

Jimmy Palmer, regional administrator of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 4, arranged the session to help local leaders find ways to resolve issues that are slowing the storm recovery process.

Palmer also told the group several industrial sites along the Gulf Coast -- including Rohm and Haas, Bayou Casotte, Fort Bienville and Dupont DeLisle -- have been tested for storm-related contaminants.

"So far, we've not found any evidence of any problem caused by Katrina," he said.

During the 90-minute session, county supervisors repeatedly mentioned an inability to get straight answers from federal authorities, particularly on debris removal issues.
"I think the most frustrating part has been the fact it's very difficult at times to nail down procedures," said Supervisor Manly Barton.

Barton said Hurricane Katrina has brought on a different level of response and anxiety.

When a personnel change is made, policy and procedure appear to change too, he said.

"What we got to do is to deal with a host of regulations that are out there that govern various things. One problem that you know very well is the asbestos issue," Palmer said.

Supervisor John McKay said the first four months after the storm, the county was able to knock down structures without problems. When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was replaced by a private debris contractor, more stringent requirements were put in place.

"Now, starting the fifth month, we have to have our contractor out there with a water hose wetting it down, in case we have asbestos in a building. We're not given enough inspectors to go out and inspect it, which would alleviate the problem of having to haul it to a different landfill. So the relaxed regulation now is to just assume it's there and take it to a middle-class landfill, not a hazardous waste (landfill), which costs the government a whole lot more money," McKay said.

Palmer said key to removal of a structure is it must be deemed "unsound and in danger of imminent collapse."

"Things get tricky though when there is building that's still structurally sound," he said.

Supervisor Frank Leach said after the storm, local governments were ill-prepared to deal with wastewater issues.

"Every lift station across this Coast, literally, being out of commission because they went under water. All those electronics and pumps became a nightmare. We were searching diligently for the right type of equipment," he said.

Trying to get small items, such as chlorine tables, was practically impossible, he said.

There is a need for a preventive plan or a way to have spare parts at one's disposal, he said.

Leach also told Palmer finances have become a roadblock to recovery.

"If we can improve the flow of monies, then certainly that would be better. As we all know that stream of money, from Federal Emergency Management Agency to Mississippi Emergency Management Agency then to reimburse us, that continues to be a bit of a nightmare and it is placing us all in a significantly restrictive financial capacity for what we are trying to accomplish," Leach said.

Bass said his agency also wants the recovery process to pick up speed.

"By the same token, we've got to be sure that proper procedures are being followed keeping the dust down and when it's disposed of, you're not putting it somewhere where 10 or 15 years later it's going to cause a bigger problem than it's causing today. We recognize too, with only three solid waste landfills in the six coastal counties, that those aren't going to be logistically located to handle this. So we looked at upgrades to Class 1 facilities and we are doing that with everyone that will apply and agrees to keep up with paperwork and special coverings," Bass said.

Bass said mechanisms are in place to accommodate as quick and inexpensive removal as possible.

Palmer said during the storm, a humanitarian effort took effect.

With five months post-Katrina and more auditing being done, Palmer said federal authorities are reticent because they know they are being monitored.

"It has taken a tremendous effort to just get basic utilities back up and going and we're very fortunate that we've gotten there now," Palmer said.

"Now we're shifting into the issues of continuing to clean up the mess, clean up debris. For months, we just tried to get the roads open so we could move ourselves around. Now we are moving into the difficult phase of just cleaning up the rubble and then taking down buildings that have got to come down. That presents a whole new set of issues," Palmer said.

Pascagoula officials sought an extension of deadlines for stormwater improvements and debris removal.

"They are stopped up and we're fixing to get into rainy season," said David Groves of Ocean Springs.

Ocean Springs Mayor Connie Moran asked why an environmental study would take two years if a drawbridge is selected to replace the existing damaged Biloxi Bay bridge.

Palmer said he will research the issue.

Reporter Natalie Chambers can be reached at nchambers@themississippipress.com or (228) 934-1429.

Link to Reference: CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press, January 30, 2006

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Highlights:
- Everywhere scientists look, they see disrupted patterns in and along the Gulf of Mexico.
- Scientists say the future could be different. Nature might not be able to rebound so quickly. The reason: the human factor.
- Between 2004 and 2005, “we've basically demolished our coastline from Galveston (Texas) to Panama City, Fla.,” said Barry Keim, the state climatologist in Louisiana.

Last year's record hurricane season didn't just change life for humans. It changed nature, too.

Everywhere scientists look, they see disrupted patterns in and along the Gulf of Mexico. Coral reefs, flocks of sea birds, crab- and shrimp-filled meadows and dune-crowned beaches were wrapped up in — and altered by — the force of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Dennis.

“Nothing's been like this,” said Abby Sallenger, a U.S. Geological Survey oceanographer, during a recent flight over the northern Gulf Coast to study shoreline changes.

For him, the changes are mind-boggling: Some barrier islands are nearly gone; on others, beaches are scattered like bags of dropped flour.

Hurricanes have been kneading the Gulf Coast like putty for eons, carving out inlets and bays, creating beaches and altering plant and animal life — but until now, the natural world has largely been able to rebound. Trees, marine life and shoreline features that tourists and anglers enjoyed in recent years were largely the same types as those that 17th-century buccaneers and explorers encountered.

But scientists say the future could be different. Nature might not be able to rebound so quickly. The reason: the human factor.

“Natural systems are resilient and bounce back,” said Susan Cutter, a geographer with the University of South Carolina. “The problem is when we try to control nature rather than letting her do what she does.”

The seas are rising, the planet is getting hotter, and commercial and residential development is snowballing. Add those factors to a predicted increase in nasty hurricanes and the result is a recipe for potentially serious natural degradation, some say.

“It may bring about a situation (in which) the change is so rapid, it's something that's very different from what the ecosystem experienced over the last three, four thousand years,” said Kam-biu Liu, a Louisiana State University professor and hurricane paleoscientist. “We may be losing part of our beaches, we may lose our coastal wetlands, and our coastal forests may change permanently to a different kind of ecosystem.”

Between 2004 and 2005, “we've basically demolished our coastline from Galveston (Texas) to Panama City, Fla.,” said Barry Keim, the state climatologist in Louisiana. “It's getting to the point that we might have to rethink what our coastal map looks like.”

Surveys of the washed out Chandeleur Islands, an arc of barrier islands off the coast of Louisiana, found nesting grounds for brown pelicans, royal terns, sandwich terns and black skimmers gone.

“Hopefully the birds will be resilient enough to move to other areas,” said Tom Hess, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. “We will have to see.”

Salt water spread by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita killed marsh grasses across the Louisiana coast, leaving little to eat for Louisiana's most hunted bird — the duck.

Katrina and Rita didn't only kill plants. They annihilated more than 100 square miles of wetlands in Louisiana alone, scattering huge chunks of soft marshy earth.

A lot of things are happening under the water, too.

With their towering waves — well over 50 feet high during Katrina — hurricanes move huge volumes of mud and sediment on the ocean bottom, burying clam and oyster beds and seagrass meadows where crabs, shrimps and fish hide and feed. Can the sea plants spring back?

“It depends on the light penetration, how deep they are buried, and factors like that,” said John Dindo, a marine scientist and assistant director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama.

Farther out, where the continental shelf drops off, the wild seas kicked up by the hurricanes damaged the Gulf's coral reefs.

Coral reefs are resilient, for the most part, but like much else in nature along the Gulf Coast they could be devastated by an onslaught of powerful hurricanes and warming seas. A coral reef near Jamaica, for example, was wiped out by Hurricane Allen in 1980, Schmahl said.

“If they're hit continually with a whole variety of stressors they may not be able to recover, and that's the big concern right now,” he said.

“Most of the marsh where that salt water sat for a long time looks dead. It looks like it is does extremely late in the winter and you've had several extreme frosts,” said Robert Helm, a state waterfowl biologist. “Where we found birds, they seemed to be concentrated in the habitat that was not impacted by the storm.”

The Gulf, scientists say, won't turn into an environmental wasteland, but it could be less rich in flora and fauna.

Duck hunters ask themselves: If Louisiana's abundant wetlands keep getting knocked out, will the ducks head to greener fields?

“You don't go to the restaurant, find it empty, and hang around,” said Charlie Smith, a duck hunter.

Among fish, species shift locations when runoff from towns, septic systems and farms causes algae blooms or storms change salinity levels in coastal bays and channels. Still, not all changes are detrimental: When Gulf commercial and recreational fishermen are knocked out of the water in storms, overfished species like the red snapper get some breathing room.

Nor are the effects confined to the water or the shoreline. Go inland, and millions of trees — cypress, gum, pine, oak — were snapped like toothpicks. Wild fires fueled by fallen timber break out and kill even more trees. And plant diseases like citrus canker and soybean rust can be spread by hurricanes from one region to the next.

The Gulf is in the midst of flux — heavily developed, heavily fished and buffeted by climate change and storms. It's becoming a perfect place for oceanographers, marine biologists, geologists and geographers to study, said Steven F. DiMarco, an ocean researcher Texas A&M University.

“I think,” he said, “people are looking to the Gulf of Mexico ever more as a microcosm of the world.”

“The hurricanes may have changed habitat in ways that we have not even begun to assess,” said Harriet Perry, a fishery expert with the University of Southern Mississippi.

After Rita's 30-plus-foot waves, surveys of the coral at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary 100 miles off the coast of Louisiana and Texas showed damage to about 5 percent of the reef. Brain and star coral was toppled and smashed into other coral heads. About 3 feet of sand was dispersed on sand flats in the reef where trigger fish and queen conch burrow and nest.

Also, a large plume of contaminated runoff from the mainland's towns and industries befouled the reef for a couple of days, said G.P. Schmahl, the sanctuary's manager.

Link to Reference: Larry Wheeler, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, 1/29/06

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- More disasters of Hurricane Katrina-proportions are certain because the United States has no policy to control growth in danger zones at the water's edge.
- The number of Americans living near the shore increased by 23.6 million between 1980 and 2005
- concluded many coastal watersheds may trip from healthy to damaged over the next two decades unless coast communities adopt growth policies that slow land consumption and minimize polluted runoff from impervious surfaces.


More disasters of Hurricane Katrina-proportions are certain because the United States has no policy to control growth in danger zones at the water's edge.

In a single generation, a slow-moving crisis has developed as land along the nation's fragile coasts has been gobbled up, concentrating wealth at the shore and putting at risk millions of people and property valued in the billions.

Dense development
The number of Americans living near the shore increased by 23.6 million between 1980 and 2005, according to a Gannett News Service analysis of population trends in counties nearest the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes. From the air, the footprint of coastal sprawl is unmistakable -- vast tracts of newly built houses stretch for miles. Ribbons of asphalt are crowded with shopping centers, gas stations, restaurants and other buildings.

If runaway land consumption and relentless growth in automobile use continue, many healthy shore communities could face sharp declines over the next 25 years, says Dana Beach, director of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League and an authority on coastal sprawl. He is especially concerned about developing and paving over land that drains into nearby bodies of water.

Beach authored a report for the Pew Oceans Commission that concluded many coastal watersheds may trip from healthy to damaged over the next two decades unless coast communities adopt growth policies that slow land consumption and minimize polluted runoff from impervious surfaces.

"Part of the dilemma is that there is vast ignorance across the country about ecology," Beach said. "When we modify watersheds (with roads and buildings), we are changing the physical attributes, the biological attributes of the water bodies embedded in those watersheds."

Concerns about Charleston's rapid pace of growth brought more than 100 local residents to a town council meeting one November evening in nearby Mount Pleasant.

Many spoke passionately against a town annexation proposal that could have opened the door to new homes, roads and shopping centers at the entrance to the region's ecological crown jewel -- the Francis Marion National Forest.

"Money isn't everything," said Kathie Livingston, an eco-tourism operator who lives in a small community inside the forest boundaries. "Any more annexation will be detrimental to the environment."

In some coastal areas, especially the urbanized mid-Atlantic, the Northeast and the Rust Belt states bordering the Great Lakes, much waterfront land is covered with roads, parking lots and rooftops -- all impervious surfaces.

Once more than 10 percent of the acreage of a watershed is no longer porous, creeks, rivers, streams and other water bodies seriously degrade, said Beach.

Runoff from parking lots and roads harm coastal waters by adding silt and debris that smother plants, promote algae growth and alter the habitat so it can no longer support fish, crabs and other creatures.

Coastal sprawl is consuming land far faster than the underlying rate of population growth, Beach said.

"It should be a warning sign," he said. "It ought to inspire us to do something."

For the most part, local governments control land-use decisions and are constantly forced to choose between the rights of property owners who want maximum value for their land and other community voices calling for restraint.

Paul Riddick, a funeral home owner and city councilman, said growth has been good for Norfolk, Va., a historic Navy town.

"Norfolk is going through its second phase of urban renewal," said Riddick, a lifelong resident of the city and former president of the Norfolk Branch of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "We have so many condos being built that you can't imagine it."

Indeed, gritty bars and cheap garden apartments are rapidly giving way to award-winning seaside developments with big-city price tags.

Change carries a price. "We're seeing a lot of whites coming into certain communities that once were white, changed to black and now they are changing back again," said Riddick, who was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the city school board to prevent the return of segregated elementary schools.

Norfolk officials say they plan to spearhead construction of low-cost homes for working-class families.

Damaging estuaries

Most coastal communities recognize their bays and estuaries are in severe decline after decades of growth have eliminated sensitive wetlands and polluted the waters.

The 3,000-square-mile Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" off the Texas-Louisiana coast is well-known. Aquatic life there has perished. Spawning has halted.

Texas officials are trying to prevent further loss of habitat by limiting development along the 367-mile coast, through state and federal coastal and wetland protection programs, according to the state's Center for Policy Studies and Environmental Defense.

In the mid-Atlantic, the Chesapeake Bay has been plagued by problems.

In November, regional leaders agreed to pursue state and federal regulations that would require farmers to handle their animal feed and waste in a more environmentally sensitive way.

"This year has been a turning point for the Chesapeake Bay," said Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell. He also is the chairman of the Chesapeake Executive Council.

The group's goal: to get the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the Chesapeake and its tributaries from the agency's list of impaired waters by 2010.

Hazardous bacterial contamination caused more than 20,000 closings and health advisory days at beaches across the country in 2004, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council's most recent report.

That's the most since the environmental group began tracking the problem 15 years ago, said Nancy Stoner, director of the council's Clean Water Project, although some of the increase is due to greater monitoring.

Patchwork of programs

The federal government has a patchwork of regulations and agencies that focus on pollution, flood control, the environment and growth patterns.

Some federal efforts like the National Flood Insurance Program and beach restoration projects run by the Army Corps of Engineers contribute to the growth of waterfront communities.

The value of property covered by the flood program is $555 billion, more than five times what it was 25 years ago. It generates approximately $2 billion in annual revenues, mostly from premium payments.

Hurricane Katrina demonstrated how a single disaster can overwhelm the flood program.

The federal government's lead agency on ocean and coastal issues now offers programs to help shore communities learn about the natural disasters that threaten them so they can make smarter decisions about future growth.

However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's budget has remained relatively flat since 2000, limiting the reach of its small teams of coastal specialists. The agency's budget for the current year is $3.86 billion, down 4 percent from 2005.

Nevertheless, NOAA has teamed up with experts at the Environmental Protection Agency to address the problem.

Natives displaced

Many beach communities have evolved into playgrounds for the wealthy, creating a new underclass of workers who can't afford to live in the areas.

Karen Krafft, a single mother with two children, is typical.

She can barely make ends meet living in Nags Head, N.C. She works as a credit counselor. Her annual salary is $25,000. On summer weekends she cleans vacation homes for extra money.

"Unfortunately, I don't have a positive outlook on the Outer Banks because it is such a struggle," Krafft said. "It's beautiful here and I'm fortunate to live near my family. But I work seven days a week."

Krafft's story is not unusual, said Charles Colgan, chief economist for NOAA's National Ocean Economics Program.

Colgan has traced the roots of America's love affair with the coast to the economic boom the nation enjoyed following World War II.

"The bulk of the growth in coastal areas came about as a result of a wealthier society that has a very high taste for the ocean," Colgan said.

Solutions await action

In its final report, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy made more than 200 recommendations to highlight coastal issues and coordinate 11 Cabinet-level departments and four independent agencies that oversee some portion of the nation's ocean and coastal policy.

The ambitious agenda has received little attention from the White House or Congress.

President Bush partially followed one recommendation and formed a Cabinet-level Committee on Ocean Policy, which mostly serves as a clearinghouse for information on existing programs.

"The jury is still out," said the commission's Watkins, who has formed an interest group to continue pressuring Congress and the administration.

"The oceans are no longer the eternal cesspool for mankind. They can't handle it anymore."

Link to Reference: Larry Wheeler, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, January 29, 2006

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- More disasters of Hurricane Katrina-proportions are certain because the United States has no policy to control growth in danger zones at the water's edge.
- A slow-moving crisis has developed as land along the nation's fragile coasts has been gobbled up, concentrating wealth at the shore and putting at risk millions of people and property valued in the billions.
- Pew Oceans Commission that concluded many coastal watersheds may trip from healthy to damaged over the next two decades unless coast communities adopt growth policies that slow land consumption and minimize polluted runoff from impervious surfaces.

More disasters of Hurricane Katrina-proportions are certain because the United States has no policy to control growth in danger zones at the water's edge.

In a single generation, a slow-moving crisis has developed as land along the nation's fragile coasts has been gobbled up, concentrating wealth at the shore and putting at risk millions of people and property valued in the billions.

Dense development

The number of Americans living near the shore increased by 23.6 million between 1980 and 2005, according to a Gannett News Service analysis of population trends in counties nearest the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes. From the air, the footprint of coastal sprawl is unmistakable -- vast tracts of newly built houses stretch for miles. Ribbons of asphalt are crowded with shopping centers, gas stations, restaurants and other buildings.

If runaway land consumption and relentless growth in automobile use continue, many healthy shore communities could face sharp declines over the next 25 years, says Dana Beach, director of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League and an authority on coastal sprawl. He is especially concerned about developing and paving over land that drains into nearby bodies of water.

Beach authored a report for the Pew Oceans Commission that concluded many coastal watersheds may trip from healthy to damaged over the next two decades unless coast communities adopt growth policies that slow land consumption and minimize polluted runoff from impervious surfaces.

"Part of the dilemma is that there is vast ignorance across the country about ecology," Beach said. "When we modify watersheds (with roads and buildings), we are changing the physical attributes, the biological attributes of the water bodies embedded in those watersheds."

Concerns about Charleston's rapid pace of growth brought more than 100 local residents to a town council meeting one November evening in nearby Mount Pleasant.

Many spoke passionately against a town annexation proposal that could have opened the door to new homes, roads and shopping centers at the entrance to the region's ecological crown jewel -- the Francis Marion National Forest.

"Money isn't everything," said Kathie Livingston, an eco-tourism operator who lives in a small community inside the forest boundaries. "Any more annexation will be detrimental to the environment."

In some coastal areas, especially the urbanized mid-Atlantic, the Northeast and the Rust Belt states bordering the Great Lakes, much waterfront land is covered with roads, parking lots and rooftops -- all impervious surfaces.

Once more than 10 percent of the acreage of a watershed is no longer porous, creeks, rivers, streams and other water bodies seriously degrade, said Beach.

Runoff from parking lots and roads harm coastal waters by adding silt and debris that smother plants, promote algae growth and alter the habitat so it can no longer support fish, crabs and other creatures.

Coastal sprawl is consuming land far faster than the underlying rate of population growth, Beach said.

"It should be a warning sign," he said. "It ought to inspire us to do something."

For the most part, local governments control land-use decisions and are constantly forced to choose between the rights of property owners who want maximum value for their land and other community voices calling for restraint.

Paul Riddick, a funeral home owner and city councilman, said growth has been good for Norfolk, Va., a historic Navy town.

"Norfolk is going through its second phase of urban renewal," said Riddick, a lifelong resident of the city and former president of the Norfolk Branch of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "We have so many condos being built that you can't imagine it."

Indeed, gritty bars and cheap garden apartments are rapidly giving way to award-winning seaside developments with big-city price tags.

Change carries a price. "We're seeing a lot of whites coming into certain communities that once were white, changed to black and now they are changing back again," said Riddick, who was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the city school board to prevent the return of segregated elementary schools.

Norfolk officials say they plan to spearhead construction of low-cost homes for working-class families.

Damaging estuaries

Most coastal communities recognize their bays and estuaries are in severe decline after decades of growth have eliminated sensitive wetlands and polluted the waters.

The 3,000-square-mile Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" off the Texas-Louisiana coast is well-known. Aquatic life there has perished. Spawning has halted.

Texas officials are trying to prevent further loss of habitat by limiting development along the 367-mile coast, through state and federal coastal and wetland protection programs, according to the state's Center for Policy Studies and Environmental Defense.

In the mid-Atlantic, the Chesapeake Bay has been plagued by problems.

In November, regional leaders agreed to pursue state and federal regulations that would require farmers to handle their animal feed and waste in a more environmentally sensitive way.

"This year has been a turning point for the Chesapeake Bay," said Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell. He also is the chairman of the Chesapeake Executive Council.

The group's goal: to get the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the Chesapeake and its tributaries from the agency's list of impaired waters by 2010.

Hazardous bacterial contamination caused more than 20,000 closings and health advisory days at beaches across the country in 2004, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council's most recent report.

That's the most since the environmental group began tracking the problem 15 years ago, said Nancy Stoner, director of the council's Clean Water Project, although some of the increase is due to greater monitoring.

Patchwork of programs

The federal government has a patchwork of regulations and agencies that focus on pollution, flood control, the environment and growth patterns.

Some federal efforts like the National Flood Insurance Program and beach restoration projects run by the Army Corps of Engineers contribute to the growth of waterfront communities.

The value of property covered by the flood program is $555 billion, more than five times what it was 25 years ago. It generates approximately $2 billion in annual revenues, mostly from premium payments.

Hurricane Katrina demonstrated how a single disaster can overwhelm the flood program.

The federal government's lead agency on ocean and coastal issues now offers programs to help shore communities learn about the natural disasters that threaten them so they can make smarter decisions about future growth.

However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's budget has remained relatively flat since 2000, limiting the reach of its small teams of coastal specialists. The agency's budget for the current year is $3.86 billion, down 4 percent from 2005.

Nevertheless, NOAA has teamed up with experts at the Environmental Protection Agency to address the problem.

Natives displaced

Many beach communities have evolved into playgrounds for the wealthy, creating a new underclass of workers who can't afford to live in the areas.

Karen Krafft, a single mother with two children, is typical.

She can barely make ends meet living in Nags Head, N.C. She works as a credit counselor. Her annual salary is $25,000. On summer weekends she cleans vacation homes for extra money.

"Unfortunately, I don't have a positive outlook on the Outer Banks because it is such a struggle," Krafft said. "It's beautiful here and I'm fortunate to live near my family. But I work seven days a week."

Krafft's story is not unusual, said Charles Colgan, chief economist for NOAA's National Ocean Economics Program.

Colgan has traced the roots of America's love affair with the coast to the economic boom the nation enjoyed following World War II.

"The bulk of the growth in coastal areas came about as a result of a wealthier society that has a very high taste for the ocean," Colgan said.

Solutions await action

In its final report, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy made more than 200 recommendations to highlight coastal issues and coordinate 11 Cabinet-level departments and four independent agencies that oversee some portion of the nation's ocean and coastal policy.

The ambitious agenda has received little attention from the White House or Congress.

President Bush partially followed one recommendation and formed a Cabinet-level Committee on Ocean Policy, which mostly serves as a clearinghouse for information on existing programs.

"The jury is still out," said the commission's Watkins, who has formed an interest group to continue pressuring Congress and the administration.

"The oceans are no longer the eternal cesspool for mankind. They can't handle it anymore."

Link to Reference: John Pope, Staff writer, January 23, 2006

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- Even though the insects breed in water, the storms flushed out the stagnant areas they like for breeding, killed adult mosquitoes, washed away larvae and killed or dispersed the birds that carry West Nile after mosquitoes bite them, state epidemiologist Raoult Ratard said.
- To keep from being bitten by infected mosquitoes, health officials recommend staying inside around dusk and dawn, when the insects swarm; covering arms and legs; getting rid of standing water; and using repellent with DEET.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita pounded southern Louisiana last year, but the water they dumped on the state did not lead to a surge in West Nile virus infections, according to the state health department's year-end report on the mosquito-borne disease.

Even though the insects breed in water, the storms flushed out the stagnant areas they like for breeding, killed adult mosquitoes, washed away larvae and killed or dispersed the birds that carry West Nile after mosquitoes bite them, state epidemiologist Raoult Ratard said.

According to the summary, which was released Friday, 177 Louisianians were infected with West Nile last year and 10 people died from its complications, which can include inflammation of the brain and spinal cord.

The last case count represented an increase of 22 infections since the previous report in mid-November.

There were only scattered reports of infections last year in the New Orleans area, where Katrina struck, and southwest Louisiana, where Rita roared ashore, Ratard said.

The most cases last year were in Caddo Parish, in Louisiana's northwest corner, which logged 24 cases, and East Baton Rouge Parish, where 23 infections were reported. In the seven-parish New Orleans area, there were 26 infections and one death, which occurred in Orleans Parish in July.

The statewide case total was the highest since 2002, when West Nile infections were first reported in Louisiana. In that year, there were 329 cases and 25 deaths.

In 2003, there were 122 cases and seven West Nile-related deaths, according to the Department of Health and Hospitals, and in 2004, 114 infections and seven deaths were reported.

Other mosquito-borne infections found in Louisiana last year included a case of St. Louis encephalitis in Orleans Parish, a diagnosis of eastern equine encephalitis in St. John the Baptist Parish and one LaCrosse virus infection in St. Tammany Parish.

The viruses are in the same family as West Nile, health department spokesman Kristen Meyer said, and they all start with the same flulike symptoms.

Sometimes the differences between the illnesses can be so difficult to detect that a laboratory test may be required to make a diagnosis, she said.

To keep from being bitten by infected mosquitoes, health officials recommend staying inside around dusk and dawn, when the insects swarm; covering arms and legs; getting rid of standing water; and using repellent with DEET.

Link to Reference: Claudia Copeland, Specialist in Resources and Environmental Policy, Resources, Science, and Industry Division. October 19, 2005

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- Throughout the Gulf Coast region, Hurricane Katrina’s high winds and water
damaged a wide range of public service facilities, including drinking water supply and
treatment and sewage treatment plants, and restoring those facilities is part of the overall
cleanup and restoration process.
- Damages at many water infrastructure facilities as a result of Hurricane Katrina
included loss of electric power to pump, process, and treat raw water supply and
wastewater.
-
Summary
Throughout the Gulf Coast region, Hurricane Katrina’s high winds and water
damaged a wide range of public service facilities, including drinking water supply and
treatment and sewage treatment plants, and restoring those facilities is part of the overall
cleanup and restoration process. This report describes information that has been
gathered about impacts of the August 29 hurricane on drinking water and wastewater
treatment facilities and on ongoing efforts to assess damages and needs to repair and
reconstruct damaged systems. Facility restorations may take many months, and costs
of needed repairs are unknown for now. To meet those needs, affected communities are
likely to rely heavily on federal assistance in emergency appropriations acts, as well as
traditional water infrastructure programs, principally those administered by the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The
Senate has passed a bill intended to streamline delivery of funds through existing EPA
programs to repair storm-damaged sewage treatment and drinking water plants (S.
1709). Also, legislation has been introduced that would provide hurricane assistance to
Louisiana, including $5 billion for water infrastructure projects (S. 1765/S. 1766, H.R.
3958). This report will be updated as events warrant.

Water Infrastructure Facilities Affected by Hurricane Katrina
Damages at many water infrastructure facilities as a result of Hurricane Katrina
included loss of electric power to pump, process, and treat raw water supply and
wastewater. Initially following the storm, some plants were able to operate temporarily
on backup generators, so long as fuel was available. In addition, flooding disabled
services in a number of locations, including New Orleans. Overall, a large number of
systems were affected. For example, within a few days after the hurricane, the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that more than 1,220 drinking water
systems (many of them very small, in terms of customers served) and more than 200
wastewater treatment facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama had been affected.
CRS-2
1 Detailed information, updated often, is available on EPA’s Web site at:
[http://www.epa.gov/katrina/activities.html].
As electric power was restored, many of the affected systems have been able to
restore needed services (especially facilities in Alabama, which was not in the center of
the storm’s path). Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, EPA reported that about 30% of
the affected drinking water and 40% of the affected wastewater facilities were again
operating. However, many of the inoperable drinking water and wastewater plants serve
large numbers of customers. In Biloxi, for example, officials were unable to re-pressurize
the drinking water system because of broken and inaccessible water mains and valves.
One-third of the sewage treatment facilities in Harrison County, Mississippi (serving
Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, and Pass Christian) were destroyed or very severely
damaged. Similarly, drinking water and sewage service for more than a million customers
in New Orleans (discussed below) was severely disrupted.
EPA reported that by October 10 — and following a second hurricane, Hurricane
Rita, that hit Texas and parts of Louisiana on September 24 — more than 85% of drinking
water and 95% of wastewater treatment facilities in the region were operational.1
However, as of that date, 131 drinking water systems (67 in Louisiana and 64 in
Mississippi) were operating on a boil water notice pending test results to ensure that the
water has been restored to standards safe for public consumption, and 175 others (142 in
Louisiana and 33 in Mississippi) serving about 200,000 consumers were either inoperable
or their status was unknown. All drinking water facilities in Alabama were reported to
be operational. In Texas, 45% of drinking water facilities were operational two weeks
after Hurricane Rita, and the remainder were operating on a boil water notice, were not
operating, or were still being investigated.
Also as of October 10, 22 sewage treatment plants in Louisiana serving more than
half a million customers were not operational or were reported to be experiencing
operational difficulties. Wastewater plants in Mississippi and Alabama were operational.
In Texas, 84% of wastewater treatment plants were operational. Staff of EPA’s Water
Program are preparing to assess all drinking water and wastewater plants in the region,
including more than 900 facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi that are located in areas
that were unaffected by Hurricane Katrina.
For damaged facilities, steps involved in restoring service include drying out and
cleaning engines and pumps; testing and repairing waterlogged electrical systems; testing
for toxic chemicals and harmful bacteria that may have infiltrated pipes and plants;
restoring pressure (drinking water distribution systems); activating disinfection units;
restoring bacteria needed to treat wastes (wastewater plants); and cleaning, repairing, and
flushing distribution and sewer lines.
Impacts of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans’s water system were particularly
severe. Some parts of the city did not experience interrupted service, while other parts
where water was available were advised that it should only be used for flushing toilets and
fighting fires. But in the central portion of the city, in addition to electric power
impairments, extensive damage occurred to the water infrastructure from flooding of
treatment plants, drinking water distribution lines, collector and interceptor sewers, and
CRS-3
2 Much of the New Orleans water infrastructure was built more than 75 years ago. Even before
the hurricane, the Sewerage and Water Board, which is responsible for providing drinking water,
sewage treatment, and drainage services to more than one million customers, had a $1 billion
capital improvement program to address long-term maintenance and repair needs, including
compliance with a 1998 court-ordered sewer system consent decree
3 Section 502(6) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-296, codified predominantly
at 6 U.S.C. §§101-557 ) authorized the Secretary of Homeland Security to consolidate federal
government emergency response plans into a single, coordinated National Response Plan (NRP),
the framework to coordinate activities of the federal government with those of state, local, and
tribal governments and the private sector. It is organized by 15 Emergency Support Functions,
such as public works and engineering, public health, and oil and hazardous materials response,
each with a designated coordinator, primary agencies, and support agencies. The text of the NRP
is available at: [http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf].
the water system’s powerplant.2 Even after restoration of electricity, cleanup and recovery
at flooded water and sewage treatment plants is likely to take considerable time. The
largest of the city’s two drinking water plants, located where the worst flooding took
place, was completely underwater for nearly two weeks. It was repaired sufficiently to
provide flow (i.e., for fire fighting), but may not be providing potable water for weeks,
officials say.
For flooded areas, sewage treatment often is the last thing back on line, because
plants are at the lowest point of the city and thus under the deepest water. New Orleans’s
two wastewater treatment plants were damaged: the larger facility, which serves 1.2
million customers, was flooded; the smaller facility, located on the west bank of the
Mississippi River, experienced extensive wind damage. The city’s public works officials
reportedly believe that much of the sewer system has probably been damaged, and cracks
will need to be fixed by tearing up roads (although road repairs already may be required,
as part of the overall cleanup effort), a potentially lengthy repair process.
Damage and Needs Assessments
Under authority of the National Response Plan,3 EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers staff are conducting assessments of water infrastructure systems, assisting state
and local government personnel to evaluate damages. Efforts to assess facilities continue
throughout the region to determine their operating status, including needs to repair or
rebuild.
EPA cautions that evaluations are ongoing, and the status of many facilities is
unclear (especially small systems), even more than six weeks after Hurricane Katrina.
Facilities determined to be operational may not be providing the required level of
treatment (for example, some wastewater treatment plants in Alabama and Mississippi are
operating at limited capacity or are providing only primary treatment of sewage, not full
secondary or better, as required by law and to meet water quality standards). Many of
these facilities may still require repair or reconstruction. Facility restorations, full or
partial, may take many months, and costs of needed repairs are unknown. On September
23, the American Water Works Association (AWWA) issued a very preliminary estimate
that $2.25 billion will be needed to repair or replace drinking water infrastructure at
public water systems that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The estimated total is
CRS-4
4 American Water Works Association. “Restoring Public Water Supply Systems in the Aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina: A Preliminary Cost Estimate.” Sept. 23, 2005.
5 Daily Environment Report. “Louisiana Estimates Environmental Cleanup for Katrina Damage
Could Cost $61.5 Billion.” No. 178, Sept. 15, 2005, p. A-13.
6 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Watersheds Needs Survey 2000 Report to
Congress. August 2003. EPA 832-03-001; Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and
Assessment, Third Report to Congress. June 2005. EPA 816-R-04-001. For additional
information, see CRS Report RL31116, Water Infrastructure Needs and Investment: Review and
Analysis of Key Issues, by Claudia Copeland and Mary Tiemann.
comprised of $650 million for 885 systems serving fewer than 10,000 persons and mostly
using groundwater for their supply, plus $1.6 billion for 47 systems serving more than
10,000 persons. The estimates were presented with significant caveats, however, because
of the limited information available on the extent of actual damage. The incomplete
information necessitated AWWA’s analysts having to make a large number of
assumptions about the severity of damage and repair and replacement needs.4
Estimates of needs for reconstructing sewage treatment facilities throughout the
region have not been issued. Early in September, Louisiana officials reportedly developed
some very preliminary assessments of funding needs and said in a draft report that the
state will need $35 billion to restore the wastewater treatment infrastructure, based on a
broad assumption that 50% of the existing treatment plants and 20% of the existing
sewage collection systems will need to be rebuilt.5
Meeting Needs for Repair and Reconstruction
As previously noted, assessments of needed water infrastructure repairs and
associated cost estimates are incomplete for now, but could be substantial for systems that
were directly affected. How those communities will pay for repairs represents a challenge
to public officials at all levels of government. The 109th Congress has begun to consider
how to assist their activities.
At the same time, repairing storm-damaged facilities is the most recent, but not the
only, funding needed by water infrastructure systems in the Gulf Coast and elsewhere.
Throughout the United States, wastewater and drinking water utilities face significant
investment needs to meet the treatment and performance requirements of the Clean Water
Act (CWA) and the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). According to the most recent
estimates by EPA and states, the nation’s public water and wastewater treatment systems
need more than $460 billion over the next 20 years to construct and upgrade facilities in
order to comply with those laws and to provide safe and healthy water.6 The federal
government is unlikely to provide 100% of that amount, and policymakers already are
debating how to meet those existing needs, which of course do not reflect additional costs
to reconstruct hurricane-damaged structures.
Over the years, Congress has authorized a number of programs to assist local
communities in addressing water supply, drinking water, and wastewater treatment
problems. These programs generally are intended to aid communities in constructing
facilities to comply with federal drinking water regulations and clean water rules to
prevent the discharge of harmful levels of sewage wastes into surface waters. They have
CRS-5
7 For additional information, see CRS Report RL30478, Federally Supported Water Supply and
Wastewater Treatment Programs.
8 For a review of federal emergency assistance programs, see CRS Report RS22248, Federal
Disaster and Emergency Assistance for Water Infrastructure Facilities and Supplies, by Claudia
Copeland, Mary Tiemann, and Nicole T. Carter.
9 U.S. Congress. Senate Budget Committee. “Informed Budgeteer, No. 5.” Sept. 12, 2005.
different types of financing mechanisms (some provide grants, others authorize loans),
various administering agencies, and other differences, such as eligible community size.7
These programs comprise the traditional sources of federal assistance that communities
use to meet their water infrastructure needs.
Congress also has authorized a number of programs that can provide emergency
assistance to repair and restore drinking water, wastewater, and related water
infrastructure systems and facilities. These include programs administered by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), EPA, the Corps of Engineers, and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.8 Responding to the 2005 hurricane disasters, the 109th
Congress has already provided more than $62 billion in emergency assistance in P.L. 109-
61 and P.L. 109-62. Approximately $7.8 billion of that amount is targeted for
infrastructure repair, but it is not limited to drinking water and wastewater facilities.9
Congress additionally may consider other legislation to specifically aid in repairing
and rebuilding storm-damaged structures. For example, S. 1765/S. 1766 and H.R. 3958,
the Louisiana Katrina Reconstruction Act, seeks $1.035 billion in appropriations for EPA
to provide infrastructure assistance in Louisiana, plus $4 billion directly to the state of
Louisiana for repair, reconstruction, and improvement of storm-affected wastewater and
drinking water infrastructure systems. If no additional targeted appropriations are
provided for facilities in the Gulf Coast states, as proposed in that legislation, the affected
communities are likely to rely heavily on combined resources of federal emergency
appropriations and funding under the traditional water infrastructure aid programs,
especially those administered nationally by the Department of Agriculture (loan and grant
programs for water and waste disposal projects in communities of less than 10,000
persons) and by EPA. Under EPA’s programs, authorized in the CWA and the SDWA,
federal grants of appropriated funds are used to capitalize state revolving fund (SRF)
programs. States, in turn, make loans from the SRFs to local communities for needed
drinking water and wastewater projects.
Other legislation introduced in response to Hurricane Katrina includes changes to
EPA-administered funding programs, but not additional appropriations. On September
27, the Senate passed S. 1709, the Gulf Coast Emergency Water Infrastructure Assistance
Act. It would modify the revolving loan provisions of the Clean Water Act to provide
favorable treatment (such as forgiveness of loan principal and extended repayment) for
sewage treatment repair or rebuilding projects in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Safe Drinking Water Act already includes similar provisions that are not restricted
to emergency conditions. S. 1709 would permit those states for two years to provide
assistance for wastewater and drinking water projects not included on a state’s Intended
Use Plan, since many of the systems affected by Hurricane Katrina are believed to not be
included in the plans which generally are required before a project can be funded under
either the CWA or SDWA. It also would authorize EPA to test private drinking water
CRS-6
wells affected by Hurricane Katrina for contamination. Privately owned wells that
provide drinking water are regulated by states, not EPA, and in most states, owners of
private wells are responsible for testing.
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and subsequently after Hurricane
Rita, much attention has been focused on assistance for individual victims and
management of the overall response effort. As that effort proceeds and assessments of
impacts and needs are refined, Congress may consider other policy options and issues,
including with regard to water infrastructure systems.

Link to Reference: John Manuel, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 114, Number 1, January 2006

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- Months after Katrina roared into the Gulf Coast, the environmental health implications of the storm are still being assessed.
- EPA analyzed floodwaters for more than 100 hazardous pollutants such as volatile and semivolatile organic compounds, metals, pesticides, herbicides, and polychlorinated biphenyls. They also tested for biological agents such as Escherichia coli. Their testing revealed “greatly elevated” levels of E. coli, as much as ten times higher than EPA’s recommended levels for contact. According to the EPA, agency scientists found levels of lead and arsenic at some sites in excess of drinking water standards--a potential threat given the possibility of hand-to-mouth exposure. The EPA posted these and other findings on its Hurricane Response 2005 website (http://www.epa.gov/katrina/), created after the storm.
- Though most water supply systems may be functioning again, the safety of distribution lines that were flooded can’t yet be ensured either. “There are possible changes in pipe ecology due to the intrusion of contaminants,” said Frumkin. “And we have additional concerns for homes on wells.” Louisiana officials speaking at the roundtable said there are dozens of community water systems and tens of thousands of private wells that need to be tested for contamination.


Hurricane Katrina has been called the most devastating natural environmental calamity in U.S. history. Visitors to the scene say the destruction is worse than anyone can imagine. Scientists also say that some perceived health threats have been overblown and others understated. Months after Katrina roared into the Gulf Coast, the environmental health implications of the storm are still being assessed.

Katrina presented residents of the Gulf Coast with a bewildering array of environmental health hazards. Aside from standing floodwater, hazards included a lack of potable water, sewage treatment, and electricity; chemical spills; swarms of insects (with anecodotal accounts of vermin and hungry domestic dogs); food contamination; disrupted transportation; mountains of debris; buildings damaged and destroyed; rampant mold growth; tainted fish and shellfish populations; and many potential sources of hazardous waste. Some impacts, such as deaths from drowning and injuries from cleaning up debris, have been relatively easy to determine. Others, such as post-traumatic stress disorder from the loss of homes and loved ones, may never be fully quantified.
Comprehending the catastrophe. (above) Phyllis Howley, 70, sits on what’s left of the porch of her son’s New Orleans home. (top) The beach in Biloxi, Mississippi, four days after Katrina.
image: Stephan Savoia/AP Photos
In the weeks following the storm, federal agencies such as the NIEHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as state environmental and public health agencies, sent scientists to the region to begin assessing the environmental and human health impact of the disaster. Much of what they found was presented on October 20 at a meeting of the National Academies Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine (commonly known as the EHSRT), supported by the NIEHS, the CDC, the EPA, Exxon-Mobile Corporation, the American Chemistry Council, and the Brita Water Research Institute. Still more information continues to emerge today. And much simply remains to be seen.

Katrina Hits

Katrina, rated as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, made landfall near New Orleans on 29 August 2005. Wind damage extended as far as 150 miles inland. Heavy rain battered the area, and the storm surge--measuring as high as 30 feet and sweeping several miles inland--breached several levees intended to protect New Orleans from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain. Water poured through the breaks in the days following the storm, covering approximately 80% of the city with water as deep as three meters. The American Red Cross estimates that more than 354,000 homes along the Gulf Coast were destroyed or damaged beyond repair by Katrina and, a month later, Hurricane Rita. Hundreds of small manufacturers or businesses using chemicals or fuels also were impacted.

Flooding, wind, and waves caused major damage to buildings and infrastructure whose integrity is key to the environmental health of the local citizenry. The EPA estimated that more than 200 sewage treatment plants in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were affected, with almost all the plants around New Orleans knocked out of action. Loss of power meant lift stations (which pump sewage uphill) could not work, causing sewage to overflow into houses and streets.

The region struck by Katrina and Rita is home to a large number of oil refineries and chemical plants. Prior to Katrina, the EPA had identified nearly 400 sites in the affected area as possibly needing cleanup because of their potential impact on human health. Following the storm, the U.S. Coast Guard reported numerous oil spills from refineries and tank farms in South Louisiana. A story in the September 30 Boston Globe reported that Katrina damaged 140 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, 43 seriously, including some that floated away or sank.

Across the Gulf Coast, more than 1.5 million people evacuated as the storm approached. More than 100,000 stayed behind in New Orleans, unwilling or unable to leave. As New Orleans flooded, thousands waded through chest-deep floodwaters to reach shelters or higher ground. Thousands more remained trapped in homes, hospitals, and nursing homes. Conditions in shelters rapidly became unsanitary. Many people were exposed to the elements for five days or more, living with little or no food, drinking water, or medicine. As of December 5, the death toll was reported at 1,071 in Louisiana, 228 in Mississippi, 14 in Florida, 2 in Alabama, and 2 in Georgia.
First Response

Numerous federal, state, and local agencies, as well as private individuals and relief groups, swung into action in the wake of the storm. Troops from the U.S. Army, Coast Guard, and National Guard as well as state and local officials and private citizens rescued those they could. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was assigned the lead in disaster relief planning and administration, including provision of emergency food and shelter and contracting for debris removal. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) declared a public health emergency in the Gulf states and directed the CDC to take appropriate action. The CDC deployed more than 600 professionals into the disaster zone, including specialists in public health nursing, occupational safety and health, laboratory science, medicine, epidemiology, sanitation, environmental health, disease surveillance, public information, and health risk communication.

