jbphburg
09-07-05, 05:20 PM
Wow, the environmental impact really didn't even dawn on me with everything else going on, sounds like it's going to rank as one of the few biggest environmental diasters ever too.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0907-03.htm
Published on Wednesday, September 7, 2005 by The Independent / UK
After Katrina: The Toxic Timebomb
New Orleans Mayor orders 'forceful evacuation' as contaminated waters threaten an environmental disaster.
by Andrew Gumbel and Rupert Cornwell
The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has created a vast toxic soup that stretches across south-eastern Louisiana and Mississippi, and portends the arrival of an environmental disaster to rival the awe-inspiring destruction of property and human life over the past week.
A toxic film spreads over the water near a flooded home in a lakeside area in New Orleans, Louisiana. On August 29, Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, a city built below sealevel, sustained by a complex system of dams and whose buffer against storm surges, the wetlands of the Mississippi Delta, had been eroded by reckless development.(AFP/Getty Images/File/Dave Einsel)
Toxicologists and public health experts warned yesterday that pumping billions of gallons of contaminated water from the streets of New Orleans back into the Gulf of Mexico - the only viable option if the city is ever to return to even a semblance of its former self -would have a crippling effect on marine and animal life, compromise the wetlands that form the first line of resistance to future hurricanes, and carry deleterious consequences for human health throughout the region.
The full extent of the danger is unknown and unknowable, but the polluted waters are known to contain human and animal waste, the bodies of people and animals, household effluence, and chemical and petrochemical toxins from the refineries that dot the Gulf coast in and around New Orleans.
Even before the pumping is complete, a process city officials said yesterday would take at least three weeks (some engineers believe it could last months), the consequences for all living creatures - humans, animals, fish and micro-organisms - are likely to be dire.
"We're talking about a mass of decomposing dead bodies and animals. This is going to produce a horrible festering of unknown consequences," said Harold Zeliger, a chemical toxicologist and independent consultant based in New York State.
The waters now swilling around the streets and neighbourhoods of New Orleans will probably end up either in the Mississippi River or in Lake Pontchartrain, just to the north of the city, where they are likely to react with the oxygen in the water and deprive all living creatures, starting with the fish, of the means to life.
Click link at top for full story
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0907-03.htm
Published on Wednesday, September 7, 2005 by The Independent / UK
After Katrina: The Toxic Timebomb
New Orleans Mayor orders 'forceful evacuation' as contaminated waters threaten an environmental disaster.
by Andrew Gumbel and Rupert Cornwell
The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has created a vast toxic soup that stretches across south-eastern Louisiana and Mississippi, and portends the arrival of an environmental disaster to rival the awe-inspiring destruction of property and human life over the past week.
A toxic film spreads over the water near a flooded home in a lakeside area in New Orleans, Louisiana. On August 29, Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, a city built below sealevel, sustained by a complex system of dams and whose buffer against storm surges, the wetlands of the Mississippi Delta, had been eroded by reckless development.(AFP/Getty Images/File/Dave Einsel)
Toxicologists and public health experts warned yesterday that pumping billions of gallons of contaminated water from the streets of New Orleans back into the Gulf of Mexico - the only viable option if the city is ever to return to even a semblance of its former self -would have a crippling effect on marine and animal life, compromise the wetlands that form the first line of resistance to future hurricanes, and carry deleterious consequences for human health throughout the region.
The full extent of the danger is unknown and unknowable, but the polluted waters are known to contain human and animal waste, the bodies of people and animals, household effluence, and chemical and petrochemical toxins from the refineries that dot the Gulf coast in and around New Orleans.
Even before the pumping is complete, a process city officials said yesterday would take at least three weeks (some engineers believe it could last months), the consequences for all living creatures - humans, animals, fish and micro-organisms - are likely to be dire.
"We're talking about a mass of decomposing dead bodies and animals. This is going to produce a horrible festering of unknown consequences," said Harold Zeliger, a chemical toxicologist and independent consultant based in New York State.
The waters now swilling around the streets and neighbourhoods of New Orleans will probably end up either in the Mississippi River or in Lake Pontchartrain, just to the north of the city, where they are likely to react with the oxygen in the water and deprive all living creatures, starting with the fish, of the means to life.
Click link at top for full story