...were providing tetanus and hepatitis A and B shots to anyone who asked for them at no charge. "I've given about 500 inoculations in the past two days," said a member of a Disaster Medical Assistance Team in Meraux in St. Bernards Parish on Sept. 11.
The town, like much of the rest of St. Bernard's Parish, is devastated. A surge from Lake Borgne and the Gulf overtopped outer and inner levee walls, says Kevin Wagner, a Corps of Engineers project manager who inspected pump stations and oil spills in the Lake Borgne Levee District Sept. 11. Cars and trucks were swept away, houses lifted off their foundations, utility poles snapped.
At Murphy Oil Corp.'s tank farm in Meraux, the wall of water lifted a crude oil tank off its foundation, opening a seam and spilling 819,000 gal of crude. "We have 90 people on the scene, with a vacuum truck, skimmers and booms," says Mindy West, the El Dorado, Ark.-based company's director of investor relations. "They're working 24 hours a day." The company has recovered 367,000 gal of its product, she says, but the remainder coats the surrounding streets, yards, fields and structural foundations that are still standing with a thick, stinking black film of crud. There were booms across the intake pipes at Pump Station No. 7, but the iridescent sheen on top of the water was flowing past into the station and through the outlet pipes toward the marsh.
Wagner and Michael Salyer, a Corps biologist and environmental officer, contacted the Corps District in New Orleans to get better booms delivered. They also asked the levee district to shut down the pumps until the booms are in place, to keep the petroleum contained. By the following day, the Corps said, the booms were in place and the pumps operating again.
Around the stricken city, water levels are dropping and the sun is shining, as it has every day since Katrina left town.
It would be more accurate to say since Katrina took the town away. Streets are covered with the tank farm residue and the fetid, redolent black swamp goo that locals call "gumbo mud." Police and military recovery teams are still going from house to house, looking for remains. Spray-painted code on the houses marks their progress and results. Nearly all of the 65,000 residents of the parish have decamped to stay with friends, strangers or in shelters.
Parish President Robert "Junior" Rodriguez Jr., at a meeting in Baton Rouge Sept. 13 attended by several thousand of his constituents, tells them he could not say when they will be able to return to check on their homes or to retrieve their belongings. The initial cleanup will take a while and then extensive air quality sampling will be required, he says. Those that live near the refinery will be displaced longer than others, he adds, and when they are allowed access, he recommends that they not bring their children. It is unlikely that anyone will be able to return before next summer, says Councilman Craig Taffaro. Even then the choice will difficult for many. Several subdivisions that were outside levee walls were washed away.
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| Murphys Law. Flooding by massive sheets of water forced oil storage tanks off their foundations in St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans. (Photo by Michael Goodman for ENR) |
Murphy's oil spill is only one of several. Royal Dutch Shell, Bass Enterprises Production and Chevron together leaked millions of gallons of crude oil from pipelines and storage terminals stretching from St. Bernards Parish and to the mouth of the Mississippi River at the tip of Plaquemine Parish, according to Coast Guard reports. The Coast Guard also reported that 52 offshore oil and gas production platforms sank and another 58 sustained damages. Three drilling rigs sank and another 16 were damaged.
The fishing industry in the same area is out of commission. It's hard to tell how long the environmental damages will linger. On Sept. 11, at the East Orleans-St. Bernard's Parish line, crabs were coming out of the water in droves. "The dissolved oxygen level is dropping," said Salyer. "They're trying to breathe."
In New Orleans, even as the water goes down, the Sewerage & Water Board and the Corps of Engineers are restoring water and wastewater treatment service as quickly as possible. According to LaDEQ, 16 or the area's large wastewater treatment plants are back in service. The Corps is responsible for assessing the condition of the rest and the sewer lines, says EPA's Coleman.
The long-term environmental effects are a major concern, but the immediate risk to workers in the cleanup zone is an issue, too. Col. Duane P. Gapinski, the Corps of Engineers officer in charge of draining New Orleans says: "My number one concern is the health and safety of our people. In areas that had been wet, now there is sludge and muck, and some toxic muck and as it dries we will have growing concerns about breathing that dust." Respirators are one option. "Obviously there are going to be lots of challenges once the task force is complete, including dealing with that debris, and with the people who want to get back into their residences, into what will be an unhealthy environment."