The CDC also joined with the EPA to set up a joint task force to conduct an environmental health needs and habitability assessment to identify critical public health issues for the reinhabitation of New Orleans. This city was unique among the areas hit in that it was the only one left with standing water. Major urban areas in Mississippi and Alabama, while devastated, did not remain flooded.

images: Left to right: Chip Hughes/NIEHS; Bill Haber/AP Photos
Hazards in wading? Initial reports labeled the floodwaters through which many New Orleans residents were forced to wade a “toxic gumbo.” Later testing of stormwaters found elevated levels of fewer contaminants than feared, but sampling was limited and the water may yet present long-term problems.
In advance of the storm’s arrival, the EPA had predeployed teams to the area, with the mission of guiding debris disposal, assisting in the restoration of drinking and wastewater treatment systems, and containing hazardous waste spills. Immediately after the storm, these teams used their 60 watercraft to help search-and-rescue efforts, rescuing about 800 people, according to EPA administrator Stephen Johnson. Five days after the storm, the EPA began testing floodwaters in New Orleans for biological and chemical contamination.

In coordination with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ), the EPA analyzed floodwaters for more than 100 hazardous pollutants such as volatile and semivolatile organic compounds, metals, pesticides, herbicides, and polychlorinated biphenyls. They also tested for biological agents such as Escherichia coli. Their testing revealed “greatly elevated” levels of E. coli, as much as ten times higher than EPA’s recommended levels for contact. According to the EPA, agency scientists found levels of lead and arsenic at some sites in excess of drinking water standards--a potential threat given the possibility of hand-to-mouth exposure. The EPA posted these and other findings on its Hurricane Response 2005 website (http://www.epa.gov/katrina/), created after the storm.

Shortly after the hurricane struck, the U.S. Coast Guard began working with the EPA, the Louisiana state government, and private industries to identify and recover spilled oil along the coast. The team identified 6 major, 4 medium, and 134 minor spills totaling 8 million gallons. One of the most notorious spills occurred at the Murphy Oil Company plant, which dumped more than 25,000 barrels of oil into the streets of Chalmette and Meraux, Louisiana. As of December 7, the Coast Guard reported the recovery of 3.8 million gallons, with another 1.7 million evaporated, 2.4 million dispersed, and 100,000 onshore.

Meanwhile, the NIEHS was joining with Duke University Medical Center, the NIH, and the CDC to provide assistance with relief and recovery operations along the Gulf Coast, as well as working at home to establish a website on environmental health issues related to Katrina [for more information, see “NIEHS Responds to Katrina,” p. A28 this issue].
Floodwater Hazards

Kevin Stephens is director of the New Orleans Department of Health. He was in charge of interpreting the EPA data and advising citizens and responders about the health hazards presented by the floodwaters. “I struggled every day to determine what [the data] meant and what to tell our health workers and the public,” he says. “What does ‘not an immediate health hazard’ mean when you have people wading through the water? What does ‘not in excess of drinking water standards’ mean? Is it a danger if you get your hands wet and touch your mouth?” Journalists claimed the floodwaters were a “toxic gumbo” of dangerous chemicals and microbes, raising fears that any contact was a health threaten.

Vehicle slaughter. Vehicles destroyed in the storm surge of Hurricane Katrina (left) are being stockpiled north of Gulfport, Mississippi (right). The thousands of automobiles are just the tip of the iceberg of waste that communities must deal with as a result of the hurricane.
images: Left to right: Clayton James Cubitt; Mark Wolfe/FEMA

These concerns prompted a team of scientists led by John Pardue, director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at Louisiana State University (LSU), to conduct its own study of the New Orleans floodwaters. The report, published 15 November 2005 in Environmental Science & Technology, stated categorically that, contrary to claims in the media, the floodwater was not a “toxic soup.”

“Chemical oxygen demand and fecal coliform bacteria were elevated in surface floodwater, but typical of stormwater runoff in the region,” the report said. “Lead, arsenic, and in some cases chromium exceeded drinking water standards, but with the exception of some elevated lead concentrations were generally typical of stormwater.” The LSU study also found only low concentrations (less than 1%) of benzene, toluene, and ethylbenzene even in places where there was a visible oil sheen. “Collectively, these data indicate that Katrina floodwater is similar to normal stormwater runoff, but with somewhat elevated lead and VOC concentrations,” the report concluded.

However, the LSU study was limited to two areas within the city of New Orleans, and the authors warned that conditions could be different elsewhere, particularly in Lake Pontchartrain, where floodwaters were being pumped. LSU and the University of Colorado are currently conducting studies of Lake Pontchartrain looking for a wide range of pathogens. The Colorado team is measuring aerosols created by pumping floodwater into the lake, while the LSU team is analyzing the lake water itself.
More Water Hazards

Still other threats were posed by water. As of December 9, the EPA reported that 99% of the waste treatment and water supply systems were back online, but some had been out of operation for weeks. At the October 20 EHSRT, Howard Frumkin, director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR), said that despite the percentage of sewage treatment plants already online at that point, the danger wasn’t over. “We have no guarantees that sewage being flushed is getting to treatment plants,” he said. “Raw sewage is going into the Mississippi River.”

Though most water supply systems may be functioning again, the safety of distribution lines that were flooded can’t yet be ensured either. “There are possible changes in pipe ecology due to the intrusion of contaminants,” said Frumkin. “And we have additional concerns for homes on wells.” Louisiana officials speaking at the roundtable said there are dozens of community water systems and tens of thousands of private wells that need to be tested for contamination.

Standing water poses a different threat, serving as a breeding ground for bacteria and mosquitoes. Even prior to Katrina, Louisiana had the highest number of reported cases of West Nile virus (66) of any state in the union, according to the CDC. West Nile virus can be transmitted to humans via mosquito bites, and the warm, wet weather following the storm was ideal for breeding of mosquitoes. The U.S. Air Force sprayed areas of standing water with pesticides to kill mosquito larvae. The CDC reported on its Update on CDC’s Response to Hurricanes website that postspraying surveillance at ten sites found a 91% reduction in total mosquito density compared to prespraying surveillance results [for more information on this website, see the EHPnet article, p. A27 this issue].

The Gulf Coast is also known for the presence of the bacterium Vibrio vulnificus. This relative of the pathogen that causes cholera thrives in brackish waters in warmer times of the year. Humans may become infected by eating contaminated seafood or through open wounds exposed to water. While not harmful to individuals in good health, it can be fatal to those with liver damage. Health officials at the roundtable reported counting 22 cases of illness induced by V. vulnificus following the storm, including 5 deaths.

In late September, the EPA launched the Ocean Survey Vessel Bold to conduct water quality testing in the river channels and nearshore waters of the Mississippi Delta. The agency monitored 20 areas to determine whether fecal pollution from flooded communities had spread into these waters. All 20 monitoring stations showed that, at the time, the water was safe for primary contact, including swimming. The EPA said on its website, however, that the data “should not be used to assess the safety of consuming raw or undercooked molluscan shellfish.”

In the wake of the storm, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama closed their shellfishing waters until testing could be done. On December 8, the three states issued a joint press release saying that fish and shellfish samples collected and analyzed since the hurricanes “show no reason for concern about the consumption of Gulf seafood.” Louisiana and Alabama subsequently reopened their waters, while Mississippi’s oyster reefs remain closed pending additional studies.
Toxicants in Sediment and Air

Health officials also anticipated a threat from contaminated sediment in the days and weeks following the storm. As floodwaters were pumped out of inundated areas, a dark sludge was found coating buildings, land, and pavement. E. coli was detected at elevated levels in many sediment samples taken from around New Orleans, implying the presence of fecal bacteria. The EPA has no standards for determining human health risks from E. coli in sediment, but warned people to limit exposure, and if exposed, to wash skin with soap and water.

The EPA was concerned, too, about the region’s Superfund sites, which include former dump sites of pesticides and dioxins. The EPA identified 54 Superfund sites in the affected area. Officials worried that at least some of these sites might have been compromised, releasing toxic chemicals into the land or water. Johnson reported at the EHSRT that as of October 20, the EPA had visually inspected all of the sites and sampled many. As of December 5, the EPA’s posted test results for these sites indicated that none were compromised in a way that would present a human health hazard.
A slicker picker-upper. Absorbent pads are used to clean up surface oil at the Bass Enterprises South Facility in Cox Bay, Louisiana, where Katrina caused the release of an estimated 3.8 million gallons of oil. Oil spills may have long-lasting effects on water supplies and surrounding ecologies.
image: Mike Lutz/USCG

Elsewhere, as late as November 20, chemical testing of sediment samples in Louisiana’s Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes indicated the continued presence of petroleum. However, the EPA’s website states that exposures of emergency responders at these levels are not expected to cause adverse health effects as long as the proper personal protective equipment is worn, such as gloves and safety glasses. Volatile and semivolatile organic compounds, pesticides, and metals including aluminum were found, but at levels below what the ATSDR and CDC consider to be immediately hazardous to human health. However, the site continues, “EPA and ATSDR/CDC continue to recommend that residents avoid all contact with sediment deposited by floodwater, where possible, due to potential concerns associated with long-term skin contact.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a host of local environmental groups paint a darker picture of the contamination situation. In a December 1 press release, the NRDC stated that tests it had conducted revealed “dangerously high levels” of industrial chemicals and heavy metals in the sediment covering much of New Orleans. For example, tests found arsenic levels in some neighborhoods that exceeded EPA safety limits by a factor of 30.

“We found arsenic and other cancer-causing contaminants in sediment all across the entire city,” said Monique Hardin, codirector of the New Orleans-based Advocates for Human Rights, at an NRDC press briefing. “We also found hot spots where there were some nasty surprises, such as banned pesticides.” The groups urged the EPA to begin cleaning up or removing contaminated topsoil across the city and to conduct further testing in certain neighborhoods.

The NRDC also challenged the EPA’s assertion that the flooded Superfund sites posed no threat. The December 1 press release stated that NRDC’s own assessment of one of these sites, the New Orleans Agricultural Street Landfill Superfund Site, showed “visible leachate emerging from the site and spreading across the street and onto a local senior center’s property. Sediment testing at this site found contamination as much as 20 times higher than the EPA soil cleanup standards for four [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons].”

LDEQ toxicologist Tom Harris responded in press reports that the NRDC’s findings were fundamentally flawed because arsenic levels are naturally above the EPA’s residential standard in Louisiana and elsewhere. “I have never personally seen soil samples come back below the residential screening level for arsenic,” Harris told PlanetArk World Environmental News on December 5. “It’s a naturally occurring [element] you can find everywhere.” The state of Louisiana and the EPA continue to perform testing of sediment to determine when to give an all-clear to residents with respect to exposure to sediment.

The EPA has also addressed concerns about air quality in the Gulf region. According to Johnson, most of the agency’s stationary air quality monitors were knocked out by Katrina. The EPA reinstalled the stationary monitors and employed their Airborne Spectral Photometrics Environmental Collection Technology to undertake airborne monitoring. The EPA also employed two Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer buses, self-contained mobile laboratories capable of continuous real-time sampling and analysis.

Air samples were tested for volatile priority pollutants such as benzene, toluene, and xylene, which are commonly found in gasoline, as well as other industrial solvents. The screening results indicated that chemical concentrations in most areas were below the ATSDR health guidelines of concern. The EPA stated on its website, “The low level of volatile pollutants is not surprising as contaminants may be bound in sediment. Monitoring data directly around Murphy Oil spill reveal some slightly elevated levels of benzene and toluene that are associated with petroleum release. Long-term exposure (a year or longer) at the levels measured would be required for health effects to be a concern.”

Air may also play a role in an illness known as “shelter cough,” or “Katrina cough.” Shelter cough is presumed to be an allergic reaction to some particulate matter in the air, according to Stephens. However, despite the presence of shelter cough and earlier concerns about a wave of infectious diseases in the wake of Katrina, acute respiratory illness have made up only 8.7% of diagnoses between August 29 and September 24, according to the October 7 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. “We have no evidence of infectious disease outbreaks,” Stephens said at the EHSRT.
A Mountain of Debris

The amount of debris generated by Katrina is by all accounts staggering. FEMA estimates there are 39.9 million cubic yards of debris in Mississippi alone. Mark Williams, administrator of solid waste policy, planning, and grants at the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), says that state has enough space for the initial removal of debris to staging areas, but not for long-term deposition in landfills.

Jimmy Guidry, medical director of Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals, says Louisiana, too, lacks sufficient landfill space for all the debris: “We have more than three hundred thousand refrigerators that need to be disposed of. All these have freon in them.” Guidry said at the roundtable that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality has approved dozens of temporary debris disposal sites, which will have to be carefully monitored.
Waves of destruction. (above) A motorcyclist rides past a mountain of trash, wallboard, and furniture removed from homes damaged by Katrina. (inset) Thousands of damaged refrigerators await safe disposal at a landfill near New Orleans. The freon in these appliances will need to be handled carefully.
images: Left to right: Nati Harnik/AP Photos; Don Ryan/AP Photos

Appliances can be recycled for metal content. Televisions and household computers pose a different problem. A single computer monitor contains 4.5 pounds of lead, and computer processing units contain trace metals that can leach out of unlined landfills.

As much as one-third of the debris is vegetative matter that can be burned or chipped for compost. The rest must be recycled or landfilled. Williams says burning of vegetative debris has been allowed in Mississippi for some months and is now largely complete. He adds, “EPA in conjunction with MDEQ has done some monitoring in the area [of controlled burns], which has indicated some elevated levels of formaldehyde and acrolein in certain areas.” In the interest of minimizing air pollution, the EPA and MDEQ allowed only clean vegetative debris to be burned and strongly encouraged the use of air curtain destructors and other combustion units in the early stages of cleanup.

Williams says another daunting challenge was disposing of thousand of tons of food--chicken, fish, and beef--rotting in warehouses on the docks. Officials from Mississippi’s Natural Resources Conservation Service said more than 6 million dead animals--poultry and livestock--had to be removed from farms in the affected area. Now officials are dealing with wastes in homes, including such items as propane tanks, household pesticides, and asbestos from roofing, insulation, and other home sources. The waste is taken to staging areas where hazardous waste is pulled out for disposal by the EPA. As of October 31, the EPA had collected an estimated 1 million pounds of household hazardous waste in Louisiana (the agency did not report on collections in other states).
Injury Protection

One of the major concerns officials have with regard to the handling and disposal of debris is the safety of workers. “We have a large number of workers coming to the Gulf seeking employment, and many of them are not properly trained and protected,” says Max Kiefer, assistant director of emergency preparedness and response for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). High-risk occupations include debris removal, levee rebuilding, residential refurbishment, and infrastructure rebuilding.

NIOSH is trying to keep workers apprised of health hazards. “We have assessed exposure to silica and metals during levee rebuilding, debris removal, and tasks involving the sediment,” Kiefer said at the roundtable. “We also worried that people were wearing protective gear that may induce heat stress. After assessing certain tasks, we were able to downgrade our gear recommendations in light of that. Psychological stress on responders has been significant. But by far the biggest issue has been injuries--lacerations, falls, and trips.” NIOSH is providing guidance for responders and providers on the CDC hurricane response website.

Private citizens also face significant risk of injury during cleanup. Officials talk of a “second wave” of injury following a natural disaster as citizens undertake to remove debris and repair buildings themselves. Will Service, the industrial hygiene coordinator with the North Carolina Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, worked in a mobile hospital in Waveland, Mississippi, in the days following the storm. “We saw a lot of injuries from things like chain saws used during cleanup,” Service says. “People are tired, their thinking isn’t clear. They’re doing things they don’t normally do.”

Illnesses and injuries associated with Katrina are being tracked by the CDC, with updates posted regularly on its website. Confirming what public health officials warned about a second wave of injuries, the most common diagnosis (26.2%) in reporting hospitals and clinics from September 8 to October 4 was injury. The major cause of injury was falling, followed closely by vehicle crash-related injuries (likely related to missing or nonfunctioning traffic signs and signals). Cutting and piercing injuries ranked third.
Coming Home to Hazards

Mold growth in houses damaged by Katrina is of enormous concern to health and housing officials. Estimates of the number of homes suffering water damage range in the hundreds of thousands. Claudette Reichel, an LSU professor of education and housing specialist, says that virtually every home that sustained flood damage will experience mold growth. “Houses that people were not allowed back into for weeks will all have mold, and that mold will have had time to multiply, spread, and get really thick,” she says. Says Frumkin, “The magnitude of mold exposure in the Gulf region will in many instances greatly exceed anything we have seen before, adding to the concern and uncertainty regarding health effects.”

How or even whether mold causes human health problems is disputed by public health professionals, but most acknowledge a connection. “It is a very difficult science, because there is no clear-cut dose-response threshold,” Reichel says. “It is highly dependent upon the type of mold, whether the mold is producing a mycotoxin, the susceptibility of the patient, and the amount of exposure.”

The CDC states that people who are sensitive to mold may experience stuffy nose, irritated eyes, or wheezing. People allergic to mold may have difficulty in breathing. People with weak immune systems may develop lung infections.

Health and housing officials advise homeowners and renters to throw out any furnishings, insulation, and bedding that may have gotten wet, to clean walls and floors with soap and water, to ventilate, and then to close up and dehumidify the home.

The CDC also reported a spike in post-Katrina carbon monoxide poisoning in the Gulf Coast in the October 7 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. From August 29 to September 24, a total of 51 cases of carbon monoxide poisoning, including 5 deaths, were reported in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. After the hurricanes, many residents used gasoline-powered portable generators to provide electricity to their homes and businesses. These devices produce carbon monoxide, which can build up to fatal levels if run inside a living space or garage.
Opportunistic attacker. The warm, damp conditions left in homes following Katrina provided the perfect medium for the growth of mold. Because mold can be extremely toxic and hard to eradicate, many homes may not be salvageable.
images: Left to right: Clayton James Cubitt; Marvin Nauman/FEMA

A number of other health issues loom as residents begin returning to New Orleans, where health care services aren’t widely available, sewer and water services are still spotty, and structural inspections aren’t complete. Residents have asked city officials for a health assessment to address their concerns about oil spills, mold contamination, and the possible long-term health effects related to mold and chemical exposures. “We are developing an assessment tool for this purpose, and we anticipate that it will be developed for the beginning of [2006],” says Stephens.

Many health care professionals worry that mental health may be the most serious long-term health issue resulting from Katrina. Hundreds of thousands of people across the Gulf region have had their homes destroyed. Thousands are still living in shelters. Many have no jobs, no health insurance, and no job prospects. “We are seeing a lot of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,” says Marty Allen, a psychologist with the Mississippi Department of Mental Health. “The trauma was not just the day of the storm. People are still being traumatized by living in tents, not having jobs, and having to walk for miles just to get food and water.”
Lessons Learned?

What lessons have been learned from Katrina with respect to environmental health? Debate about how to protect Gulf Coast citizens from hurricanes and storm surge was ongoing before the storm and will continue with renewed intensity.

In Mississippi, Governor Haley Barbour enlisted the Chicago-based Congress for New Urbanism to come up with recommendations for rebuilding the Gulf Coast. The Congress sponsored a week-long Mississippi Renewal Forum in October attended by some of the nation’s leading architects, engineers, and urban planners. Working with local leaders, the teams produced reports for 11 coastal towns impacted by the storm. Recommendations include improving the connectivity between towns by moving the CSX freight line north and transforming the abandoned right-of-way into a boulevard for cars and transit, connecting the Gulf region towns with high-speed rail, realigning and revising U.S. 90 to become a pedestrian-friendly “beach boulevard,” and creating a Gulf Coast bikeway.
Chemical calamity. A worker tests hazardous household liquids at the Fort Jackson “orphan” tank and drum staging area in Louisiana.
image: Chuck Burton/AP Photos
A similar process is under way in Louisiana under the auspices of the Louisiana Recovery Authority created by Governor Kathleen Blanco. The authority is developing short-, medium-, and long-range plans to guide the rebuilding of Louisiana in the wake of the hurricanes. At the authority’s request, the American Association of Architects, in collaboration with the American Planning Association, presented the Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference on November 10-12. The authority has developed a 100-day plan that includes completion of an environmental evaluation of damages caused by the hurricanes and development of recommendations for how to proceed with reconstruction.

Discussion will center on how to protect New Orleans from further flooding and whether certain low-lying parts of the city should even be reoccupied. Such decisions will be made in the months and years to come. Meanwhile, environmental and public health officials have drawn some conclusions about how to better respond to events like Katrina.

Officials at the EHSRT agreed that communication in advance and in the wake of natural and man-made disasters is key. Fears and rumors of disease ran rampant in the days following Katrina. Citizens, the media, and even public health officials did not know which factors presented a genuine health threat and which did not. Federal agencies conducted testing and provided data, but people often did not know how to interpret those data with respect to the kinds of exposures they were encountering.
“The public health community must be actively involved and articulate key health issues,” said Kellogg Schwab, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We must keep the message simple and focused. We must develop effective strategies to provide targeted timely results. We must provide concise and accurate public health information and advice.”

Officials also agreed that responders must be properly trained and deployed, provided with proper protective gear and an effective communications system (land lines and cell phones were inoperative in much of the area for weeks after Katrina). Health officials must be able to assess the particular kinds of exposures that people have been subjected to and respond accordingly.

“Your response strategy for exposure varies with each event,” said Paul Lioy, deputy director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute at Rutgers University. “The World Trade Center [collapse] was an instantaneous acute air exposure event like we’d never experienced. Katrina for the most part involved an acute water exposure event, but the exposure was over a longer period of time.”

Lioy pointed out the need for a national review of the kind of standards and guidelines necessary to ensure that the correct information is given out to the public about immediate hazards versus long-term exposures and risks. “Comparison to general drinking water or ambient air quality standards are not sufficient for guiding the public or public officials during an acute exposure event,” he said.

Most of all, roundtable participants agreed, Katrina represents a chance for officials across all levels of government to do things better--evacuation planning, urban design, communication, environmental monitoring, and involvement of citizenry, particularly minority and low-income residents. John McLachlan, director of the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, said that preparing for disasters like Katrina requires the involvement of virtually every academic discipline. To that end, Tulane and Xavier are creating a Katrina Environmental Research and Restoration Network (KERRN) of researchers who share data and ideas across disciplinary, geographical, and institutional lines. Paraphrasing one of his colleagues, McLachlan stated, “This is the mother of all multidisciplinary problems.”

Link to Reference: Associated Press, Jan. 17 2006

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Highlights:
- This year's hurricane season begins June 1. By that date, the U.S. Corps of Engineers expects to have the Crescent City's levees restored to pre-Katrina condition.
- The $1.6 billion repair effort will use some improved construction methods and materials compared to what was in place before, decreasing the chances that levees breached by Katrina will fail again. It will also bring levees that had gradually settled over the years back up to their original height.
- Because the canals were so vulnerable after Hurricane Katrina, the Corps of Engineers is considering additional measures to protect them. The Corps plans to erect temporary gates at the mouths of the canals to protect them from storm surges coming off Lake Pontchartrain. The gates will be open during good weather, but if a hurricane does approach New Orleans next year, they can be closed at a moment's notice.

NEW ORLEANS — In New Orleans, the apocalyptic clock is ticking — again. Ravaged last year by one hurricane and slapped by the fringes of another, the city faces a 2006 storm season that begins in less than five months — not much time to repair the tattered ramparts that keep New Orleans from being swallowed by the sea.

This year's hurricane season begins June 1. By that date, the U.S. Corps of Engineers expects to have the Crescent City's levees restored to pre-Katrina condition.

The job is massive. It will take about 4 million cubic yards of fill — a nearly Superdome-sized pile — to repair the 170 miles of levee destroyed or damaged by Katrina.

"So far we're on schedule and we're doing pretty good," said Col. Lewis Setliff, the leader of the repair effort.

There are many who fear that may not be good enough.

"This is just a few Band-Aids, really," said Ivor van Heerden, a civil engineer at Louisiana State University. "We really need to go the step further and start implementing projects now that would make New Orleans safe."

Setliff says he understands such concerns. But as commander of Task Force Guardian, his mission is to repair the levees in time for the next hurricane season, and that is what he vows to do. New Orleans will simply have to live through 2006 with roughly the same protection it has had for the past 30 — even though that wasn't enough to fend off Katrina.

"Everybody wants a lot of the long-term solutions overnight," Setliff said, but there is neither time nor funding to make major improvements to the barriers by June.

The $1.6 billion repair effort will use some improved construction methods and materials compared to what was in place before, decreasing the chances that levees breached by Katrina will fail again. It will also bring levees that had gradually settled over the years back up to their original height.

But it will not raise the height of any levees or replace any sections that survived Katrina intact.

"We don't have the authority to just go in there and raise levees," Setliff said. "We are allowed to make some smart decisions."

For example, in every situation where it can, the Corps of Engineers is replacing the so-called "I-walls" that top many levees with more stable "T-walls." An I-wall is simply a vertical concrete barrier anchored to the levee by steel sheet pile driven vertically into the ground.

A T-wall sits on a horizontal concrete base that protects the soil at the wall's base from crashing waves on the wet side and, in a worst-case scenario, from water pouring over the levee onto the dry side. During Hurricane Katrina soil erosion underneath floodwalls — known to engineers as scour — contributed significantly to a number of breaches by simply washing away the ground the concrete barriers sat on.

To make them even stronger, T-walls are also anchored by multiple steel beams, rather than a single sheet. Those beams are driven into the levee diagonally, providing more support.

Most challenging to repair are the breaches along the drainage canals that carry rainwater from the heart of New Orleans north to Lake Pontchartrain. Because so much of New Orleans is below sea level, pump stations have to lift water from the city's storm sewers into the canals, which then flow by gravity to Lake Pontchartrain.

During a hurricane the lake's surging waters reverse the flow in the canals, pushing water deep into the city. Floodwall-topped levees along the canals rise as high as 14 1/2 feet above sea level, which should have been enough to contain Hurricane Katrina. But at three points on the London Avenue and 17th Street drainage canals, the floodwaters weakened the structures to the point that they gave way.

An emergency repair effort plugged the three breaches with massive sandbags weighing as much as 15,000 pounds each. But now the Corps is faced with the tricky task of removing the sandbags and replacing them with a new levee and floodwall — without inundating the city.

What they do is build temporary walls on both the canal and land sides of each breach. This completely surrounds the work area and keep soil from collapsing into the hole that will be created during the next step, when the emergency sandbag levee is removed.

Finally, a new levee and floodwall is built across the breach. After the new T-wall has been completed, the temporary walls, known as coffer dams, will be removed.

"This job will go right up to June," construction inspector Duke Ducarpe said of the repair at the 17th Street Canal breach. He said the two breaches on the London Avenue Canal might be repaired a few weeks earlier than that.

Because the canals were so vulnerable after Hurricane Katrina, the Corps of Engineers is considering additional measures to protect them. The Corps plans to erect temporary gates at the mouths of the canals to protect them from storm surges coming off Lake Pontchartrain. The gates will be open during good weather, but if a hurricane does approach New Orleans next year, they can be closed at a moment's notice.

Van Heerden complained that in other areas, the Corps simply isn't doing enough. In many places, Katrina's storm surge overtopped an earthen levee and then began wearing it down, allowing an ever increasing amount of water to surge through the breach.

Along the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, the torrent grew so powerful that it swept away much of the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood, washing entire houses off their foundations and sending cars tumbling like pebbles in a raging river. The Corps plans to replace the I-wall along the canal with a T-wall.

Such measures may be enough to protect the Lower Ninth Ward during another Katrina. But there will be no improvement of levee segments that did not fail during last summer's storm. That leaves some of those segments as the most vulnerable points next time a hurricane hits, unless additional, costly efforts are made to beef up the entire levee system.

The Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, one of several teams of engineers reviewing the performance of the flood control system during Hurricane Katrina, intends to determine just how much protection New Orleans will have once its levees are repaired. The question is a difficult one, said Ed Link, the University of Maryland professor who heads the team, and it won't be answered until June 1.

Donald Powell, named by President Bush as the federal coordinator for the Gulf Coast rebuilding effort, has proposed spending an additional $1.5 billion to provide more protection.

The proposal would allow for several improvements, including:

_The completion of levee projects to the south and east of New Orleans that had been authorized before Katrina but were not scheduled to be finished until 2018.

_Armoring levees with pavement or rock to prevent waves from eating away at them.

_Closing the drainage canals and installing pumps on Lake Pontchartrain to remove rainwater from the city.

So far Congress has approved the first item on that list. But it balked at armoring the levees and installing new pumps, objecting that those measures had not been adequately examined.

Even if Congress does approve the Bush plan when it reconvenes in February, will it be enough to coax displaced residents and businesses back to New Orleans?

Civil engineer van Heerden doesn't think so. He thinks Washington should spring for a major flood control system that raises the levees around New Orleans and other communities in south Louisiana high enough to survive a direct hit by a Category 5 hurricane — the top of the scale. Katrina had weakened to Category 3 or less by the time it passed through the city.

Van Heerden also recommends building structures that knock down incoming storm surges in the Gulf of Mexico, before they pass into the bays and harbors on New Orleans' flanks. Finally, van Heerden advocates a massive effort to rejuvenate the marshes that once buffered the city from the Gulf's open waters. Those wetlands have gradually succumbed to channelization, pollution and sediment starvation over the years, mostly because of efforts to improve shipping and prevent floods on the Mississippi River.

Such an effort could easily cost more than $30 billion.

"We've really got to look at doing more," van Heerden said.

Democratic Congressman William Jefferson, who represents New Orleans, considers the Bush administration's proposal a "down payment" on a full-fledged system that would protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane.

"What is going to be most important to people is whether they can come back and rebuild with some security," Jefferson said during a Jan. 6 special session of the New Orleans City Council. "Otherwise we will suffer a depopulated city for some time to come."

Link to site: Tony Deyal, Saturday, 1/14 2006

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Highlights:
- In 1989 the US navy launched a top secret project called the "Cetacean Intelligence Mission". Dolphins, fitted with harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skins, were taught to patrol and protect docked Trident submarines and stationary warships at sea.
- Ponds holding the dolphins and 36 of them were swept out to sea and were feared to be around the Bahamas. The navy was scared that because they had learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who simulated terrorists in exercises, the dolphins would fire the toxic darts they carried at any divers they saw. It would be no accident
- Tony Deyal was last seen saying that dolphins are so intelligent that within minutes they can train a human to stand at the side of a pool and feed them fish.

There are Navy SEALs who are not really seals and there are dolphins. In the 1973 film, Day of the Dolphin, George C Scott plays Dr Jake Terrell, a scientist who spent many years training a pair of dolphins to speak and understand English. The dolphins are stolen to be used in an assassination attempt. In 1989 the US navy launched a top secret project called the "Cetacean Intelligence Mission". Dolphins, fitted with harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skins, were taught to patrol and protect docked Trident submarines and stationary warships at sea.

Hurricane Katrina breached the ponds holding the dolphins and 36 of them were swept out to sea and were feared to be around the Bahamas. The navy was scared that because they had learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who simulated terrorists in exercises, the dolphins would fire the toxic darts they carried at any divers they saw. It would be no accident, the dolphins would shoot on porpoise. Worse, because the Bahamas tourism industry is built on scuba diving and snorkelling, a wet suit could become a death suit.

It is not also in war that dolphins, like humans, excel. Scientists who have studied these matters say that in addition to being remarkably intelligent, or maybe because of it, dolphins are the only animals, beside humans, that have sex for fun- a clear case of war and piece. In the case of the bottlenose dolphin, though, would that have been known before the species was named? And is this the purpose of the dolphin's "blowhole"?

The "beside" humans business has now become literal, or to be more geographically accurate (to be shore), littoral. According to an Israeli newspaper, in a report on December 29, 2005, Sharon Tendler, a 41-year-old Jewish millionaire from London married a male dolphin named Cindy at Israel's Eliat resort where there is a dolphin reef.

Even before the full story emerged people were asking whether the bride sponsored the cost of the groom's outfit and reception or whether he had to go to a loan shark to get the money. Did she wear a flowing veil and a sea-through outfit and did they take a vow to forget the past and let it all be water behind the bridge? With a name like Cindy, does that indicate that the dolphin groom already has an identity crisis that could be compounded by trying to behave like a Jewish husband? Would that be kosher?

The whole business has been plagued by misunderstandings and deliberate attempts to muddy the waters of the wedding. The fact is that Ms Tendler, a British rock concert producer, and not the groupie or grouper claimed by her critics, met Cindy 15 years ago and it was a case of love at first sight.

When she fed him it became a case of love at first bite. Since then she has been visiting Eliat, a city on the Gulf of Aqaba, two or three times a year to spend time with her 35-year-old underwater sweetheart. "The peace and tranquility under water, and his love, would calm me down," the Israeli daily quoted her as saying.

Last week, Ms Tendler finally plucked up the courage to ask the dolphin's trainer, Maya Zindler, for the mammal's fin in marriage. The amazed spectators watched the bride, wearing a white dress, walk down the dock to where the groom was waiting in the water. She kissed him, to the cheers of those present, and then after the ceremony was "sealed" with some mackerels, the bride was tossed into the water so she could swim away with her new husband.

Apart from the rumour that they were honeymooning in Sardinia and not Maracas Bay where the bride would eat the bake and the groom the shark, there was an anxious moment while they waited for any objection to the marriage. Some rumour-mongers had spread the word that the groom was really the author, Salman Rushdie, hiding from the "fatwah" of fundamental Islam for his Satanic Verses and who was now disguised as a fish, Salmon Rushdie.

However, since the humans and dolphins present opted for holding their tongues temporarily before wagging them, the ceremony proceeded to its finale without any further red herrings except another rumour that the groom was a Navy SEAL in disguise and would probably blow up the bride.

"I'm the happiest girl on earth,'' the bride was quoted as saying. "I made a dream come true. And I am not a pervert.'' The groom, now that his future is secure, is reputed to have said, "No more attempting to be a contestant on the Whale of Fortune" but that might merely be malicious gossip. He definitely will be provided for when he is old and hard of herring. It is a prospect to make him flip.

However, the future is fraught, or froth, with enough problems to make the couple believe they have swum into a Tsunami. Would the groom have to convert to Judaism or is his residency in Israel taken as satisfying that requirement? Would he qualify for UK citizenship? In what religion would the children be brought up? And worst of all, would he have to eat gefilte fish?

- Tony Deyal was last seen saying that dolphins are so intelligent that within minutes they can train a human to stand at the side of a pool and feed them fish.

Link to Reference: Bob Marshall, Staff writer, 1/13/06

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Highlights:
- Army Corps of Engineers can't repeat the mistake that allowed Lake Borgne to swallow much of St. Bernard Parish: building the structures out of weak marsh soils that disintegrated in Hurricane Katrina's surge.
- soils being used to rebuild the levee appeared to be unsuitable for the task, the design being employed repeats mistakes that contributed to the failures during Katrina, and calls to armor the levee with a layer of protective concrete or fabrics -- considered critical to keeping it intact if overtopped again -- were still not approved.
- when overtopped during Katrina, water rushing down the landside of the levee quickly removed the protective layer of grass. Once exposed directly to rushing water, engineers said, any soils will break apart quickly. But the highly organic muck used to build the MR-GO levee was especially vulnerable.

As the man in charge of rebuilding the failed levees along the MR-GO, Col. Louis Setliff knows the Army Corps of Engineers can't repeat the mistake that allowed Lake Borgne to swallow much of St. Bernard Parish: building the structures out of weak marsh soils that disintegrated in Hurricane Katrina's surge.

To that end, Setliff said, "We're taking routine samples and then more samples. We're bringing people in to check the checkers."

But some of the nation's leading forensic engineers, including two who visited the project this week, are not impressed with the results. They said soils being used to rebuild the levee appeared to be unsuitable for the task, the design being employed repeats mistakes that contributed to the failures during Katrina, and calls to armor the levee with a layer of protective concrete or fabrics -- considered critical to keeping it intact if overtopped again -- were still not approved.

"I think the people out there are doing the best they can with what they have to work with. Unfortunately, what they have to work with isn't enough," said Robert Bea, the University of California-Berkeley professor who is part of a National Science Foundation team investigating the New Orleans disaster.

"It boils down to the right kind of soils, the right kind of equipment and the right kind of people. We were very concerned with what we saw. It looks like, despite their best efforts, they're repeating the mistakes that cost them the last time."

When the corps dredged the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet in the 1960s, it acknowledged the channel could increase the risk of storm surges flooding settled areas of St. Bernard Parish, corps documents show. The corps later raised the levee on the west side of the channel to mitigate that threat, but its main source of material was the highly organic soils dredged from the channel, corps officials acknowledged.

That construction was solid enough to withstand boat wakes and minor storm surges. However, when overtopped during Katrina, water rushing down the landside of the levee quickly removed the protective layer of grass. Once exposed directly to rushing water, engineers said, any soils will break apart quickly. But the highly organic muck used to build the MR-GO levee was especially vulnerable.

Taking extra care

Setliff said the corps was going to extra lengths not to repeat that mistake. Although it is getting much of the soils for its repairs from borrow holes in the marsh adjacent to the levee, it used soil borings to locate layers of clays that would be suitable.

And while this project, in a time-saving move, is not following normal procedure by having an outside lab test each source of soil, Setliff said his agency was doing intensive on-site inspections that were augmented by frequent outside lab work.

"I'm confident about the layers of quality inspection we have," Setliff said. "We have on-site quality control and quality assurance personnel, as well as the resident engineers."

He said the corps was doing routine checks, and when a spot in the levee that was just built doesn't meet standards, it's taken out and rebuilt.

"It's a massive undertaking," he said. "We can't monitor every cubic foot in there. But we're confident it's better than the material from the MR-GO."



Pointing out weaknesses

While acknowledging the corps' efforts, the investigators were not reassured about the outcome.

In New Orleans this week with University of California colleague and fellow investigator Ray Seed, Bea first observed the MR-GO work during a flyover Monday. They returned Tuesday by boat with corps personnel for a close-up look.

Bea said hands-on inspection of soils from one section revealed it was "sandy" and too weak to use in a levee. Further, he felt the two inspectors on site might have been overwhelmed by the pace of the job, as well as its requirements.

And the levee design could be another weak element, Bea and other investigators said. The corps has signed contracts to bring in sturdier clay soils from other sources, including one in Mississippi, but those stronger soils might be used for the outer shell of the structure, not mixed in to strengthen its core.

That was a mistake that weakened the levee that failed, investigators said.

"That has been a real problem throughout the areas we inspected in New Orleans," said J. David Rogers, the University of Missouri-Rolla professor who is one of the nation's top authorities on levee failures and another member of the NSF team.

"A lot of the material you've got down there, plain and simple, ain't good for building levees," Rogers said. "You may have standards for those levees, but you can't find enough good stuff nearby the project to make a good levee.

"When you don't have the right materials, you have to bring them in, and that gets expensive as well as time consuming," Rogers said. "So, I don't care how many quality control people you have on site, too often you end up with a subpar levee. And that can kill you when these things are put to the test -- as we found out all over that town during Katrina."

Rogers said new technologies were available to solve the problem, such as mixing binding agents like cement into the soils before building the levee.

"That's 21st century technology, but they're still using 18th century technology to build levees down there. And that's just dig what's there and dump it on the side," Rogers said.

Adding armor

Just as critical, all sides agreed, was having the levees armored, especially the landward sides, to prevent scouring and collapse if they are overtopped, as they were during Katrina.

"If that land side is protected, your levee has a much better chance of surviving if it's overtopped," Rogers said.

But while the corps has recommended all levees in the area be armored, and the Bush administration has approved the idea, Setliff said the authorization and financing must still make its way through Congress, a process that could take months.

Link to Reference: Washington, D.C. - infoZine

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Highlights:
- Test results from Gulf of Mexico sampling indicate that at most, relatively low levels of fecal contamination were present after the hurricane.
- The agency monitored 20 areas to determine whether fecal pollution from flooded communities had spread into these waters.
- There are no EPA health-based ambient water quality criteria for C. perfringens. Therefore, there is no approved analytical method for assessing water quality using this bacterium.

Test results from Gulf of Mexico sampling indicate that at most, relatively low levels of fecal contamination were present after the hurricane.

The Clostridium perfringens tests show that the levels were low to undetectable. Previously released enterococcus tests show that at the time of sampling the water was appropriate for any kind of recreational use--including swimming. Water samples were collected by the OSV Bold in the Gulf from Sept. 27 through Oct. 2, 2005 at monitoring stations in the river channels and nearshore waters surrounding the Mississippi Delta. The agency monitored 20 areas to determine whether fecal pollution from flooded communities had spread into these waters.

Clostridium perfringens is a bacterium, found in the intestinal tract of both humans and animals. It enters the environment through feces. There are no EPA health-based ambient water quality criteria for C. perfringens. Therefore, there is no approved analytical method for assessing water quality using this bacterium. However, some scientists recommend using C. perfringens spores as a tracer of fecal pollution because its presence is a good indicator of recent or past fecal contamination in water and spores survive well beyond the typical life-span of other fecal bacteria.

EPA previously released results for enterococcus, which was detected at four of 20 stations from 10 to 53.1 bacteria colonies per 100 milliliters. These results indicate that the water is suitable for any kind of recreational use. This level is below the most conservative marine water criteria of 104 bacteria per 100 milliliters.

It is difficult, due to absence of previously analyzed data, to determine the source of the C. perfringens and enterococci. They could have been present prior to the hurricane. Bacteria were not routinely analyzed prior to Hurricane Katrina.

While all of these results are encouraging for recreational uses, this data should not be used to assess the safety of consuming raw or undercooked molluscan shellfish--such as oysters--because accidental ingestion of water presents different risks than eating raw or undercooked shellfish.

Link to Reference: NEW ORLEANS (AP), 1/5/06

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Highlights:
- Like New Orleans itself, the aquarium is now on a long road back. And like the city, the revival will depend, in part, on hardy holdouts and returning evacuees, some still living far away - including Satchmo, Voodoo and 17 other penguins now cooling their heels in California.
- The aquarium has begun restocking and plans to reopen this summer, but it won't be easy. Finding the right fish to fill a million gallons of water not only takes time and money, but generosity and luck.
- “It's important for the spirits of the community,” he says. “We have animals who've left and animals who've died. We had to show that our animals our coming back.”

It's lunchtime and Elvira and Nick are having a quick bite, then it's back to an afternoon of swimming in their big glass house on the Mississippi River.

Their midday routine has resumed at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, where the two 5-foot tarpons are once again sharing meals and a home with Midas, the 300-pound green sea turtle who returned after a six-week exile in Texas.

Slowly, this watery world is rebuilding from the staggering blow it suffered in Hurricane Katrina: Generator problems killed up to 10,000 fish, including some rare species nurtured over many years.

Like New Orleans itself, the aquarium is now on a long road back. And like the city, the revival will depend, in part, on hardy holdouts and returning evacuees, some still living far away - including Satchmo, Voodoo and 17 other penguins now cooling their heels in California.

While no one here equates the disaster at the aquarium to the epic human devastation left by Katrina, the animal losses are still heartbreaking to devoted workers who tend to these sea creatures each day.

“Not only is it sad because you know how much life is lost ... you know you'll never be able to replace it like it was,” says Lance Ripley, assistant curator of fish.

The aquarium has begun restocking and plans to reopen this summer, but it won't be easy. Finding the right fish to fill a million gallons of water not only takes time and money, but generosity and luck.

Hundreds of fish already have been donated by other aquariums. And expeditions are being planned to the Florida Keys, the Caribbean and other spots to collect more.

“There are no pet stores that sell 9-foot sharks,” says John Hewitt, the aquarium's director of husbandry. “You've got to get them some other way. We're going to try and collect as many animals as we can.”

