Toxic waters: New Orleans unsafe for a decade

[mzteris]

Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Correspondent
Published: 11 September 2005

Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger.

In an exclusive interview, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to health.

The pollution was far worse than had been admitted, he said, because his agency was failing to take enough samples and was refusing to make public the results of those it had analysed. "Inept political hacks" running the clean-up will imperil the health of low-income migrant workers by getting them to do the work.


-MORE-

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article311818.ece


How will this affect the GULF as a whole??

[CottonBear]

1. Bio-remediation using trees, plants and bacterial remedies is the solution

UGA is working on bio-remediation of oil spills and contaminated soils using bacteria and trees. These methods could be part of the Green rebuilding of NOLA using modern bio-remediation and green building techniques while utilizing vernacular architecture and city planning models based on historic patterns in NOLA. Architects, Lansdcape Architects, City Planners, Urban Planners, Engineers and Scientists can work with the people of NOLA to rebuild their city.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. Wow

what smile-inducing solutions. Nature rules. Instead of seeing muck and despair you envision trees.

[CottonBear]

3. Trees and plants are good for your spirit and your soul.

I'm a landscape architect with a special interest and background in Urban Tree Management. The Green solutions exist: we just need to use them. Universities, researchers, scientists, design professional and engineers have the knowledge. We need the political will to use the knowledge to cleanse and rebuild the city of New Orleans.

[mzteris]

6. There used to be a "game"

at the Science museum for kids consisting of a kind of topographical landscape and marbles that represented pollution.

With it, you could have "trees, bushes, grasses, etc." or not. You'd release the marbles and see how many gathered at the bottom - which as I remember was the water source. You could do it "with plants" or "without plants" which affected how many marbles (pollution) entered the water source.

Or - erm - something like that. :)

At any rate, we need to learn that bulldozing trees and planting parking lots is really really bad for the environment. Smarter building is a necessity if we have a snowballs chance in hell of turning our environment around. (If it isn't too late already. :( )

[ret5hd]

4. here's the future of New Orleans...

the flooded houses of the poor will be bulldozed. a 2 foot layer of clay will be layed on top, sealing the worst of the poisons in. New housing will be built, but NOT for the poor.

NO will be turned into a mixture of a whitebread playground and "disneyland". The poor service workers will be bussed 50-70 miles daily like in Vail, CO.

A few black trumpet, sax, trombone players will be hired to amuse the tourists as the walk through "A Taste of Old Orleans (tm)" in the French Quarter.

Once a year in Feb or March a staged parade will be held, complete with floats, paid revelers dressed extravagantly, a few paid cross-dressers (just raunchy enough to tittilate the crowd, but polite enough to make everything "family friendly") and a few beads thrown from the floats to the polite orderly crowds lined on the sidewalks.

God, i hope i'm wrong...but that's the way i see it.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

5. Hmmm

Let's see...the nasty stuff is sealed in, and new housing built over it. Well, I see kharma happening here.

But I have hopes that there will be some level of advocacy and affordable housing will be built. But I do hope they take out the gunk first.

[Nihil]

7. I think that you've got the wrong end of the stick

> a 2 foot layer of clay will be layed on top, sealing the worst of
> the poisons in. New housing will be built, but NOT for the poor.

New housing will be built, ONLY for the poor.

The rich can afford lawyers to sue when the poisons leach up through
the gaps in the "sealing" layer ... e.g., those around the foundations
(more than 2' deep), around the utility pipes (gas, water, sewage and
whatever services that are buried underground), around the drains in
the street, through the holes once utility workers have dug up the
road, ...

The poor will just suffer and quietly die (in between working at the
"Disneyland" and the new refineries). Well, "quietly" in terms of
how much notice is given to them by the rest of the country.

[Delphinus]

8. I'm confused.

I heard on NPR today that people were moving back into the French Quarter, that water was coming on line. Why the difference in stories? Is the French Quarter that protected?

[mzteris]

9. I think the French Quarter

escaped most flooding as it's on a bit higher ground.