Hugh Kaufman, the 35 year EPA veteran who previously warned that the
air at the WTC site was not as safe as thought, is now weighing in with some strong statements on the New Orleans floodwaters.
And it's not a pretty picture.
In The Independent (and also the New Zealand Herald), Kaufman says:
Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade
More after the fold...
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.
These are the same charges that were made about the air at the WTC. However, comparing New Orleans to the WTC, which was just an office building, the potential sources of contamination seem much greater:
Other US sources spelt out the extent of the danger from one of America's most polluted industrial areas, known locally as "Cancer Alley". The 66 chemical plants, refineries and petroleum storage depots churn out 600m lb of toxic waste each year. Other dangerous substances are in site storage tanks or at the port of New Orleans. No one knows how much pollution has escaped through damaged plants and leaking pipes into the "toxic gumbo" now drowning the city. Mr Kaufman says no one is trying to find out.
As for preparedness and the need for a cleanup:
Mr Kaufman claimed the Bush administration was playing down the need for a clean-up: the EPA has not been included in the core White House group tackling the crisis. "Its budget has been cut and inept political hacks have been put in key positions," Mr Kaufman said. "All the money for emergency response has gone to buy guns and cowboys - which don't do anything when a hurricane hits. We were less prepared for this than we would have been on 10 September 2001."
While I want to see New Orleans come back to everything that it was, and certainly don't agree with
Hastert who wants to simply bulldoze it, I'm afraid the reality will be somewhere in between. Some areas, like the historic district and high rise buildings will undoubtedly come back, but some of those homes that have soaked deep in this polluted water may be beyond saving. All the furnishings will probably have to go, along with flooring, drywall, wiring, and almost everything but the shell. Given the extent of the damage, some will probably have to be torn down and rebuilt, rather than be repaired. With residents displaced for months and their homes destroyed and their children already enrolled in other schools, some of them may decide not to come back (we have a precedent in
Homestead, Florida, where 250,000 were left homeless by Hurricane Andrew and 100,000 never returned).
Along with rebuilding, we obviously need to improve the flood protection. Because if it takes 10 years to fully recover, and the city is at risk of the same thing happening again, I do have to wonder whether it's worth it.
A few days ago, the New York Times published a nice review of advanced flood control techniques in Europe.
After a catastrophic failure of dikes and seawalls in 1953 that killed 2,000 in the Netherlands,
at a cost of some $8 billion over a quarter century, the nation erected a futuristic system of coastal defenses that is admired around the world today as one of the best barriers against the sea's fury - one that could withstand the kind of storm that happens only once in 10,000 years.
New Orleans flood protection is nowhere near safe for 10,000 years. Obviously, we've got a long way to go to be as safe as the Dutch. Only protecting to a category 3 hurricane leaves us nervously watching the weather and hoping for the best. This isn't good enough.
London has built floodgates on the Thames River. Venice is doing the same on the Adriatic. Japan is erecting superlevees. Even Bangladesh has built concrete shelters on stilts as emergency havens for flood victims.
For New Orleans, experts say, a similar forward defense would seal off Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf of Mexico. That step would eliminate a major conduit by which hurricanes drive storm surges to the city's edge - or, as in the case of Katrina, through the barriers.