It will be difficult, maybe even impossible, to replace some losses - such as a 13-foot small-tooth sawfish called Mr. Bill, and a 250-pound goliath grouper, both on the endangered species list, along with nine sandtiger sharks, whose numbers have been dwindling because of commercial fishing.

“Some of these collections have taken years to accumulate,” Ripley says. “We had five species of freshwater stingray. We had dozens of breeding projects over the last 15 years. We had a jellyfish gallery 10 years in the making. ... All that's gone.”

There's no quick way to bring it back.

“You have to repopulate slowly,” Hewitt says. “To capture a couple of sharks and move them across the country, you have to have holding spaces, isolation and quarantine areas. ... Catching them is the easier part. Getting them from here to there without mortal damage is what gets complicated.”

Once they do arrive, fish can't simply be dropped in water. Some need time to warm up to captivity, the public - or each other.

Newcomers are taking the plunge.

The Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga and the Underwater Adventures aquarium at the Mall of America in Minnesota donated catfish, shark pups, crappie and hundreds of small reef fish. A seafood restaurant in Hattiesburg, Miss., handed over a 2-foot shark that had outgrown its tank.

“Everyone says, ‘If we have it extra, it's yours,'” Ripley says.

Louisiana fishing clubs have offered help to the New Orleans aquarium, which also received an invitation from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago to use its 85-foot research ship, the Coral Reef II, for a collecting expedition in the Caribbean.

Repopulating the aquarium is important to the city's economy. It's a big tourist attraction, drawing 1.4 million visitors a year along with its adjoining IMAX theater. Another popular spot, the zoo, lost just a few animals and reopened in November.

The problems at the aquarium came after workers who had hunkered down in the building during the storm were told to evacuate as the looting edged nearer and floodwaters rose.

Ron Forman, president and chief executive officer of the Audubon Nature Institute, which operates the aquarium, ordered his staff out, fearing for their safety. He stayed behind, joined by several New Orleans police officers, who set up a command post.

The officers traded their dirty, wet uniforms for gift shop shorts, caps and T-shirts and hand-fed several animals.

Don Kinney, an officer who brought along his pet cockatoo, Yogi, scrounged around the aquarium's refrigerator and kitchen and found fish for the otters and penguins, red meat for the white alligator and frozen (but thawing) mice for the birds.

Toting a flashlight and a feeding bucket, Kinney was a welcome sight to the hungry holdouts.

“It gave me a good feeling in my heart knowing I was feeding animals and keeping them alive,” says Kinney, who lost his own home in the floods and ended up bunking on an aquarium bench.

No one could save thousands of fish after the generator clogged and couldn't produce enough electricity to run systems that add oxygen, rid the tanks of waste and keep the water cool.

“It was a total domino effect,” Ripley says.

Cool, clear water turned hot, dirty and toxic. “Every day it got worse,” Forman says.

When workers returned the weekend after the storm, they faced a grim scene: cloudy, bacteria-filled tanks littered with thousands of dead fish. Some donned scuba gear and began scooping them out.

“It was incredibly difficult,” Hewitt says. “It's like burying your children - and that's all I'm going to say about that.”

Having worked at the aquarium its entire 15 years, Hewitt had a deep attachment to the creatures.

“I took many of them out of the wild,” he says. “There's a great deal of responsibility that comes with that ... to ensure that the animal has the best possible chance of a long, productive life.”

About 2,000 animals, including penguins, raptors, turtles, otters, the white alligator and some fish such as tarpons that have the capability to breathe air, survived - along with sea dragons, sea horses and clownfish.

Some barely hung on.

The macaws were panting because temperatures in the Amazon rain forest exhibit, with its lush tropical foliage, had soared to 135 degrees.

The 19 penguins were dirty and agitated, but aviculturist Tom Dyer was thrilled they were alive. He jokingly calls them his kids, knows each bird's personality and can instantly distinguish their seemingly carbon-copy features.

“You could paint them all orange and I could tell you in 30 seconds who's who,” says Dyer, who quickly offers proof by rattling off their idiosyncrasies:

There's Satchmo, who sits between the legs of the person feeding him, Voodoo, who is delicate and fastidious, and Patience, his favorite. Dyer glances at a calendar on his watch and notes that Patience is “going to be 23 tomorrow. ... She's getting a little harder to feed. She can't get her beak around the food. But she's still going strong.”

Dyer escorted the birds, along with sea otters Buck and Emma, on a cargo plane to their temporary home, California's Monterey Bay Aquarium. He keeps on eye on the birds' progress via Web cam.

He has taken other trips, too, with some of his charges - even getting a police escort in the post-Katrina chaos to return five rehabilitated sea turtles to the Gulf of Mexico. The aquarium treats endangered turtles that are sick or injured and releases them back to their natural habitat.

Dyer had a bittersweet goodbye for 3-pound Mr. Chompers, a loggerhead he had nursed back to health after it arrived nearly a year ago weighing a puny 3 ounces.

He got a brassy “Helllooo!” weeks later when he traveled to the Houston zoo and was greeted by Spike, one of the macaws he'd come to take home from her refuge there. The enthusiastic welcome surprised the keepers who said the bird hadn't talked while she was there.

“People say elephants never forget,” Dyer says. “But it's birds.”

The macaws are back, but some animals won't return for months. Money is one reason. The two otters, for instance, have white-tablecloth tastes - lobster, clams, shrimp and squid, five meals a day - and it costs $40,000 a year to feed them.

The aquarium faces more than $5 million in repairs, though insurance likely will cover that.

Forman says finances alone don't dictate the aquarium's revival, noting the homecoming of Midas, the green sea turtle, was a morale boost more than anything else.

“It's important for the spirits of the community,” he says. “We have animals who've left and animals who've died. We had to show that our animals our coming back.”

Link to Reference: Russ Britt, 12/27/2005

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Highlights:
- The critical link in rebuilding New Orleans is the levee system that failed so catastrophically, but already officials at the local and federal level are scaling back their vision on how to protect the Crescent City.
- Netherlands engineers were visiting the region and telling Louisiana how they completely revamped dikes, levees and floodgates over a 30-year period for the nation that lies mostly below sea level. The Netherlands system is designed to fail once every 10,000 years.
- "I'm afraid the farther we get away from the catastrophe of Katrina, the more dire the picture will get," he said. "We've basically ignored infrastructure needs for 40 years."

NEW ORLEANS (MarketWatch) - The critical link in rebuilding New Orleans is the levee system that failed so catastrophically, but already officials at the local and federal level are scaling back their vision on how to protect the Crescent City. Immediately after Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29 and floodwaters engulfed three-fourths of New Orleans, calls for strengthening the system to a maximum Category 5 hurricane protection level went out with price tags running higher than $30 billion.

It wasn't long before Netherlands engineers were visiting the region and telling Louisiana how they completely revamped dikes, levees and floodgates over a 30-year period for the nation that lies mostly below sea level. The Netherlands system is designed to fail once every 10,000 years.
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said there is no reason why the same can't be done in her state, and in a shorter amount of time, given the Netherlands' situation when it undertook the project in 1953.
"We're not in shambles after a world war," Landrieu said. "But we still can't muster the effort."
Officials both in and out of Louisiana say it's likely they'll just want to make sure New Orleans levees at least handle a Category 3 storm. That's what Katrina was by the time it hit New Orleans and proved too much for the city's troubled infrastructure.

On Dec. 15, the Bush Administration proposed adding $1.5 billion on top of the $1.6 billion in federal funds already devoted to shoring up the levee system, one-tenth the original amount discussed.
State-of-the-art pumps would be installed to pump rainwater out of the city and into Lake Pontchartrain, and levees would be reinforced with concrete and stone, said Don Powell, who is overseeing the rebuilding effort for the federal government. Powell also is chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Powell said the levee rebuilding effort is geared to help the system handle a storm like Katrina, but he isn't eyeing Category 5 protection. He just wants to make sure the system can handle another Katrina.
"I'm convinced that what we're doing here today, if there is another Katrina that hits New Orleans, that we would not see the catastrophic results that we saw during Katrina," he said. "There will be some flooding, but it will be manageable type of flooding."
Mayor Ray Nagin seems content, for now, with the program as it is. He did call for extra study of the issue in future funding.
"I feel comfortable that those studies will take place, and that currently there's no science to go higher than what they're doing today," Nagin said.
Some, however, wonder if the city is settling for less.
Mike Parker is former assistant secretary for the U.S. Army. He oversaw the service branch's Corps of Engineers, which designed and built the levees around New Orleans.
Parker says long-term planning always has been one of the region's weaknesses, but officials should seriously consider a state-of-the-art system.
"I'm afraid the farther we get away from the catastrophe of Katrina, the more dire the picture will get," he said. "We've basically ignored infrastructure needs for 40 years."
Three breaks
Levees at three canals - 17th Street, London Avenue and the Industrial Canal - broke after the storm. The exact cause for all three remains a mystery.
Scans of the breach at the 17th Street Canal on the west side of New Orleans initially showed sheet metal pilings used to reinforce the walls was submerged only 10 feet below the surface. The initial surveys were done by the Corps and scientists from Louisiana State University.
However, the Corps later determined that was not the case after it pulled out the pilings and found them to be the prescribed length of 17 feet.
"That testing method used throughout the canals here in New Orleans is not a valid testing method," said Col. Lewis Setliff, commander of the Corps' task force investigating the levee breaks. "We'll have to figure out another test."
Meanwhile, Setliff said his crews are shoring up the breaches even more before the next hurricane season hits. Canal walls outside the breaches, however, will take some time to reinforce, or rebuild.
The Corps is looking at possibly creating floodgates to block Lake Pontchartrain waters from continuing to flow into the levees, but that means it could be difficult to pump rainwater out from city streets.
There are several roadblocks to creating an effective levee system. Most officials agree that one critical barrier remains the fact there are several disparate levee boards in the New Orleans area, all with their own agendas.
The problem is most apparent at the 17th Street Canal, which sits on the Jefferson-Orleans parish border. The Orleans Parish levee board is responsible for maintaining the east side of the channel while the Jefferson Parish levee board oversees the west side.
Erosion
Fixing levees is only one part of the equation, though. A greater problem may be coastal erosion. Estimates say the Gulf of Mexico is reclaiming wetland areas from the Louisiana coast at an alarming rate. In the past 50 years, the state has lost a land mass the size of Rhode Island, officials from Landrieu's office say.
The more wetlands reclaimed by the Gulf of Mexico, the less buffer protection New Orleans has from hurricanes slamming into the coast. If wetlands could absorb more of the storm surge, there would be less water filling up Lake Pontchartrain and thus fewer swollen canals.
Coastal erosion also is partly to blame for the fact that New Orleans is sinking further below sea level. The city is already nine feet below sea level in some places and continues to drop. Some of that is due to development, but restoration could help abate that, scientists say.
The Bush proposal calls for $250 million in wetlands restoration and protection.
Louisiana's coastal erosion is illustrated by footage of President Teddy Roosevelt's visit to the region a century ago for a ceremony creating several Mississippi River Delta islands as preserves. In one shot, Roosevelt is seen walking around on an island that doesn't exist anymore.
Some restoration is taking place, but at a slow rate. Sean Reilly, member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority board and president of Lamar Advertising (LAMR) in Baton Rouge, says levee reconstruction can't take place without swifter coastal restoration.
"It's a fact, you have to integrate the two," Reilly said.
Much of the coastal trouble is man-made, Reilly says. Over the past several decades, dozens of oil industry pipelines serving offshore drills cut through wetland areas when they were installed. As that happened, saltwater intruded and chipped away at the ecosystems that surrounded the pipes.
'Mister Go'
Increased shipping traffic over the years also didn't help. A desire to create a more direct route to the Gulf of Mexico from New Orleans resulted in the building of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, known locally as MRGO or Mister Go, in the mid-1960s.
That 66-mile man-made trench is blamed as one of the factors in deluging St. Bernard Parish with more than 12 feet of water in some cases. Serious consideration is being given to closing that outlet.
Federal officials don't plan to dredge the outlet for deep-hulled ships; it can now accommodate medium-sized vessels. Port officials say they want to make sure locks connected the city's upper harbor to the Mississippi are wide enough to handle large ships.
Also at play are the Mississippi River levees that protect Plaquemines Parish as the river flows south from New Orleans into the Gulf of Mexico, Reilly said.
Silt that collects from the Midwest upriver flows down toward the Gulf. Without the levees, the river would overflow from time to time and leave deposits, thus reinvigorating the wetlands with fresh soil. The presence of levees keeps those deposits flowing down river and shooting out the mouth of the delta, creating further erosion.
Officials think they may have a one-stop solution to financing new levees. Offshore oil rigs give a certain percentage of taxes to the federal government. The U.S. shares that revenue with many states, giving up to half in some cases.
Despite being one of the most oil-rich states, Louisiana gets a fraction of a percent of that tax revenue. Michael Olivier, Louisiana's secretary for economic development, says the state is lobbying Washington for that share.
"They don't want to talk about it," Olivier said, adding Louisiana wouldn't bother Washington for levee protection funds if it received the same share in offshore oil revenue as Texas.
Reilly added that sharing the revenue is the strongest argument the state can make to get levee protection funds.
"Louisiana gave up its coastline for the oil and gas industry for the last 70 years. The benefits of that have basically flowed through to the rest of the country. We think it's time for the rest of the country to acknowledge that sacrifice we made and help us rebuild that coastline."

Link to Reference: EVIN SPEAR, The Orlando Sentinel, 12/21/05

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Highlights:
- Spilled chemicals, leaking gas tanks and city sewage all mingled with floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina that eventually drained into the Gulf of Mexico. The toxic soup went somewhere. But its destination remains a mystery.
- Potential damage to cities, chemical plants and industrial sites - now and in years to come - could spell calamity for the Gulf's treasured wetlands, beaches, coral reefs, surf and sea life.
- How communities and industries that continue to crowd the region are so blind to their environmental risk-taking and the harm they cause the Gulf

NEW ORLEANS - Spilled chemicals, leaking gas tanks and city sewage all mingled with floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina that eventually drained into the Gulf of Mexico. The toxic soup went somewhere. But its destination remains a mystery. Scientists still don't know whether the slug of germs and chemicals is floating toward Florida's coast, drifting out to the Atlantic or lurking somewhere in between.

The massive dose of pollution stands as one of the storm season's critical environmental lessons: The Gulf roils with looping, whirling currents able to turn one shore's mess into another's lasting misery.

That message is growing more urgent with predictions that hurricanes will punch harder and more often in coming decades.

Potential damage to cities, chemical plants and industrial sites - now and in years to come - could spell calamity for the Gulf's treasured wetlands, beaches, coral reefs, surf and sea life. At the very least, hurricane batterings will heighten threats to an ecosystem already burdened with dead zones, toxic algae and mysterious plumes of pollution-laden black water off Florida's coast.

"Where does the Gulf of Mexico reach the tipping point where it can no longer fix itself?" asked Enid Sisskin, legislative chair for the Panhandle's Gulf Coast Environmental Defense.

The Gulf of Mexico's expanse - the world's fifth-largest sea - is really an illusion. Shaped like a fishbowl, upside down and slightly canted, its widest span equals a line from Orlando to New York. But the distance is easily conquered.

A hummingbird migrates from Mississippi to Mexico in 18 hours. Ships laden with wheat steam from Beaumont, Texas, to beyond Key West in 48 hours. Natural-gas molecules surge through a pipeline under the Gulf from Mobile Bay to Tampa Bay in 59 hours.

It's not hard to see how a mess in one part of the Gulf can arrive quickly in others.

At Padre Island National Seashore, near Corpus Christi, Texas, researchers have traced trash to offshore rigs, shrimp boats, recreational boaters and more-distant sources, such as Midwest farms, said park science chief Darrell Echols.

After Mississippi River floods in the 1990s, crews hauled off everything from cow carcasses to roof trusses. After Katrina, workers returned to the park for truckloads of storm debris.

Yet how currents morph and whirl remains such a mystery that scientists aren't certain about how pollution travels. Predicting serpentine movements in the Gulf isn't nearly as reliable as forecasting a tropical storm.

"We have lots of weather observations on land," said Steve Murawski, chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington. "In the Gulf, we have a handful of buoys."

Stress on the Gulf of Mexico began in earnest decades ago as increasing development contributed polluted runoff, and industries found it a convenient dumping ground. Catastrophes not only added to the mess but proved how trouble in one area can extend for miles.

The world's second-worst ocean oiling issued a wake-up call in 1979. Workers on a rig near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula lost control of a well, unleashing 140 million gallons of crude into the Gulf during the next nine months.

Despite efforts to skim, burn and dissolve the spill, slicks smeared Mexico's coast and drifted 600 miles to Texas, washing onto 160 miles of shoreline. In Florida, 900 miles from the blowout, officials feared tar balls on beaches and petroleum poisoning of fish.

Scientists found encouraging but worrisome news.

Mexican oil hadn't traveled to Florida. But their research at the time showed that crude from other faraway parts of the Gulf had made the journey. It came from tankers scrubbing out their holds. It wasn't a small amount of oil. The discharged oil had been swallowed by turtles - green, hawksbill and loggerhead - that washed up dead on Florida shores.

It was a clear sign that Florida needs to keep a lookout far beyond its own share of the Gulf's blue depths.

The unknowns of the Gulf have contributed to the mystery of what happened to the slug of pollution that flowed out of New Orleans.

Nobody can say how fast or in what direction it traveled. But they know more than 66 billion gallons drained out of the city - more than enough to fill the 50-square-mile Lake Apopka west of Orlando.

The giant plume set off such worries that an unprecedented armada of oceanographers, marine biologists and chemists fanned out in several ships across the northern Gulf of Mexico, from Florida to west of the Mississippi River delta.

Health authorities already had reported that evacuees who waded in floodwaters in New Orleans were breaking out with rashes and blistered skin.

"We had no way of knowing what to expect," said Shailer Cummings, chief scientist for one of the cruises sponsored by NOAA.

A University of South Florida oceanographer, in a separate effort, offered a theory. Using computer calculations and satellite observations of sea-surface changes, he estimated the swiftest-moving New Orleans contamination could have traveled the Gulf in circular detours for a month before hooking around South Florida to the Atlantic Ocean.

NOAA deployed "drifters" - floating electronic buoys - that broadcast their locations while riding currents. Some migrated toward Texas. Others meandered toward Florida.

The scientists never found fish kills, tainted shellfish or the pollution. Perhaps toxic floodwaters were neutralized by exposure to sun, sank to the bottom, decayed or were diluted.

Robert H. Gore, a marine scientist who wrote a book about the Gulf's wonders and plight in the early 1990s, doesn't expect that many of Florida's residents will see Katrina's mess as a warning.

He has marveled at how communities and industries that continue to crowd the region are so blind to their environmental risk-taking and the harm they cause the Gulf.

"You built your own nest," Gore said. "Now you have to sit in it."

Link to Reference: John McQuaid, Staff writer, 12/18/05

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Highlights:
- higher levees along New Orleans' 17th Street Canal likely would fail in high water because they were built on "very soft clays with minimal cohesion.
- canals breached when foundation soil slipped from underneath them as Hurricane Katrina's storm surge rose on Aug. 29, flooding much of central New Orleans.
- Investigators, along with many New Orleans residents, are wondering how engineers with advanced degrees, using computers and detailed data on soil conditions, could design floodwalls with what, in hindsight, are obvious flaws.
- The document trail is incomplete, and mysteries remain about key design decisions. But design memoranda and other documents from the construction of the floodwalls in the two canals offer clues to what might have gone wrong. They show that in addition to concerns dating back 25 years about the stability of levees in both canals, designers sometimes worked at the edge of acceptable standards and at times failed to account for layers of weak soil. All are problems that could have contributed to the failures.


After a 1980 flood caused a stretch of the city's London Avenue canal levee to collapse, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed replacing it with a fortified design called a T-wall, with sheet pile foundations driven 26 feet deep. And in 1981, a study by Metairie design firm Modjeski & Masters found that proposed higher levees along New Orleans' 17th Street Canal likely would fail in high water because they were built on "very soft clays with minimal cohesion."

Yet when levee designs were finalized, the London Avenue Canal wall ended up with a significantly weaker design and the 17th Street walls with shallower foundations. Both canals breached when foundation soil slipped from underneath them as Hurricane Katrina's storm surge rose on Aug. 29, flooding much of central New Orleans.

As teams of forensic engineers probe why levees breached during Katrina, the key question lies at the heart of the design process. Investigators, along with many New Orleans residents, are wondering how engineers with advanced degrees, using computers and detailed data on soil conditions, could design floodwalls with what, in hindsight, are obvious flaws.

Investigators are focusing on the 17th Street and London Avenue canals, which breached when water rose to a point that was, at the most, two feet below their tops. They suggest that, since the walls have common elements, there is a fundamental problem with the way the walls were built.

"There does appear to be a systemic failure along the drainage canals because the failure occurred at two places simultaneously," said David Rogers, a geotechnical engineer at the University of Missouri-Rolla who is on a National Science Foundation team studying the breaches. "There's got to be something big that's causing that. . . . This is a very bad failure mark. It's telling you they missed the mark by a country mile on the design."

The document trail is incomplete, and mysteries remain about key design decisions. But design memoranda and other documents from the construction of the floodwalls in the two canals offer clues to what might have gone wrong. They show that in addition to concerns dating back 25 years about the stability of levees in both canals, designers sometimes worked at the edge of acceptable standards and at times failed to account for layers of weak soil. All are problems that could have contributed to the failures.

Unpredictable forces

Engineering has a reputation as the hardest of hard sciences. It deals not just with scientific laws and complex equations but with the real world: things such as levees, dams, bridges and jet engines. Those structures have to perform under everyday conditions for years, and also keep working when hit by rarer, more powerful stresses.

Engineers are supposed to calculate those forces -- in this case, the high pressures of rising floodwaters -- account for them and compensate for them in the design. It sounds straightforward, especially for a structure as seemingly simple as a vertical, steel-and-concrete wall. But it's not.

Every structure faces hard-to-predict scenarios. For levees, these involve the combination of weak soil and high water. Soil, especially the muck under much of New Orleans, behaves unpredictably under stress. It's hard to address that in the design, though there are safeguards built into the process that are supposed to make up for such uncertainties.

Complicated process

But the design process itself also is complicated, from the gathering of soil samples to the production of plans, said Radhey Sharma, a Louisiana State University geotechnical engineer who is studying the levee failures as part of the state-sponsored Team Louisiana.

"There are a number of stages at which things can be very delicate," Sharma said. "They can be at the site investigation, the level of testing in the field and lab, and then when you have calculations at the design level."

Far from being straight-up mathematical calculations, these involve questions of politics, money and bureaucracy. Firms and agencies with varying priorities participate and make compromises. With physical uncertainties added in, engineers say, those factors can result in designs that appear to meet all requirements but contain hidden weaknesses that show up only after it's too late.

In hindsight, experts say, designers working on the 17th Street wall got some of the basics wrong.

Not deep enough

Investigators say the floodwall's sheet pile foundation, which extended 17 feet below sea level at the breached area, allowed water -- under pressure from weight, wind and waves -- to seep through soft soils underneath it during the hurricane, leading to a breach.

The bottom of the wall rested in a layer of soft clay that can turn to the consistency of grease when pressurized water moves through it, Rogers said. It also didn't reach the 18.5-foot depth of the canal bottom, a common design benchmark because the highest seepage occurs from water penetrating horizontally from the canal.

Deeper sheet piling would have had two benefits, engineers say: preventing seepage and stabilizing the whole structure.

Modjeski & Masters says it initially recommended a depth of 35 feet to the corps, but has not provided documentation to back the claim.

Yet as the designs were developed, engineers suggested that much shorter sheet-piling depths would work fine.

Design documents by Modjeski & Masters and Eustis Engineering, a geotechnical firm, show that in 1988 and 1989 engineers calculated that the sheet pile for a 3,500-foot length of floodwall, including the breached area, should be just 12.8 feet deep. The documents appear to be general surveys that assess and approve already agreed-upon designs, Rogers said. The next year, the corps incorporated many of the same numbers into the official design and came up with an even shorter 10-foot depth for the sheet piling.

It's not clear how the foundations ended up 7 feet deeper when the walls were built. But it still wasn't enough.

The documents indicate that the floodwalls were designed primarily as retaining walls to hold back water in the canal not to prevent seepage or to buttress the soil at deeper levels underground.

"In terms of the influence of the sheet piling, if it were driven very, very deep it would have intercepted or somewhat retarded the movements of soils at, say, 20 feet," said Joseph Suhayda, a retired Louisiana State University professor and engineering consultant who studied the documents. "That certainly was not a design function indicated by the documents. There was a separation of function."

Not stable enough

That separation is appropriate if the levee part of the structure is strong. Floodwalls are only as stable as the soil in which they're built. Though both are part of one, integral system, they also are distinct structures with different forces acting on them that behave in different ways under stress. When a wall fails in isolation, it tends to dislodge from its moorings, rotating around a point, bending or breaking. When soil fails, pressures build in its softest layers until they literally break apart and an entire mass suddenly slips along an arc or a plane, like a book sliding across a table.

The designers figured, incorrectly, that the earthen structure alone would be stable enough in the layers below the bottom of the sheet pile. One reason for that is that they miscalculated how far down the soil would be likely to slide.

The 17th Street designs calculated the most likely point for the soil to fail was at 36.5 feet below sea level 15 to 20 feet below the weakest layers.

At about 36 feet below sea level, boring data show that softer soil layers give way to sand, the remnant of an ancient beach. Geotechnical engineers say it makes sense to assume soil might slip where one distinct layer sits on another. But they also say that weaker soils above that, where transitions between soft clays, peat and other marshy materials were not as clearly demarcated, were more likely failure points.

The edge of safety

The calculations also show that at various stages before the sheet-piling depth was changed to 17 feet, designers were operating at the edge of acceptable safety standards.

Rogers called the calculations "suspicious" because they derived a safety factor of 1.3 for that 36 feet-below-sea-level depth exactly the minimum called for by the Army Corps of Engineers' standards for levees. A safety factor is a cushion built into the design to make sure a structure is stronger than the maximum forces it's designed to withstand.

Getting a minimum safety factor in a design is not unusual; it's usually the goal. Higher safety factors mean bigger costs. But Rogers noted that design requirements mandate the safety factor be 1.3 only at the weakest points; at other points in a typical structure it's often much higher. But in the 1988, 1989 and 1990 design documents for the breached area of the 17th Street wall, virtually all of the safety factors were 1.3 or slightly above it one, however, was 1.2965 indicating the structure barely met corps standards.

"If I can do a hundred cross sections of a levee and a few are 1.3, that's OK. But here all the factors are around 1.3," Rogers said. "From the outside, that's suspicious. If you come across something like this, you say maybe the answers they want to get are driving the analysis, not the analysis driving the answers."

With a safety factor of 1.3 -- low for an important structure protecting lives and property -- there is relatively little room for error, and engineers are supposed to compensate for that with conservative designs, taking into account the unexpected soil variations.

The breached floodwalls were I-walls, a vertical wall that is the least expensive and least stable of the choices available. But it's not clear yet whether such concerns or other factors led to deepening the sheet piles from the shorter designs to 17 feet.

Weak spots

In calculating those safety numbers, designers also broadly generalized about quirky soil in an area where pockets of weakness can matter a great deal. Wide variations in soil type and strength were mathematically lumped together to simplify the calculations.

To figure out where the trouble spots are -- where soil is likely to slip or slide -- engineers use equations that give a rough prediction of how the earth will behave during the maximum flood: in this case, a water height of 11.5 feet in the canal associated with a Category 3 hurricane.

The three sets of documents show engineers used the same soil-strength figures for a section of the levee wall more than 6,000 feet long. A profile generated from boring data shows the layer of especially weak soil was about 1,500 to 2,000 feet long.

Designers are supposed to be cautious and account for weak points in such generalizations, but the documents do not indicate whether they did. Rogers said they might have averaged low numbers with higher strengths in the vicinity, blurring the differences -- and underestimating the risk of failure.

The stability analyses don't mention concern about the weakest soil layers or isolated weak points. A second round of calculations done in 1989 by Modjeski & Masters, intended to double-check Eustis' 1988 numbers, concluded that the designs apparently were fine, as did the 1990 design memorandum.

The peat and soft clays "presented a real challenge," Suhayda said. "When you look at the design calculations, it seems to be absent."

If they make generalizations and have an incomplete picture of what's going on underground, there is always a risk engineers will not identify serious trouble spots. "There might be a big layer that is very weak that might have been totally missed," Sharma said.

There also is evidence of such a possible oversight in the London Avenue canal, whose floodwalls breached in two spots. According to a 1989 project design memorandum, designers had ignored layers of soft clays in levee sections for an area near the lakefront, an error caught by corps reviewers at the Lower Mississippi Valley Division in Vicksburg.

The memo, from corps Lower Mississippi Valley Division official William Hill, says: "These stability analyses plates show no clay layers above el(evation). -41 [ft.]. However, borings . . . show very soft clay layers (and 'no sample') in the vicinity of el -15; and Boring 32 very soft clay between elevations -18 and -20. If these very soft clays were included in the referenced stability analyses, lower than allowable factors of safety would result."

New Orleans district engineering chief Frederic M. Chatry concurred, saying that new soil borings would be done in that area and the numbers recalculated. It's not clear what happened after that, but at some point the design for the east side that breached was changed from a T-wall to the weaker I-wall.

Link to Reference: Mark Schleifstein, Staff writer, 12/15/05

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Highlights:
- A leader of a state team investigating New Orleans area levee failures Wednesday defended sonar and seismic tests conducted by a state contractor that indicated some sheet piles installed along the 17th Street Canal were sunk to only 10 feet below sea level.
- the corps' findings also don't relieve the agency of responsibility for the failure of the 17th Street Canal levee or other levees in the city.
- We have to be responsible to the people of New Orleans and fix these problems and fix them right. That calls for validated scientific information and not speculation and accusations that are creating anxiety and fear in people

A leader of a state team investigating New Orleans area levee failures Wednesday defended sonar and seismic tests conducted by a state contractor that indicated some sheet piles installed along the 17th Street Canal were sunk to only 10 feet below sea level.

On Tuesday, Army Corps of Engineers contractors pulled eight pilings from just north and south of the breach in the canal, revealing those pilings were sunk to at least 17.5 feet below sea level, as required by the corps' levee design.

A corps contractor in October, using a similar sonar and seismic instrument, incorrectly estimated that two of the pilings removed Tuesday would reach to only 10 feet below sea level.

Corps officials said the piling pull exercise indicated that both their own sonar and seismic tests and those conducted by Louisiana State University must not be accurate.

Differences in equipment

But Ivor van Heerden, one of the leaders of Team Louisiana, a group of six LSU professors and three independent engineers investigating the levee failures for the state Department of Transportation and Development, said the team thinks the measuring equipment used by Southern Earth Sciences was more accurate than that used by the corps, and that the reading of 10 feet below sea level was accurate. Van Heerden said the LSU soundings were made in a borehole dug only 1.5 feet from the wall. The corps tests were done in boreholes dug 5.5 feet and 6.2 feet from the north and south wall sections next to the breach.

"So our preliminary assessment is still that where we tested the sheet piles, they ended at minus 10 feet below sea level, but we will do some additional testing ourselves," van Heerden said.

Van Heerden described the location of the Team Louisiana tests as "a couple hundred feet south of the breach" but would not give an exact location. He also demurred on why the team didn't respond to a request from the corps for that location so it could pull pilings there to determine the accuracy of the state tests.

"The sites chosen by the state were where there were indications of seepage at the present time, as well as evidence of sand boils and similar blowout features from Hurricane Katrina," van Heerden said.

Not off the hook yet

He said the corps' findings also don't relieve the agency of responsibility for the failure of the 17th Street Canal levee or other levees in the city.

"Our geotechnical engineers, when they did their safety calculations, used both sheet pilings to minus 10 and minus 17, and in both cases they indicated that the sheet piles would have failed as the water level in the canal approached 11 feet above sea level, which is exactly what happened in Katrina," van Heerden said.

"The fact that the corps found some sheet piling sunk to minus 17 does not negate the fact that we had catastrophic structural failures of the levees in 58 locations around New Orleans," he said.

"I was fortunate enough to tour a number of the major levee systems and flood control structures in the Netherlands, and their levees make ours look extremely sad," said van Heerden, who returned from a tour of the Dutch levee system Tuesday. "As an American, I feel the sooner the Corps of Engineers accepts responsibility, the sooner we can move forward. The Dutch have all the technology that we need, and building a world-class levee system for southeast Louisiana is an extremely doable task."

Corps vows solutions

Corps spokesman Jim Taylor said agency officials think the LSU test site may be outside the boundary of a cofferdam of deep sheet pilings that has been built around the breach area to keep canal water out while repairs are made.

"We couldn't pull those anyway without risking flooding again," Taylor said.

He said the corps is committed to providing accurate information to its own investigators and those outside the agency looking into the reasons for levee breaches, which was the reason for Tuesday's piling removal operation.

"We absolutely have to find out what the answer is," he said. "We have to be responsible to the people of New Orleans and fix these problems and fix them right. That calls for validated scientific information and not speculation and accusations that are creating anxiety and fear in people."

Al Naomi, a corps engineer directing a study of expanded levee protection of south Louisiana, is traveling to the Netherlands in a few days to examine its flood protection system, corps spokeswoman Susan Jackson said.

"We've been in partnership with the Dutch since 2001," Jackson said of a relationship that has included exchanges of engineers between the two countries. "Naomi will probably tour their facilities, their barrier, and is going to be sitting down with them to discuss everything from the big levee plan to hydrology."

The Netherlands also supplied trained pump operators to assist the corps in removing water from the city in Katrina's aftermath, she said.

Link to Reference: Mark Schleifstein and Bob Marshall, Staff writer, 12/14/05

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Highlights:
- confirmed that the foundation had been driven to the depths required by the Army Corps of Engineers. But those findings only turned the focus back on whether the structure's basic design was key to the levee breach that flooded much of the city during Hurricane Katrina.
- The measurements, however, were somewhat surprising because recent seismic/sonar testing by the corps had predicted that the sheet piles just north and south of the breach reached to only about 10 feet below sea level. That's the same depth found by a testing company hired by Team Louisiana, a group of six Louisiana State University professors and three independent engineers investigating the levee failures for the state Department of Transportation and Development.
- Finding the reasons behind the levee failures is important in determining how to rebuild failed sections and whether other parts of the more than 100 miles of levee walls in the New Orleans area are strong enough to prevent future hurricane-related flooding.

Measurements of sheet pilings pulled Tuesday from the 17th Street Canal confirmed that the foundation had been driven to the depths required by the Army Corps of Engineers. But those findings only turned the focus back on whether the structure's basic design was key to the levee breach that flooded much of the city during Hurricane Katrina.

The pilings removed from beneath four wall segments on the north and south side of the break averaged 23.5 feet long, corps officials said. That means they extended to about 17 feet below sea level, as described in corps design documents.

The measurements, however, were somewhat surprising because recent seismic/sonar testing by the corps had predicted that the sheet piles just north and south of the breach reached to only about 10 feet below sea level. That's the same depth found by a testing company hired by Team Louisiana, a group of six Louisiana State University professors and three independent engineers investigating the levee failures for the state Department of Transportation and Development.

That depth raised questions about possible malfeasance in the construction and prompted the corps to spend Monday and Tuesday pulling sections of the floodwall for examination by forensic experts. Corps officials said they plan to measure sheet piling at the ruptured London Avenue and Industrial Canal for measurements as repairs there proceed.

While the hands-on measurements seem to reduce the possibility of criminal conduct, corps officials and independent engineers said serious questions remain about how the wall failed during the Aug. 29 storm.

"The investigation will be ongoing until we find out exactly why, the scientific and engineering reasons why some levee parts of the system were able to withstand the forces of this hurricane and others did not," said Brig. Gen. Robert Crear, commander of Task Force Hope, which is assisting in the recovery of the New Orleans area.

The rebuilding question

Finding the reasons behind the levee failures is important in determining how to rebuild failed sections and whether other parts of the more than 100 miles of levee walls in the New Orleans area are strong enough to prevent future hurricane-related flooding.

"We need to check every foot of the levees," said Michael McCrossen, acting chairman of the Orleans Levee District. "Random tests are not enough."

Two pilings pulled Tuesday by the corps were at sites where the agency had conducted seismic soundings, and both showed the test measurements were off by 7 feet. No one could explain the discrepancy Tuesday.

Corps spokesman Jim Taylor said the agency wanted to pull pilings at the spot where the Team Louisiana had conducted its tests, but team officials would not identify the location.

Scott Slaughter, branch manager for Southern Earth Sciences, which did the piling depth investigations for Team Louisiana, said he "would very much welcome" the corps to pull sections of the wall where his company did its work.

"We used the same technology the corps used when it measured the sheet pilings depth, and we got the same answers," he said.

Late Tuesday, Ivor van Heerden, a leader of Team Louisiana, said he had been in and out of the country in recent days and was unable to act on the corps request.

The tests are conducted by driving a "seismic cone" into the earth near the wall and striking the top of the sheet piling with a heavy object. The cone marks the time it takes for the energy waves from the strike to travel down the piling.

"Energy waves travel much faster through steel than through soil," Slaughter said. "So we know when we get to the end of the piling because it suddenly takes longer for those waves to reach our instruments.

"This technology has been around a long time. It's widely available. It's the same device the corps used in taking its readings.

"We've had our methodology verified and tested many times, but if we're making some kind of mistake, we want to know about it to correct it," he said. "The only way to find that out for sure is to have the corps come to the spot we made our checks, and pull one of those pilings."

End the blame game

Col. Richard Wagenaar, who heads the corps' New Orleans District office, said he hoped the findings Tuesday would restore confidence in the corps, which had said the pilings were driven to 17 feet below sea level, and reduce criticism of corps employees, many of whom lost homes in the storm.

"There's an environment right now in which everybody wants to come after the corps," he said. "But the corps didn't come into New Orleans in the 1800s and build this canal. And we're not going to get anything done if people continue to want to blame people."

University of California-Berkeley engineering professor Raymond Seed said that the measurements help confirm the theory being considered by a team of engineers working for the American Society of Civil Engineers and the National Science Foundation that the design was not adequate for the soils in the area.

While the sheet piling now seems to stretch just deep enough to cut off water from the canal reaching the soft peaty soils beneath the levee wall, the soils in which the tip was resting were still too weak, and the wall could not sustain the pressure of surge water in the canal, said Gordon Boutwell, a Baton Rouge soils specialist and member of the civil engineers team.

Water seepage through a layer of sand beneath the London Avenue canal still is the leading theory for the failure of several sections of wall there, Seed and Boutwell said.

Wrong design at outset?

Engineers with Team Louisiana agree that the 17th Street Canal pilings were still too short, even at 17 feet below sea level.

Using the soil data available to the design teams and the corps, it ran the engineering equations used to test the limits of the design, and found the wall would fail when water levels rise between 11 and 12 feet -- as it did in Katrina -- even with the sheet pile as deep as 20 feet below sea level.

Engineers on the team said their work also indicates the weak soils may have been too risky for the I-wall design chosen by the corps even if sheet pilings had been driven 35 or 40 feet below sea level.

They said a safer design would have been the T-wall concept, which was suggested by the original design teams, but rejected by the corps at both the London and 17th Street Canal projects, documents show.

Show them the money

Meanwhile, New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board Director Marcia St. Martin told the corps' Crear during Tuesday's sheet-pile pull that her agency has decided to begin work on building new pump stations at the end of the 17th Street, Orleans Avenue and London Avenue canals.

"The Sewerage & Water Board will need federal assistance," St. Martin said, "because each pump station will cost upward of $150 million."

The new stations would take at least three years to build. Corps officials have said they probably will keep a sheet pile wall or other structure in place at the canal entrances during the 2006 hurricane season that begins June 1, while studying their own gate options.

Existing pump stations that sit on higher ground to the south of Lake Pontchartrain -- the 19th century edge of New Orleans -- will continue to operate under the water board plan, St. Martin said. But the new pumps will assist in pumping rainwater out and, more importantly, act as blockades against hurricane storm surge entering the canals.

Original corps plans for levees along all three canals west of the Industrial Canal called for installing automatic butterfly gates that would close when the water level in the lake rose above that in the canals. But those plans were vetoed by the Sewerage & Water Board in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of concerns that the gates might interfere with the ability of the internal pump stations to move rainfall out of the city, even during a hurricane.

St. Martin said the use of pumps at the canal entrances will eliminate that concern, and turn them into mirrors of the pump stations at the ends of several drainage systems in eastern New Orleans.

Crear said the corps is willing to work with the board on the plans, but was noncommittal about the money necessary to build the pumps.

Link to Reference: Mark Schleifstein, Bob Marshall and John McQuaid, Staff writers, 12/16/05

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- President Bush pledges $3.1 billion for fortified hurricane protection.
- New pumping stations aimed at keeping storm surge from pouring into New Orleans through drainage canals, vulnerable levees reinforced to resist erosion from waves and fast-track completion of a long-promised hurricane protection system are the cornerstones of an additional $1.5 billion request
- repairs to a variety of breaches in canal levee walls and eroded earthen levees in New Orleans and Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes.


President Bush pledges $3.1 billion for fortified hurricane protection. Nagin, Blanco urged displaced residents to return home.

New pumping stations aimed at keeping storm surge from pouring into New Orleans through drainage canals, vulnerable levees reinforced to resist erosion from waves and fast-track completion of a long-promised hurricane protection system are the cornerstones of an additional $1.5 billion request announced Thursday by the Bush administration.

"The levee system will be better and stronger than it ever has been in the history of New Orleans," said Donald Powell, the top federal official for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. "Better and stronger than it ever has been in the history of New Orleans," Powell repeated, as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin stood at his side at the White House.

"If a hurricane such as Katrina ever visited New Orleans again, I'm convinced that the work that the corps would be doing as I've described will prevent any catastrophic flooding," Powell said.

He said the Army Corps of Engineers would correct any design flaws that may have contributed to the catastrophic flooding caused when Katrina slammed into the area Aug. 29, and would raise and strengthen levees that have settled over the years.

Nagin praised Bush's commitment to nearly double an earlier $1.6 billion package for levee repairs and improvements, saying the president had responded to local residents' call for action.

"I want to say to all New Orleanians, to all businesses, it's time for you to come home, it's time for you to come back to the Big Easy," Nagin said. "We now have the commitment and the funding for hurricane protection at a level that we have never had before."

Calling it a down payment on greater protection for all of south Louisiana, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the announcement "is a strong signal to our families that they can come home and rebuild."

"I want to thank the president for his commitment to rebuild the New Orleans levees to a true Category 3 level," she said.

The list of improvements is expected to raise the hopes and confidence of displaced residents who have been looking for reassurance that destroyed homes in flooded areas can be rebuilt with some guarantee of increased protection from hurricanes.

The work, however, could take as long as five years for some projects.

Plenty of projects

Powell and U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the Bush request would provide the money needed to complete construction of long-delayed levees in St. Charles Parish, on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish and the New Orleans-to-Venice project in Plaquemines Parish. The request also includes $250 million for wetlands restoration efforts.

The money would come from part of the $62 billion already appropriated by Congress but not yet spent for aid after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

It would be added to $1.6 billion already pending before Congress to pay for the corps' immediate repairs to a variety of breaches in canal levee walls and eroded earthen levees in New Orleans and Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes.

Dan Hitchings, head of the corps' Task Force Guardian, said the agency aims to restore and upgrade all levees to pre-Katrina standards by the start of the 2006 hurricane season June 1. The additional improvements, such as reinforcing some levees, will take until Sept. 2007, and the new pumping stations will be finished in three to five years, he said.

The corps is looking at several options to block off the mouths of three canals -- 17th Street, London Avenue and Orleans -- from floodwaters until the pumping stations are completed, Hitchings said. Breaches at the 17th Street and London Avenue canals flooded much of the city during Katrina and have long been a concern as a pathway for hurricane flooding.

"One would be a barrier system that has gates at the lakefront so that they could be opened and closed as needed. That's the preferred option at this point," he said. "Until we are able to get those in place, we'll be leaving the sheet piling in."

Hitchings said it would be up to designers whether to permanently close the canals to the lake or leave a gated structure in place.

