Floodwater challenges

When Hurricane Katrina swept into Louisiana and Mississippi, it took more than a thousand lives, displaced more than a million people, and exposed an incompetent government response plan. But that was apparently not enough bad news for some folks to report. It was time to turn to one of our era’s favorite bogeymen: toxic sludge. “The dank and putrid floodwaters choking this oncegracious city are so poisoned with gasoline, industrial chemicals, feces and other contaminants that even casual contact is hazardous, and safe drinking water may not be available for the entire population for years to come,” read the Washington Post’s lead article on September 7th. There’s just one detail not addressed in that story: health officials hadn’t actually completed the first water tests until after that article was published. And guess what? The results didn’t back up the Post’s claims. To be sure, the water was heavily contaminated with sewage. But state and federal tests scanning for more than 100 toxic compounds found almost all to be in the water at below the level of detection. The one exception was lead, which was found in excess of the amount that a child should consume every day in a liter of water. Presumably, the folks of New Orleans were not planning to make a habit of drinking floodwaters. No matter. If New Orleans can’t be radioactive, at least it can be ‘toxic’ to the news-consuming public (‘infectious’ is the more accurate term but apparently not as sexy). “A ‘witch’s brew’ of heavy metals, chemicals, sewage, fuel and pesticides is swilling through New Orleans and the waterways of Louisiana and other US coastal states,” said the Guardian in London, even earlier in the crisis. “Hurricane Katrina rapidly is becoming the worst environmental calamity in U.S. history,” warned the Seattle Times, “with oil spills rivaling the Exxon Valdez, hundreds of toxic sites still uncontrolled, and waterborne poisons soaking 160,000 homes.” Never mind that the oil spills were largely contained within earthen berms — not choking wildlife in pristine Prince William Sound. And never mind that most of those 160,000 homes were so damaged by floodwaters that they’re destined for the bulldozer anyway, poisons or no. Even federal officials fueled the overwrought reporting. “At a briefing in Washington with five Cabinet secretaries and other high-ranking officials, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said the government is ‘gravely concerned’ about infectious disease outbreaks, especially cholera and typhoid,” reported USA Today. Leavitt, a career politician, apparently hadn’t spoken to his subordinate, Dr. Julie Gerberding, who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She noted at a separate news briefing, “in the city of New Orleans, cholera has not been present for years.” Dead bodies are a horror, but many politicians and journalists didn’t realize that corpses can’t spread germs they don’t possess. The Environmental Protection Agency took a conflicted stand on the issue of toxins. The agency promptly posted test results on its site, showing that the vast majority of the hazardous chemicals it routinely screens for were not found in the water at all. And only a few nasty compounds, such as chromium and selenium, were even making cameo appearances. Yet the EPA was careful not to trumpet this as good news. In the first place, fecal coliform levels remained high, and Floodwater challenges