"One of the things that is an advantage of putting pumping stations at the lakefront here is that the canal areas will not be subjected to the surge from the lake," he said. "Basically what that means is you will not need to have the level of protection there, that the water will never get that high."

Protection promised

Hitchings said any levee subjected to significant wave action from Lake Pontchartrain or the Gulf of Mexico would be armored with stone or concrete.

"The advantage of armoring is that those storms won't destroy the levees," he said. "You can imagine that a lot more water will run in through an open breach than if it's just running over the top of it."

The extra protection increases the chances that pumping stations inside the levees would still be working, and could remove the water that has made its way in, he said.

Among the protection measures are:

-- A concrete slope on the backside of some levees to prevent water topping them from scouring the levee soil.

-- The use of rocks or "gabion," rocks wrapped in fabric or chicken wire to hold them together, to reduce scour on the back of levees.

-- Adding a rock base on the water side to break down waves before they undermine a levee.

Hitchings said completing the West Bank levee project, which will protect parts of Jefferson Parish from surge moving through Lake Catouache from Barataria Bay, in two years would be "a significant acceleration."

"Under the current, previous plan, the West Bank levee system there would not have been completed until 2018," he said.

The two-year completion of the St. Charles Parish part of the Lake Pontchartrain plan and the raising of levees that is part of the New Orleans-to-Venice plan also represents a major improvement.

The big one

While the levee improvements will significantly reduce the risk from hurricanes smaller than Katrina, several scientists doubt they will block all the effects of larger storms.

Indeed, even Powell and Hitchings agree that storms considered weaker than Category 3 when they hit New Orleans could have stronger force that would lead to topped levees in parts of eastern New Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, even with the levee improvements.

"The levee system in St. Bernard, Orleans east and Plaquemines Parish would be exposed to the same level of flooding as they were before," Hitchings said. "They were overtopped significantly by Katrina."

Blanco and other Louisiana politicians have been lobbying Congress for support for a larger levee and gate system that would protect the city from Category 5 hurricanes.

A spokesman for the governor said she was not invited to the White House event Thursday, which was attended by Nagin and several federal officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Blanco had asked for a meeting with Bush during her trip to Washington, from Sunday night until today, but was told that the president's schedule would not permit a visit, said Roderick Hawkins, a Blanco spokesman. Blanco met Thursday with two top Bush officials, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

Hawkins said Blanco was very pleased with the White House's levee pledge. "Without the levees we don't have homes, without the homes we don't have people," he said. "Today's announcement is a strong signal that New Orleans is coming back."

A White House spokesman would not comment on why Blanco was not invited to the White House event.

"We are continuing to work with everyone at the state and local level. While addressing the levee situation is important to the state, it is critical to New Orleans," spokesman Blair Jones said. "The levee situation is critical to New Orleans, that is why Mayor Nagin was there."

The grandchild test

In a meeting with members of the Louisiana congressional delegation and in several discussions with reporters, Powell said he asked corps officials to apply the "grandchild test," whether they would be confident enough to say that the system is safe enough for their grandchildren to live in New Orleans. He said the corps officials all answered, "Yes, yes, yes."

Earlier this week, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has threatened to keep Congress in session through the Christmas holidays if more money is not earmarked for Katrina recovery, reached an agreement with Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., to increase the dollars for levee repairs to $3 billion.

She told reporters Thursday that she credited the grassroots efforts of Louisiana residents and the constant prodding of the delegation and state and city leaders with getting the White House to make Thursday's announcement.

Landrieu said Bush's support will be instrumental in gaining approval for the extra dollars when the supplemental appropriation request returns to the House of Representatives, where support for additional money for Louisiana has been lukewarm.

"This commitment to Category 3 protection, along with some early construction toward Category 5, is a good step, but more steps need to be taken to ensure protection for the entire south Louisiana region," Landrieu said in a statement.

"I will not stop working until all parishes can be assured that this 'never again' defense is in place," she said. "If the Netherlands, at half the size of Louisiana, can protect itself from North Sea storms so strong they occur but once every 10,000 years, surely the United States of America can protect its own citizens from a lake."

Vitter said the commitment made by Bush to restore the levees to their authorized strength is open-ended, despite the price tag quoted by Powell.

"They are committed to do a certain scope of work," he said. "Their estimate is $3.1 billion. My estimate is $3.75 billion. But they've committed to complete the listed projects no matter what the cost."

Vitter, however said he will not be satisfied until a new commission "dominated by outside, independent experts who can work with the Corps of Engineers from start to finish" is in place to oversee the corps' work.

'45 years late'

Joseph Suhayda, a coastal scientist and retired Louisiana State University professor who helped design computer programs allowing the modeling of the effects of storm surge on New Orleans, said the most impressive part of Powell's announcement was the plan to armor the levees and close the canals by building pumping stations at the lake. "Those are significant and will have a positive affect, especially removing the canals as a serious threat," he said.

But the rest of the work, Suhayda said, was "the federal government simply saying they would finally do what they had committed to doing in 1965," when the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project was authorized by Congress. "In that regard, they aren't restoring to Category 3 levels, they're finally getting there, just 45 years late."

Suhayda also said the Bush announcement could take steam from the drive to provide Category 5 protection for New Orleans, a commitment he said is vital to the city's future.

"We've already seen some businesses say they can't come back, or won't come, unless they have that level of protection," he said. "It may be a case of, 'If you don't build it they won't come.'

"I think we're looking at having a city of 350,000 with Category 3 protection, as opposed to a vibrant, growing city of 1.5 million again with Category 5.

"So, while I think the announcement is great as far as it goes, I don't want them to think this is the end of the story," Suhayda said.

Ivor van Heerden, director of the LSU Hurricane Center, said he applauds all the proposals but "in terms of the overall needs of southeast Louisiana, those are little more than Band-Aids."

Van Heerden said Katrina proved the system being rebuilt will not keep the city safe from a Category 3 storm because surge heights were the equivalent of those produced by a Category 1 storm by the time they reached some parts of town where levees failed or were topped.

"The problem is the design criteria they had in the past wasn't for a Category 3 hurricane; Katrina proved that," he said. "The breaches at London Avenue and 17th Street were caused by surges generally associated with a Category 1 storm."

Simulations run by the LSU Hurricane Center showed a true Category 3 storm passing west of the city would flood the entire West Bank and downtown New Orleans with the current protection system in place, van Heerden said.

"The point is, we have to do better if we want even Category 3 level of protection," he said. "And that is very doable.

"Powell said their intention as to build the best levee system in the world. Well, the Dutch have the best system in the world. They built for a 10,000-year flood. We can build for a Category 5 hurricane. It's doable."

U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, agreed that more needs to be done.

"We need a system of protection for our barrier islands and wetlands that will help slow hurricanes before they reach populated areas," Jefferson said in a written statement. "I hope that we can move forward with more commitment in the future for a continued stream of south Louisiana."

Link to Reference: Babe Winkelman, The Pilot-Independent, 12/15/05

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- President Bush made a pledge to all hunters, anglers and conservationists to preserve wetlands. The president not only reaffirmed his father's pledge of a no net loss of wetlands, but also committed his administration to a policy of gaining wetland habitat each year.
- Truth is, we do not have a serious federal wetlands policy, and until we do, we will continue to lose wetlands acreage and, perhaps worse, further erode our nation's once-uncompromising commitment to natural resources conservation.
- federal wetlands law has been in a sort of limbo, although wetland losses continue unabated today. That despite President Bush's pledges to sportsmen and women.

Astute readers of this column will remember that President Bush made a pledge to all hunters, anglers and conservationists to preserve wetlands. The president not only reaffirmed his father's pledge of a no net loss of wetlands, but also committed his administration to a policy of gaining wetland habitat each year.

Both pledges were lavished with considerable praise from the Usual Suspects of the conservation movement — from mainstream hook-and-bullet groups to hardcore environmental activists. And why not: increasing wetlands habitat in the United States is a noble and meaningful goal, one that, if achieved, would benefit people, fish and wildlife.
But two General Accountability Office (GAO) reports released recently, not to mention actions taken by some federal lawmakers, illustrate just how far out in the wilderness we are as a nation on wetlands preservation.
Truth is, we do not have a serious federal wetlands policy, and until we do, we will continue to lose wetlands acreage and, perhaps worse, further erode our nation's once-uncompromising commitment to natural resources conservation.

The GAO is commonly referred to as the investigative arm of Congress. It studies how the federal government spends taxpayer money by evaluating federal programs.
According to the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), the two GAO reports found that the Army Corps of Engineers is failing in "its duty to protect vital wetlands and other water resources." In addition, for the third consecutive year, Congress recently cut funding for the nation's largest voluntary wetlands conservation initiative — the Wetlands Reserve Program.
"These reports show that the Corps is failing to ensure that Clean Water Act regulations are applied to their full extent and is providing no rationale for its failure to protect many wetlands," said Jim Murphy of NWF.
"And if this isn't troubling enough, the Corps is making little effort to ensure that permitted impacts to wetlands are mitigated. This all adds up to wetland losses that are not being accounted for."
I could detail the specifics of both reports, but to do so would be cruel and unusual punishment for you, the reader. Mr. Murphy's quote above gives all the insight you need to illustrate what's happening on the ground.
What's important to remember is that until 2001, the Clean Water Act protected nearly all swamps, marshes and seasonal ponds. However, the Supreme Court that year ruled that certain isolated potholes, considered unconnected to other waters (many biologists believe they are connected, however), fell outside the scope of federal regulation under the act.
Since that decision, federal wetlands law has been in a sort of limbo, although wetland losses continue unabated today. That despite President Bush's pledges to sportsmen and women.
Of course, prairie potholes — to name one wetland type — are enormously important wetlands, though they're often the most misunderstood.
More than half of North America's ducks produced each year come from isolated wetlands known as prairie potholes, which provide critical habitat for literally hundreds of bird species, including song birds, shorebirds and other nongame species.
Isolated wetlands are small and shallow and warm quickly during the spring, producing thousands upon thousands of tiny protein-rich invertebrates important to female ducks. As hens migrate north in March and April their nutritional requirements for egg development are extremely high.
Thus, potholes produce a protein-laden smorgasbord for migrating waterfowl.
But without these 1- to 3-acre potholes — which often dry and disappear during the heat of summer, in effect blinding us to their ecological importance — prairie duck production will decrease dramatically, say waterfowl biologists.
In fact, research conducted by Delta Waterfowl Foundation as early as the 1940s discovered that 10 one-acre wetlands produce three times as many ducks as one 10-acre wetland.
"Most duck hunters think in terms of big marshes, and traditionally habitat conservation efforts have focused on big waters," said Rob Olson of Delta. "Seasonal wetlands don't get much attention, but without them duck populations will crash."
According to Olson, about 80 percent of wetland basins in the Dakotas are classified as seasonal or temporary. All totaled, seasonal wetlands account for 70 percent of the duck production in the Dakotas.
All Wetlands — even small prairie potholes — provide society with untold benefits by performing certain ecological functions. Wetlands filter pollutants from water runoff before it reaches lakes, rivers and streams.
Wetlands act as nature's holding ponds by stemming flash floods that cause erosion and fill our streams with sediments and pollution. Had our coastal marshes that buffer storm surges not been destroyed for decades, the human toll from hurricanes Katrina and Rita would have been markedly less.
The benefits of wetlands are endless.
What to do? The solution is within our grasp, my friends. Congress must pass legislation to reaffirm the wetlands protections in the Clean Water Act.
Promises will no longer suffice.
Babe Winkelman is a nationally known outdoorsman who has been teaching people to fish and hunt for 25 years. Watch his award-winning "Good Fishing" television show on WGN-TV, Fox Sports Net, The Men's Channel, Great American Country Network and The Sportsman's Channel. Visit www.winkelman.com for air times.

Link to Reference: Stephen Maloney, St. Tammany News, 12/14/05

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Highlights:
- The Northshore of the lake lost a staggering 3.6 square miles of wetland habitat to the storm.
- Overall, Lake Pontchartrain's coastline lost an estimated 75.3 square miles due to the storm.
- Lake Pontchartrain was able to heal itself with such astounding speed through the simple process of dilution.

MANDEVILLE - In a matter of 30 hours, Hurricane Katrina dealt an unprecedented blow to the Lake Pontchartrain basin. "Never before in the history of America has this happened," said Carlton Dufrechou, director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.

The Northshore of the lake lost a staggering 3.6 square miles of wetland habitat to the storm. According to Dufrechou, the regular yearly rate of loss is substantially less. "We're usually dealing with losing several feet of wetlands a year on the Northshore to natural causes, maybe a square yard," Dufrochou said, "Nothing like this."

Overall, Lake Pontchartrain's coastline lost an estimated 75.3 square miles due to the storm. That's about 130 percent more than what was lost from 1990 to 2001, according to the findings of the U.S. Geologic Survey posted on the foundation's Web site.

Immediately after the storm, Dufrechou said the lake's waters reached unprecedented levels of pollution, but by mid-October the coastal water was back to pre-Katrina levels. "We had fishable/swimmable water again about five weeks after the storm," he said.

Lake Pontchartrain was able to heal itself with such astounding speed through the simple process of dilution.

"We're not advocating fighting pollution with dilution by any means," Dufrechou said, "But in reality, the lake covers about 630 square miles, so any localized contaminates were able to quickly spread out and break down."

The pollutants only represented about 10 percent of the lake's overall volume, so while the short-term localized effects were very significant, they didn't last long enough to affect the lake's overall pollution levels.

Dufrechou said the coastlines are the area's first line of defense.

"Without them, we will continue to see higher and higher storm surges on a more and more frequent basis," he said.

While the levee system is designed to be an effective breakwater system, Dufrechou said levees alone won't keep us safe. He said he supports the integration of our levee systems with our natural wetlands. The two working together will be a much more effective means of protecting ourselves from hurricanes and floods.

"The levees can be much better, but we can't do things the old way," Dufrechou said. "Everything needs to be integrated. The levees and the wetlands need to work together to protect us."

Link to Reference: Jim Stratton, Sentinel Staff Writer, 12/13/05

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Highlights:
- Along the 1,600-mile arc of the Gulf of Mexico, refineries, chemical plants and other industries stand like bowling pins waiting for the next hurricane to strike.
- Today, the ravaged coastline stands as a warning of what can happen when Gulf Coast industries meet Gulf Coast storms.
- The facilities crowd the coast because it was convenient and profitable to build there. Elected officials approved them, eager to create jobs and a solid tax base. Neighborhoods expanded around them, and in some cases, are now separated from them by only a chain-link fence. Much of the development happened more than 40 years ago, with little thought to land planning or environmental protection. In the following years, industries solidified their places and expanded during a period of fewer severe hurricanes.

Along the 1,600-mile arc of the Gulf of Mexico, refineries, chemical plants and other industries stand like bowling pins waiting for the next hurricane to strike.

The sites pulse with crude oil, acids and a menu of dangerous chemicals used in everything from jet fuel to fertilizer to cleaning supplies found in virtually every American home. Yet many are dangerously close to the water, exposed to the strongest winds and storm surges. Though the plants are built to withstand violent storms, Hurricane Katrina offered a vivid reminder that nature has little respect for concrete and steel. In Florida, that means sewage-treatment facilities, pulp mills and the Port of Tampa -- home to half the state's hazardous chemicals -- could get badly bruised by a major hurricane.

Katrina damaged dozens of facilities and dumped a slew of chemicals and petroleum into Louisiana neighborhoods. Today, the ravaged coastline stands as a warning of what can happen when Gulf Coast industries meet Gulf Coast storms.

"Where is the wisdom of putting these vulnerable facilities in areas most subject to catastrophic storms?" asks Quenton Dokken, the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation and a former top official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Hurricanes are going to happen, and we know they're going to happen. Where's the logic?"

Water power

The facilities crowd the coast because it was convenient and profitable to build there. Elected officials approved them, eager to create jobs and a solid tax base. Neighborhoods expanded around them, and in some cases, are now separated from them by only a chain-link fence. Much of the development happened more than 40 years ago, with little thought to land planning or environmental protection. In the following years, industries solidified their places and expanded during a period of fewer severe hurricanes.

Now more than 700 facilities stand along the coast -- from chemical plants and pulp mills to oil refineries and gas-processing plants -- according to state records, industry representatives and a review of industry publications. The plants have transformed the Gulf into an economic powerhouse, but not one free of risk.

"Anywhere you have such a high concentration of these places, there's the potential for catastrophe," said Ivor van Heerden, a hurricane researcher at Louisiana State University. "We all know that."

Water, in the form of a storm surge, is most likely to cause that catastrophe.

In New Orleans, raging stormwaters washed thousands of 55-gallon drums loaded with chemicals out of warehouses and into neighborhoods where they bobbed in the water like poisonous corks. Water toppled freight cars near the Mississippi River, adding punch to the toxic cocktail. A flooded chemical depot exploded, filling the sky with a hellish red glow and choking black smoke. And floodwaters wrenched an oil tank from its foundation, sending 900,000 gallons of crude rushing toward a neighborhood, where it coated about 1,800 homes.

Driven by 100-mph winds and its own momentum, rushing water can dislodge bridge supports, carry cars away and strip clothes off bodies. The National Hurricane Center has projected that a Category 5 storm could produce a storm surge of 29 feet in Apalachee Bay, the highest surge predicted for Florida's west coast; 30 feet in Bay St. Louis, Miss.; and 28 feet in Galveston, Texas, the hub of the nation's petrochemical industry.

Katrina produced a 30-foot-high surge in Biloxi, Miss., the highest recorded in the United States. Water obliterated neighborhoods, smashing into homes like a wrecking ball.

A Category 5 storm barreling through Tampa Bay could push a 25-foot-high wall of water toward downtown Tampa and submerge much of Pinellas, the state's most densely populated county.

Heavy winds and rain could overwhelm dikes designed to protect phosphate mines and processing plants in the Tampa area.

Last year, 65 million gallons of acidic water spilled into Hillsborough Bay after Hurricane Frances damaged a dike in Riverview. Hurricane Jeanne caused a 4.5 million-gallon spill at a similar site in Bartow.

The Port of Tampa would pose the biggest threat if it took a direct hit from a monster storm. The port is adjacent to the city's business district and stores hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel, liquid propane, chlorine and other hazardous substances.

FBI officials have estimated the port, the nation's 10th-largest, houses 50 percent of all hazardous material in Florida.

In 2002, the agency's Tampa division chief told a congressional hearing on national security about three terminals at the port that contain anhydrous ammonia, used in fertilizer, a substance that can burn skin, cause respiratory problems and, in some cases, blindness.

James Jarboe said the terminals had "outstanding safety records," but he issued this warning: "Individually, each of the three ammonia terminals pose a risk to the surrounding community, and the effect of three facilities, in close proximity with such massive quantities, pose an even greater risk."

The port and other nearby industrial areas, Jarboe said, are vulnerable not only to terrorist attacks but to "acts-of-nature releases." Any release, the National Sheriffs' Association has said, represents "a serious risk to communities in the area."


"They've got a lot of hazardous materials over there," said Mike Trimpert, chief of planning for Hillsborough County emergency management. "And they're right on the bay in downtown, so it's always a concern."

Florida's coast isn't as heavily populated by chemical plants or oil refineries, but facilities still hug the coastline. The Panhandle is home to a collection of chemical and petroleum facilities that produce or store materials used to manufacture everything from acrylic fibers to propellants for ammunition.

North of Tampa, the Crystal River nuclear plant overlooks the Gulf of Mexico. Nuclear facilities have held up well during hurricanes because their walls are several feet thick and made of reinforced concrete. A plant about 20 miles west of New Orleans survived Katrina virtually intact. Although Hurricane Andrew caused extensive damage to some buildings at the Turkey Point plant near Homestead, the nuclear reactors were protected.

Dozens of major wastewater plants and hundreds of lift stations -- pumps that move sewage out of neighborhoods -- are among some of the most vulnerable facilities. If a hurricane knocked out power to parts of the coast, generators would keep the plants running.

But a recent edition of the Florida Water Resources Journal warned local water officials that generators fail at least 10 percent of the time. The rate rises to 50 percent for old or used generators.

Failing wastewater plants could dump untold amounts of sewage -- and its disease-causing bacteria -- into neighborhoods, streams and, ultimately, the Gulf.

That's what happened when Hurricane Wilma swept through South Florida in October. The storm leveled utility poles and left water-treatment plants and lift stations powerless. In Broward County, sewage bubbled up into the streets and residents' bathtubs.

Weighing the risks

The risk of any single facility being hit by a major storm is relatively small, but the destruction caused by Katrina has renewed questions about the best ways to protect Gulf Coast facilities and the communities around them.

Some environmentalists have suggested that plants be required to withstand Category 5 storms, but there is little political will for a proposal that could cost billions of dollars.

So far, there has been no organized push to require industries to strengthen the storm protection at existing coastal sites. Nor is there a movement to ban them along the coast altogether.

"Many of them have to be near the water," said Larry Gispert, Hillsborough County's emergency-management director and a regional president for the International Association of Emergency Managers.

Most facilities, industry representatives say, are already well-protected against most storms. The specific requirements, however, vary by jurisdiction.

In some Alabama communities, for example, structures must be designed to withstand winds of 135 mph. In Hillsborough, the requirement ranges from 110 mph to 130 mph. Many companies build to exceed those minimum standards, but virtually none build with the worst storms in mind.

"Are they built to withstand Category 5 storms?" said Bruce Baughman, Alabama's director of emergency management and president of the National Emergency Management Association. "It's pretty clear they're not."

Facilities could be designed to weather the strongest storms, but it's unlikely to happen.

"If they had to build everything to that standard," Gispert said, "we couldn't afford the products they make."

Moreover, businesses pummeled by Katrina or Rita are more concerned about repairing existing problems than preventing future ones. For example, Air Products in New Orleans -- which produces liquid hydrogen -- hopes to have its badly damaged plant up and running by January. Fortifying the site against the next Katrina will have to wait.

"It's a very valid question, and in the long term, it's something we'll look at," company spokesman Art George said. "But our immediate focus is on resuming substantial operation by year's end."

Seven years ago, Chevron took a different tack at its refinery in Pascagoula, Miss. After Hurricane Georges caused $300 million in damage and sank the facility under 5 feet of water, the company built a $10 million, 5-mile dike around the property. Chevron officials say that dike, 20 feet high in some places, prevented serious flooding when Katrina blew through.


Chevron's decision, however, is more the exception than the rule. Until there is tremendous public and political pressure to shore up facilities, former NOAA official Dokken and others say most companies will take their chances they won't get hit.

"On this, there's been no leadership in the Gulf Coast community," Dokken said. "So it's incumbent for us to stand up and say, 'Here's what we want. Here's the way we want you to do business.' "

Any change, of course, will be too late to help residents in Chalmette, La.

In the suburb just east of New Orleans, the risks of putting Gulf Coast industries in the path of Gulf Coast storms became more than theoretical.

When Katrina roared ashore, its floodwaters ripped a Murphy Oil tank from its foundation and cracked it open, smearing just about everything in the town once named Louisiana's cleanest community.

Three months after the storm, the stains on homes, cars and yards are still visible. It's unclear when, or whether, the community will fully recover.

Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez said that for years, Murphy had offered to buy homes from residents who no longer wanted to live near the refinery.

"They were looking to create a buffer zone around their refinery," Rodriguez said. "They've got a buffer zone now. They've got one hell of a buffer zone."

Link to Reference: Kevin Spear, Sentinel Staff Writer, 12/12/05

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Highlights:
- Spilled chemicals, leaking gas tanks and city sewage all mingled with floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina that eventually drained into the Gulf of Mexico. The toxic soup went somewhere.
- The massive dose of pollution stands as one of the storm season's critical environmental lessons: The Gulf roils with looping, whirling currents able to turn one shore's mess into another's lasting misery. That message is growing more urgent with predictions that hurricanes will punch harder and more often in coming decades.
- Potential damage to cities, chemical plants and industrial sites -- now and in years to come -- could spell calamity for the Gulf's treasured wetlands, beaches, coral reefs, surf and sea life. At the very least, hurricane batterings will heighten threats to an ecosystem already burdened with dead zones, toxic algae and mysterious plumes of pollution-laden black water off Florida's coast.

NEW ORLEANS -- Spilled chemicals, leaking gas tanks and city sewage all mingled with floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina that eventually drained into the Gulf of Mexico. The toxic soup went somewhere. But its destination remains a mystery. Scientists still don't know whether the slug of germs and chemicals is floating toward Florida's coast, drifting out to the Atlantic or lurking somewhere in between.

The massive dose of pollution stands as one of the storm season's critical environmental lessons: The Gulf roils with looping, whirling currents able to turn one shore's mess into another's lasting misery. That message is growing more urgent with predictions that hurricanes will punch harder and more often in coming decades.

Potential damage to cities, chemical plants and industrial sites -- now and in years to come -- could spell calamity for the Gulf's treasured wetlands, beaches, coral reefs, surf and sea life. At the very least, hurricane batterings will heighten threats to an ecosystem already burdened with dead zones, toxic algae and mysterious plumes of pollution-laden black water off Florida's coast.

"Where does the Gulf of Mexico reach the tipping point where it can no longer fix itself?" asked Enid Sisskin, legislative chair for the Panhandle's Gulf Coast Environmental Defense.

Shared sea

The Gulf of Mexico's expanse -- the world's fifth-largest sea -- is really an illusion. Shaped like a fishbowl, upside down and slightly canted, its widest span equals a line from Orlando to New York. But the distance is easily conquered.

A hummingbird migrates from Mississippi to Mexico in 18 hours. Ships laden with wheat steam from Beaumont, Texas, to beyond Key West in 48 hours. Natural-gas molecules surge through a pipeline under the Gulf from Mobile Bay to Tampa Bay in 59 hours.

It's not hard to see how a mess in one part of the Gulf can arrive quickly in others.

At Padre Island National Seashore, near Corpus Christi, Texas, researchers have traced trash to offshore rigs, shrimp boats, recreational boaters and more-distant sources, such as Midwest farms, said park science chief Darrell Echols.

After Mississippi River floods in the 1990s, crews hauled off everything from cow carcasses to roof trusses. After Katrina, workers returned to the park for truckloads of storm debris.

Yet how currents morph and whirl remains such a mystery that scientists aren't certain about how pollution travels. Predicting serpentine movements in the Gulf isn't nearly as reliable as forecasting a tropical storm.

"We have lots of weather observations on land," said Steve Murawski, chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington. "In the Gulf, we have a handful of buoys."

Pollution travels

Stress on the Gulf of Mexico began in earnest decades ago as increasing development contributed polluted runoff, and industries found it a convenient dumping ground. Catastrophes not only added to the mess but proved how trouble in one area can extend for miles.

The world's second-worst ocean oiling issued a wake-up call in 1979. Workers on a rig near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula lost control of a well, unleashing 140 million gallons of crude into the Gulf during the next nine months.

Despite efforts to skim, burn and dissolve the spill, slicks smeared Mexico's coast and drifted 600 miles to Texas, washing onto 160 miles of shoreline. In Florida, 900 miles from the blowout, officials feared tar balls on beaches and petroleum poisoning of fish.

Scientists found encouraging but worrisome news.

Mexican oil hadn't traveled to Florida. But their research at the time showed that crude from other faraway parts of the Gulf had made the journey. It came from tankers scrubbing out their holds. It wasn't a small amount of oil. The discharged oil had been swallowed by turtles -- green, hawksbill and loggerhead -- that washed up dead on Florida shores.

It was a clear sign that Florida needs to keep a lookout far beyond its own share of the Gulf's blue depths.

Mysterious currents


The unknowns of the Gulf have contributed to the mystery of what happened to the slug of pollution that flowed out of New Orleans.

Nobody can say how fast or in what direction it traveled. But they know more than 66 billion gallons drained out of the city -- more than enough to fill the 50-square-mile Lake Apopka west of Orlando.

The giant plume set off such worries that an unprecedented armada of oceanographers, marine biologists and chemists fanned out in several ships across the northern Gulf of Mexico, from Florida to west of the Mississippi River delta.

Health authorities already had reported that evacuees who waded in floodwaters in New Orleans were breaking out with rashes and blistered skin.

"We had no way of knowing what to expect," said Shailer Cummings, chief scientist for one of the cruises sponsored by NOAA.

A University of South Florida oceanographer, in a separate effort, offered a theory. Using computer calculations and satellite observations of sea-surface changes, he estimated the swiftest-moving New Orleans contamination could have traveled the Gulf in circular detours for a month before hooking around South Florida to the Atlantic Ocean.

NOAA deployed "drifters" -- floating electronic buoys -- that broadcast their locations while riding currents. Some migrated toward Texas. Others meandered toward Florida.

The scientists never found fish kills, tainted shellfish or the pollution. Perhaps toxic floodwaters were neutralized by exposure to sun, sank to the bottom, decayed or were diluted.

South Florida resident Robert H. Gore, a marine scientist who wrote a book about the Gulf's wonders and plight in the early 1990s, doesn't expect that many of the region's residents will see Katrina's mess as a warning.

He has marveled at how communities and industries that continue to crowd the region are so blind to their environmental risk-taking and the harm they cause the Gulf.

Link to Reference: John Hill, Shreveporttimes.com, 12/8/05

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Highlights:
- Although some federal officials have said they didn't know of devastating flooding in New Orleans until Aug. 30, communications have revealed that word went out to state and federal levels a full day before then
- Despite the fact that representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were in the state briefings in Baton Rouge, word did not reach Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in Washington, D.C., until nearly 24 hours later.
- Bahamonde said he personally talked with Brown at 7 p.m. to tell him about the breach, which had grown to 200 feet.

BATON ROUGE -- Although some federal officials have said they didn't know of devastating flooding in New Orleans until Aug. 30, communications have revealed that word went out to state and federal levels a full day before then.

About the same time Hurricane Katrina was making its landfall on the Mississippi-Louisiana border on Monday morning, Aug. 29, state and federal emergency responders learned a breach in the 17th Street Canal was flooding New Orleans. Documents released by Gov. Kathleen Blanco to Congress show the first report of the breach was in the official 11 a.m. state police status report to the state Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.

Despite the fact that representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were in the state briefings in Baton Rouge, word did not reach Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in Washington, D.C., until nearly 24 hours later.

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown has blamed the poor response to Katrina on "dysfunctional" Louisiana officials.

A spokesman for Chertoff said Wednesday it is "unfortunate" the information didn't make it to the secretary until the day after Katrina devastated New Orleans, southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi.

In October, Marty Bahamonde, the only FEMA staffer in New Orleans, testified before a U.S. Senate committee that he had alerted Brown's assistant shortly after 11 a.m. Aug. 29 with the "worst possible news" that Katrina had cut a 20-foot breach in the 17th Street Canal levee and water was pouring into the city.

Bahamonde said he personally talked with Brown at 7 p.m. to tell him about the breach, which had grown to 200 feet.

Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Wednesday that it is "evident" there was a breakdown in communications at the FEMA emergency operations center. He also called it "a very frustrating time."

Louisiana state police Sgt. Kathy Flinchum said FEMA representatives were in the briefing that Monday morning when the breach was first mentioned, contained in the written state police report and highlighted in bold-faced red print: "Captain Mark Willow, NOPD Homeland Security, has reported a 20-foot break in the 17th Street canal. Fire Department is reporting authority. Levee board notified."

"After we received that information, the information was passed along," Flinchum said.

It was not even the first mention of flooding in Orleans, St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes.

Extensive flooding in New Orleans was reported during the 7:30 a.m. conference call between the state Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge and parish emergency offices in the 13 affected southeast Louisiana parishes. That's 70 minutes after Katrina made landfall across Plaquemines Parish at 6:20 a.m.

In the conference call, a tape of which is among the governor's documents submitted to Congress last week, flooding was reported in Orleans, St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes.

The National Guard headquarters in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward reported three to four feet of water, Jefferson Parish had flooding, Big Charity Hospital in downtown New Orleans reported flooding on the first floor and St. Bernard had three feet of water rising in Arabi.

In the 11 a.m. state police briefing report, "significant structural damage, heavy flooding and deteriorating weather" is reported in Orleans.

In a 5 p.m. bulletin by the national weather service, NOAA warns of flooding in New Orleans.

The 6 p.m. state Office of Emergency Preparedness' status report includes the notation that there were three breaches in New Orleans levees. The state OEP reported the 17th Street Canal breach was flooding the Lakeview area of New Orleans, while two other levee breaches in the 9th Ward were causing flooding.

Homeland Security's Knocke reiterated that Chertoff wasn't told of the breach until Aug. 30, some 20 to 22 hours after the first state police report.

"I don't think I could look back and tell you why," Knocke said. "It was unfortunate the information did not make it to the secretary."

When asked if he knew the breach had occurred within the same hour of the storm's landfall near Pearl River, Knocke declined to answer. "The (U.S.) Army Corps (of Engineers) would be able to have the best information."

FEMA is conducting an "after-action analysis" that is ongoing, Knocke said.

Link to Reference: Executive Summary

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Highlights:
- After 25 years of experience, the Superfund program has evolved to protect Americans from toxic chemicals released when industry collides with nature, such as hurricanes and floods. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now must use this experience to face its biggest challenge yet—cleaning up the toxic pollution left behind after Hurricane Katrina flooded the Gulf Coast. Unfortunately, funding shortfalls plague the Superfund program and may hinder its ability to respond to Hurricane Katrina and address the thousands of other polluted sites littered across the country.
- Hurricane Katrina presents EPA and the Superfund program with its biggest challenge yet – cleaning up after a flood of epic proportions. Hurricane forces and floodwaters that hit the heavily industrialized Gulf Coast in August 2005 created a stew of chemicals, sewage, oil, and pesticides that dispersed and settled widely.
- Unfortunately, the Superfund program must confront the challenge of cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina—and addressing thousands of other still contaminated sites across the country— with inadequate funding.

Since 1980, the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program has worked to protect the one in four Americans, including more than 10 million children, who live within four miles of the nation’s most polluted toxic waste sites. After 25 years of experience, the Superfund program has evolved to protect Americans from toxic chemicals released when industry collides with nature, such as hurricanes and floods. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now must use this experience to face its biggest challenge yet—cleaning up the toxic pollution left behind after Hurricane Katrina flooded the Gulf Coast. Unfortunately, funding shortfalls plague the Superfund program and may hinder its ability to respond to Hurricane Katrina and address the thousands of other polluted sites littered across the country.

In the 1970s, parents in Love Canal, New York, a community built upon a toxic waste dump, galvanized the nation when they demanded action from their elected officials to address the health problems afflicting local children. In response, Congress created the Superfund program in 1980 as the preeminent cleanup program for the nation’s most contaminated and toxic sites. Since its inception, the Superfund program has performed more than 7,000 emergency removal actions and permanently cleaned up 294 sites on the National Priorities List of the most toxic sites. Over the years, the Superfund program has evolved beyond just conducting cleanups at traditional hazardous waste sites; the Superfund program now supports response actions triggered by terrorism, natural disasters and other catastrophes. The Superfund program helped respond to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the anthrax contamination in the U.S. Senate, the devastating Midwest floods in 1993, and the initial federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In addition, the Superfund program has functioned as a safety net in hundreds of lesser-known situations when hazardous substances threatened communities after nature and industry collided. For example:

• The Gurley Pit Superfund site is situated in the floodplain of 15 Mile Bayou in northeast Arkansas. When 15 Mile Bayou flooded in 1980, water surged into Gurley Pit, releasing 500,000 gallons of hazardous waste onto residences and farmland. The Superfund program cleaned up the site and ensured that heavy rainfalls and flooding will no longer present a threat to local residents.

• In 1999, Hurricane Floyd dumped seven inches of rain over a 24-hour period in southeastern Pennsylvania. The resulting floodwaters carried toxic contaminants from an upstream industrial area into a residential neighborhood. Using the Superfund program, EPA identified two old landfills that were leaching a toxic brew into adjacent waterways. In 2001, EPA began planning long-term cleanup actions at these two sources to protect downstream residents.

• In 1997, a severe flood at Milo Creek washed toxic mining waste from the Bunker Hill Mine and Metallurgical Complex in northern Idaho onto 50 homes. The Superfund program removed the toxic waste from the homes and is stabilizing the Milo Creek channel to prevent future floods from dumping more toxic mining waste on downstream residents.

Hurricane Katrina presents EPA and the Superfund program with its biggest challenge yet – cleaning up after a flood of epic proportions. Hurricane forces and floodwaters that hit the heavily industrialized Gulf Coast in August 2005 created a stew of chemicals, sewage, oil, and pesticides that dispersed and settled widely. In the days and weeks after the hurricane, the Superfund program helped officials sample water for toxic chemicals, contain oil spills, remove barrels containing hazardous substances, and collect and dispose of hazardous waste. The full extent of these toxic releases will take years to understand and even longer to clean, but Superfund will continue to play a pivotal role in making the area safe again for local residents.

Unfortunately, the Superfund program must confront the challenge of cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina—and addressing thousands of other still contaminated sites across the country— with inadequate funding. The “polluter pays” fees levied on industries and chemicals that contribute to Superfund sites expired in 1995, leaving the program without a dedicated source of funding. Consequently, financial reserves in the Superfund trust have declined from a surplus of $3.8 billion in 1996 to levels that approach or reach zero at the end of each fiscal year, forcing average American taxpayers to shoulder more of the cost for toxic waste cleanups. In addition, Superfund’s financial demands have outstripped federal appropriations, leading to program funding shortfalls that slow or stop site cleanups and hinder EPA’s ability to address the backlog of contaminated sites.

As a result, the eve of Superfund’s 25th anniversary comes at a time when the program faces an uncertain future. To ensure that polluters, rather than regular taxpayers, pay to clean up Superfund sites, the polluter pays fees must be reinstated. Reinstating these fees will once again ensure that the Superfund program receives the funding it needs to function properly. In addition, a fully-funded Superfund program will be able to meet and overcome future emergencies and program challenges. In an era of federal budget deficits and program spending cuts amounting to billons of dollars, providing a reliable source of funding for the Superfund program with the polluter pays fees is sound public policy that will do much to protect public health and the environment.

Link to Reference: BRETT MARTEL, Associated Press Writer, 12/1/05

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Highlights:
- Government engineers performing sonar tests at the site of a major levee failure confirmed that steel reinforcements barely went more than half as deep as they were supposed to, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official said Wednesday.
- The Corps cannot explain the disparity between what its 1993 design documents show was supposed to be there and what they've found.
- But LSU computer models showed that even if the pilings had gone to 17.5 feet below sea level at 17th Street as design documents said they should have, they still would have failed.


NEW ORLEANS - Government engineers performing sonar tests at the site of a major levee failure confirmed that steel reinforcements barely went more than half as deep as they were supposed to, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official said Wednesday. "We've come up with similar results" to those from earlier tests performed by Louisiana State University engineers, said Walter Baumy, the Corps' chief engineer for the New Orleans District.

Baumy said the Corps intends to pull out pieces of the remaining wall along each edge of the breach at the 17th Street Canal to verify the sonar test results. The canal itself is now mostly dry at the breach site, with temporary walls holding back water from each side.

Baumy said the Corps cannot explain the disparity between what its 1993 design documents show was supposed to be there and what they've found.

The documents indicated that the steel reinforcements in the levee, known as sheet piling, went to a depth of 17.5 feet below sea level. Sonar tests indicated the pilings went only to 10 feet below sea level, meaning the flood wall would have been much weaker than intended.

The LSU team is working on a report for the state that will say there were serious, fundamental design and construction flaws at both the 17th Street and London Avenue canals. Both broke during Hurricane Katrina, flooding much of the city.

The team's leader, Ivor van Heerden, said Wednesday that the levee design ensured failure under the type of water pressure exerted by Katrina's storm surge.

The team's computer modeling showed that the designs failed to account for loose, porous soils such as sand and peat that were prone to allowing water to seep from the canal through to the dry side of the levee.

Much deeper steel pilings driven well below the canal bottoms likely would have stopped seepage to the dry side, engineers have said. The bottom tip of the pilings, at 10 feet below sea level, did not reach the canal bottoms.

But LSU computer models showed that even if the pilings had gone to 17.5 feet below sea level at 17th Street as design documents said they should have, they still would have failed.

Engineering studies prior to construction of the flood wall were performed by Eustis Engineering, Modjeski and Masters Inc. and the Corps. Members of the LSU team have expressed shock that all three could have missed what they characterized as fundamental flaws.

Calls to Eustis and Modjeski and Masters were not returned Wednesday. Van Heerden said the federal government bears ultimate responsibility.

Link to Reference: Scott LaFee, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER, November 30, 2005

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Highlights:
- Scientists and engineers, politicians and environmentalists are talking about restoring and re-creating hundreds of square miles of wetlands along America's Gulf coast, which many contend would have saved New Orleans and the region from much of Katrina's wrath.
- When European settlers first arrived in what would become the United States, there were an estimated 220 million acres of wetlands
- Some two centuries later, the total wetland area in the United States has been cut in half to less than 103 million acres,
- Natural phenomena are partly to blame: erosion, subsidence, rising sea levels, drought, hurricanes and other storms. But the damage done pales in comparison to human-induced causes: drainage, dredging, stream channelization, the dumping of fill material, damming, levees, logging, mining, construction, runoff, air and water pollutants, changes in nutrient levels, the release of toxic chemicals, the introduction of invasive, nonnative species and farming.
- Twenty-two states have lost more than half of their original wetlands; six have lost more than 85 percent. California is down to just 5 percent of what it once had.

There's a news photo, taken a month after Hurricane Katrina, that depicts a storm-tossed Chevy lying upside down beside a marsh near Venice, La. Beyond the car and some open water, a row of somewhat scraggly trees – a remnant of what was once a much-larger and more robust wetland – strips across the horizon.

But in the wake of an unforgettably destructive hurricane season, scientists and engineers, politicians and environmentalists are talking about restoring and re-creating hundreds of square miles of wetlands along America's Gulf coast, which many contend would have saved New Orleans and the region from much of Katrina's wrath.

The talk is insistent, sincere and old. Scientists have been attempting to restore – and create – wetlands for decades, from the Tijuana River estuary to the Florida Everglades to Casco Bay in Maine. The results have been mixed at best. There have been many failures. Restoration researchers say they've learned a lot from those failures about how to build a healthy, functional wetland, but clearly nature still does a much, much better job.

People are better at the other end: destroying wetlands. When European settlers first arrived in what would become the United States, there were an estimated 220 million acres of wetlands, a word that encompasses a surprisingly diverse array of ecosystems, from coastal salt marshes and riparian habitat to cypress swamps, forest bogs and prairie potholes.

Some two centuries later, the total wetland area in the United States has been cut in half to less than 103 million acres, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Natural phenomena are partly to blame: erosion, subsidence, rising sea levels, drought, hurricanes and other storms. But the damage done pales in comparison to human-induced causes: drainage, dredging, stream channelization, the dumping of fill material, damming, levees, logging, mining, construction, runoff, air and water pollutants, changes in nutrient levels, the release of toxic chemicals, the introduction of invasive, nonnative species and farming.

Twenty-two states have lost more than half of their original wetlands; six have lost more than 85 percent. California is down to just 5 percent of what it once had.

Losses were greatest in the 1950s through 1970s when public policies broadly encouraged the elimination of wetlands in favor of economic development. Then came the realization, emboldened by a growing database of research, that wetlands were and are valuable in their own right.

They are the Earth's kidneys, filtering and cleansing water systems. They are home and hearth to thousands of species of birds and fish, particularly as a safe haven for reproduction. Their presence helps moderate temperatures, cooling days and warming nights.

In 1997, a team of ecologists, economists and geographers attempted to establish the monetary value of nature. Their answer: $33 trillion, of which wetlands accounted for $14.9 trillion, or 45 percent.

Part of that value, as residents of Louisiana will tell you, is protective. In coastal areas, wetlands buffer the effects of hurricanes and other destructive storms. They do this in two ways.

No. 1: They block storm surge. The rule of thumb is that every mile of marsh reduces the height of a storm surge by 1 foot. A Danish study published in October found that in areas of India where coastal mangrove forests remained, damage from last year's deadly tsunami was significantly less than in areas where the trees had been removed for commercial development.

The mangroves are like a bumper on a car. They take the brunt of the wave. It trashes the forest, said John Pernetta, a project director for the United Nations Environment Program, but reduces damage to infrastructure behind.

Computer models suggest 30 mangrove trees per 120 square yards in a 109-yard belt can reduce a large tsunami's power by more than 90 percent.

A number of Asian nations have announced plans to replant the lost mangrove forests. The Sumatran government, for example, says it will replant thousands of acres of mangroves in the northern province of Aceh, where more than 110,000 people were killed in the tsunami.

No. 2: Coastal wetlands act like giant sponges, soaking up storm water, which, in turn, reduces the chance of flooding. According to American Rivers, an environmental group, a single acre of wetland, saturated to a depth of one foot, retains more than 330,000 gallons of water – enough to flood 13 average-sized homes thigh deep.

Blue bayous

Louisiana has long been the poster child of wetlands loss. Between 1932 and 2000, almost 2,000 square miles of wetlands were eliminated, an average of 34 square miles annually. In recent years, that rate has been reduced but still stands at about 25 square miles of wetland destroyed each year. If the current rate of loss is not slowed, researchers estimate an additional 800,000 acres of wetlands will disappear by 2040.

Earlier this month, a committee of the National Research Council (part of the National Academies of Science) issued a public assessment of a plan developed in 2004 by the state of Louisiana and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin to restore and protect the state's coast and wetlands.

The analysis was restrained and cautiously optimistic. Four of the five restoration projects proposed were "scientifically sound," but the NRC declared that the plan fell short of the "the type of integrated, large-scale effort needed for such a massive undertaking."

"It's a start," said Robert Dean, committee chairman of the NRC report and a professor of civil and coastal engineering at the University of Florida, "and we recommend that the work move forward with the understanding that long-range programs need to be developed."

To be fair, the Louisiana/Army Corps plan – called the Louisiana Coastal Area (LCA) study – was never intended to be a grand solution. Its goals were purposefully limited by time and funding to five projects that could theoretically be accomplished within the next five to 10 years.

These projects focused on repairing and restoring specific sections of Louisiana's coast and infrastructure, such as restoring shoreline along Barataria Basin, diverting the Hope Canal and mitigating environmental damage caused by the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a large navigation channel.

Educated guesses

Restoring a wetland is like putting together a billion-piece jigsaw puzzle with only the vaguest notion of what the big picture looks like. They are extraordinarily complicated, perhaps the most dynamic ecosystems on Earth. Ecologists struggle to even quantify the variables that determine whether a wetland is functional and healthy.

Take the issue of water, arguably the single most important and defining factor in all wetlands. For any preservation or restoration scheme to work, scientists must assess and understand how much water is present in a particular wetland, how it behaves, the purposes it serves. Is it primarily surface water or ground? What's the source: rain, river, sea? How does it move? Where does it go? How much is present at any particular time?

AdvertisementFor example, the MRGO was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1960s as a major shortcut for oceangoing vessels traveling between the Gulf of Mexico and the port of New Orleans. The 76-mile-long channel required the dredging of more than 290 million cubic yards of earth, 60 million more than were excavated for the Panama Canal.

One result of the MRGO has been a massive intrusion of Gulf seawater deep into the surrounding wetland. Increased water salinity has wiped out more than 5,000 acres of cypress forest and decimated once-flourishing populations of alligators, fish, birds and muskrats. It's estimated that MRGO has destroyed more than 27,300 acres of wetland.

Local scientists are now trying to stop and reverse some of the damage by funneling part of New Orlean's storm water and treated sewage back into the remaining marsh. If all goes as planned, the "fresh" wastewater will push back the saltwater intrusion and provide needed sediment and nutrients for plants and animals.

But water poses just one set of questions and problems. What about local topography, the slope of the land? How much lies above the water? What is the soil quality? What kinds of plants live there? What animal species? How do they all interact?

Actual restoration is an educated guessing game, said Joy Zedler, a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has spent more than 30 years studying and restoring wetlands, in particular the Tijuana River estuary south of San Diego.

"There are so many working parts, and conditions are always changing," she said. "There are always surprises you didn't predict."

Two examples:

One of Zedler's projects while she worked at San Diego State University was restoring the Sweetwater Marsh south of downtown San Diego for two endangered species of birds – the clapper rail and the least tern – and one endangered plant called bird's beak.

Previous efforts to create suitable habitat involved transplanting Spartina cordgrass from nearby wetlands. But the transplants failed. The grass refused to grow tall enough to provide adequate nesting sites. Researchers eventually discovered that the marsh's sandy soil lacked sufficient nutrients, so fertilizer was added to encourage grass growth.

And it did, but the fertilizer also spurred the growth of pickleweed, a less desirable marsh plant that outgrew the cordgrass, leaving the birds with still no suitable place to nest.

In the early 1990s, Oregon scientists tried restoring a coastal marsh that had been diked off from tidal action to create pastureland in the Salmon River estuary. They presumed that, once re-exposed to ocean tides, the land would soon return to its original wetland state.

Ten years later, it looked nothing at all like the surrounding, untouched wetlands. Absent water for all those years, the land had subsided. More water flooded it, changing the kinds of plants and animals that would live there. It was a kind of wetland, but not like the wetland originally lost. Scientists now estimate it will take nature 50 years or more to build up sediments and return the land to what it once was.

Subsidence is merely one kind of glitch in restoration. Researchers have had to learn through trial and error (euphemistically called adaptive restoration) which species of plants are good colonizers – that is, which ones will move into a restored area naturally – and which must be hand-seeded and painstakingly nurtured. Similarly, some plants have proved to be strong competitors, able to hold their own, while others quickly succumb to problems like soil compaction or invasive species. How restored vegetation fares is a strong determinant of whether birds and other animals will return and thrive. Plans to replant lost mangrove forests in Indonesia, for example, have drawn criticism because they oversimplify nature. Alfredo Quarto, executive director of the Mangrove Action Project, a U.S.-based environmental group, said similar mangrove restoration projects in Thailand resulted in "plantation-style" forests that harmed biodiversity and eventually failed. The mangroves, he said, were often planted in places where they didn't naturally grow and died after a few years.

Indonesian government ecologists say they realize mangroves are only part of the solution, and promise to plant other kinds of trees, such as pine.

Likewise, Greg Stone, a professor of coastal geology at Louisiana State University, says future efforts to repair the Gulf Coast's swamps and bayous will not be sufficient or successful unless the coast's barrier islands – long, narrow strips of sand forming islands that protect inland areas from ocean waves and storms – are also restored.

"The islands are like the first layer of armor," he said. "We've allowed them to be eroded away over the years. We've probably lost three to five years of land in just this one hurricane season. If we're going to restore and preserve coastal wetlands, I think we've got to think first about how to restore the barrier islands that protect the coast."

Small steps, big needs

A handful of small-scale projects have begun to hydraulically pump sand and sediment onto existing barrier islands with some success, but Stone says this effort needs to be massively expanded.

Which means spending money, a lot of it. No one can yet say exactly how much will be needed to repair and restore the Gulf coast's barrier islands and wetlands. The current estimate, developed before Katrina, is roughly $14 billion, but some estimates have doubled the amount. The Louisiana Coastal Area plan, in fact, isn't even funded. Though the Bush Administration supports a plan to spend $2 billion over 10 years on the most promising restoration projects, Congress has yet to authorize any funding.

Even when the money comes, success won't immediately follow. Wetland restoration takes time, said Zedler and others. Real success is measured in decades, a fact that has frequently doomed projects where funding was mandated for only a few years.

Zedler cites an example:

Several years ago, an effort was made to create wetland habitat near the San Diego River for the least Bell's vireo, an endangered migratory bird. Millions of dollars were spent diverting the river into this new habitat.

Then a winter flood destroyed the diversion levee. The river returned to its old route; the restored wetland withered away.

"It turned out that the breached berm that shunted the water was built in the wrong place, but by then all of the project obligations and liability had passed. Nobody was responsible for the project anymore. Everybody just walked away from a wetland that had no water."

That happens a lot. From California to Louisiana, the idea of wetland restoration has become widely accepted and supported. Everybody's in favor of restoring their neighbor's wetland, said Dan Walker, Louisiana Coastal Area study director. They can understand the long-term benefits. But when it's their property or immediate economic interests that may be affected, people balk, and things get complicated.

"There are always competing and conflicting interests. What we're trying to do is get everybody on the same map."

No one, of course, believes wetlands restoration and creation will ever resemble what was lost. Louisiana environmentalists say their ultimate goal is to simply slow the ongoing erosion of their state. Something is better than nothing, whether it's looking out over a coastal lagoon in North County or across a bayou toward the Gulf and, inevitably, another incoming hurricane.

Link to Reference: Ron Scherer, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, 11/30/05

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Highlights:
- Hurricanes Rita and Katrina caused $1.6 billion in damage to the state's farm economy.
- "The state will have to test the soil for salt and crude oil,"
- "Most of the trees were under 14 feet of water."

Hurricanes Rita and Katrina caused $1.6 billion in damage to the state's farm economy.
NAIRN, LA. – This is the time of year when Emmett Fowler would be pulling bright navel oranges, sweet satsumas, and juicy grapefruit from his citrus trees. Instead, Mr. Fowler expects he will be plowing under his 2,000 lifeless fruit trees.

"The state will have to test the soil for salt and crude oil," says Fowler as he looks out at his groves - now not much more than leafless pieces of wood with stray, discolored oranges - and talks about whether he will be able to recover. "Most of the trees were under 14 feet of water."

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have left similar scenes of devastation across the state. State economists now estimate the losses to Louisiana's farm economy at $1.6 billion - ranging from strawberry fields that were washed away to entire forests that had 10 to 15 years' worth of timber destroyed. And, because of the salt-water flooding, agriculture experts say the damage could stretch on for years.

"The losses are bigger than anything else we've ever had," says Kurt Guidry, an agricultural economist with the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge. "There was nothing that we grow that was not impacted."

Crops lost

In the southern part of the state, the vegetable and citrus industries were heavily damaged. For example, in Plaquemines Parish, farmers lost their crop of bell peppers, tomatoes and eggplant, says Regina Bracy, a professor of horticulture at the LSU Ag Center. Most strawberry growers had already put down costly plastic mulch, most of which got blown away. "Vegetables are a $40 million crop, strawberries are a $10 million crop," says Ms. Bracy. "That may not be big by California standards, but it's significant in this particular parish."

For some farmers, the damage to their crops is coming from an unusual source - wild animals that are hungry because their normal food is now missing. That's the case with Lester L'Hoste in Braithwaite, La. As he walks through his citrus groves, he points to damage done to his trees by hungry deer. "They eat the leaves and the fruit," he says.

Further south in the state, the damage is much greater. LSU Ag Center's Citrus Research station in Port Sulphur was totally destroyed as the storm surge wiped out equipment and buildings.

Many farmers in the southern part of the parish have suffered the same fate as Fowler, who has lost his yearly income of about $57,000, depending on prices. The loss of the trees hurts Fowler more than the money. His product was so good, he says, that a local oil man and baseball fan used to ship cartons of his citrus to people like George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees.

His house may be lost, as well. "You can see where the water level hit - about 14 feet up," he says.

Some of the small farmers, such as Fowler, may get some aid from the Louisiana Small Farm Survival Fund, which is run by Baton Rouge Economic and Agricultural Development Alliance (BREADA). So far, the Survival fund has raised about $175,000, which will be distributed to subsistence farmers.

"Our hope is to keep them on the farms, keep them from being displaced like the residents in urban areas," says Copper Alvarez, the executive director of BREADA.

Elsewhere, some farmers whose crops withstood the wind and floods watched their produce wither after weeks without electricity meant they couldn't irrigate. "We're still in a drought situation," says Professor Bracy. "We've had no significant rain since Katrina or Rita."

For farmers, the problems seem never-ending. After the hurricanes, there were shortages of diesel. This prevented farmers from using their generators, which could have powered their irrigation pumps. Dairy farmers, also without electricity, lost milk sales.

Other farmers have had trouble finding workers, many of whom are stuck in Houston or other cities. "They are scrambling to find people to plant their crops on top of everything else," says Bracy.

Heavy toll on timber industry

On a dollar basis, the largest agricultural losses are in the timber industry, which lost $1.1 billion in product, Mr. Guidry estimates. In some parishes, some 80 percent of the trees were either knocked down or broken. Historically, only 20 to 25 percent can be salvaged. "It goes from a price based on saw timber to a price based on pulp wood and the difference is pretty substantial," says Guidry.

However, Wade Camp, an economist with the Southern Forest Products Association in Kenner, La., estimates the total damage to the timber industry is less than 10 percent. He's worried about the shortage of loggers since many are now working for FEMA. "How long will that last?" he asks.

Some farmers will eventually receive federal money. The Emergency Conservation Program will pay to have debris removed from land in production.

Even before the hurricanes hit, Guidry says it was going to be a tough year for the farmers, struggling with higher fuel and fertilizer costs and stagnant prices. "But, now the hurricanes have turned a bad situation into a terrible situation."

Still, Ms. Alvarez is optimistic that small farmers such as Fowler will fight to survive. "They don't take things lying down," she says. "I think most think they will be back."

Link to Reference: DAN MCMENAMIN, 11/16/2005

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Highlights:
- many people thought that terrorists were our number one enemy. But the recent past has reminded us that we have another, much deadlier killer lurking all around us: nature
- vicious storms from the Gulf of Mexico caused as much damage to our country than any terrorist attack ever could
- Warmer water also fuels hurricanes and makes them more intense, like the three Category 5 storms this fall

In this post-9/11 world, many people thought that terrorists were our number one enemy. But the recent past has reminded us that we have another, much deadlier killer lurking all around us: nature.  Natural disasters in the past year have exposed a problem that will affect us even more in the future. Our planet, it seems, is getting increasingly warmer and unstable.

  This September, vicious storms from the Gulf of Mexico caused as much damage to our country than any terrorist attack ever could. The wind and flood damage caused just by the Category 5 Hurricane Katrina is estimated to cost the U.S. upward of $150 billion, not to mention over 1,000 lives, many of which belonged to people already living in extreme poverty.

  Two other Category 5 hurricanes, Rita and Wilma, also tore through the Gulf Coast, causing significant damage and loss of life. It was the first time on record that three Category 5 hurricanes happened in the same season.

  Now, I’m not going to say that global warming caused any of these hurricanes to happen.

  Obviously, natural disasters like these will continue to occur long into the future. That’s clearly not too bold of a prediction; all sorts of similar events have happened before and many more will happen again.

  However, what’s relevant is the fact that problems like higher temperatures and intense hurricanes seem to be happening more and more frequently now.

  So are these disasters just part of a natural cycle on our planet, or is the Earth starting to get angry with us?

  After all, it would have good reason. The U.S. alone produces 20 percent of daily carbon dioxide emissions, despite making up less than 5 percent of the global population.

  Because our vehicles, power plants and factories have been blowing all sorts of toxic substances up into the atmosphere for over a century, it shouldn’t be surprising that we could face some consequences for our actions.

  The pollutants we pump into the atmosphere cause a “greenhouse effect,” in which carbon dioxide molecules allow heat from the sun to travel into the atmosphere but prevent it from traveling back out.

  The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the average global and ocean temperature has risen over one degree Fahrenheit in the past century, and that carbon dioxide levels could double by 2100, based on current emission levels.

  The U.N. study predicted an average global temperature rise of 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the next century if this happens.

  A small temperature rise might not seem like a big deal, but hotter weather is already having a noticeable effect around the globe.

  Over 200 cities in the U.S. — including New Orleans — broke records for all-time high temperatures this summer, as did the water nearby in the Gulf.

  Also, NASA measured the Arctic ice caps from various satellite images and found that they were at the smallest levels ever measured.

  They concluded that if it keeps melting at current rates, by the end of the century, the Arctic could be completely ice-free during the summer months.

  Now, all that ice obviously doesn’t just disappear when it melts; it turns into water. And lots of melted ice leads to higher sea levels, which can lead to more flooding like we saw in New Orleans.

  Warmer water also fuels hurricanes and makes them more intense, like the three Category 5 storms this fall. Don’t be surprised if you see even more high-category hurricanes in the future.

  A warmer climate will also enable diseases to spread more quickly, such as malaria or the avian flu that currently has many people scared.

  Mike Leavitt, President Bush’s secretary of health and human services, recently said that a pandemic like avian flu “is essentially nature’s terrorist.”

  America already has a war on terror. Will we declare war on nature? Unfortunately, we’ve already been doing that for a long time with our cars, planes and factories.

  But only now are we beginning to see what happens when nature starts to fight back.

Link to Reference: NEW ORLEANS (AP) November 11, 2005

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Highlights:
- A batch of new EPA results from air and water samples indicate that the region was not turned into an environmental disaster zone after Hurricane Katrina inundated hundreds of miles of coast and flooded New Orleans
- EPA says bacteria levels in water along the Mississippi Gulf Coast were so low that swimming is now safe. The agency says air sampling in Louisiana has shown no problems and the storm did not cause any serious contamination at five Superfund sites around New Orleans.
- State and federal environmental agencies have been criticized for downplaying the dangers caused by the hurricane.

From polluted air to oil spills, the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast region still has many environmental problems to tackle, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator said on Thursday. Stephen Johnson said that the region is dealing with mounds of debris, mold, contamination from oil spills, broken infrastructure and reports of poor air quality in Mississippi. “This is a natural disaster unlike anything we've seen before,” Johnson said.

A batch of new EPA results from air and water samples indicate that the region was not turned into an environmental disaster zone after Hurricane Katrina inundated hundreds of miles of coast and flooded New Orleans when it hit on Aug. 29.

EPA says bacteria levels in water along the Mississippi Gulf Coast were so low that swimming is now safe. The agency says air sampling in Louisiana has shown no problems and the storm did not cause any serious contamination at five Superfund sites around New Orleans.

There are a few trouble spots, according to EPA.

In Meraux, sediment samples where 1 million gallons of crude oil spilled from a refinery storage tank revealed high levels of arsenic, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, diesel and oil-related organic chemicals. The agency has told people to wear protective clothing while in the area and to keep children and pets away. Johnson said it is too early to say when the area will be cleaned up.

In Mississippi, air sampling between Oct. 7 and 19 at the Stennis Space Center and in Pascagoula found dangerous chemicals.

High levels of formaldehyde, or methanal, were found on three days near the county health department in Pascagoula. The chemical compound, which takes form as a pungent gas, often comes about with combustion, for example from forest fires or automobile exhaust. EPA said preliminary results from newer samples show that the formaldehyde levels are coming down.

In western Mississippi, high levels of acrolein were found at a monitor at Stennis on two days. The chemical, which is mostly used to make other chemicals, can enter the atmosphere when trees, plants, gasoline and oil are burned. Since then, the agency said, preliminary results show the chemical has fluctuated in intensity.

The agency said it is trying to figure out where the chemicals are coming from at both sites.

State and federal environmental agencies have been criticized for downplaying the dangers caused by the hurricane.

Anne Rolfes of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an environmental group that has sought to empower communities near oil and chemical plants, said EPA has done little to inform residents in Meraux about the hazards of cleaning up their oil-contaminated homes.

“There's just no information and it's EPA's job to let us know,” Rolfes said.

Richard Greene, EPA's regional administrator in Dallas, said state and federal officials used checkpoints, Federal Emergency Management Agency distribution points, agency web sites and local radio to get word out about the risks of entering the oil spill zone.

Gary Miller, a chemical engineer and air expert with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said state and federal agencies have done a good job sampling the hurricane-hit region.

EPA has been reluctant to declare the region environmentally dangerous because the agency does not want to stop the rebuilding effort, he said.

“There are millions of dollars at stake here, and the last thing EPA will want to do is get in front of that locomotive,” Miller said.

He said the long-term health and environmental effects are still playing out. “This is an ongoing experiment,” he said, “and unfortunately the humans are the guinea pigs here.”

For example, he said, EPA samples show that there are high levels of lead and arsenic in sediment in New Orleans. Officials, he said, will need to be very careful about what they do with the contaminated soil.

On The Web:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency test results from Hurricane Katrina: http://www.epa.gov/katrina/testresults

Link to Reference: Elizabeth Ashby, PONTCHARTRAIN NEWSPAPERS, 11/9/05

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Highlights:
- Nearly 45 square miles of wetlands around Lake Pontchartrain have disappeared because of Hurricane Katrina
- We need the wetlands and natural ridges to help protect the levee system.
- we need to preach the blending of costal preservation and flood protection to prevent a future situation like Katrina.

MANDEVILLE - Nearly 45 square miles of wetlands around Lake Pontchartrain have disappeared because of Hurricane Katrina, it was reported last week at a Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation meeting in Mandeville.
"Lake Pontchartrain suffered a greater wetland loss in this one event than it lost between 1990 and 2000," said Dr. John Lopez, director of LPBF's Coastal Program. "The pressure to focus more on flood protection may cause coastal restoration to be lost in the process. We need the wetlands and natural ridges to help protect the levee system. The modern world ecological engine and economic engine co-depend on one another."

Hurricane Katrina's destructive eyewall crossed over Lake Pontchartrain, he said, and four square miles of Northshore wetlands were lost because of the storm.

"Lake Pontchartrain recovered in miraculous time in the last eight weeks," said Carlton Dufrechou, LPBF's executive director. "What helped it was the fact it was healthier before the storm that it was in previous years. It cured itself once the pumping stopped. The cost to build a new levee system will be astronomical but we need to preach the blending of costal preservation and flood protection to prevent a future situation like Katrina."

LPBF has established a number of programs aimed at protecting and restoring the lake through preliminary assessments of the lake's habitat, Lopez said, and the Multiple Lines of Defense Strategy will be presented at this month's special legislative session on the integration of flood protection and coastal restoration to help Lake Pontchartrain survive and thrive.

The Water Quality Monitoring Program has increased its number of testing sites because approximately 9 billion cubic feet of water was pumped into Lake Pontchartrain from the Greater New Orleans area following Hurricane Katrina. This is equivalent to approximately 4.5 percent of the volume of the lake, said Program Director Andrea Bourgeois-Calvin.

"In general, we're looking pretty good and staying within safe levels which is where we want to be," she said. "Our numbers are encouraging, which disspells the lake's 'toxic soup' rumor because of the contaminated water pumped into the lake."

The Habitat Protection Program is aimed at focusing on the long-term impacts on the lake's habitat during the foundation process and studying ways to rebuild in an environmentally friendly manner, Calvin said.

"We want to meet halfway (on flood protection and coastal restoration) to protect resources while helping communities move forward," she said. "One positive thing is we are not losing the habitat to RV and trailer parks."

As more data is collected bi-weekly from most testing sites on the north and south shores, LPBF will present updates on the lake's condition and elect a new board of officers at its next meeting at 1:30 p.m. Dec. 8 at the Lakeway 1 building on North Causeway Boulevard in Metairie.

Link to Reference: JOE GYAN JR., New Orleans bureau, 11/05/05

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Highlights:
- a silver lining in the midst of the destruction and devastation: Shrimp, fish and blue crabs are plentiful in the aftermath of the killer storms.
- the infrastructure needed to support fishermen and seafood harvesters is virtually nonexistent.
- misinformation that the flood waters pumped from New Orleans into Lake Pontchartrain created a "toxic soup." Smith called the matter "the crisis on top of the crisis."


EMPIRE -- Commercial fishermen and seafood harvesters in southeast Louisiana find themselves in the same boat in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and that boat is listing severely, industry officials said Friday. But there is a silver lining in the midst of the destruction and devastation: Shrimp, fish and blue crabs are plentiful in the aftermath of the killer storms.

That's the good news. The bad news, which was painfully obvious during a Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board-sponsored bus tour of lower Plaquemines Parish on Friday, is that the infrastructure needed to support fishermen and seafood harvesters is virtually nonexistent.

Ice, clean water, electricity, fuel, bait, docks and labor are in short supply, as are working boats.

"I don't know how this is going to come back. This is mind-boggling. They could make a movie down here," Don Schwab, vice president of operations for Paul Piazza & Sons Inc., one of the state's largest shrimp processing plants, said as the bus he was riding passed through Katrina-ravaged Empire.

Tracy Mitchel, assistant executive director of the Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board, referred to Empire as "ground sub-zero."

Byron Despaux, chairman of the Lafitte-based Louisiana Shrimp Association, said high fuel prices and low shrimp prices already were plaguing the shrimping industry before Katrina hit Aug. 29 and Rita followed on Sept. 24.

Without financial assistance from the government, he said, "This industry's going to be in a hell of a mess."

"After Katrina came, it really put a big damper on our industry. It's getting worse and worse," Despaux said. "I don't know how we're going to rebuild this industry unless we get a lot of help. This industry is going to be gone. If you don't get the help, you're not going to be back."

Katrina essentially flattened lower Plaquemines from the elevated bridge at Empire to Venice at the mouth of the Mississippi River where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. Houses are pancaked. Boats are scattered about, resting on dry ground, against levees or on roads. The 165-foot menhaden boat "Sea Falcon" straddles La. 23 at the foot of the Empire bridge where Katrina's storm surge deposited it.

Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board executive director Ewell Smith estimated that 3,000 commercial fishing boats need to be put back into the water. He said only 15 to 20 percent of the commercial fishermen in the area are working.

Schwab said Paul Piazza & Sons can be up and running for the start of the shrimp season in May if it has workers and supply.

"If you don't have supply, you're just basically brick and mortar," he said.

Schwab said importers of cheaply priced shrimp are "taking advantage" of Louisiana's misfortune. Louisiana Shrimp Association president A.J. Fabre said cheap foreign imports are "ruining" the crab, crawfish and shrimp industries.

"The imports -- we've been slowly dying," he said.

Fabre said the seafood industry as a whole "needs a solution." He proposes convening a panel of seafood interests "to create a unified front to move forward."

"We're going to try to survive it," he said. "The real true shrimper will survive, but it's going to be a hard road."

Empire oyster harvester Mato Lebetich, who co-owns Lebetich Oyster LLC with his brother Anta, said his two 60-foot boats survived the hurricanes, but the lack of infrastructure has kept him out of the water and away from his 2,000 acres of oyster leases.

"We can't do nothing," the Croatian-born Lebetich said. "No electricity. No water. No docks. No fuel. There's nothing we can do now but wait. It's going to take a while to clean (up) all this. It don't look too good."

"But we're hard-working people. We will rebuild this. This wasn't our first rodeo," he said, referring to hurricanes Betsy and Camille. "No, I'm not giving up. We'll survive."

Buddy Pausina with the Louisiana Oyster Task Force said he does not see the oyster industries in Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes ever coming back fully.

"I think it will be back differently," he said.

"Only the strong will survive this," Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board chairman Harlon Pearce, a seafood wholesaler in Kenner, added. "The commercial fishermen in Louisiana are a tough breed, but they need help."

Pearce, who noted that infrastructure was a problem before Katrina and Rita came calling, said the storms have given the commercial seafood industry an opportunity to do things better.

"Now we have the chance to do it right. We have a chance to rebuild our fisheries in a bigger and better way," he said. "We'll be back."

Greg Holt said his heavily damaged Empire menhaden plant also will be back. He plans to invest $36 million in the industry. The recovery, he said, will be challenging.

"It's going to come back. It's going to be very, very hard," he said. "The infrastructure in these areas is zero. Presently we have no way of getting any of our product to market."

Jim Rich with Wholesale Catfish Inc. of Abbeville said the south-central Louisiana crab industry took a major hit from Rita. Many traps and boats were lost, he said.

"There are a lot of crabs out there. The crab resource is very healthy. The crab industry is not so healthy," he said, adding that cheap crab meat imports from Venezuela are a major problem. "It's a bad situation."

Pearce and Smith said the commercial seafood industry's recovery also is being slowed by misinformation that the flood waters pumped from New Orleans into Lake Pontchartrain created a "toxic soup." Smith called the matter "the crisis on top of the crisis."

"The seafood in the marketplace is safe to eat," he stressed.

Link to site: Boats of every size now litter marinas and residential neighborhoods, navigation canals and highways.

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Highlights:
- it's a nautical disaster that has brought Louisiana's coastal industries largely to a standstill, keeping fishers off the water and clogging ports that serve lucrative oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Diesel and engine oil is leaking from some vessels, fouling marshlands.
- removal of an estimated 35,000 to 45,000 grounded, wrecked or lost recreational boats.
- initially insisted the Coast Guard was handling the smaller vessels, but later changed their message to say they were "still in discussions" about the matter with federal agencies.

Matthew Brown, October 31, 2005, West Bank bureau
With thousands of boats wrecked by hurricanes, Louisiana's fishing industry faces a bleak future

This hurricane season's heavy toll can be tallied in endless ways, from the tragedy of more than 1,000 confirmed Louisiana deaths to the bizarre sight of 5,000 refrigerators stacked at an eastern New Orleans dumping ground.

In fishing villages such as Empire, Venice, Hopedale and Chef Menteur Pass, the havoc is counted in boats, an estimated 3,000 fishing and work vessels picked up and wildly scattered by Katrina and Rita.

Boats of every size now litter marinas and residential neighborhoods, navigation canals and highways. They are smashed, bent and flipped on their sides. Grounded, sunk and shattered to bits. Some emerged with barely a scratch, but came to rest a thousand yards or more from the nearest waterway.

From Venice to Cameron, it's a nautical disaster that has brought Louisiana's coastal industries largely to a standstill, keeping fishers off the water and clogging ports that serve lucrative oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Diesel and engine oil is leaking from some vessels, fouling marshlands.

The Coast Guard Wreck and Salvage Group is charged with mopping up the mess, a task that could take another six months or more. But critics say additional equipment and crews are needed if Louisiana's crippled fishing industry can ever hope for a rebound.

"The (salvage) cranes that are there now are not capable of getting onto the land to get the boats out. We need more subcontractors to go in and get the boats," said A.J. Fabre, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. "It's a hell of a mess. We need to get the fishing industry up and running."

The Coast Guard's job description does not include the removal of an estimated 35,000 to 45,000 grounded, wrecked or lost recreational boats. More than two months after Katrina, it is unclear who will take care of those.

State Department of Environmental Quality officials initially insisted the Coast Guard was handling the smaller vessels, but later changed their message to say they were "still in discussions" about the matter with federal agencies.

The Coast Guard said it cannot salvage recreational boats with existing resources.

"Our plate is full," said Lt. Cmdr. Scott Calhoun, supervisor of the maritime agency's Wreck and Salvage Group. "We have more than 2,500 reported cases and would expect to have in excess of 3,000. . . . A lot of the vessels can float, but a lot of them are completely demolished and will be disposed of as trash."

More contractors on way

Working under an $85 million Federal Emergency Management Agency contract, the Coast Guard has brought in salvage firms with five heavy-lift, barge-based cranes to lead the commercial vessel cleanup. The maritime agency through Saturday had removed 78 boats, mostly in Plaquemines Parish, versus more than 800 salvaged privately.

The arduous nature of the salvage jobs was seen in the recent removal of a mud-filled shrimp boat, the Ocean Queen, from the bottom of a canal in Empire.

Raising and draining the 60-foot steel-hulled boat took an 18-person crew a day and a half using two towering cranes. Within a mile radius of the operation, an estimated 200 boats awaited their turn, including a pair of 150-foot pogy boats straddling Highway 23, about 40 smaller shrimp and oyster boats in a tangled heap on dry ground beneath the Empire Canal bridge and dozens more scattered throughout Empire in every imaginable state of disarray.

Calhoun said more contractors, including several with land-based cranes, could start as soon as this week.

"We're trying to bring in other companies to decrease the job time," Calhoun said as he watched a salvage crew pump diesel-fouled water from the hold of the Ocean Queen. "But there's only a very few companies in the country that can do these jobs. It's not as simple as people would like it to be."

In the interim, he said, the few cranes available are concentrating on clearing marinas and blocked waterways.

When that's done, the Coast Guard still must tackle hundreds of trickier recoveries, of vessels dropped by floodwaters in neighborhoods far from any waterway or ensnared in thick stands of cypress trees where maneuvering a crane barge could be all but impossible.

Double whammy

Most fishers evacuated before the storm hit, leaving the Coast Guard scrambling to track down boat owners so they can find out what they want done with their vessels. In some cases, the boats themselves bear spray-painted messages with names and phone numbers of owners.

Others display more direct pleas. "Please put me in water as soon as you can," read one message . "I need (to) go to work."

But David Magruder, an insurance agent representing 130 shrimp boat owners, said salvage rules set up by the Coast Guard could end up slowing the return to work for many. Uninsured boat owners are not charged for salvage services. But others will have a bill sent to their insurance company, with the fee deducted from their policy.

Magruder said that means his clients face a double whammy. First they paid thousands of dollars for insurance. Now they stand to lose tens of thousands of dollars out of their policies through salvage fees that can top $50,000 for larger boats.

"We're going to see there's not enough money left in the policies to repair the boats," Magruder said. "Some of them paid $20,000 for their insurance. If you had insurance you're at a disadvantage. That's backward."

Help 'sooner or later'

Some fishers such as Henry Hess of Empire have camped out on their grounded boats to make sure they don't miss help when it comes. His shrimp boat, the Miss Jodie II, was picked up by floodwaters from a marina and dropped onto dry land about 100 yards away.

"It's killing me having it up here," Hess said about two weeks ago as he stood on the boat's prow, cradling a beer. But by the end of last week, he was back on the water, one of the few Plaquemines-based shrimpers to already rebound from the storm.

"If you stay down there, somebody's going to help you sooner or later," he said.

In the early days after Katrina, there was concern the smashed vessels concealed a floating graveyard, entombing the bodies of stubborn fishers who tried to save their boats by riding out the storm.

At least four shrimpers did ride it out in the Empire Canal, but survived to give Plaquemines Parish officials a videotape depicting the storm's destructive stomp through the marina where they'd tied up.

So far, that's the only evidence to emerge of fishers who refused to leave their craft.

"Not one body," Calhoun said.

Since the beginning of salvage operations in mid-September, the Coast Guard crews have spent most of their time in the Plaquemines communities of Empire and Venice, where the local economies are highly dependent on fishing and oil activities. Calhoun said about 200 boats in need of salvage have been reported in Empire, and aerial maps show possibly as many more in the immediate vicinity that have yet to be entered into a Coast Guard database.

About 20 miles away in Venice are an additional estimated 100 boats, and up to several hundred more in St. Bernard Parish, where the Coast Guard is just beginning to assess vessels. Hundreds more will need removal or relocation in Grand Isle, Slidell and Mandeville, eastern New Orleans, the Rigolets and Chef Menteur Pass, and to the west in Morgan City and Cameron Parish.

Many that sank will require divers to check for hull damage before they can be raised, said Ted Hosking, a salvage master for T&T Marine Salvage of Galveston, Texas, one of three companies with Coast Guard contracts. Then the vessels must be refloated, pumped free of water and tied to a secure berth, all the while surrounded by pollution booms meant to capture diesel or engine oil spills.

"People say it's only a little fishing boat, but it takes the same amount of time as a large cargo vessel," Hosking said.

Pulling up or moving a boat often is just the beginning of the process. Hai, a shrimper who goes by just one name, was one of the first fishers in Venice to have his boat salvaged, by New Jersey-based Donjon Marine, the Coast Guard's lead contractor. The Miss Kimberly had flipped onto its top in a canal outside the Venice Marina.

That was in early October. Right after it was salvaged and returned to the marina, Hai and another man, Ronald Taylor, began lugging buckets full of mud from inside the boat. More than two weeks later, that grueling chore was not finished.

Major repairs still are needed to get the Miss Kimberly running, and Hai predicted it will be months before he can fish again.

"It's totaled," he said. "The generator is gone. The transmission is gone. The engine is gone. The outriggers are gone. The cabin is totaled. If I get my insurance money and get some more help, maybe six months until I fish. If not, it would take forever."

Link to site: military officials and weather modification experts could be on the verge of joining forces to better gauge, react to, and possibly nullify future hostile forces churned out by Mother Nature.

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- joint air and space operations to deal with after-the-fact problems, perhaps the foundation for how to fend off disastrous weather may also be forming.
- degrade the effectiveness of enemy forces. That could come from flooding an opponent’s encampment or airfield to generating downright downpours that disrupt enemy troop comfort levels.
- It is likely the Department of Defense would be the lead agency in any new efforts in severe storm modification.

Leonard David, Senior Space Writer 31 October 2005
The one-two hurricane punch from Katrina and Wilma along with predictions of more severe weather in the future has scientists pondering ways to save lives, protect property and possibly even control the weather.

While efforts to tame storms have so far been clouded by failure, some researchers aren’t willing to give up the fight. And even if changing the weather proves overly challenging, residents and disaster officials can do a better job planning and reacting.

In fact, military officials and weather modification experts could be on the verge of joining forces to better gauge, react to, and possibly nullify future hostile forces churned out by Mother Nature.
While some consider the idea farfetched, some military tacticians have already pondered ways to turn weather into a weapon.

Harbinger of things to come?

The U.S. military reaction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that slammed the U.S. Gulf coast might be viewed as a harbinger of things to come. While in this case it was joint air and space operations to deal with after-the-fact problems, perhaps the foundation for how to fend off disastrous weather may also be forming.

Numbers of spaceborne assets were tapped, among them:
• Navigation and timing signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) of satellites;
• The Global Broadcast Service, a one-way, space-based, high-capacity broadcast communication system;
• The Army’s Spectral Operations Resource Center to exploit commercial remote sensing satellite imagery and prepare high-resolution images to civilian and military responders to permit a better understanding of the devastated terrain;
• U.S. Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites that compared "lights at night" images before and after the disaster to provide data on human activity.

Is it far-fetched to see in this response the embryonic stages of an integrated military/civilian weather reaction and control system?

Mandate to continually improve

The use of space-based equipment to assist in clean-up operations -- with a look toward future prospects -- was recently noted by General Lance Lord, Commander, Air Force Space Command at an October 20th Pacific Space Leadership Forum in Hawaii.

"We saw first hand the common need for space after the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean," Lord said. "Natural disasters don’t respect international boundaries. Space capabilities were leveraged immediately after the tsunami to help in the search and rescue effort…but what about before the disaster?"

Lord said that an even better situation is to have predicted the coming disaster and warned those in harm’s way. "No matter what your flag or where you waive it from...the possibility of saving hundreds of thousands of people is a mandate to continually improve," he advised.

The U.S. Air Force is also looking at ways to make satellites and satellite launches cheaper and also reduce the amount of time it takes to launch into space from months to weeks to days and hours, Lord said. Having that capability will increase responsiveness to international needs, he said, such as the ability to send up a satellite to help collect information and enhance communications when dealing with international disasters.

Thunderbolts on demand

What would a military strategist gain in having an "on-switch" to the weather?

Clearly, it offers the ability to degrade the effectiveness of enemy forces. That could come from flooding an opponent’s encampment or airfield to generating downright downpours that disrupt enemy troop comfort levels. On the flipside, sparking a drought that cuts off fresh water can stir up morale problems for warfighting foes.

Even fooling around with fog and clouds can deny or create concealment – whichever weather manipulation does the needed job.

In this regard, nanotechnology could be utilized to create clouds of tiny smart particles. Atmospherically buoyant, these ultra-small computer particles could navigate themselves to block optical sensors. Alternatively, they might be used to provide an atmospheric electrical potential difference -- a way to precisely aim and time lightning strikes over the enemy’s head – thereby concoct thunderbolts on demand.

Perhaps that’s too far out for some. But some blue sky thinkers have already looked into these and other scenarios in "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025" – a research paper written by a seven person team of military officers and presented in 1996 as part of a larger study dubbed Air Force 2025.

Global stresses

That report came with requisite disclaimers, such as the views expressed were those of the authors and didn’t reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the United States government. Furthermore, the report was flagged as containing fictional representations of future situations and scenarios.

On the other hand, Air Force 2025 was a study that complied with a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force "to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future."

"Current technologies that will mature over the next 30 years will offer anyone who has the necessary resources the ability to modify weather patterns and their corresponding effects, at least on the local scale," the authors of the report explained. "Current demographic, economic, and environmental trends will create global stresses that provide the impetus necessary for many countries or groups to turn this weather-modification ability into a capability."

Pulling it all together

The report on weather-altering ideas underscored the capacity to harness such power in the not too distant future.

"Assuming that in 2025 our national security strategy includes weather-modification, its use in our national military strategy will naturally follow. Besides the significant benefits an operational capability would provide, another motivation to pursue weather-modification is to deter and counter potential adversaries," the report stated. "The technology is there, waiting for us to pull it all together," the authors noted.

In 2025, the report summarized, U.S. aerospace forces can "own the weather" by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications.

"Such a capability offers the war fighter tools to shape the battlespace in ways never before possible. It provides opportunities to impact operations across the full spectrum of conflict and is pertinent to all possible futures," the report concluded.

But if whipping up weather can be part of a warfighter’s tool kit, couldn’t those talents be utilized to retarget or neutralize life, limb and property-destroying storms?

All-weather worries

"It is time to provide funds for application of the scientific method to weather modification and control," said Bernard Eastlund, chief technical officer and founder of Eastlund Scientific Enterprises Corporation in San Diego, California.

Eastlund’s background is in plasma physics and commercial applications of microwave plasmas. At a lecture early this month at Penn State Lehigh Campus in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, he outlined new concepts for electromagnetic wave interactions with the atmosphere that, among a range of jobs, could be applied to weather modification research.

"The technology of artificial ionospheric heating could be as important for weather modification research as accelerators have been for particle physics," Eastlund explained.

In September, Eastland filed a patent on a way to create artificial ionized plasma patterns with megawatts of power using inexpensive microwave power sources. This all-weather technique, he noted, can be used to heat specific regions of the atmosphere.

Eastlund’s research is tuned to artificial generation of acoustic and gravitational waves in the atmosphere. The heating of steering winds to help shove around mesocyclones and hurricanes, as well as controlling electrical conductivity of the atmosphere is also on his investigative agenda.

Carefully tailored program plan

Eastlund said that the reduction in severity or impact of severe weather could be demonstrated as part of a carefully tailored program plan.

"In my opinion, the new technology for use of artificial plasma layers in the atmosphere: as heater elements to modify steering winds, as a modifier of electrostatic potential to influence lightning distribution, and for generation of acoustic and gravitational waves, could ultimately provide a core technology for a science of severe weather modification," Eastlund told SPACE.com.

The first experiments of a program, Eastlund emphasized, would be very small, and designed for safety. For example, a sample of air in a jet stream could be heated with a pilot experimental installation. Such experiments would utilize relatively small amounts of power, between one and ten megawatts, he pointed out.

Both ground-based and space weather diagnostic instruments could measure the effect. Computer simulations could compare these results with predicted effects. This process can be iterated until reliable information is obtained on the effects of modifying the wind.

Computer simulations of hurricanes, Eastlund continued, are designed to determine the most important wind fields in hurricane formation. Computer simulations of mesocyclones use steering wind input data to predict severe storm development.

After about 5 years of such research, and further development of weather codes, a pilot experiment to modify the steering winds of a mesocylone might be safely attempted. Such an experiment would probably require 50 to 100 megawatts, Eastlund speculated.

"I estimate this new science of weather modification will take 10 to 20 years to mature to the point where it is useful for controlling the severity and impact of severe weather systems as large as hurricanes," Eastlund explained.

Inadvertent effects?

Another reason for embarking on this new science could be to make sure inadvertent effects of existing projects, such as the heating of the ionosphere and modifications of the polar electrojet, are not having effects on weather, Eastlund stated.

As example, Eastlund pointed to the High frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). This is a major Arctic facility for upper atmospheric and solar-terrestrial research, being built on a Department of Defense-owned site near Gakona, Alaska.

Eastlund wonders if HAARP does, in fact, generate gravity waves. If so, can those waves in turn influence severe weather systems?

Started in 1990, the unclassified HAARP program is jointly managed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research. Researchers at the site make use of a high-power ionospheric research instrument to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere for scientific study, observing and measuring the excited region using a suite of devices.

The fundamental goal of research conducted at the facility is to study and understand natural phenomena occurring in the Earth’s ionosphere and near-space environment. According to the HAARP website, those scientific investigations will have major value in the design of future communication and navigation systems for both military and civilian use.

Messing with Mother Nature

Who best to have their hands on the weather control switches?

The last large hurricane modification experiments -- under Project Stormfury -- were carried out by the U.S. Air Force, Eastlund said. "It is likely the Department of Defense would be the lead agency in any new efforts in severe storm modification."

Additionally, federal laboratories with their extensive computational modeling skills would also play a lead role in the development of a science of weather modification. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would find their respective niches too. The satellite diagnostic capabilities in those agencies would play a strong role, Eastlund suggested.

It appears that only modest amounts of government dollars have been spent on weather modification over the last five years.

"Hurricane Katrina could cost $300 billion by itself," Eastlund said. "In my opinion, it is time for a serious scientific effort in weather modification."

"Global warming appears to be a reality, and records could continue to fall in the hurricane severity sweepstakes," Eastlund said. "When I first suggested the use of space-based assets for the prevention of tornadoes, many people expressed their displeasure with ‘messing with Mother Nature’. I still remember hiding in the closet of our house in Houston as a tornado passed overhead. It is time for serious, controlled research, with the emphasis on safety, for the good of mankind," he concluded.

Link to site: Hurricane Katrina proved America is paying a high price for its loss of wetlands, scientists say, and activists are pressing for restoration of swamps and marshes to prevent new catastrophes.

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintains that wetlands "function as natural sponges that trap and slowly release surface water, rain, snowmelt, groundwater and flood waters."
- The wildlife service notes that 220 million acres of wetlands existed in the lower 48 states in colonial America. That total has declined to about 100 million acres.
- In the spring of 2004, President Bush pledged his administration to a no-net-loss policy and went so far as to commit to annual gains in wetlands habitat. Critics assert he has not honored that pledge and that the Army Corps of Engineers, a key federal agency charged with protecting wetlands, is engaging in practices that are destroying thousands of acres.

BILL STRAUB, Scripps Howard News Service, October 24, 2005
Hurricane Katrina proved America is paying a high price for its loss of wetlands, scientists say, and activists are pressing for restoration of swamps and marshes to prevent new catastrophes.

In a speech on the Senate floor last February, Sen. Mary Landrieu warned lawmakers that disappearing wetlands along the coast of her native Louisiana - vanishing at the rate of 25 square miles a year - would ultimately result in "more severe and frequent flooding than ever before" and cost in the billions of dollars.

"With the loss of barrier islands and wetlands over the next 50 years, New Orleans will lose its wetland buffer that now protects it from many effects of flooding," she said. ""Hurricanes will pose the greatest threat, since New Orleans sits on a sloping continental shelf that makes it extremely vulnerable to storm surges."

Landrieu's words proved eerily prescient. Less than eight months later, Katrina hit the region with Category 5 fury, inundating New Orleans and causing billions of dollars in damages.

Katrina hit the New Orleans region with such force that ruin likely would have resulted regardless. But scientists are almost unanimous in their assessment that vanishing wetlands are having a deleterious impact, creating hazardous conditions that could have been mitigated by their continued existence.

Too often, environmentalists say, communities are draining swamps and marshes to allow for commercial and residential development. "Disappearing wetlands increase the risk of flooding, threaten the survival of migrating birds and endangered species and diminish the environment for outdoor lovers and sportsmen," said Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington-based interest group.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintains that wetlands "function as natural sponges that trap and slowly release surface water, rain, snowmelt, groundwater and flood waters."

"Trees, root mats, and other wetland vegetation also slow the speed of flood waters and distribute them more slowly over the floodplain," the service said in a statement. "This combined water storage and braking action lowers flood heights and reduces erosion. Wetlands within and downstream of urban areas are particularly valuable, counteracting the greatly increased rate and volume of surface-water runoff from pavement and buildings. The holding capacity of wetlands helps control floods and prevents water logging of crops."

Despite their value and even though protections are offered under the Clean Water Act of 1972, wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate. The wildlife service notes that 220 million acres of wetlands existed in the lower 48 states in colonial America. That total has declined to about 100 million acres.

From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, the lower 48 lost an average of 458,000 acres of wetland each year. Between the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the loss rate dropped to about 290,000 acres annually. Today, the annual loss rate is somewhere between 70,000 and 110,000 acres.

In the spring of 2004, President Bush pledged his administration to a no-net-loss policy and went so far as to commit to annual gains in wetlands habitat. Critics assert he has not honored that pledge and that the Army Corps of Engineers, a key federal agency charged with protecting wetlands, is engaging in practices that are destroying thousands of acres.

In a report issued last month, the Environmental Integrity Project said the Army Corps has opened more than 11,000 acres of wetlands in 15 states for development since the spring of 2004. Among the enterprises who benefited was a Wal-Mart shopping center in Texas, a titanium sand mine in Georgia, a peat bog mine in Florida and a highway project in North Dakota.

"This administration is not very good at keeping promises made to the American people," said Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for the environmental group Earthjustice. "The president and his appointees promised not to change the Clean Water Act's rules, but they are shirking that responsibility by just ignoring those rules. In turn, they are breaking the promise of the Clean Water Act, which is to protect all of the nation's waters, to make them safe for drinking water, for swimming and fishing. This cannot be done when the Corps leaves waters out of the law's scope."

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, defended the administration's record, saying a report released by the council in April shows the administration is on target to "restore, preserve and protect at least three million acres of wetlands over the next five years.'' The effort was enhanced, he said, by $40 billion in conservation funding in the 2002 Farm Bill and reauthorization of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.

The administration is looking to develop public-private partnerships to meet its goals.

"Working collaboratively has proven remarkably effective in improving and sustaining America's wetlands," Connaughton said.

However, in two separate reports released last month, the Government Accountability Office found the Army Corps has failed to determine whether developers were offering proper justification for building in wetlands before issuing permits. It also accused the agency of failing to explain why it is not assuming jurisdiction over disputes rising from wetlands development.

"These reports show that the Corps is failing to ensure that Clean Water Act regulations are applied to their full extent and is providing no rationale for its failure to protect many wetlands," said Jim Murphy, water resources counsel for the National Wildlife Federation. "And if this isn't troubling enough, the Corps is making little effort to ensure that permitted impacts to wetlands are mitigated. This all adds up to wetlands losses that are not being accounted for."

The Army Corps officially accepted the criticisms contained in the reports and said it is developing policies to address the problems.

Link to site: We focus on New Orleans because it was so densely populated, but there are other little towns that are worse off.

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- concluded that exposures are not expected to cause bad effects if proper protection is worn
- Katrina Environmental Research and Restoration Network (KERRN) will be a network of researchers who share data and ideas crossing disciplinary and geographical boundaries to provide models on how to respond to major environmental disasters.

HEATHER MOYER, WASHINGTON, D.C. October 21, 2005
The environmental health impact of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina is serious and communities should be prepared, said speakers at a Institute of Medicine conference Thursday.
We focus on New Orleans because it was so densely populated, but there are other little towns that are worse off.

"Environmental Public Health Impacts of Disasters: Hurricane Katrina" was sponsored by the Roundtable of Environmental Health Sciences, Research and Medicine. Speakers discussed a range of topics, from the challenges Hurricane Katrina created to how communities can be better prepared for such disasters.

In New Orleans, health officials are contending with the chemicals and bacteria being found in floodwater and lingering sediment. Chemicals such as arsenic, lead and petroleum products have been found in tests done by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

"The EPA and (Centers for Disease Control) concluded that exposures are not expected to cause bad effects if proper protection is worn, so we've been checking to make sure residents are doing that," said Dr. Kevin Stephens, director of health for the New Orleans Health Department.

Stephens said the city is still learning more about the risks residents and workers face from cleaning up debris and just being in the formerly flooded areas.

"Our local health department has questions about long-term effects - what should we monitor? How should we monitor it? And what should our communication strategies be?" asked Stephens at the conference.

He added that he hopes continued cooperation with the EPA and other federal and state health agencies will assist to making sure residents and workers are safe.

The New Orleans Health Department is also monitoring sickness outbreaks, something Stephens said he was amazed happened rarely considering how many people were kept in such close-quarters. He said there was a respiratory illness outbreak in one city cleaning team two weeks after Katrina, but instituting a cleaning convention within the unit immediately brought down the cases of the illness.

Stephens added that the biggest health problem the agency is finding within the city right now are "unintentional injuries," such as residents falling off roofs and other cleanup mishaps.

Dr. Jimmy Guidry, state health officer and medical director for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said it is important to give attention to other devastated areas besides New Orleans.

"We focus on New Orleans because it was so densely populated, but there are other little towns that are worse off," he said. "But there's not much left standing in St. Bernard Parish or Plaquemines Parish."

For Guidry, the challenge is rebuilding the health system in the devastated regions of the state where how many health professionals will return is unknown. Major hospitals in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana have been condemned or seriously damaged.

Many of Thursday's speakers brought up other health issues they worry may be ignored as time passes. In Louisiana, some of the debris is slated to be burned because there is so much. "How will that affect people and the environment?" asked Guidry.

Other health issues mentioned included the increase of mosquitoes and the possibility of West Nile Virus, long-term mental health, the increase of vermin that may carry disease, re-certifying restaurants and members of the food industry, drinking water supplies, wastewater plant repairs, mold and how it affects indoor air quality, and making sure recovery workers and residents are protected while cleaning up.

"We're going to have major issues with educating the public about mold risks," Guidry said. "And if workers get hurt or sick on the job, our medical infrastructure isn't there to help them."

Other agencies are making sure workers are properly trained before doing debris removal.

"A common denominator of all disasters is that you have a worker like a first responder or those in consequence management - Katrina is no different," said Max Keifer, associate director of emergency preparedness for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

"We're now worried about the influx of workers to Louisiana and the region who are looking for jobs. They may not be trained and we want to protect them. Some may be asked to do work they are not trained or outfitted for."

A scientist involved with the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the related air quality issues from the World Trade Center collapse also spoke at Thursday's conference. Dr. Paul Lioy of the Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine at Rutgers Univeristy had some words of advice for those planning the cleanup of the Gulf Coast.

"In New Orleans and the South you will have dust and it will be made up of all kinds of things," said Lioy. "We're still tearing down buildings (in New York City) because we can't clean them up. This will also be an issue the South will have to deal with."

Related to the dust, Lioy said that knowing its specific make-up is crucial to cleaning it up correctly. "Characterize your dust now, know what's in it and know it well. It's not just one single chemical, it's multiple toxins. And those toxins may not alone impact people, but they could react differently mixed together."

Lioy also advised those present to make sure no one is left out during the cleanup phase and to make sure responders and workers are equipped with respirators. Pointing to an image of Ground Zero cleanup workers with respirators resting around their necks, Lioy cautioned the conference-goers.

"One of the most serious issues after Sept. 11 was that no one wore respirators (during cleanup)," he explained. "You need to make sure that not only government workers and large contractors have them, but that everyone has them and wears them."

Conference speakers also addressed the issue of repopulating and rebuilding the hardest hit areas of New Orleans. Monique Harden, co-director of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, said she worries that the low-income residents of the city will not be included in important discussions about the environmental risks of moving back.

"Communities need to be at the table in the talks about rebuilding," said Harden.

Noting that Hurricane Katrina exposed many failures within the environmental regulatory system, Harden said the EPA needs to explain their tests on the water and sediment.

"They say the environmental data is publicly accessible, but it's not for low-income residents. It's also not easily understood."

Harden also worries about the six EPA superfund sites in the city and other sites now newly contaminated by the floodwater. Harden showed the conference a photo of a vacant lot across from her home where workers were depositing sewage. None wore facemasks or gloves and she was confused as to why the lot - which the photos showed was now oozing sewage material into the street - was suddenly allowed to be a sewage disposal site.

"What we don't need is a blanket waiver of public health laws," said Harden. "We need to develop environmentally sustainable initiatives. What we need is the EPA convening monthly meetings with the community."

For Dr. Sandral Hullett, CEO of Jefferson Health System in Alabama, developing a trust within the community is the only way cleanup and rebuild plans can succeed. Hullet spoke about her work with the 10 poorest counties in Alabama, most of which suffered serious damage from the high winds and tornadoes Katrina spawned.

"You have to have the community be part of the process to be successful and have them not feel used," said Hullet.

Out of the devastation from Katrina can spring new partnerships, said other speakers. When the flooding inundated New Orleans, many major universities lost valuable research facilities. Dr. John McLachlan, a professor of environmental studies at Tulane and Xavier Universities, and some of his fellow researchers are now using his fifth-floor loft apartment in New Orleans as their research facility. Through that, he said, they came up with the idea of a major partnership to benefit everyone after Hurricane Katrina.

The Katrina Environmental Research and Restoration Network (KERRN) will be a network of researchers who share data and ideas crossing disciplinary and geographical boundaries to provide models on how to respond to major environmental disasters. He gave the example of one university already contacting him asking how they can do some research on the water contamination in the Mississippi near New Orleans. McLachlan said he connected that university up with another area university with a boat that is already out doing something similar.

"It is a network of skills and interests, we'll match research needs and skills," said McLachlan. "This will also ensure maximum benefit and avoid duplication of efforts. And it will help us pass on lessons learned to the next disaster."

Link to site: I'm very concerned about the levee systems in New Orleans East,

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- complaints that restoration of water service has been unfairly delayed in the East,
- They need water in their lines so they can clean up their houses,
- Breaks and myriad leaks in the lines were allowing contaminated water and debris into the system after the storm

Bruce Hamilton, Staff writer, Thursday, October 20, 2005
Disputing what he called "rumors and innuendo," Mayor Ray Nagin on Wednesday vowed to rebuild eastern New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward "as fast as we possibly and humanly can."

The mayor made his pledge a day after he testified on Capitol Hill about his plans for the city's recovery. At that hearing, he told two House Transportation subcommittees that the question of how to protect areas east of the Industrial Canal "has not been answered yet. The rest of the city we can rebuild."

That remark indicated he was uncertain about the degree to which eastern New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward could be rebuilt. But Nagin soundly dismissed any uncertainty Wednesday, saying he had been misquoted. But he again expressed doubt that the eastern portion of the city is adequately protected against flooding. "I'm very concerned about the levee systems in New Orleans East," he said, "which causes us to pause as we start to repopulate."

The mayor spoke Wednesday at the first post-Katrina meeting of the Sewerage & Water Board, of which he is chairman. He also addressed widespread complaints that restoration of water service has been unfairly delayed in the East, saying it has been restored first to areas where the water system had less damage.

Pick up pace, critics say

Before Nagin arrived at the meeting, the developer of Eastover Country Club, the president of New Orleans East Business Association and City Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis all addressed the board to decry the area's lack of water.

"New Orleans does not stop at the Industrial Canal," Willard-Lewis said to a smattering of applause from audience members. "What happened as a result of Katrina was an act of God, but what has now happened are actions of man that are not deploying resources in a fair and appropriate manner."

The councilwoman noted water service has been restored in Algiers, the French Quarter, Uptown and elsewhere. "I know that there has been movement," she said. "I say the movement has been at a snail's pace while initially it seemed like you were trying to win the marathon in other parts of the city."

She pleaded for urgency on behalf of her constituents. "They need water in their lines so they can clean up their houses," she said. "It is a crime to starve and to deny what is basic to restoration."

Donald Pate, president of Eastover Development Corp., said the subdivision's 200 residents need water to combat mold immediately. "We desperately need water. Our homes are deteriorating daily. We don't need water to drink at this point in time, but we need water to work with."

Pate said 10 crews are working daily, using truckloads of water from outside the city, to clean up mold-damaged houses.

Sherman Copelin, chairman of the Eastover Property Association and president of the New Orleans East Business Association, asked the water board to "kick it up a notch" to restore water. "You can't have commerce without water," he said. "We can't have commerce Uptown and in Algiers and not have commerce in eastern New Orleans."

'Toxic' issue surfaces

Pate and Copelin, a former state representative, both criticized Sen. Ann Duplessis, D-New Orleans, for remarks attributed to her by a newscaster in an interview Wednesday morning on WWL Radio. Duplessis reportedly warned residents in a private meeting against a toxic environment in eastern New Orleans.

"The Environmental Protection Agency has been in the East, and they have taken samples," Pate said. "And they have told us it's OK to return." Said Copelin, "We happen to know the EPA has been to Eastover. It's not toxic."

Duplessis did not return phone calls Wednesday.

Nagin defended the progress of water restoration, saying those efforts were limited by the hurricane's effects. "Katrina, when she left us, she left us with certain segments of the city that weren't as damaged, and that's the areas we focused on first with the limited resources we had," he said.

"And whether you like it or not, the areas that were least damaged were Algiers, Uptown, the Central Business District, the French Quarter and Treme. And that is the decision point for how we start to bring this city back."

Battling leaks

Breaks and myriad leaks in the lines were allowing contaminated water and debris into the system after the storm, and the city had to make some hard decisions in order to certify drinking water, Nagin said. In eastern New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward, he said, "we had to temporarily shut down some of the water, period."

The mayor said the water board planned, as of Monday, to restore water in eastern New Orleans in 10 days. "We went out and started to pump water in New Orleans East. Guess what happened? We found a significant number of leaks, particularly around the Lakefront Airport," he said. "That forced us to shut the system down again."

Joe Sullivan, the water board's general superintendent, said workers are hunting for leaks and repairing them. "We are continually striving to get water pressure in the area," he said.

Staff member Rudy August said 18 to 24 contractor crews are working daily in addition to water board staff; of 1,300 work orders, nearly 70 percent have been finished, he said.

August said that between 500 and 1,000 more repairs are needed "to really tighten the system up." Workers have identified about 800 defects or leaks on private property, which also hinder restoration, he said. "It's an ongoing challenge, and it may be awhile before we're able to get water to parts of New Orleans East."

Link to site: The 30-foot-wide 17th Street Canal, the scene changes from one of bustling streets lined with populated restaurants and gas stations displaying "help wanted" signs, to one of deserted, water-logged houses, cars and scattered motor boats washed up on dead lawns.

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- water was declared drinkable last Thursday with the exception of the Lower 9th Ward and New Orleans East,
- categorized coliform as an indicator organism for other potential dangers, such as E. coli and other fecal associated bacteria and viruses. He said samples have been taken two to four times a week and have totaled several hundred since the hurricane.

The Daily Texan, Naomi King 10/12/2005
Driving across the Jefferson-Orleans parish border from west to east on Veterans Boulevard, over the 30-foot-wide 17th Street Canal, the scene changes from one of bustling streets lined with populated restaurants and gas stations displaying "help wanted" signs, to one of deserted, water-logged houses, cars and scattered motor boats washed up on dead lawns.

Art Depodesta, co-owner at Cooter Brown's Tavern & Oyster Bar in Uptown New Orleans, which is south of the canal, said he's frustrated with how Jefferson seems to have more resources at their disposal compared to Orleans Parish.

Although electricity is still out for 47 percent of customers in Orleans Parish as of Monday, water was declared drinkable last Thursday with the exception of the Lower 9th Ward and New Orleans East, according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals's Office of Public Health. C.J. Guenzel, a resident of Uptown New Orleans who returned to the city this past weekend, said he ran the water for 15 minutes before taking a shower. He said he didn't notice any unusual smells or coloring, but he still avoided drinking it.

Meanwhile, Jefferson Parish, located immediately west of Orleans Parish, has had potable water for about four weeks, said Wayne Kolfskey, a scientist for the Jefferson Parish Water Department.

"I can estimate, the boil order on the West Bank [of Jefferson Parish], which had a lot less damage, was lifted on Sept. 8," said Kolfskey, adding that a coliform, or bacterial, sampling for that area took place. "The East Bank [of Jefferson Parish] took another week."

In Metairie, Jefferson Parish, the Italian Pie pizzeria on Veterans Boulevard opened on Oct. 4 and currently serves water from the faucet. A sister Italian Pie on South Rampart Street in the central business district opened yesterday, but Katy Chan, an employee of the pizzeria, said they will serve bottled water to customers.

The 17th Street Canal levee system that divides the two parishes broke on the Orleans side, causing flood waters to rapidly rise in the city the day after Hurricane Katrina pummeled the region. And because of this levee break, the main difference in the reestablishment of drinking water is that New Orleans started off in a much worse situation than Jefferson, said Doug Vincent, chief engineer for the state's Office of Public Health.

"If [the levee break] had been on the other side, the tables would have been turned," Vincent said. "They may be adjacent, but they're distinctly different."

In addition to being an older system than Jefferson's, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board's pipes sustained more leaks and breaks and had more flooding of pipes and facilities, Vincent said. Even vehicles and equipment normally used to assess leaks and take samples were incapacitated by flood damage.

"It's only been recently that they've been able to get in and assess damage," Vincent said.

Around the second week in September, the Sewerage and Water Board's water treatment plants began pumping water through the system, Vincent said. As this began, the certified laboratory also began assessing the water system's pressure, chlorine levels, and sample results from coliform analysis. Vincent categorized coliform as an indicator organism for other potential dangers, such as E. coli and other fecal associated bacteria and viruses. He said samples have been taken two to four times a week and have totaled several hundred since the hurricane.

Link to site: easy to see what led to the catastrophe Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- New Orleans should not be rebuilt in its present location -- a lowland bowl situated between a lake and a river channel where this largest of America's rivers forms its delta
- what can be done in rebuilding New Orleans to make it a better, more sustainable place?
- the following ten-point plan for moving this dialog ahead

Alex Wilson, October 2005
It is easy to see what led to the catastrophe Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans: a city of a half-million people at an average elevation of six feet (2 m) below sea level; wetlands that have been disappearing for decades for lack of replacement silt from the Mississippi River's annual flooding; a city that has been sinking as its silt soils compress; levees that are designed to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes in an age when global climate change appears to be spawning more catastrophic storms; and years of inadequate funding to maintain even the existing Category-3-rated levees that were built to protect the Crescent City.

In the aftermath of the devastating late-August storm, as rescue teams search for survivors and carry out the grim task of recovering the dead, discussion is well underway about what to do next in heavily damaged New Orleans -- and nearby cities including Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi. New Orleans is the first large American city to be devastated by a catastrophic event since a mammoth earthquake and subsequent fires destroyed much of San Francisco in 1906, leaving three-quarters of its population homeless, and before that the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 destroyed a third of that city. From the San Francisco earthquake we learned to build structures that were more earthquake-resistant, and we instituted seismic building codes. From Chicago's fire we learned to replace wood-frame structures with masonry and steel, and we instituted rigorous fire codes. What will Katrina teach us?

In many respects, New Orleans should not be rebuilt in its present location -- a lowland bowl situated between a lake and a river channel where this largest of America's rivers forms its delta. There are very good reasons for accepting the reality that the combination of subsiding land, rising sea levels, and the effect of shipping channels in funneling storm surges into New Orleans makes long-term survival of the city either very doubtful or highly expensive. Serious consideration should be given to the idea of relocating the city to stable land, either somewhat inland from the coast or farther from the delta where it can be better protected. But there’s almost no chance of that happening. New Orleans will be rebuilt where it is. Our nation has learned a lot in its 200-plus years, but we’re neither that smart nor that bold.

So what can be done in rebuilding New Orleans to make it a better, more sustainable place? A great deal. The opportunities are exceeded only by the creativity that exists in the sustainable design community today. We have an opportunity with New Orleans to put into practice -- in a far-reaching and highly visible manner -- a vision infused by the collective wisdom of the green building movement. If common sense, intelligence, and forethought can prevail in the ensuing debates about the future of this great city, we will end up with a model that can be emulated around the world. Our nation can rebound from the shame of our hapless response to Katrina by demonstrating to the world a commitment to sustainable development.

In this spirit, we offer the following ten-point plan for moving this dialog ahead. These suggestions are directed specifically at New Orleans, though many of the ideas apply as well to other coastal areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

1. Institute a Sustainable New Orleans planning task force. This task force should be comprised of 20 to 30 of the best minds in sustainable development, urban planning, and green building, along with at least an equal number of community leaders of New Orleans and the surrounding region. Participation and buy-in by residents is critical to the long-term success of any sustainability initiative in a city or region, and that seems particularly the case in New Orleans, where too many have been disenfranchised for too long. This planning process should generate neighborhood, community, city, and regional plans that address such issues as housing, employment, government, transit, open space, healthcare, education, water, sewer, energy, and telecommunications. This task force should be funded at a level that will permit these outside visionaries and local participants to take leave of many of their other responsibilities for an intensive six- to twelve-month period, and the initiative should be enriched with the best support staff of computer modelers, ecologists, geologists, building scientists, and engineers that money can buy. This task force should be established as quickly as possible.

2. Pursue coastal and floodplain restoration as the number-one priority in rebuilding New Orleans. As has been widely reported, it doesn’t make economic sense to invest in rebuilding New Orleans without also addressing the underlying hydrologic problems that will continue to threaten this area. Sediment deposition needs to be restored in the Mississippi River Delta, both to replenish wetlands in the delta that are being lost to erosion and to counteract the subsidence of land that is occurring in the region. We need to harness nature’s restorative powers to support human efforts to create a habitable coastal zone -- rather than continuing to work in opposition to the forces of nature.

3. Immediately establish Sustainable New Orleans enterprise-zone businesses to salvage and warehouse building materials from the destruction of New Orleans. The materials so salvaged should be cleaned and used in the rebuilding of the city. These businesses should be cooperatively owned by the people of New Orleans and should provide employment to those in the city who most need it -- in the process, establishing models for the sorts of businesses that can ultimately build a vibrant, strong economy for New Orleans. Such start-up businesses can empower residents and help them emerge from the cycle of poverty and hardship that have for too long afflicted the city. Organized deconstruction of the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of buildings that are deemed unlivable should be undertaken. Temporary housing, food, and infrastructure will be needed to support this enterprise; the housing can start as tent barracks if necessary. If we can provide mobile living quarters and infrastructure for 150,000 ground troops in Iraq 8,000 miles (13,000 km) away, we should be able to do the same in Louisiana, an hour’s flight from Atlanta.

4. Rebuild a levee system around the city that the water engineers of Holland will envy. The levees should incorporate redundancy and be designed to fully withstand a Category 5 hurricane and a storm surge exceeding that predicted by the most extreme computer models. Where possible, the levee system should be integrated into a perimeter park for the city that combines protective functions with recreational amenities that will help New Orleans lure its dispersed residents back to the city and attract the new companies and employment that the city so desperately needs to sustain itself in the long term.

5. Create Sustainable New Orleans overlay zoning for the city to ensure that the goals of sustainability, safety, and urban vitality will be followed in the city’s redevelopment. This zoning code should emerge from the comprehensive planning process outlined in the first recommendation. It should provide for mixed uses (retail, commercial, and residential) in urban cores, public transportation, bicycle and pedestrian pathways, high levels of energy efficiency, reliance on natural cooling strategies and solar power systems in buildings that can maintain comfort and provide critical electricity during power outages, and durable building systems based on a platform of building science. While there is an urgency to move ahead with the rebuilding of New Orleans, doing it right -- in a way that will maintain and strengthen the character of the city -- is paramount. The end result should not be a gentrified New Orleans, but a better, more sustainable version of the old New Orleans -- a city that supports all segments of its society while protecting its environment and ensuring its long-term future.

6. Retain and restore those buildings that can be salvaged. Due to damage from contaminated water, extensive measures will be required to deal with mold. Gut-rehab will be required for many of the estimated 80% of the city’s 200,000 homes that have been damaged and, of course, many homes will not be salvageable. Building codes should address resistance to non-catastrophic flood damage -- for example, the most flood-prone lower floors of houses should have no paper-faced drywall, no ductwork, no air handlers, no wall-to-wall carpeting, and no electrical service boxes. Retaining the character of New Orleans, which is defined in part by its vernacular architecture and its diversity, should be a high priority.

7. Mandate or incentivize green building. Along with ensuring that certain minimum practices are followed in the rebuilding of New Orleans, the city, state, and federal government, as well as insurance companies and banks, should require, or offer incentives to encourage the implementation of, more comprehensive green building practices. Tax credits, zero-interest loans, density bonuses, grants to support the greenest redevelopment efforts, and other incentives should be offered to the people and businesses of New Orleans to support this greener vision of the city. Affordable housing should be built at least to the Enterprise Foundation Green Communities standards. Public buildings should be required to achieve LEED Gold standards. The U.S. Green Building Council should encourage green construction by waiving or discounting the registration and certification fees for all private building projects going through LEED certification -- discussions about doing this are already underway.

8. Work with ecologists and fisheries biologists to create more sustainable fisheries for the Gulf Coast. The Louisiana coast produces more seafood than any U.S. location outside of Alaska; as elsewhere, these fisheries are in decline. The terrible pollution that resulted from Katrina’s floodwaters will doubtless further damage these fisheries -- and likely extend the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone, which currently covers about 7,000 square miles (18,000 km2) -- an area about the size of New Jersey. This issue must be addressed if the culture of New Orleans is to survive.

9. Clean up the new brownfields of New Orleans. Pollutant-laden sediment and all manner of toxins will greet the city once it is drained of its floodwater. The most ecologically responsible means should be used to detoxify New Orleans, and an ongoing testing program should be implemented to ensure that New Orleans’s water is safe to drink, its playgrounds are safe to play on, and its seafood is safe to eat. Indeed, this is an opportunity to put into practice, on a large scale, such leading-edge practices as bioremediation, phytoremediation, and ecological restoration.

10. Work with industry to clean up the factories along the Gulf Coast. There need not be a "Cancer Alley" along the Gulf Coast, but it will take a concerted effort by industry, environmentalists, and regulators -- and a lot of money -- to bring about the necessary change. In creating a sustainable economy and ensuring that residents can live healthy lives, however, this blight simply has to be addressed. Let’s learn from the toxic sludge and silt left by Katrina and create industrial processes that will not leave a toxic legacy for our children and grandchildren. The long-term plan for industry along the Gulf Coast should address both a reduction of toxics and opportunities for synergies in material and resource flows -- concepts of industrial ecology.

These are not easy tasks. Most involve hard, concerted effort and huge financial outlays. But these measures -- and others that would doubtless emerge through the process laid out here -- are critically important if New Orleans and the surrounding environs are to emerge from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in better shape than before. New Orleans can emerge as a model for sustainable development, charting a course that other cities around the country and world can follow. Let's not look back at the rebuilding of New Orleans as a lost opportunity; let's work together for a future that the city -- and all of America -- can be proud of.

Link to site: Soil tests indicate that a soft, spongy layer of swamp peat underneath the 17th Street Canal floodwall was the weak point that caused soil to move and the wall to breach during Hurricane Katrina

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- the same peat layer also runs under the London Avenue Canal breaches and probably was instrumental in those collapses as well.
- a design or construction flaw is to blame for the collapses, and for the flooding of much of central New Orleans.
- Signs of trouble appear in graphs in the corps' soil data showing the "shear strength" of the soil,

John McQuaid, Washington, October 15, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Soil tests indicate that a soft, spongy layer of swamp peat underneath the 17th Street Canal floodwall was the weak point that caused soil to move and the wall to breach during Hurricane Katrina, an engineer who has studied the data says.

"The thing that is remarkable here is the very low strength of the soils around the bottom of the sheet pile" base of the floodwall, said Robert Bea, a geotechnical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, who examined the test results. Bea is a member of the National Science Foundation team that is studying the levee system's performance during Katrina.

Bea said other data shows the same peat layer also runs under the London Avenue Canal breaches and probably was instrumental in those collapses as well.

Investigators are focusing on the 17th Street and London Avenue canal levee walls because, unlike other parts of the system, they apparently were not topped by Katrina's storm surge. That could mean a design or construction flaw is to blame for the collapses, and for the flooding of much of central New Orleans.

Army Corps of Engineers officials say they must determine whether human error played a role in the breaches. If it did, they say, they may have to rebuild the canal walls immediately so they don't pose an additional risk during next year's hurricane season.

Investigators from the corps, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the National Science Foundation have spent the past two weeks examining the floodwalls and other parts of the levee system. At the two drainage canal breaches, they say the culprit appears to be the layer of peat around or not far beneath the base of the walls.

Graphs show problem
The Corps of Engineers has not yet released the results of soil borings in the breached areas to the outside investigators. But the corps included some soil boring data for the 17th Street Canal breach this week in a contract for temporary repairs posted on its Web site. The Times-Picayune asked Bea to examine the results.

The canal walls consist of a concrete cap on a steel sheet pile base, driven 17 ½ feet deep at 17th Street and 16 feet deep at London Avenue, corps design documents show. Bea said the soil boring data shows the peat layer starts about 15 feet to 30 feet beneath the surface and ranges from about 5 feet to 20 feet thick.

Signs of trouble appear in graphs in the corps' soil data showing the "shear strength" of the soil, its ability to resist deformation and lateral motion. In one boring, at 27 feet, the soil strength is near the bottom of the scale, about 0.02 tons per square foot. Eight feet deeper, the strength is 0.25 tons per square foot, more than 10 times greater. At 70 feet, the strength even greater: 0.6 tons per square foot.

The data also show the soil at the peat level has a high water concentration. Put together, those data indicate it would be very vulnerable to the stresses of a large flood, Bea said.

At 17th Street, the soil moved laterally, pushing entire wall sections with it. Bea and other engineers say that as Katrina's storm surge filled the canal, water pressure rose in the soil underneath the wall and in the peat layer. Water moved through the soil underneath the base of the wall. When the rising pressure and moving water overcame the soil's strength, it suddenly shifted, taking surrounding material -- and the wall -- with it.

"Think of a layer cake. In the middle I've got my icing. All of a sudden, I push on the top of my piece of cake, and what it's moving on is this weak, slick icing. The whole thing moves," said Thomas Zimmie, a civil engineer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who is on the National Science Foundation team and surveyed the levees this week.

Swampy soil

The Lakefront area used to be a swamp, and was filled over the decades as development advanced northward toward Lake Pontchartrain. But the soft swamp and river soils -- layers of mud, peat, sand and silt -- remain under the surface and can pose problems for those trying to anchor structures in them. The normal solution, engineers say, is to drill piles as deep as possible so that they go all the way through weak layers and are more firmly anchored.

The contractor who built the 17th Street Canal reported problems drilling the sheet pilings in the soil. Segments of the wall leaned slightly when the concrete was poured, according to a legal ruling in a contract dispute over the matter. An administrative law judge ruled that was because of the unusual bracing system used to build the structure rather than unexpected soil conditions.

Bea said that while the investigators have theorized the corps missed the peat layer in soil tests before the wall was built, the data they now have shows the peat would be hard to miss.

"The soil profile that we've got in front of us is showing that peat layer is large in extent, not narrow. They are mapping it between multiple borings. My suspicion, or fear, that they had missed it between two borings is not justifiable. It looks like it's about a thousand feet wide. That used to be a swamp. We built levees and cut canals in it, but never went in there and took out the peat."

Link to site: Hurricane Katrina sent a powerful message on the importance of wetlands.

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- study after study showed that the loss of wetlands to development increased the risk of flooding in coastal areas.
- The 47-page report can be basically reduced to a few words: The corps isn't doing a very good job of making sure there is no net loss of wetlands.
- It is a particularly disappointing conclusion for a president who has echoed the pledge of his father -- the first President Bush -that there should be "no net loss" of wetlands in the United States. President George W. Bush vowed last year that wetland areas would be increased under his administration.

Hurricane Katrina sent a powerful message on the importance of wetlands. Even before Katrina's arrival, study after study showed that the loss of wetlands to development increased the risk of flooding in coastal areas.

On Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, issued a report on the U.S. Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency -- the two agencies that have jurisdiction over much of the nation's wetlands.

The 47-page report can be basically reduced to a few words: The corps isn't doing a very good job of making sure there is no net loss of wetlands.

"The corps is generally not asserting jurisdiction over isolated, intrastate, nonnavigable waters using its existing authority," the study concluded.

It is a particularly disappointing conclusion for a president who has echoed the pledge of his father -- the first President Bush -that there should be "no net loss" of wetlands in the United States. President George W. Bush vowed last year that wetland areas would be increased under his administration.

The report noted that although corps' officials said that the nonet-loss program is "a key component of this program, the corps has consistently neglected to ensure that the mitigation it has required as a condition of obtaining a permit has been completed." Instead, the corps sees the processing of permit applications as its priority.

Nor are things being done much differently than in previous decades, said the report: "In 1988 and 1993, we reported that the corps was placing little emphasis on its compliance efforts, including compensatory mitigation, and little has changed. The corps continues to provide limited oversight of compensatory mitigation, largely relying on the good faith of permittees to comply with compensatory mitigation requirements."

Navis Bermudez, a New Orleans native who handles national wetlands issues for the Sierra Club, told Reuters news service that the GAO's report "confirms the administration is secretly pursuing a policy that favors developers and other industrial interests."

While dredging and filling and discharging into the "waters of the United States" is prohibited by the Clean Water Act without a permit from the corps, some of those waters are disputed. In 2001, the Supreme Court issued a decision saying the corps could not regulate isolated water bodies simply because they were used by migratory birds.

But the GAO report noted that under the Bush administration, the EPA and the corps scaled back its jurisdiction much further than required by the court decision.

The reduction of the corps' jurisdiction over wetlands was proposed in January 2003 by the Bush administration as part of a rulemaking change to the Clean Water Act. The public commenting period showed strong opposition to the change. Of the 135,000 comments, the vast majority favored federal protection for small streams, ponds and wetlands.

Environmental agencies from 39 states opposed the change; only those of three states supported them. Congress also weighed in with 218 members signing a letter to Bush urging him to leave the rules alone.

At the end of 2003, the administration said it had heard the voices of environmentalists, conservationists and hunters. The rulemaking change had been abandoned.

But several environmental groups noted that the GAO report showed that the administration had accomplished what it wanted without the rule change. "This administration is not very good at keeping promises made to the American people," said Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice. "The president and his appointees promised not to change the Clean Water Act's rules, but they are shirking that responsibility by just ignoring those rules. In turn, they are breaking the promise of the Clean Water Act, which is to protect all of the nation's waters, to make them safe for drinking water, for swimming and fishing. This cannot be done when the corps leaves waters out of the law's scope."

The GAO said if the corps doesn't take its duties "more seriously, it will not know if thousands of acres of compensatory mitigation have been performed and will be unable to ensure that the (wetlands mitigation) program is contributing to the national goal of no net loss of wetlands."

The corps was given 30 days to respond to the report before GAO released it. Corps officials said they "generally concur" and are working to bring about reporting changes "so that full compliance with the Clean Water Act is encouraged, with the goal of increasing the effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness" of the corps' program.

After so many years of neglect, a change would be welcome.

Link to site: President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have used emergency powers to waive some federal regulations and have proposed other changes in what they say is an effort to cut red tape and speed relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- Democrats and watchdog groups complain that some waivers are attempts to roll back federal protections and advance the Republican political agenda.
- The Environmental Protection Agency extended a waiver until Oct. 25 allowing the use of polluting, higher-sulfur fuel to alleviate gas shortages nationwide. Sen. James Inhofe (news, bio, voting record), R-Okla., and others have proposed legislation that would lift limits on the amount of air and water pollution emitted by refineries, motor vehicles and other sources.
- "The hurricane is being used as a pretext to attack health and environmental standards," says Frank O'Donnell, president of the watchdog group Clean Air Watch.

By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY Thu Oct 13, 6:35 AM ET
President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have used emergency powers to waive some federal regulations and have proposed other changes in what they say is an effort to cut red tape and speed relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Democrats and watchdog groups complain that some waivers are attempts to roll back federal protections and advance the Republican political agenda. A look at some of the actions:

• Affirmative action. The Labor Department waived for three months rules requiring some companies to file hiring plans for minorities, women and disabled workers. The waiver, which can be extended, applies to first-time federal contractors hired on reconstruction projects. Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean is among those who have attacked the move at a time when the storm bared deep racial and economic disparities.

• College grants. President Bush signed a law Sept. 21 waiving requirements for college students to pay back their federal Pell Grants if they have withdrawn from school because of major disasters. It covers as many as 100,000 college students displaced by Katrina as well as those affected by Hurricane Rita. The law removes financial penalties for late payments.

• Environmental protections. The Environmental Protection Agency extended a waiver until Oct. 25 allowing the use of polluting, higher-sulfur fuel to alleviate gas shortages nationwide. Sen. James Inhofe (news, bio, voting record), R-Okla., and others have proposed legislation that would lift limits on the amount of air and water pollution emitted by refineries, motor vehicles and other sources. "The hurricane is being used as a pretext to attack health and environmental standards," says Frank O'Donnell, president of the watchdog group Clean Air Watch.

• Federal contracts. The Transportation Department issued a rule to allow no-bid contracts until Dec. 1 on restoration projects. Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., and others have called for an independent probe into how the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies have awarded contracts. FEMA has said it will reopen four large no-bid contracts signed just after the storm.

• Government credit cards. The General Services Administration raised the limit on government-issued credit cards to $250,000 for hurricane-related spending. The change enraged Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and other critics, forcing the administration to return the limit to $2,500, or $15,000 in an emergency.

• Minimum wage. Bush suspended the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act in parts of the four states most affected by Katrina. The law requires workers on federal construction projects to receive the prevailing or average minimum wage in the area. Bush and other Republicans have opposed the law, saying it raises contract costs. The AFL-CIO and other labor groups say it will lower wages and make it tougher for union workers to be hired.

• School vouchers. The Department of Education has proposed offering displaced students emergency school vouchers of $7,500 that could be used at public or private schools, even if students didn't attend a private school before Katrina. Teachers unions and Democrats such as Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) of Massachusetts oppose the plan, saying Congress has repeatedly rejected vouchers because they drain scarce tax dollars from public schools.

• Taxes. The Internal Revenue Service granted relief to residents in the affected areas, giving them until Oct. 31 to pay taxes without incurring penalties or interest.

• Transportation rules. The Transportation Department temporarily waived safety rules limiting work hours for truck drivers and airline pilots who carry goods related to relief efforts. Safety regulations also were waived for the hurricane-related transport of hazardous materials in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Link to site: the US Army Corps of Engineers guilty of failing to protect wetlands, headwaters and other important waters.

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- The GAO report says the administration essentially changed the rules after announcing it would not do so by simply ignoring existing law.
- by storing floodwater, wetlands provide a variety of other benefits: they filter pollutants from our drinking water, and provide habitat for fish, shellfish and wildlife.

FlyFish News Service, 2005-10-13

The General Accounting Office (GAO) has released a report finding that the US Army Corps of Engineers guilty of failing to protect wetlands, headwaters and other important waters. The report found that although the Army Corps is required under the Clean Water Act to protect these waters, the agency is permitting their destruction without explaining why it is not following the law, recording the acreage being destroyed or evaluating the natural functions that are lost.

"In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we know that our nation needs to be increasing - not weakening - protections for waterways that can prevent flooding and provide clean water," said Navis Bermudez, Sierra Club Clean Water Campaign Representative. "The GAO's report confirms that the administration is secretly pursuing a policy that favors developers and other industry interests. The administration's policy needs to be withdrawn and protections extended to the full extent of the law."

In January 2003, the administration proposed rule making to weaken the Clean Water Act's requirements defining "waters of the United States." The administration later abandoned this rule making and promised key constituents that it would not pursue that course of action again. The GAO report says the administration essentially changed the rules after announcing it would not do so by simply ignoring existing law.

"The President and his appointees promised not to change the Clean Water Act's rules, but they are shirking that responsibility by just ignoring those rules,"says Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice. "In turn, they are breaking the promise of the Clean Water Act, which is to protect all of the nation's waters, to make them safe for drinking water, for swimming and fishing. This cannot be done when the Corps leaves waters out of the law's scope."

The wetlands are extremely important for our communities' health and safety. For example, when wetlands are destroyed or filled, they are often replaced by impermeable paving or structures that increase water runoff and can contribute to increased flooding. In addition to protecting homes by storing floodwater, wetlands provide a variety of other benefits: they filter pollutants from our drinking water, and provide habitat for fish, shellfish and wildlife.

Link to site:

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Highlights:
- the EPA and Corps have been following a Bush administration policy directive that jeopardizes Clean Water Act protections by telling agency staff to stop protecting many streams, wetlands, lakes, and other waters unless they first get permission from Washington, D.C. officials.
- The wetlands, streams and other waters that are being destroyed because the Corps is not protecting them are extremely important for our communities’ health and safety.
- Losses of wetlands in many areas of the U.S. are unprecedented, yet the Corps is allowing many of the remaining wetlands to be destroyed in violation of its Clean Water Act obligations
Sierra Club, October 11, 2005
Evidence Shows Corps of Engineers Lacked Justification for Not Protecting Wetlands, Streams

The General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report today finding that the US Army Corps of Engineers is failing to protect wetlands, headwaters and other important waters. The report found that although the Army Corps is required under the Clean Water Act to protect these waters, the agency is permitting their destruction without explaining why it is not following the law, recording the acreage being destroyed or evaluating the natural functions that are lost.

Since January 2003, the EPA and Corps have been following a Bush administration policy directive that jeopardizes Clean Water Act protections by telling agency staff to stop protecting many streams, wetlands, lakes, and other waters unless they first get permission from Washington, D.C. officials. The EPA and Corps claim that the policy is based, at least in part, on a 2001 Supreme Court decision, Solid Waste Agencies of Northern Cook County v. the Army Corps of Engineers (or "SWANCC"), but the terms of the directive go far beyond the holding of that case and jeopardize millions of acres, thousands of miles of streams, and all the rivers, lakes and coastal waters downstream. What the GAO study found is that the US Army Corps of Engineers is not using its legal authority to protect those waters and wetlands that it can still protect after the SWANCC decision.

"In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we know that our nation needs to be increasing - not weakening - protections for waterways that can prevent flooding and provide clean water," said Navis Bermudez, Sierra Club Clean Water Campaign Representative. "The GAO’s report confirms that the administration is secretly pursuing a policy that favors developers and other industry interests. The administration’s policy needs to be withdrawn and protections extended to the full extent of the law."

In January 2003, the administration proposed rulemaking to weaken the Clean Water Act’s requirements defining "waters of the United States." The administration later abandoned this rulemaking and promised key constituents that it would not pursue that course of action again. The GAO report shows that the administration essentially changed the rules after announcing it would not do so by simply ignoring existing law.

"This administration is not very good at keeping promises made to the American people," said Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice. "The President and his appointees promised not to change the Clean Water Act's rules, but they are shirking that responsibility by just ignoring those rules. In turn, they are breaking the promise of the Clean Water Act, which is to protect all of the nation's waters, to make them safe for drinking water, for swimming and fishing. This cannot be done when the Corps leaves waters out of the law's scope."

The wetlands, streams and other waters that are being destroyed because the Corps is not protecting them are extremely important for our communities’ health and safety. For example, when wetlands are destroyed or filled, they are often replaced by impermeable paving or structures that increase water runoff and can contribute to increased flooding. In addition to protecting homes by storing floodwater, wetlands provide a variety of other benefits: they filter pollutants from our drinking water, and provide habitat for fish, shellfish and wildlife. Wetlands are crucial for clean water, serving as a natural filter absorbing water-borne pollutants and damaging contaminants before the water enters our rivers, lakes and streams.

"Losses of wetlands in many areas of the U.S. are unprecedented, yet the Corps is allowing many of the remaining wetlands to be destroyed in violation of its Clean Water Act obligations without even bothering to figure out why," said Christy Leavitt, Clean Water Advocate for U.S. PIRG.

Link to report http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05870.pdf

Link to site: Bush administration accused of covering up health dangers after Katrina

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Highlights:
- 1 million people lack clean drinking water around New Orleans.
- Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee also were skeptical of post-Katrina work being done by EPA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.
- recalled the Bush administration’s response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when the White House directed EPA officials to minimize the health risk posed by the cloud of smoke from the World Trade Center collapse
- Within 10 days of those attacks, EPA issued five news releases reassuring the public about air quality without testing for contaminants such as PCBs and dioxin. It was only nine months later — after respiratory ailments began showing up in workers cleaning up the debris and residents of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn — that EPA could point to any scientific evidence, saying then that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels.


Ap Associated press, Oct. 6, 2005
Bush administration accused of covering up health dangers after Katrina
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration was accused Thursday by senators in both parties of minimizing health hazards from the toxic soup left by Hurricane Katrina, just as they said it did with air pollution in New York from the Sept. 11 attacks.

More than a month after the storm, compounded by Hurricane Rita, Environmental Protection Agency officials said 1 million people lack clean drinking water around New Orleans. Some 70 million tons of hazardous waste remain on the Gulf Coast.

While EPA officials have warned of serious health hazards from bacteria, chemicals and metals in the region’s floodwaters and sediment, they haven’t taken a position on New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s aggressive push to reopen the city.

“EPA may not be providing people with the clear information they need,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. “EPA should be clear about the actual risks when people return to the affected areas for more than one day.”

Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee also were skeptical of post-Katrina work being done by EPA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.

“The people of New Orleans need to feel safe, need to feel like there’s a plan,” said Sen. David Vitter, R-La.

High levels of toxins
The committee’s chairman, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., expressed skepticism about the two-page government handouts on environmental and public health risks that EPA helped compile.

“It bothers me a little bit,” Inhofe said. “How many people are going to see the report?”

EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock said thousands of copies are being delivered door-to-door, at relief centers and other public places.

But Peacock acknowledged “room for improvement” in handling the Katrina cleanup and recovery. Agency workers first helped save 800 people’s lives, he said, shifted to contaminant monitoring and then began focusing on long-range cleanups.

“We’ve been through a sprint, and now we’re staging a marathon,” he said. EPA is now assessing 54 Superfund toxic waste sites in the paths of Katrina and Rita. So far, Peacock said, there have been no signs of chemicals released or ruptures in the waste containers.

Samples of floodwater and sediment in the Gulf Region have shown high levels of bacteria, fecal contamination, metals, fuel oils, arsenic and lead. Air monitoring has shown high levels of ethylene and glycol. EPA said the results are “snapshots” that can quickly change.

Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., called the government’s response to Katrina “apparent chaos.”

Both he and Boxer recalled the Bush administration’s response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when the White House directed EPA officials to minimize the health risk posed by the cloud of smoke from the World Trade Center collapse. Within 10 days of those attacks, EPA issued five news releases reassuring the public about air quality without testing for contaminants such as PCBs and dioxin. It was only nine months later — after respiratory ailments began showing up in workers cleaning up the debris and residents of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn — that EPA could point to any scientific evidence, saying then that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels.

“I hope that we’re not seeing history repeat itself,” said Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.

Link to site: Beneath the celebratory tone, potential environmental hazards swell in silence.

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Highlights:
- it is too early to determine exactly what health risks returning residents will face.
- no one seems to know, or be willing to say, how careful is careful enough when dealing with the filth that now blankets the homes awaiting tens of thousands
- returning residents might find their homes caked in sewage, mold and other toxic substances after weeks of immersion in putrid floodwaters.
- Environmental groups question the integrity of the data, noting that many of the contaminants sampled for were suspiciously "not found."


Michelle Chen
City officials urging residents to repopulate select parts of New Orleans know little about the storm’s ecological impact, leading critics to question the sensibility and motives of the effort.

Sep 30 - Beverly Wright just wants to go home. The New Orleans college professor has not been back since Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast last month. Like tens of thousands of others, she is anxious to salvage what is left of her life there – the family pictures, a child’s christening dress.

But as the founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Wright has evacuated to Capitol Hill, to advocate for tighter government oversight as New Orleans barrels down a road to recovery that is still being hastily paved.

"While they’re talking about rushing to get things rebuilt," she said, "it would all be for naught if in 10 to 20 years people are sick and dying."

Both the White House and the New Orleans mayor’s office have heralded a rebirth of the city. Recovery seems imminent, if for now ill-defined, as Mayor Ray Nagin pushes to repopulate some neighborhoods, and corporations snatch up contracts for rebuilding projects.

But beneath the celebratory tone, potential environmental hazards swell in silence. To activists, evidence of pollution, in a historical context of what they consider institutionalized racism, suggests that even after the city is pumped dry, long-term health risks will dampen visions of renewal.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s limited outdoor sampling throughout the impacted area has uncovered E. coli bacteria and industrial toxins like lead and fuel oil. But according to EPA officials, the contamination is generally below what they consider severely harmful levels, and it is too early to determine exactly what health risks returning residents will face.

Tom Natan, research director with the advocacy organization National Environmental Trust, said a rigorous, comprehensive environmental health assessment would be "extremely costly and time-consuming." Since authorities are trying to press forward with economic recovery, he said, "there may be a tendency to just say, ‘Okay, go back, be careful.’"

The problem, say environmental groups, is that no one seems to know, or be willing to say, how careful is careful enough when dealing with the filth that now blankets the homes awaiting tens of thousands of New Orleanians.

According to a September 29 situation report, the plan for incremental repopulation first allows business owners and residents to reenter the French Quarter, the Central Business District, Uptown New Orleans, and the minimally damaged Algiers area. By October 5, residents and business owners will be able to enter all parts of the city except the battered Lower Ninth Ward.

But returning residents might find their homes caked in sewage, mold and other toxic substances after weeks of immersion in putrid floodwaters. And they will have to cope with compromised public services and a weakened emergency response system.

While federal agencies pass the buck to local counterparts, environmental groups say all levels of government are united in sloughing the responsibility onto individuals.
According to the Mayor’s office, although the city just revamped its 9-1-1 emergency system, only about 110 inpatient hospital beds are available. Many fire stations are not fully operational, and in the most impacted areas, though one of the only uses of the undrinkable water is fighting fires, problems with low water pressure could make it difficult to actually extinguish a blaze.

In Katrina’s aftermath, the EPA has explained its environmental data with qualified safety assessments tempered by grim health warnings.

The EPA’s analysis of the initial sediment samples lists potential health impacts of exposure to fuel oils, which it found at elevated levels. Harm from short-term inhalation exposure includes nausea, increased blood pressure and poor coordination. Prolonged contact with fuel vapors "may cause kidney damage and lower the blood’s ability to clot."

But the agency has not provided detailed information on risk levels for returning residents, stating only that it "will perform air sampling to monitor potential inhalation risks and will also assess long-term exposure scenarios."

Environmental groups question the integrity of the data, noting that many of the contaminants sampled for were suspiciously "not found." For instance, one key fuel component, the known carcinogen benzene, did not show up in the latest published data, even though EPA officials have publicly stated that petroleum has constituted a significant portion of some samples.

"When they say they didn’t find it, does that mean they couldn’t detect it," Natan asked, "or that they know it’s not there?" He explained that such data discrepancies might reflect not the true environmental situation, but rather the limited sensitivity of the equipment used.

As the recovery process lurches forward, the EPA acknowledges that it is still in the first phases of the environmental assessment process, which mainly serve to gauge the nature of the contamination and determine the need for further testing.

But at this rate, said Natan, by the time a comprehensive plan emerges, "a lot of the potential hazard might be gone" – not necessarily because the problem has been eliminated, he stressed, but because it has already done its damage, dissipating into the air and entering people’s bodies.

Darryl Malek-Wiley, a New Orleans resident and environmental justice organizer for the Sierra Club, said the EPA’s sampling has ignored the most common environment returnees will encounter. "There’s not been any systematic testing of inside houses to let people know what risks they’re going to be facing," he said.

Among community representatives and small business owners, there is pressure not to lag behind in revitalizing the city, as neighboring white parishes kick off their rebuilding efforts.
Environmentalists fear a reprise of past EPA disaster responses that drew criticism for placing political goals of "recovery" above people’s health. In a letter to the White House last week, Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) recalled that after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City, residents and workers were given premature safety assurances, resulting in widespread health and respiratory problems from toxins at the World Trade Center site.

"Clearly," he wrote, "people should not return to the Gulf Coast until EPA does its job. After 9/11, we let people rush back into contaminated areas. It is imperative that we learn from those mistakes."
A Word of Caution But Not Much Help

Environmentalists say that a lack of coordination and accountability across all agencies involved in the response is impeding public health efforts.

"Nobody is taking responsibility for making a decision about when it is actually clean enough for residents to return," Natan said.

In theory, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s National Response Plan for catastrophes, that responsibility should be shared by state, local and federal agencies, which should defer to one another’s health and safety expertise. Yet, critics see more deflection than deference in the joint response.

Bernadette Burden,a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control, said that health authorities at various levels have collaborated on developing public education materials. She stated that overall, federal agencies are "in full support of the mayor of New Orleans’ plan to repopulate" and are encouraging residents to take the health advice of local authorities.

But according to Wright, who has met with the mayor and community representatives in Baton Rouge, New Orleans leaders are looking to federal authorities for guidance -- and finding little.

"What our mayor needs, and what our city council and state legislature need," she said, "are really good facts about the environmental contaminants and the conditions that exist now, in terms of toxics, and when, and if, we will be able to return."
Entering at Their Own Risk

While federal agencies pass the buck to local counterparts, environmental groups say that all levels of government are united in sloughing the responsibility for cleanup onto individuals.

The mayor’s guidelines for returning home advise people that they are entering at their own risk, and that they "must supply [their] own protective equipment," including filter masks and eye gear to protect against airborne mold.

The EPA advisory on post-hurricane home remediation cautions people not to handle asbestos or lead-containing debris themselves and to "seek the assistance of public health authorities" or "specially trained contractors, if available."

But the agency also provides ample do-it-yourself options: if people must handle the hazardous debris, they should "at a minimum" wear gloves, goggles and face masks. If they cannot remove pregnant women and children from the hazardous environment, they should "at least completely seal off the work area." Aside from listing informational websites and a hotline, the directive contains no advice on applying for relief funds and other direct government assistance.

Marjorie Clarke, an environmental scientist with the City University of New York, predicted that many residents will see no choice but to risk their health to clean their homes. Despite the government’s responsibility to protect people during disaster recovery, she said, "telling people to come in and take care of whatever needs to be taken care of themselves… is basically encouraging people to have exposures to toxic materials."
Environmental Concerns Evoke Burdens of History

The environmental politics of the recovery effort are layered with contrasting interests within the community.

Norris McDonald, president of the African American Environmentalist Association, said that right now, local officials fear the dilution of their black constituencies more than they fear environmental threats. For upcoming elections, he said, "they’d still need those black citizens back. That’s a lot of votes."

Beverly Wright noted that among community representatives and small business owners she has met with, there is pressure not to lag behind in revitalizing the city, as neighboring white parishes kick off their rebuilding efforts. "We see all those people going home… who don’t look like us for the most part, who lost less than what we lost," she said. "So, there is that political reality, then there’s an emotional reality."

At the heart of this tension, environmentalists are trying to link social needs with long-term environmental issues as part of the same struggle. Wright said that while she understands the eagerness to rebuild, "we have to find a way to do it that’s clean, safe and economically and politically feasible."

Activists hope to prevent the comeback of New Orleans from becoming a relapse into a legacy of inequality. Katrina’s fatal deluge, they say, was just a drop in the bucket of systematic environmental abuse. According to an analysis of government data by the advocacy organization Environmental Defense, Orleans Parish, which is over 60 percent black, has more than ten times as many federally designated toxic release sites per square mile as Louisiana as a whole.

Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, said that in protecting these already-embattled communities from future harm, "we have to make sure that Katrina does not push them deeper into poverty and deeper into environmental health problems."

Local advocates see their city perched on the cusp of learning history’s lesson and repeating its mistakes. The Agriculture Street Landfill site in New Orleans, flooded by Katrina and also born of another great hurricane, has come to symbolize the cycle of environmental devastation coloring the city’s past and future. During the recovery that followed Hurricane Betsy in 1965, the government filled the site with debris and later built housing developments on top of it. In the 1990s, the EPA discovered the area was so polluted that it declared it a federal Superfund site.

Looking back, Wright reflected, "it’s not like we don’t know what can happen if, in fact, places aren’t cleaned up properly… We have that example."

Link to site: The bill that would allow laws such as the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, hazardous-waste laws and others to he to be "waived or downplayed,"

Return to: watercenter.org sciencefaircenter.com watercenter.net

Highlights:
- Vitter-Inhofe proposed bill "would add to the public health and environmental risks facing our communities
- The groups called the proposal "unwarranted and dangerous."
- Includes threats from contaminated drinking water supplies, polluted flood waters, broken sewage treatment systems, oil and chemical exposures, toxic sediments and sludge, and the safety of recovery personnel as well as returning residents and business owners.

MIKE DUNNE, Advocate staff writer
Several Gulf Coast environmental groups and a union are asking Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana to withdraw proposed legislation that would allow the suspension and waiving of environmental laws in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Vitter and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., are sponsoring the bill that would allow laws such as the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, hazardous-waste laws and others to he to be "waived or downplayed," the groups said in a letter to Vitter and other members of the U.S. Senate.

A request for comment from Vitter through his press office in Washington didn't result in a response. In the letter to Vitter and others, the groups said: "Indeed, in the wake of the hurricane, we believe these laws are most desperately needed to protect communities from these unprecedented hazards," the groups said in the letter.

The groups said the Vitter-Inhofe proposed bill "would add to the public health and environmental risks facing our communities by giving the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the authority to waive or change any law under the EPA's jurisdiction or that applies to any project or activity carried out by the agency for up to 18 months."

The groups called the proposal "unwarranted and dangerous." Monitoring data and the initial assessments prepared by the EPA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention portray "a complex array of environmental health" problems in New Orleans.

"This array includes threats from contaminated drinking water supplies, polluted flood waters, broken sewage treatment systems, oil and chemical exposures, toxic sediments and sludge, and the safety of recovery personnel as well as returning residents and business owners. People from other Gulf Coast communities are also facing some or all of these hazards."

They point out that the EPA admits the extent of the public health and environmental risks is not well known, especially in the storm-damaged areas of New Orleans.

Groups signing the letter were:

Alabama Environmental Council, Alabama Rivers Alliance, Alabama Watch, Alliance for Affordable Energy, Tulane Law School Environmental Law Clinic, Friends of Moss Rock Preserve, Gulf Restoration Network, Louisiana ACORN, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, Mobile Baywatch/Mobile Baykeeper, Service Employees International Union Local 100, Sierra Club-Alabama Chapter, Sierra Club-Delta Chapter, Sierra Club-Mississippi Chapter, The Urban Conservancy, and WildLaw.

Link to site: Revealed that, while the pant site was inundated with water and railcars pushed off the tracks and on their sides by Hurricane Katrina, no hazardous material releases or leaks were observed

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Highlights:
- Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) inspections at the DuPont Delisle no hazardous material releases or leaks were observed.
- MDEQ has also confirmed that all chlorine railcars have been accounted for and placed upright.

September 28, 2005
HARRISON COUNTY — Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) inspections at the DuPont Delisle plant in Harrison County have revealed that, while the plant site was inundated with water and railcars pushed off the tracks and on their sides by Hurricane Katrina, no hazardous material releases or leaks were observed. The onsite landfill for waste disposal remained intact and was not overcome by the storm surge, the MDEQ said.

"We were pleased to learn the DuPont's landfill, which is a series of impoundment constructed with levees and berms, worked as it was designed and did prevent the inflow of water," said Phil Bass, director of MDEQ's Office Pollution Control.

The MDEQ has also confirmed that all chlorine railcars have been accounted for and placed upright. Before these railcars leave the site, each will be inspected for damage and repaired as needed.

Recovery efforts are underway at DuPont Delisle. Company officials said they expect to resume operations in November

Link to site: EPA is carrying out extensive sampling of standing flood waters in the City of New Orleans.

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Highlights:
- Flood water test results
- Preliminary test results advisory
- Drinking water and food
- For water and wastewater facilities


EPA is carrying out extensive sampling of standing flood waters in the City of New Orleans. The Agency follows a quality assurance process that ensures that the data is thoroughly reviewed and validated. This process is being used for all data received as part of the emergency response. EPA is ensuring coordination of data between federal, state, and local agencies and will routinely release data as soon as it is available.
Flood water test results
Preliminary test results advisory

Drinking water and food
Boil water - To kill major water-borne diseases, bring water to a rolling boil for 1 minute. Boil 3 minutes at elevations above 5280 ft (1 mile or 1.6 km).
What to do about water from household wells after a flood . Do not turn on the pump - danger of electric shock. Do not drink or wash with water from the flooded well. More info. General info about household wells.
Dehydration (extreme thirst) can be life-threatening in older adults. Make sure older adults have enough good drinking water and are drinking it. Older adults risk dehydration because they may feel thirsty less, because of medications, or due to physical conditions that make it difficult to drink. More information about dehydration risks in older adults.
EPA and HHS Urge Caution in Areas Exposed to Contaminated Flood Water - guidelines for those in contact with flood water. Flood water test results...

For water and wastewater facilities
Suggested post-hurricane activities - to help facilities recover from severe weather conditions.
National Emergency Resource Registry (https://www.swern.gov/) - Register if you have resources to help water utilities recover from Katrina.

 

Link to site: Geography of southeastern Louisiana is unlike any place else on Earth

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Highlights:
- solid ground on a map is actually marshland, floating like a pancake on a plateful of syrup.
- Levees built to protect the city may have actually focused that storm surge
- "You can rebuild Louisiana's marshes over the next 50 years -- it's just a matter of making the decision and doing it.

Morning Edition, September 23, 2005 · The geography of southeastern Louisiana is unlike any place else on Earth. Much of what looks like solid ground on a map is actually marshland, floating like a pancake on a plateful of syrup.
Scientists are now piecing together how Hurricane Katrina affected those marshes, which form a buffer against storms and flooding. What they find will help determine how the region is rebuilt. For the latest NPR/National Geographic Radio Expedition report, Christopher Joyce journeys to "liquid Louisiana" to survey the damage.
Scientists believe Hurricane Katrina created a giant storm surge that gathered in the Gulf of Mexico and barreled westward up the wide swampy delta on its way to New Orleans. It may have reached 20 feet high by the time it hit the city's eastern suburbs.
Levees built to protect the city may have actually focused that storm surge: Instead of spreading a sheet of water out across the delta, the levees created a channel for the surge. Also, the natural marsh buffer zones that soften the blow of a storm surge have been largely replaced or hemmed in by ship channels and development. All those channels and levees cut off river sediment that enable the marsh to take root and thrive.
What happened to the city is now well known. But damage to the marsh is harder to evaluate. From the air, there's obvious evidence of Katrina's wrath. Wind and waves have cut channels through once-uniform mats of grasses.
At the Chandeleur Islands, a crescent of land about 60 miles east of New Orleans, the full force of Katrina is more evident. Nothing's left but patches of marshland, or "island marshes." It will take years for the islands to recover -- but what did survive is held together by island marshes, a "green glue" that will anchor new growth.
In the marshes to the south of the city, the marshes have held up well. The storm wasn't a fatal blow, but scientists say that unless erosion is held in check, the marshes will continue to recede and leave New Orleans even more exposed to the elements.
But can the city remain a vital shipping destination, with all the deep-water channels required, and still divert enough Mississippi River sediment to the marsh to keep it alive?
"It's just a question of engineering and money," says the U.S. Park Service's David Muth, whose own home was flooded by five feet of water when the city's levees gave way. "The cheap way is the way we're doing it now -- so ask yourself the question, was that the smartest thing we could have done?
"You can rebuild Louisiana's marshes over the next 50 years -- it's just a matter of making the decision and doing it. And if this doesn't spur us to do it, we'll never do it."

Link to site: Cleanup faced a storm of new obstacles with the arrival of Hurricane Rita, which spread more debris as it churned in from the Gulf of Mexico.

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Highlights:
- At this point, we're not sure what's out there,"
- The testing will continue quarterly for the next year, he said.
- The cleanup covers 140,000 square miles of waterways and coastal zones, including nearly 6,400 miles of zigzagging shoreline.

GARRY MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer, September 23. 2005
Hurricane Katrina's deadly debris-scattering slam into the Gulf Coast left messy fuel spills, leaky sunken vessels and toxic chemical threats across a broad, battered shoreline.

The multi-agency task force attempting to carry out the cleanup faced a storm of new obstacles with the arrival of Hurricane Rita, which spread more debris as it churned in from the Gulf of Mexico.

But even before Rita, scientists said they have never encountered such a catastrophe as Katrina. "At this point, we're not sure what's out there," said marine scientist Russell Callender, director of NOAA's Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment program.

Next week, he said, NOAA and its federal partners will begin sampling and analyzing waters and sediments from Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne, the Mississippi Sound and the outfalls of the Mississippi Delta, looking for signs of contamination.The testing will continue quarterly for the next year, he said.

"We really don't have a good picture at this point in terms of how big the problem might be," Callender said.

Sheer numbers tell part of the story: The cleanup covers 140,000 square miles of waterways and coastal zones, including nearly 6,400 miles of zigzagging shoreline. But David Dorian, an Atlanta-based environmental engineer at EPA, says the most dangerous elements are not necessarily the big ones, such as submerged, leaking vessels.

One particular hazard: chlorine cylinders found in the debris dislodged from water treatment plants. "Chlorine is quite deadly," he said. Some cylinders had washed up in residential areas, posing a threat to returning residents and contractors arriving to help in the recovery.

As storm debris piles grow, inspectors will mark the ones with hazardous materials, Dorian said, so they can be separated out before collection. Lt. Cmdr. Jim Elliot of the Coast Guard's Gulf Strike Team said at least 400 sunken or damaged vessels in Alabama and Mississippi have been assessed and photographed in the wake of Katrina. The Mobile-based team is trying to track down their owners, and a similar effort based in Baton Rouge is underway for Louisiana waters. Most of the vessels targeted for removal have been in hard-hit Mississippi - at Pass Christian, the Industrial Canal of Biloxi and the Pascagoula River area.

In Alabama, Elliot said 72 fishing vessels in Bayou La Batre were damaged or submerged by Katrina. Ten of those vessels in the fishing village were being pulled out of the water because of fuel leaks. Elliot said federal officials try to find the owners before taking charge of a vessel in distress.

"If it's a hazard to human health or the environment, we will take care of the situation, pump out the oil and take off the hazardous material," he said. If it's cost-effective for the government, the vessel also could be removed from the water, taking care to protect the environment.

If there's a vessel stranded in a wetland, for example, before they dredge out a channel to get the boat out, all options must be weighed. There are some environmental permit issues involved in salvaging a vessel.

"That's why we're contacting owners to see what their intentions are," Elliot said.

The Gulf Strike Team, organized more than 30 years ago, has handled at least 575 cases of hazardous materials and oil pollution in Alabama and Mississippi caused by Katrina.

Alabama Department of Environmental Management officials on the team said they closely monitored 73 public water systems - all disrupted to some extent by Katrina. As of Sept. 13, all of those systems were operating again.

In Louisiana, environmental threats have included 7.4 million gallons of oil discharged from tank storage plants. Coast Guard officials said 7.1 million gallons of it had been recovered - either contained or naturally dispersed. Nearly 800 contractors responded to the 11 major and medium spills in Louisiana.

The number of sunken vessels in Louisiana waters was not immediately available.

Besides the Coast Guard, the cleanup team includes the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as state environmental agencies.

Commercial and private contractors also have been hired for the cleanup, with the biggest challenges in Mississippi - a large above-ground fuel tank that contained 1.7 million gallons of gasoline, a pool chemical manufacturer and hospitals' biological wastes.

In Alabama, Elliot said, Katrina-damaged fishing vessels caused the most problems.

The Katrina cleanup comes on the heels of another. Elliot recalled that it took about eight months to clean up after Hurricane Ivan struck last September.

Link to site: Now the trail's entrance sign warns: "Do Not Enter, Toxic,"

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Highlights:
- "This is what I would call catastrophic damage to our national wildlife refuges."
- coastal Louisiana alone produces 30 percent of the nation's domestic seafood
- The storm hurt 25 national wildlife refuges that will cost at least $93 million to repair, according to preliminary estimates, a figure equal to a quarter of the entire federal budget for the refuges. Sixteen are temporarily closed.

JULIET EILPERIN, The Washington Post
Until a couple of weeks ago, Mississippi's Clower-Thornton Nature Trail lured avid birders as well as small children, who wandered in fascination underneath its broad canopy of oak and dogwood trees. Now the trail's entrance sign warns: "Do Not Enter, Toxic," and the surrounding habitat is dying.
"Every tree is brown, every leaf is blown off," said Donna Yowell, executive director of the Mississippi Urban Forest Council, after touring the area. Hurricane Katrina, Yowell added, "has turned it into a toxic waste site overnight."
The scene of devastation in Gulfport, Miss., is just one of the ecological disasters to emerge as scientists, activists and state and federal officials have begun documenting how the hurricane damaged one of the nation's largest networks of estuaries, wetlands and cypress swamps -- a varied and watery ecosystem that sustains a wealth of birds, fish and vegetation. From polluted fisheries to battered forests, the Gulf Coast's habitat has suffered losses that will take years to restore, they say.
"It's as much a disaster for the places set aside to conserve wildlife as for the cities and the people who have been impacted," said Evan Hirsche, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association. "This is what I would call catastrophic damage to our national wildlife refuges." There are 25 in the affected area.
In the aftermath of Katrina's unprecedented devastation, industrial toxins are seeping into coastal waters. Already-eroded barrier islands have washed away.
Federal authorities have devoted much of their attention so far to the contaminated water in New Orleans, where floodwaters are said to be laced with industrial toxins and untreated sewage. The city's flooded area includes 121 known contaminated sites and more than 1,000 that are possibly contaminated, according to Environmental Data Resources Inc., a firm based in Milford, Conn., that compiles environmental information on private and public property.
The polluted water is being pumped out into neighboring Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico, and is likely to affect areas far beyond the city's confines. Federal scientists are already investigating whether the contaminants have damaged valuable fisheries in the gulf, and some scientists and local activists are worried that Lake Pontchartrain is being sacrificed.
On Tuesday, environmental activists released satellite images showing large oil slicks a few miles offshore, in the Gulf of Mexico, some stemming from known oil platform locations and stretching as far as 40 miles. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Stephen Johnson said the agency has documented five oil spills in the New Orleans area.
Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) dispatched a research vessel, the Nancy Foster, to the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to collect and test fish and shrimp, as well as water and sediment samples. The agency has also hired a commercial shrimp boat to take samples in the Mississippi Sound.
NOAA Fisheries Director Bill Hogarth said the agency will release its results in about a week, adding it would take "a minimum of two years" to restore the oyster industry.
"Obviously, we have to start paying attention to the potential of an environmental disaster," said Steve Murawski, NOAA Fisheries' chief science adviser. "This is a major fishing area."
The Gulf of Mexico ranks second only to Alaska among America's largest fisheries; coastal Louisiana alone produces 30 percent of the nation's domestic seafood. The Congressional Research Service estimated the hurricane may cost Louisiana's shrimpers $540 million in sales over the next year.
Experts suspect the hurricane has swamped everything from oyster beds to the sea grass that provides a critical nursery for fish, and the flush of nutrients from sewage-laden water into the gulf could spark massive algae blooms deadly to marine organisms.
"What we're looking at here is too much of a good thing," said Hans Paerl, professor of marine and environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, citing the nutrient influx. "And what is the impact of those pollutants that are coming in, I don't think we know very well at all."
Congress plans to examine the question soon: Rep. Paul Gillmor, R-Ohio, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on environment and hazardous materials, will start hearings at the EPA's "earliest convenience," said his spokesman Brad Mascho.
Scientists and local advocates are particularly concerned about Lake Pontchartrain, which had begun to recover from decades of pollution. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-La., whose district encompasses the lake's north shore, said residents are worried the contaminants from New Orleans floodwaters will undo the progress made over the past decade.
In addition to unleashing toxic and human refuse, the hurricane destroyed habitat critical to area wildlife. The storm hurt 25 national wildlife refuges that will cost at least $93 million to repair, according to preliminary estimates, a figure equal to a quarter of the entire federal budget for the refuges. Sixteen are temporarily closed.
In Mississippi's Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge, the hurricane felled pine trees crucial to the survival of the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker; Breton Island, a sanctuary for nesting and wintering seabirds and shorebirds, has largely washed away.
"It's going to damage things," said Cathy Shropshire, executive director of the Mississippi Wildlife Federation.
Steve Cochran, a Louisiana native who now works as a senior staffer at the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund, said the hurricane dealt the final blow to flora and fauna that have declined for decades because of habitat loss.
"All of those things, entirely unique to that part of the world, have been disappearing since about, say, 1927, and now they've disappeared altogether," Cochran said, recalling swamp lilies he used to find right outside New Orleans. "Too few people have experienced them, and now, no one else will."

Link to site: Pollution flushed into the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricane Katrina is not likely to reach Galveston County beaches

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Highlights:
- I don’t believe there will be an impact on Texas’ coastline
- Any pollutants will be rapidly diluted with seawater
- most of the microbes could not survive the time spent in the saltier offshore waters

Kelly Hawes, The Daily News, September 19, 2005
Experts say pollution flushed into the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricane Katrina is not likely to reach Galveston County beaches.

“I don’t believe there will be an impact on Texas’ coastline,” said Norman Guinasso, director of the geochemical environmental research group at Texas A&M University at Galveston. “The water will flush slowly into the Mississippi Bight, and the water there will mix gradually out into the Gulf of Mexico.” The threat will dissipate quickly, he said.

“Any pollutants will be rapidly diluted with seawater,” he said, “and the currents sending water in Texas’ direction are presently weak ones.”

Guinasso offered the assessment in an advisory issued by the university’s Sea Grant program.

In that same advisory, John Schwartz, a professor of marine biology at the university’s Galveston campus, said swimmers had no reason to worry.

“While it is doubtful that the contaminated waters from New Orleans will reach Texas, it is even less likely that many potentially harmful microbes would be left in the waters,” he said. “First, the microbial numbers would be greatly diluted before they reached Texas, and second, most of the microbes could not survive the time spent in the saltier offshore waters.”

If any did survive, Schwartz said, the biggest threat would be from bacteria found in human waste. For the most part, the bacteria cause diarrhea, fever and vomiting.

“They are normally self-limiting and nonfatal,” he said.

Those with weakened immune systems are most at risk. But to come down with anything serious, he said, they’d have to drink the contaminated water or have it touch an open wound.

The scourge of cholera is also unlikely, he said.

“Cholera would be present only if the fecal material from a previously infected person ended up in the waters,” Schwartz said.

Sammy Ray, also a professor of marine biology at the Galveston campus, said the only seafood affected by contamination would be oysters from mid-Louisiana to Mobile Bay. And there aren’t likely any oysters there to harvest.

“There probably won’t be any oysters from this region for the next 18 to 24 months,” he said.

For now, he said, the oysters finding their way to market will come from mid-Louisiana westward to Texas.

“Consumers should be confident about the safety of the product,” Ray said.

David Bazan, a member of the coastal studies team at the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, agreed.

“Scientists are monitoring the situation,” he said, “and if there is an indication that humans could be affected by contaminants from Hurricane Katrina floodwaters, we will do our best to make sure the public is informed.”

Link to site: Oceanographers call it the Loop Current

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Highlights:
- nothing along the northern Gulf Coast will ever be the same
- water that overwhelmed the levees in New Orleans is contaminated with sewage, lead and to a lesser degree pesticides, tests show
- Winds play a role, too, especially along the coast
- We have many questions

Lenore Greenstein, Eric Staats (Contact), Sunday, Sep 18, 2005
The Gulf of Mexico’s deep currents follow a path that wiggles and jiggles every year as it loops through waters hundreds of miles offshore.Oceanographers call it the Loop Current, and its gyrations are getting more attention this year, for the same reason nothing along the northern Gulf Coast will ever be the same: Hurricane Katrina.
Katrina left behind an environmental catastrophe that scientists and fishermen worry could ride Gulf currents across important fishing grounds off Tampa Bay and into sensitive ecosystems in the Dry Tortugas and Florida Keys.
The water that overwhelmed the levees in New Orleans is contaminated with sewage, lead and to a lesser degree pesticides, tests show. Crews are draining the city by pumping the water into Lake Pontchartrain, which is connected to coastal waters of the Gulf.
From space, satellites show water working its way south from coastal Louisiana and Mississippi, but nobody yet knows what’s in the water, whether it’s polluted or how it might affect the Gulf.
“We don’t know a lot about this,” University of South Florida oceanographer Frank Muller-Karger said. “We have no experience with an event as major as Katrina.”
Riding the Loop
The Loop Current moves northward into the Gulf between Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula, loops clockwise in the eastern Gulf and heads south, around the Keys and the tip of Florida and then north into the Atlantic Ocean.Its path varies, as does the distance it pushes north into the Gulf.

On Sept. 7, about a week after Katrina’s disastrous landfall, scientists noticed the Loop Current had moved far enough north to get a hold on waters from coastal Louisiana.
At Roffer’s Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service in Miami, consultant Mitch Roffer is tracking the current using data from two satellites that measure water temperature and ocean color.
Currents move across the Gulf like highs and lows on a TV weather map, except much more slowly, he said. Sometimes, like water moving down a rocky stream, the current spins off eddies, or gyres, he said. Different currents have different temperatures and color, ranging from green to blue.
If part of the Loop Current breaks off, it could have the effect of cutting off the current’s connection with waters along the northern Gulf coast, University of South Florida oceanographer Bob Weisberg said.
A gyre seems to be keeping the Loop Current from reaching even farther north toward the northern Gulf coast, monitors say.
For now, the water from coastal Louisiana is moving south along the eastern edge of the Loop Current and isn’t expected to make a move to Southwest Florida across the shallower waters of the continental shelf.
Along the way, as the water makes its twists and turns with the currents, any contaminants increasingly will be diluted as they mix with the Gulf.
Using computer models, Weisberg estimates that the water could arrive at the Florida Keys by Sept. 20.
The Loop Current isn’t the only force of nature controlling the movement of waters in the Gulf. Winds play a role, too, especially along the coast, Weisberg said.
The winds haven’t been favorable to push water from the Katrina strike zone onto Florida shores, but that could change in coming weeks, he said.
“We just don’t know,” he said.
That’s what worries fishermen.
‘Fishery failure’
“They’re scared to death,” said Bob Jones, executive director of the Southeastern Fisheries Association, a commercial fishing trade group.
Katrina triggered a declaration by U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez of a “fishery failure” in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf fishing industry is valued at almost $700 million per year.
The declaration clears the way for federal relief funds to restore the fisheries and help fishing communities recover.
The northern Gulf coast is home to 15 fishing ports and 177 seafood processors, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The storm damaged fishing boats and leveled ports, closed seafood processors and clogged waterways with debris. That could turn out to be just the start, Jones said.
Louisiana environmental officials have reported a 99 percent loss of oyster beds that supply the nation with 40 percent of its oysters.
Murky water from coastal Louisiana already is over grouper fishing grounds off Tampa Bay, said commercial fishermen Bob Spaeth, of Madeira Beach.
It could mean less sunlight reaching the bottom, making it more difficult to sustain marine life that supports the Gulf food chain, he said.
“We’re concerned, obviously, and I think we need to get on top of it,” Spaeth said.
At the Dry Tortugas, a cluster of islands west of Key West, dark water will harm already stressed coral reefs by robbing them of life-sustaining light, said Brian Keller, science coordinator at the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which takes in the Tortugas.
On the other hand, a little shading could help stressed coral by blocking harmful ultraviolet radiation, he said.
If the murkiness is caused by sediments in the water, they could settle onto the coral, requiring the reefs to use more precious energy to clean themselves, he said.
Scientists and fishermen worry about what else might be in the water that only monitoring will be able to find — and whether enough monitoring is being done.
On the trail
A NOAA research ship left Pensacola this past Monday to sample water, sediments and test fish and shrimp along the northern Gulf coast for chemicals and microorganisms that could cause disease.
Part of its mission will be to establish a baseline from which to compare future results, biologists said.
NOAA also chartered a shrimp boat from Bon Secour, Ala., to sample water, sediments and fish and shrimp in Mississippi Sound.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday that it would dispatch its ocean research vessel Sept. 26 on a three-week survey of Mississippi Sound and into the plume of water from coastal Louisiana.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sent a ship along a 30-mile path heading southwest from Panama City to see whether water from coastal Louisiana and Mississippi is moving east along the coast.
Water and sediment samples will be tested for pesticides, metals, industrial chemicals and nutrients that could fuel algae blooms, said Gil McRae, director of the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, the Conservation Commission’s research arm in St. Petersburg.
McRae said the biggest risk from Katrina is the potential for an overall increase in pollution in the Gulf that could make its way into the food chain and manifest itself years from now.
“It’s an open question how long the impacts of this catastrophe will be seen,” McRae said last week.
Bad water
Details are emerging slowly about what is in the water that has swirled through the streets of New Orleans.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson acknowledged the enormity of the contamination problem last week during a press conference in Washington, D.C.
“We have many questions,” he said. “We have many concerns.”
Total coliform and e. coli bacteria, both indicators of human or animal waste, have been found at levels as much as 25 times above the allowed level for contact, according to the EPA.
EPA water samples also show lead, arsenic and a chemical used to make plastics at levels that exceed drinking water standards. In one case, lead was found at levels 56 times the drinking water limit.
Tests also have found mercury, copper, cadmium and various pesticides at lower levels that scientists say still can pose long-term hazards.
The EPA hasn’t released water sampling results since Sept. 10 for bacteria and since Sept. 6 for chemicals.
New Orleans is home to five Superfund cleanup sites, one of them a landfill that still was underwater last week, raising concerns about contaminants leaching from its soils.
Outside of New Orleans, the U.S. Coast Guard has reported five major and four moderate oil spills totaling more than 7 million gallons — about 63 percent of the amount of crude oil the Exxon Valdez spilled into Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1989.
The EPA reported retrieving more than 20,000 “orphan containers,” including household cleaners, medical waste containers and at least one partially filled drum of acid.
Soils in New Orleans are so laden with petroleum products that laboratories have reported difficulty testing them for anything else, Johnson said last week.
The Coast Guard hasn’t received reports of oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, but boats have reported an oily sheen in some areas, a spokeswoman said.
Roffer, tracking the Loop Current on computers in Miami, said reports coming from the northern Gulf make him wonder about what might be heading south from the devastated coast.
“It just reiterates to me, to a lot of people, that there are potentially some bad things entering the ecosystem,” Roffer said.

Link to site: Environmentalists say they are concerned

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Highlights:
- Early environmental tests after Hurricane Katrina have given authorities little cause for alarm,
- Federal and state officials say two weeks of sampling floodwaters has not raised any alarm bells
- Heavy concentrations of petroleum products in the muck have complicated the process of sample testing,
- wear rubber gloves and boots and leave children behind to protect them from the residual sludge
Frank McGurty

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - Early environmental tests after Hurricane Katrina have given authorities little cause for alarm, but some environmentalists say they are concerned that severe pollution may still be a threat.

The Gulf Coast hurricane slammed into one of the most industrialized areas of the United States, home of more than 400 refineries, chemical plants and other facilities that produce, use or store hazardous material, according to Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group.

The storm caused at least five major oil spills along the Mississippi River south of New Orleans, according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

It swept through 31 Superfund sites -- heavily polluted areas awaiting federal cleanup -- including five in New Orleans. As of Wednesday, the EPA had still been unable to visit all of them and one, in Crescent City, was still under water.

The floodwaters that covered 80 percent of New Orleans, including many of the poorest neighborhoods, may leave contamination from bacteria and pollutants as they withdraw and residents return, some environmentalists fear.

"My fear is that the people who suffered the most when Hurricane Katrina struck will be the people who become most exposed to toxins," said Eric Olson, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Federal and state officials say two weeks of sampling floodwaters has not raised any alarm bells, even though it is swimming with e. coli bacteria that may indicate the presence of other bacteria that could be harmful.

The water contains heavy metals such as lead and arsenic, and oil products such as diesel, but not huge amounts, and the evidence shows that people would have to eat the residue or drink the water to be poisoned.

"We are looking for this long-term risk and it doesn't seem to be there," said Dr. Tom Clark, an infectious disease specialist with the Centers for Disease Control in New Orleans.

Heavy concentrations of petroleum products in the muck have complicated the process of sample testing, EPA says.

Evacuated residents of St. Bernard Parish, where nearly 20,000 barrels of crude oil spilled out of a damaged tank, were told that when they returned, they would have to wear rubber gloves and boots and leave children behind to protect them from the residual sludge.

But officials say it is too soon to give a definitive evaluation of damage and even more difficult to say how long it will take to fix any problems.

"Until we have a better handle on what's the magnitude of the problem -- whether it's sediment, whether it's water, whether it's debris issues or whether it's air issues -- it really is impossible to speculate on what it's going to take and what time it's going to take," said EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson.

Questions remain in part because it took nearly a week after the storm struck on August 29 for assessments to begin. Before that, EPA officials on the scene were too busy with rescue operations. In addition, the heavy concentration of petroleum products in the muck has complicated the process of sample testing, EPA says.

The EPA and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality have flown 15 missions with aircraft equipped to collect environmental screening data. So far, nothing of acute concern has been found.

Link to site: No one knows how to deal with the untold tons of lethal goop -- or who will pay

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Highlights:
- A toxic brew of oil, chemicals, bacteria, debris, and garbage must be cleared and the ground scrubbed before the city can be rebuilt.
- There is no silver bullet
- assessments are expected to take months
- lake may be so starved of oxygen that the natural cycle will be inhibited.

As rescue workers continue the grim search for bodies in New Orleans, environmental engineers are struggling with what will probably become the biggest challenge of Katrina -- the mess. A toxic brew of oil, chemicals, bacteria, debris, and garbage must be cleared and the ground scrubbed before the city can be rebuilt. Unfortunately, the experts have few new ideas about how to tackle a cleanup of this scale. "There is no silver bullet, and I would be highly suspicious of anyone who says there is," says Calvin H. Ward, an environmental engineering professor at Rice University.

Federal and state scientists have started surveying the many cleanup issues. Those assessments are expected to take months, but the Environmental Protection Agency has already found that the floodwater pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain has extremely high levels of lead and sewage-related bacteria. The Coast Guard has reported at least five major oil leaks from damaged tanks and refineries, including 819,000 gallons spilled south of New Orleans. Then there's the 95-acre Superfund site near downtown New Orleans, a toxic former dump. Four years ago, it was covered with two feet of topsoil and protective sheeting. Now it's underwater and could be leaching chemicals.

Any one of these situations might be manageable, but taken together, the task leaves experts questioning where the resources will come from. The cost could run to tens of billions of dollars, especially if oil and chemicals seep deep into the ground. "We have cleaned up lots of other catastrophes and, quite candidly, this outstretches all of them combined," says William J. Geary, executive vice-president of Clean Harbors Inc (CLHB )., a leader in environmental cleanup, with workers already in the city. "This is orders of magnitude bigger than what any cleanup company would be familiar with."

The most immediate concern for health officials is the high levels of bacteria and lead in the rancid water covering much of New Orleans. The EPA has warned the water is so contaminated that people should not let it touch their skin, and five Louisiana evacuees have died of a cholera-like illness. Yet that water, essentially raw sewage, is being pumped into Lake Pontchartrain.

There's no chance of treating the water as it goes into the lake, as nearly all the waste treatment plants in the region were damaged by the flood. Bacteria normally dies off from exposure to sun and seawater after a week or so, but the lake may be so starved of oxygen that the natural cycle will be inhibited. Ward says it would help if oxygen were pumped back into the lake -- "nature does work if you let it" -- but right now New Orleans' main priority is getting the water out of the city.

Oil and toxic chemical spills present a far more intractable problem. Contaminated topsoil can be scooped up by vacuum-like machines, but those devices can't get at muck that has seeped into houses, sewer lines, or groundwater. There are novel technologies that can be applied. Last year, for example, Solucorp Industries Ltd. in West Nyack, N.Y., introduced a chemical compound that prevents heavy metals such as mercury and lead from leaching into the soil and makes them safe for disposal. Solucorp President Noel E. Spindler says the technology has not been tried on any project as large as the Katrina disaster site, but it could be deployed in certain areas. Such reagents will likely not be useful, however, in locations where a complex chemical cocktail exists.

The biggest problem will be disposing of all the waste. "This is going to be an absolutely enormous volume, and I doubt that much of it will be able to be recycled," says Edward J. Bouwer, an environmental engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University. There is no landfill in the U.S. large enough to accommodate a trashed city, and scientists say there is a limit to how much other nations would be willing to take. "The logistics, the cost, the volume," laments Ward. "It's just a massive, massive problem."

Link to site: Scientists begin taking samples to study whether fishing grounds remain safe as a toxic brew flows farther.

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Highlights:
- From space, a plume of sediment from the Mississippi Delta into the Gulf of Mexico is always visible.
- Rich in dissolved nutrients and plant matter, the plume's browns and greens stand out
- What's in the leading edge of this water?

WILL VAN SANT, Times Staff Writer, September 15, 2005

From space, a plume of sediment from the Mississippi Delta into the Gulf of Mexico is always visible.

Rich in dissolved nutrients and plant matter, the plume's browns and greens stand out against the surrounding dark blue waters of the gulf. Since Hurricane Katrina struck, the plume has been fed by receding storm surge from devastated gulf states. From the air, it still looks the same. But some scientists and regulators worry that the plume is now carrying toxic substances harmful to marine life and people.

Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, said Katrina flooded dozens of Superfund and toxic waste sites. The water also washed over landfills, hazardous waste storage facilities and fuel depots, he said. All of that is now returning to the gulf. "It makes Love Canal look like a fly compared to the elephant of contamination that is now in that region," Kaufman said.

On Monday, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration sent a vessel into the plume. The 187-foot Nancy Foster , in addition to a crew of scientists, took along 20 body bags, just in case it comes across victims of Katrina.

Between now and Friday when the vessel returns to port in Pensacola, its crew will travel through the plume, taking bottom and water samples. Marine life will be caught and frozen for further examination of contamination.

Oceanographer Mitch Roffer, owner of a Miami firm that uses environmental data from satellites to locate catches for commercial fisherman and weekend anglers, thinks more than a single voyage will be needed to assess the plume's threat.

"What's in the leading edge of this water?" said Roffer. "Nobody knows. It's critical to get out there now and see."

Oceanographers say most of the toxic brew will cling to the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coasts. The portion that finds its way out into the gulf will be greatly diluted if it ever reaches the Florida Peninsula and the state's fishing grounds, they say.

But those same scientists agree that certain chemicals likely to be found in the plume are poisonous even in low concentrations and could endanger Florida's exhausted marine ecosystem. They also acknowledge uncertainty about what a catastrophic storm like Katrina could introduce into the plume.

"We have no experience with these kinds of things," said Frank Muller-Karger, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida. "There are a lot of people that are concerned. We don't want any surprises."

A finger of the plume that extends south into the gulf is of particular concern. Both Muller-Karger and Roffer said the finger could be swept into a powerful current that loops through the gulf and heads toward the Florida Keys and vulnerable coral reefs.

Peter Ortner, chief scientist at the NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, is overseeing the Nancy Foster 's trip into the plume.

In addition to the testing this week, Ortner said he hoped to soon place buoys along the plume's leading edge. The buoys will send out signals, allowing the movement of the water to be monitored closely.

Already, the Commerce Department has announced a "fishery failure" for the Gulf Coast from the Florida Keys to the Texas border, a declaration that frees up federal aid for the fishing industry. Ortner said part of the Nancy Foster 's work will be assessing whether any fishing grounds need to be declared off-limits.

"It is an open question at present whether there has been contamination of areas that must be closed," Ortner said.

A complete determination of the plume's possible impact will take months of study, said Ortner, and he has requested an additional vessel and other resources to complete an assessment.

Roffer, too, sees the need for extensive tracking and study of the plume. It's quite likely, he said, that what is now present is relatively clean compared to what the plume may carry in coming weeks.

"This is the initial wash," he said. "It should not be considered a one-time event."

Link to site: Urgent voyage tracking Hurricane Katrina's potential damage to the marine environment.

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Highlights:
- Scientists harvested fish off the Mississippi coast for testing Thursday
- determine the extent of any contamination from chemical spills, sewer overflows and other toxic mixtures in floodwaters that may have flushed back into the Gulf of Mexico
- Samples of sediments also are being tested.
- surveyed some near-shore waters in Katrina's path
- are checking rivers, inlets and bays for any possible contamination there.


GARRY MITCHELL, Associated Press
ABOARD THE NANCY FOSTER - Scientists harvested fish off the Mississippi coast for testing Thursday - the latest stop on an urgent voyage tracking Hurricane Katrina's potential damage to the marine environment.

Katrina's deadly storm surge hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, flooding New Orleans and wrecking the Mississippi coast while clipping southwest Alabama.

Scientists hope to determine the extent of any contamination from chemical spills, sewer overflows and other toxic mixtures in floodwaters that may have flushed back into the Gulf of Mexico.

Aboard the Nancy Foster, a research vessel operated by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, chief scientist Shailer Cummings of Miami said hundreds of fish samples have been collected from waters off Pensacola, Fla. to an area south of New Orleans, South Pass.

Cummings said the NOAA vessel began its work Monday off the Florida Panhandle. On Thursday the vessel was near Horn Island, dipping its net for fish samples, and planned to be back offshore Pensacola on Friday.

Some small boats and the shrimping vessel Patricia Jean helped collect the test fish. Nearby were four ships supporting the onshore hurricane relief effort, including a Canadian Navy destroyer.

Ten scientists aboard the NOAA vessel prepared fish samples for transfer to a lab in Seattle for analysis. On the ship, Tracy Collier of NOAA's Seattle lab said the Katrina situation is "so new, we don't know what we're looking for."

"We're taking samples back focusing on fish muscle tissue," Collier said. He said those tests should give some indication of what the fish were exposed to during the hurricane.

Samples of sediments also are being tested. The chief concerns, he said, are seafood safety and environmental contamination.

During this week's voyage, the crew didn't notice any rumored oil spills or fish kills. They spotted hurricane debris that included refrigerators, televisions and power poles, among other property ripped from land.

Dr. Steve Murawski, director of scientific programs and chief science adviser at NOAA, described the testing as "the first scientific effort post-hurricane to look in a very systematic way at what's going on in offshore waters." He said there have been many observations of live animals in the system. "That's a good thing," he said. His concern, however, is: "What is the fate of water coming offshore?" That water includes the New Orleans floodwaters being pumped out of the city.

While the scientists also surveyed some near-shore waters in Katrina's path, they did not survey off Louisiana's Grand Isle. But Murawski said a "sustained effort" is planned, working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation. "We're trying to be very vigilant in getting our arms around this thing," he said.

Cummings said state and local agencies, meanwhile, are checking rivers, inlets and bays for any possible contamination there. Dr. Lewis Byrd, director of seafood quality assurance for the Alabama Department of Public Health, said all seafood processing plants were checked the week after the hurricane, along with the private wells that serve some of the plants.

"Those came back good, thank goodness," he said Thursday.

He said about 35 percent of Alabama's seafood processing plants will be repaired and ready to open "in the next few weeks." Others will be slightly behind that, and some suffered so much damage that they may never be rebuilt.

This week, workers are taking samples from the bay areas where shellfish grow. The test results won't be ready until Saturday or Sunday, but Byrd said there have been no obvious problems.

He said he had been worried that silt would cover the oysters and kill them, but workers have not found that.

"They are telling me the oysters are pretty," he said.

For now, Alabama's waters are closed to shellfish harvesting. Byrd said that if the tests come back good, he could open the waters. But the Conservation Department is also reviewing the area for damage, and it could keep some beds closed if they need more time to recover.

Link to site: Becoming the worst environmental calamity in U.S. history

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Highlights:
- oil spills rivaling the Exxon Valdez
- magnitude of the oil spills came into focus
- pump billions of gallons of polluted water into Lake Pontchartrain, a brackish body of water that had just begun recovering from ecological collapse.
Randy Lee Loftis, The Dallas Morning News
 
Hurricane Katrina rapidly is becoming the worst environmental calamity in U.S. history, with oil spills rivaling the Exxon Valdez, hundreds of toxic sites still uncontrolled, and waterborne poisons soaking 160,000 homes.

New Orleans' neighborhoods are awash with dangerous levels of bacteria and lead, and with lower but still potentially harmful amounts of mercury, pesticides and other chemicals. Much will wind up in the soil or in Lake Pontchartrain.

Across southern Louisiana, the Coast Guard reported seven major oil spills from refineries or tank farms that totaled 6.7 million gallons, or 61 percent as much as the 11 million gallons that leaked into Alaska's Prince William Sound from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

The total does not count gasoline from gas stations and the more than 300,000 flooded cars, likely to add an additional 1 million to 2 million gallons. Nor does it count oil from hundreds of smaller or undiscovered spills.

More than three-quarters of the oil from the Katrina spills had not been recovered by yesterday, the Coast Guard said.

The magnitude of the oil spills came into focus with word that laboratories trying to test sediment from newly drained areas were having a problem: There was so much petroleum in the dirt that they couldn't test for anything else.

The Exxon Valdez became the benchmark for U.S. oil spills by leaking North Slope crude into Alaska's cold isolation. This time, the danger includes untreated sewage, cancer-causing compounds, nameless black gunk from rail yards, chemicals used to kill plants or insects, substances that are poisonous even in the tiniest amounts, and decomposing remains.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson acknowledged the scope of the problem during a news conference in Washington, D.C. He wouldn't speculate on when residents could return or on whether the EPA might sanction lesser cleanups in some residential areas.

"All of us ... want New Orleans to return to the thriving city that it was before Katrina," he said, but only if the job is "done right and (is) proactive of public health."

Besides the water, the city must deal with a mass of hazardous debris that Johnson described as "enormous." Thomas LaPoint, an aquatic biologist who heads the Institute for Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas, said history's infamous toxic sites might prove simple by comparison.

"This is pretty much unprecedented," LaPoint said. "At other toxic sites, such as Love Canal and Times Beach, there was a point source. Here, the potential for contamination is pretty widely spread throughout the area."

New Orleans' air, too, is a source of danger. An EPA plane detected a plume of chloroacetic acid, an industrial agent and defoliant that poses extreme toxic risks when inhaled. Ground crews found the source, an open, 55-gallon drum, Johnson said.

For now, the task is to pump billions of gallons of polluted water into Lake Pontchartrain, a brackish body of water that had just begun recovering from ecological collapse.

At the EPA's request, the Army Corps of Engineers put out floating barriers to try to stop some oil and gasoline before it enters the lake. But they won't stop the two most immediate threats in the water — bacteria and lead.

One site sampled Sept. 3, an Interstate 10 interchange north of the French Quarter, had lead 56 times higher than the amount that would be allowed in drinking water. Other samples taken days later across a much wider area also were high, but not near that mark.

Officials haven't pinpointed a source, but a likely suspect is the lead paint that for decades covered the city's huge stock of old houses. Tests also show that toxic substances will enter the food chain.

Those who have been working in the floodwater understand the danger all too well. One is J.T. Ewing, who for his living deals with some of the world's most toxic muck, the pungent and flammable stuff that leaks out of oil tankers in the Gulf of Mexico.

But it was in the neighborhoods of New Orleans, steering a rescue boat past the roofs of ruined homes, where he didn't want to touch the water.

"Normally, you get your boat stuck on top of a car, which does happen, or on top of a fence, you just put your foot down on it and push off," said Ewing, who works for the Texas General Land Office's oil-spill program. "This time, nobody wanted to put their foot in the water unless they were wearing rubber boots."

Link to site: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief

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Highlights:
- The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief
- Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials.
- Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department

Jonathan S. Landay, Alison Young and Shannon McCaf, Knight Ridder Sep 13, 2005

WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

"As you know, the President has established the `White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina," Chertoff said in the memo to the secretaries of defense, health and human services and other key federal agencies.

On the day that Chertoff wrote the memo, Bush was in San Diego presiding over a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo for the first time declared Katrina an "Incident of National Significance," a key designation that triggers swift federal coordination. The following afternoon, Bush met with his Cabinet, then appeared before TV cameras in the White House Rose Garden to announce the government's planned action.

That same day, Aug. 31, the Department of Defense, whose troops and equipment are crucial in such large disasters, activated its Task Force Katrina. But active-duty troops didn't begin to arrive in large numbers along the Gulf Coast until Saturday.

White House and homeland security officials wouldn't explain why Chertoff waited some 36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance and why he didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on Aug. 27 when the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours. Nor would they explain why Bush felt the need to appoint a separate task force.

Chertoff's hesitation and Bush's creation of a task force both appear to contradict the National Response Plan and previous presidential directives that specify what the secretary of homeland security is assigned to do without further presidential orders. The goal of the National Response Plan is to provide a streamlined framework for swiftly delivering federal assistance when a disaster - caused by terrorists or Mother Nature - is too big for local officials to handle.

Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, referred most inquiries about the memo and Chertoff's actions to the Department of Homeland Security.

"There will be an after-action report" on the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Perino said. She added that "Chertoff had the authority to invoke the Incident of National Significance, and he did it on Tuesday."

Perino said the creation of the White House task force didn't add another bureaucratic layer or delay the response to the devastating hurricane. "Absolutely not," she said. "I think it helped move things along." When asked whether the delay in issuing the Incident of National Significance was to allow Bush time to return to Washington, Perino replied: "Not that I'm aware of."

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, didn't dispute that the National Response Plan put Chertoff in charge in federal response to a catastrophe. But he disputed that the bureaucracy got in the way of launching the federal response.

"There was a tremendous sense of urgency," Knocke said. "We were mobilizing the greatest response to a disaster in the nation's history."

Knocke noted that members of the Coast Guard were already in New Orleans performing rescues and FEMA personnel and supplies had been deployed to the region.

The Department of Homeland Security has refused repeated requests to provide details about Chertoff's schedule and said it couldn't say specifically when the department requested assistance from the military. Knocke said a military liaison was working with FEMA, but said he didn't know his or her name or rank. FEMA officials said they wouldn't provide information about the liaison.

Knocke said members of almost every federal agency had already been meeting as part of the department's Interagency Incident Management Group, which convened for the first time on the Friday before the hurricane struck. So it would be a mistake, he said, to interpret the memo as meaning that Tuesday, Aug. 30 was the first time that members of the federal government coordinated.

The Chertoff memo indicates that the response to Katrina wasn't left to disaster professionals, but was run out of the White House, said George Haddow, a former deputy chief of staff at FEMA during the Clinton administration and the co-author of an emergency management textbook.

"It shows that the president is running the disaster, the White House is running it as opposed to Brown or Chertoff," Haddow said. Brown "is a convenient fall guy. He's not the problem really. The problem is a system that was marginalized."

A former FEMA director under President Reagan expressed shock by the inaction that Chertoff's memo suggested. It showed that Chertoff "does not have a full appreciation for what the country is faced with - nor does anyone who waits that long," said Gen. Julius Becton Jr., who was FEMA director from 1985-1989.

"Anytime you have a delay in taking action, there's a potential for losing lives," Becton told Knight Ridder. "I have no idea how many lives we're talking about. ... I don't understand why, except that they were inefficient."

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo came on the heels of a memo from Brown, written several hours after Katrina made landfall, showing that the FEMA director was waiting for Chertoff's permission to get help from others within the massive department. In that memo, first obtained by the Associated Press last week, Brown requested Chertoff's "assistance to make available DHS employees willing to deploy as soon as possible." It asked for another 1,000 homeland security workers within two days and 2,000 within a week.

The four-paragraph memo ended with Brown thanking Chertoff "for your consideration in helping us meet our responsibilities in this near catastrophic event."

According to the National Response Plan, which was unveiled in January by Chertoff's predecessor, Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security is supposed to declare an Incident of National Significance when a catastrophic event occurs.

"Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude," according to the plan, which evolved from earlier plans and lessons learned after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "Notification and full coordination with the States will occur, but the coordination process must not delay or impede the rapid deployment and use of critical resources."

Should Chertoff have declared Katrina an Incident of National Significance sooner - even before the storm struck? Did his delay slow the quick delivery of the massive federal response that was needed? Would it have made a difference?

"You raise good questions," said Frank J. Cilluffo, the director of George Washington University's Homeland Security Planning Institute. It's too early to tell, he said, whether unfamiliarity with or glitches in the new National Response Plan were factors in the poor early response to Katrina.

"Clearly this is the first test. It certainly did not pass with flying colors," Cilluffo said of the National Response Plan.

Mike Byrne, a former senior homeland security official under Ridge who worked on the plan, said he doesn't think the new National Response Plan caused the confusion that plagued the early response to Katrina.

Something else went wrong, he suspects. The new National Response Plan isn't all that different from the previous plan, called the Federal Response Plan.

"Our history of responding to major disasters has been one where we've done it well," Byrne said. "We need to figure out why this one didn't go as well as the others did. It's shocking to me."

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo is posted at www.krwashington.com

Link to site: Scientists begin taking samples to study whether fishing grounds remain safe as a toxic brew flows farther.

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WILL VAN SANT, Times Staff Writer, September 15, 2005

From space, a plume of sediment from the Mississippi Delta into the Gulf of Mexico is always visible. Rich in dissolved nutrients and plant matter, the plume's browns and greens stand out against the surrounding dark blue waters of the gulf.

Since Hurricane Katrina struck, the plume has been fed by receding storm surge from devastated gulf states. From the air, it still looks the same. But some scientists and regulators worry that the plume is now carrying toxic substances harmful to marine life and people.

Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, said Katrina flooded dozens of Superfund and toxic waste sites. The water also washed over landfills, hazardous waste storage facilities and fuel depots, he said. All of that is now returning to the gulf.

"It makes Love Canal look like a fly compared to the elephant of contamination that is now in that region," Kaufman said.

On Monday, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration sent a vessel into the plume. The 187-foot Nancy Foster , in addition to a crew of scientists, took along 20 body bags, just in case it comes across victims of Katrina.

Between now and Friday when the vessel returns to port in Pensacola, its crew will travel through the plume, taking bottom and water samples. Marine life will be caught and frozen for further examination of contamination.

Oceanographer Mitch Roffer, owner of a Miami firm that uses environmental data from satellites to locate catches for commercial fisherman and weekend anglers, thinks more than a single voyage will be needed to assess the plume's threat.

"What's in the leading edge of this water?" said Roffer. "Nobody knows. It's critical to get out there now and see."

Oceanographers say most of the toxic brew will cling to the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coasts. The portion that finds its way out into the gulf will be greatly diluted if it ever reaches the Florida Peninsula and the state's fishing grounds, they say.

But those same scientists agree that certain chemicals likely to be found in the plume are poisonous even in low concentrations and could endanger Florida's exhausted marine ecosystem. They also acknowledge uncertainty about what a catastrophic storm like Katrina could introduce into the plume.

"We have no experience with these kinds of things," said Frank Muller-Karger, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida. "There are a lot of people that are concerned. We don't want any surprises."

A finger of the plume that extends south into the gulf is of particular concern. Both Muller-Karger and Roffer said the finger could be swept into a powerful current that loops through the gulf and heads toward the Florida Keys and vulnerable coral reefs.

Peter Ortner, chief scientist at the NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, is overseeing the Nancy Foster 's trip into the plume.

In addition to the testing this week, Ortner said he hoped to soon place buoys along the plume's leading edge. The buoys will send out signals, allowing the movement of the water to be monitored closely.

Already, the Commerce Department has announced a "fishery failure" for the Gulf Coast from the Florida Keys to the Texas border, a declaration that frees up federal aid for the fishing industry. Ortner said part of the Nancy Foster 's work will be assessing whether any fishing grounds need to be declared off-limits.

"It is an open question at present whether there has been contamination of areas that must be closed," Ortner said.

A complete determination of the plume's possible impact will take months of study, said Ortner, and he has requested an additional vessel and other resources to complete an assessment.

Roffer, too, sees the need for extensive tracking and study of the plume. It's quite likely, he said, that what is now present is relatively clean compared to what the plume may carry in coming weeks.

"This is the initial wash," he said. "It should not be considered a one-time event."

Link to site: Water Sampling delayed due to budgets and holiday

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Mike Colbert, The Lincoln County News, Sep 15 2005
Clam diggers may have lost as many as eight days of work earlier this month when the Department of Marine Resources kept clam flats closed based on speculation rather than on actual water quality tests.

From the Bath area to Martin Point, Friendship, flats remained closed over the recent Labor Day weekend. They were closed initially on Aug. 28 and 29 due to poor water quality test results following rainfall attributed to hurricane Katrina.

Flood closure regulations require clam flats be closed until water tests indicate that the water content is acceptably healthy.

Even though much of the expected rain veered north toward Montreal and Quebec, the DMR delay in conducting water tests insured that the flats remained closed well beyond the holiday weekend.

Despite the late August water testing that resulted in the closure of clam-flats throughout the area, water quality levels can improve significantly with just one tide, said Rep. David Trahan (R-Waldoboro). “That is why I’m so irked by this; that is what that water testing program is for.”

Although many tides came and went, testing was delayed until Tues., Sept. 6.

In an Aug. 31 e-mail, Amy Fitzpatrick, the Director of the Public Health Division at the DMR, indicated to concerned parties that rains resulting from Hurricane Katrina were tracking north and would for the most part avoid the coast. “Unless something really odd happens, I’d say we’re out of the woods on this one,” wrote Fitzpatrick.

But in another e-mail circulated on Sept. 1, the Thursday prior to Labor Day weekend, Fitzpatrick notified diggers and others that “due to budget constraints and the holiday weekend” water sampling to determine the opening of the clam flats would not take place until after the holiday.

While public health is a top priority, the failure to conduct water tests in a timely manner could only be supported by a “pathetic reasoning,” said Trahan. “This program should be responsive to the needs of the industry, not to the needs of the bureaucrats for a three day weekend. They caused an eight day delay and put thousands of people out of work.”

The Sept. 1 e-mail states that test data from Aug. 29 and Aug. 30 water samples showed fecal counts taken along the coast to be unusually high.

Jan Barter with the DMR’s Division of Public Health said that the amount of rain combined with budget constraints led to the decision.

While lighter rains Downeast were soaking into the ground, Midcoast waters were “heavy with runoff,” said Barter. Waldoboro, for example, received two and a half inches of rain, and Wiscasset two inches on Tues., Aug. 30.

Between the 29th and 30th, nearly five and a half inches of rain had fallen in Newcastle, said Barter, adding that at the time the forecast was for significantly more rain in the days ahead.

Although the promised hurricane rains moved farther west on Wed., Aug. 31 and Thurs., Sept. 1, Barter said she had to make a judgment call. Thursday, “the first day we could have flood sampled, I made a judgment call not to,” said Barter, “because Wednesday night we got another half inch to an inch of rain.”

There is a three-day turn around between collecting water samples, running them through the lab, and then reviewing the results, Barter said.

“Due to budget constraints we can’t have people work on the weekend,” said Barter. “We are not allowed to work on a holiday because the state can’t afford it. We couldn’t have collected samples on Friday because there would have been no one in the lab on Sunday. It’s a budgeting [problem] and a judgment call we made.”

On Aug. 30 Barter said she logged in more than 200 driving miles to collect water samples. Between Kittery and the Canadian border there are only six people responsible for the whole area, said Barter, indicating the situation was frustrating for both the scientists and the clam diggers. “I understand their frustration. I totally sympathize with them, but we can’t control the weather.”

The Sept. 1 Fitzpatrick e-mail also said that testing would also be delayed based on anticipations that heavy rainfall in the western part of Maine would indirectly affect the coast.

“We determined that with the heavy rainfall in the western portion of the state draining down through the major river systems, our decision was a prudent one to protect public health,” said Fitzpatrick in the Sept. 1 e-mail.

“I’d love to see the data behind that,” said Waldoboro clam digger Glen Melvin, questioning the logic. “This place is dry as a bone. Western Maine drank it right up.”

“Their decision making should not be based on speculation,” said Trahan, indicating that the water-quality testing program was vital to keeping the industry moving forward.

In a Sept. 2 letter sent to DMR Commissioner George Lapointe, Trahan said he was concerned not only with the closure of the clam flats, but also with the reasons expressed for the closure.

“One reason [given] for not testing until next week is that it is a holiday weekend. This is precisely why testing should be done as soon as possible. The demand and price of clams is increased during such holiday activities and a significant portion of the yearly income of these shell fishermen comes from this weekend,” wrote Trahan.

He said failure to conduct the water test in a timely manner had economic repercussions. Referring to the Medomak River in Waldoboro, Trahan said the DMR delay was “putting people in dire straits that depend on the river [for making a living.]”

Trahan copied the Lapointe letter to Governor Baldacci, asking the Governor to authorize contingency funding for water quality testing.

Indications that the DMR is understaffed, said Trahan, are “nothing more than an excuse at this point.”

Despite the cry that there is not enough money to run the DMR water testing program properly, Trahan said he could document the fact that “when that office hires somebody, it doesn’t decrease revenue, it increases revenue.”

Giving an example, Trahan said the DMR delayed opening the Bremen Long Island Clam flats for many months “because they were understaffed. How much money would have come into our economy if they’d opened it six months ago? How many flats like that across the state are in need of testing and opening?”

Part of the problem, said Trahan, is that Governor Baldacci “gutted the water quality testing program when he took office. I think he knew it was a fee based program.”

“What concerns me is that shellfish license fees went up significantly, but nothing was put into the program to insure the rivers would be opened back up in a timely manner. I feel like the shellfish industry is supporting the General Fund,” said Trahan.

Trahan said that this approach to balancing the budget does not appear to be an isolated practice under the current administration.

“He took $5 million out of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife budget, knowing that the only thing we could do would be to raise fees,” said Trahan.

Opening closed shellfish harvesting areas is considered to be one of the top 100 benchmarks tied to economic development, according to economic goals outlined by the Maine Development Foundation.

Despite that fact, clam flats in Maine are often shut down longer than they need to be because of DMR delays in water testing. “It boils down to your philosophy on economic development,” said Trahan. “It’s obvious to anyone that the more days the flats are open and the more acres of flats open, the better it is for our economy and for individuals. When you hire a staff person for water testing and they’re able to open a flat, it brings in income and sales tax. They’re putting those people to work and putting more money into our economy.”

There are other repercussions too, some of them more personal than the number of dollars earned and lost.

“As a consequence of doing a poor job, it puts fewer clams on the market,” said Trahan. “Consumers pay more for clams at the market and fewer people are working. You combine that with the cost of fuel going into the winter, more people are going to be relying on state resources. There’s going to be a lot of folks struggling because this government failed them. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that if clam diggers are out of work for eight days straight and they’re losing two to three hundred dollars a day, that at the end of the year they won’t have earned enough money to survive.”

Fitzpatrick could not be reached at the DMR despite repeated attempts to do so over the last week.

Trahan said he asked the DMR months and months ago for information on the water quality testing program, and again a week ago, but had not gotten even so much as an acknowledgment of his request.

Because of frustrations like these, Trahan said he submitted a bill last week entitled An Act to Review the Water Quality Testing Program at Marine Resources. The bill is designed to determine whether the water quality-testing program is properly funded, and to see if it is meeting its legislative intent.

Asked if he had received a response to his letter from either Lapointe or Baldacci, Trahan said, “Nothing. Eerily quiet from the governor’s office.”

Link to site: No release from titanium dioxide plant

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Associated Press, Sep. 12, 2005

DELISLE, Miss. - Officials at the DuPont titanium dioxide plant here say they've found no evidence of chemicals being scattered into the coastal environment by Hurricane Katrina.

"We are pleased to report that the plant performed well," Pat Nichols, the DeLisle plant manager, told reporters during a tour of the facility Sunday.

Robbie Wilbur, spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, said several of the agency's staff members have been to the DuPont plant since Katrina hit Aug. 29.

"We have not detected at this time nor has DuPont reported to MDEQ any releases," Wilbur said Monday.

He said the department has requested, through the federal Environmental Protection Agency, that water samples be tested from the Bay of St. Louis.

A severe-weather dome at the DuPont facility, built 35 feet above sea level and capable of withstanding 400 mph winds, housed 24 employees during the storm. Safety manager Steve Fayard, a member of the severe-weather team, has lived in the dome the past two weeks.

"We didn't have any environmental releases before, during or after the storm," he said.

Katrina left the dome without a scar. The levee system designed to keep the plant from leaking its contents into St. Louis Bay showed some damage, though plant officials said there were no leaks into the bay.Rubble littered the levee, and most of the railroad system along the levee was destroyed. The system was built 20 feet above sea level. Dan Sloan, a plant engineer, said saltwater from the bay was pushed to about eight feet above the levee.

Officials said another system of levees, protecting several containment ponds, showed no significant damage.

Lines of debris are wrapped around the ponds. The lines are evidence of the water flooding the plant, but the rubble is about 20 feet below the closest pond.

DuPont officials expect the plant to remain dormant for several weeks while inspectors continue tests to survey the damage.

The DeLisle facility is the second-largest producer of super-white titanium dioxide in the U.S.

Last month, a Bay St. Louis oyster fisherman was awarded $14 million in a lawsuit against the chemical giant. The plaintiff said dioxins from the plant caused his cancer. It was the first of nearly 2,000 lawsuits filed by former employees and residents, making similar claims.

Later this week, DuPont executives plan to release the daily dollar amount lost during the plant's post-Katrina shutdown.

Long-term, harmful implications for the lake ecosystem and future human use

Link to site:

Return to: watercenter.org

DURHAM, N.C., Sept. 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- The pumping of New Orleans floodwaters into Lake Pontchartrain will create "long-term, harmful implications for the lake ecosystem and future human use of the area," warns Duke University environmental engineer Karl Linden.

The possibility of even more serious harm may be avoided by extensive testing of waters in the industrial zone for toxic chemicals and developing a plan to treat those waters before disposal, he added. So far, there has been no sampling performed in any of the city's industrial areas, unlike the residential areas, Linden said.

"While pumping floodwaters into the lake may seem 'better' than pumping pollution into the river or Gulf, make no mistake, this choice is only the lesser evil," said Linden, associate professor of environmental engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.

Linden acknowledged that Louisiana officials faced terrible choices in handling the polluted floodwaters in New Orleans. Trying to balance the immediate, overwhelming needs of its people against damaging the environment, Louisiana is now pumping floodwater into Lake Pontchartrain.

"According to EPA sampling, the types and levels of harmful bacteria in the floodwaters from residential areas are similar to raw sewage. Affected areas of Lake Pontchartrain will likely experience an extended period of low oxygen levels, elevated nutrients and high microbial loads, all leading to fish kills, algae blooms and the need to prevent human contact with the water," Linden said.

"Given the recent successes of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation in restoring the lake to make it safe for human contact and even manatees to populate, this is a very sad development," he said.

"According to the government authorities, the alternatives were only concerned with where to pump (-- into the lake or the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico). They did not consider water treatment to help minimize the impacts of pumping. Sacrificing the lake perhaps seemed like a better way to contain the pollution and make the eventual remediation effort at least conceivable."

Based on the data available so far, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not find any priority pollutants -- those that persist in the environment -- that exceeded health levels in the residential areas that have been tested, Linden said. Now it is time to turn attention to the areas of the city most likely to be sites of concentrated pollution -- the industrial zones, he said.

"Before any pumping from industrial areas occurs, it is imperative that an assessment be made of the level and types of pollutants present," Linden urged. "Once the status of these areas is known, a plan needs to be put in place to minimize the environmental damage from these sites, as many of them could be extremely hazardous. It would be irresponsible to simply pump the water from these areas into the lake or gulf without an attempt to remove and stabilize the toxic chemicals first."

"Waiving discharge regulations for pumping toxic water from the residential areas can be excused in the name of search and rescue. But let's please take the time to plan and prepare for the proper disposal of the industrial zone water and not cause further harm -- perhaps much more serious harm -- to the natural waters beyond what is necessary for protecting human health," Linden said.

Long-term, harmful implications for the lake ecosystem and future human use

Link to site:

Return to: watercenter.org

DURHAM, N.C., Sept. 12 (AScribe Newswire) -- The pumping of New Orleans floodwaters into Lake Pontchartrain will create "long-term, harmful implications for the lake ecosystem and future human use of the area," warns Duke University environmental engineer Karl Linden.

The possibility of even more serious harm may be avoided by extensive testing of waters in the industrial zone for toxic chemicals and developing a plan to treat those waters before disposal, he added. So far, there has been no sampling performed in any of the city's industrial areas, unlike the residential areas, Linden said.

"While pumping floodwaters into the lake may seem 'better' than pumping pollution into the river or Gulf, make no mistake, this choice is only the lesser evil," said Linden, associate professor of environmental engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering.

Linden acknowledged that Louisiana officials faced terrible choices in handling the polluted floodwaters in New Orleans. Trying to balance the immediate, overwhelming needs of its people against damaging the environment, Louisiana is now pumping floodwater into Lake Pontchartrain.

"According to EPA sampling, the types and levels of harmful bacteria in the floodwaters from residential areas are similar to raw sewage. Affected areas of Lake Pontchartrain will likely experience an extended period of low oxygen levels, elevated nutrients and high microbial loads, all leading to fish kills, algae blooms and the need to prevent human contact with the water," Linden said.

"Given the recent successes of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation in restoring the lake to make it safe for human contact and even manatees to populate, this is a very sad development," he said.

"According to the government authorities, the alternatives were only concerned with where to pump (-- into the lake or the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico). They did not consider water treatment to help minimize the impacts of pumping. Sacrificing the lake perhaps seemed like a better way to contain the pollution and make the eventual remediation effort at least conceivable."

Based on the data available so far, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not find any priority pollutants -- those that persist in the environment -- that exceeded health levels in the residential areas that have been tested, Linden said. Now it is time to turn attention to the areas of the city most likely to be sites of concentrated pollution -- the industrial zones, he said.

"Before any pumping from industrial areas occurs, it is imperative that an assessment be made of the level and types of pollutants present," Linden urged. "Once the status of these areas is known, a plan needs to be put in place to minimize the environmental damage from these sites, as many of them could be extremely hazardous. It would be irresponsible to simply pump the water from these areas into the lake or gulf without an attempt to remove and stabilize the toxic chemicals first."

"Waiving discharge regulations for pumping toxic water from the residential areas can be excused in the name of search and rescue. But let's please take the time to plan and prepare for the proper disposal of the industrial zone water and not cause further harm -- perhaps much more serious harm -- to the natural waters beyond what is necessary for protecting human health," Linden said.

Link to site: the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain

Return to: watercenter.org

H. JOSEF HEBERT; The Tribune-Star

WASHINGTON (AP) The decision to pour heavily contaminated floodwaters from New Orleans streets into Lake Pontchartrain was a difficult one and could pose new environmental problems in the years ahead, the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.

"We were all faced with a difficult choice," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The choice was, we have to get the water out of New Orleans for the health and safety of the people and we need to put it someplace."

The other option was to pour it into the Mississippi River, where it eventually would move into the Gulf of Mexico, said Johnson. "Our collective judgment was to put it into Lake Pontchartrain."

He said he could not speculate on the possible environmental fallout for the massive freshwater tidal estuary, but the EPA was prepared to "take whatever steps we need to take" to deal with future environmental problems.

Of the watery soup that has engulfed New Orleans, Johnson said: "This water is very unsafe. It's a health hazard." The first set of samples tested show it has a level of sewage-related bacteria that is at least 10 times higher than acceptable, as well as a surprising amount of lead. Louisiana officials believe it is laced with an assortment of heavy metals, pesticides and toxic chemicals.

Johnston said the EPA is testing for more than 100 chemicals from heavy metals, pesticides, industrial chemicals and PCBs and expects a more definitive word on the makeup of the hazardous brew in the coming days, possibly as early as this weekend.

So far, the EPA tests have been focused in residential areas and in the French Quarter, not the industrial areas where the floodwaters are likely to be more heavily laced with toxic substances, said Johnson.

"We don't know where the lead came from," said Johnson. "The samples that were taken were not near any industrial area." But he noted the city was full of old homes with lead paint and asbestos, which is probably also in the water.

Johnson said the EPA will also examine sediment for lead and other contaminants. If it is also contaminated, the cleanup could include removal of tons of soil and sediment.

"This is a huge area that encompasses three states," Johnson said. "Given the magnitude of this disaster we at this point can't say what the magnitude of the environmental challenges will be."

Johnson said the EPA is also taking air samples and using sophisticated detection systems to determine whether there might have been radiological releases from hospitals or university research facilities. So far no evidence of such releases has been found, he said.

The 630-square-mile Lake Pontchartrain formed some 5,000 years ago by the meandering Mississippi River. Many scientists believe it will survive the latest onslaught, although the effects may linger for decades.

Along with the toxic chemicals and sewage, the lake has become saltier. The hurricane poured waves of saltwater into the lake and the recovery effort will increase the salinity even more. Environmentalists worry that could harm the lake's cypress swamps.

This summer an unusually large number of manatees, an endangered species, were spotted on the lake, according to the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. Well before the hurricane hit, the group urged visitors to its Web site to look out for the mammals, saying we "want their visit to be safe."

On the Net: Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov/

Link to site: New Orleans may need $80-100bn

Return to: watercenter.org

David Adam and John Vidal; The Guardian
Wednesday September 7, 2005

New Orleans Roads, sewers and pipes will have to be replaced as draining of city reveals huge task

Engineers in New Orleans face an unprecedented rebuilding programme as operations to pump water out of the flooded city began yesterday. Flood levels in some areas were said to have dropped by a foot after army engineers plugged a major gap in the levees.

Yesterday it emerged that many of the roads, sewers and pipes carrying water and gas will have to be replaced and that contamination by sewage and toxic chemicals could mean some areas of the city have to be rebuilt completely.

Hugh Kaufman, senior policy analyst for emergency response at the Environmental Protection Agency, said New Orleans may need one of the largest public building programmes ever seen in the US at a cost of $80-100bn - approximately the same as the yearly cost of the war in Iraq.

More... New Orleans may need $80-100bn

Link to site: Wash your hands to avoid illness

Return to: watercenter.org

CDC
After an emergency, it can be difficult to find running water. However, it is still important to wash your hands to avoid illness. It is best to wash your hands with soap and water but when water isn’t available, you can use alcohol-based products made for washing hands. Below are some tips for washing your hands with soap and water and with alcohol-based products.

When should you wash your hands?
1. Before preparing or eating food.
2. After going to the bathroom.
3. After cleaning up a child who has gone to the bathroom.
4. Tending to someone who is sick.
5. After handling uncooked foods, particularly raw meat, poultry, or fish.
6. After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
7. After handling an animal or animal waste.
8. After handling garbage.
9. Treating a cut or wound.

Techniques for Hand Washing with Alcohol-Based Products

When hands are visibly dirty, they should be washed with soap and water when available.

However, if soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based product for washing your hands. When using an alcohol-based handrub, apply product to palm of one hand and rub hands together, covering all surfaces of hands and fingers, until hands are dry. Note that the volume needed to reduce the number of bacteria on hands varies by product.

Alcohol-based handrubs significantly reduce the number of germs on skin, are fast acting.
Techniques for Hand Washing with Soap and Water:

Proper techniques to use when washing your hands with soap and water:

1. Place your hands together under water (warm water if possible).
2. Rub your hands together for at least 10 seconds (with soap if possible). Wash all surfaces well, including wrists, palms, backs of hands, fingers, and under the fingernails.
3. Clean the dirt from under your fingernails.
4. Rinse the soap from your hands.
5. Dry your hands completely with a clean towel if possible (this helps remove the germs). However, if towels are not available it is okay to air dry your hands.
6. Pat your skin rather than rubbing to avoid chapping and cracking.
7. If you use a disposable towel, throw it in the trash.

Link to site: Water Accumulation in Your Home

Return to: watercenter.org

Important Flood Clean-Up Tips
If you have experienced any water accumulation in your home, it is important to remember that not all water damage is visible. Since flood water may contain bacteria that can cause serious illnesses, it is vital to clean and disinfect everything that may have been contaminated.

To ensure that your home and personal belongings are as clean and safe as possible, please follow these simple, but important, cleaning tips:
* Act quickly to avoid mildew and odor.
* Remove all loose dirt and debris.
* Use a chlorine bleach disinfecting solution (3/4 cup of household liquid bleach to 1 gallon of water) to wash any walls, floors, or other surfaces touched by flood waters.
* Keep area wet for 2 minutes (2 to 10 minutes for exterior areas), then rinse thoroughly and dry.

Be sure to clean and disinfect all contaminated surfaces, both interior and exterior.
* Interior: walls, counters and floors.
* Exterior: outdoor furniture, patios, decks and playground equipment.
* Kitchen Items: dishes, glassware and utensils.

Don't forget about clothing. You can also remove mildew and germs from clothing by washing them with chlorine bleach.
* Check clothing labels to make sure they are machine washable and colorfast.
* For a standard-size washing machine, use one cup chlorine bleach per load to disinfect clothing and remove odors.

When using a disinfecting solution to clean up after a flood, ALWAYS remember to:
* Wear gloves and protective clothing. Do not touch your face or eyes.
* Change the disinfecting solution often and whenever it is cloudy.
* Be thorough. Wash and dry everything well.
* Only use regular chlorine bleach for sanitation; do not use scented or color safe bleach.