Some of you may find this article from Salon useful/interesting.
Andi
"The entire community is now a toxic waste dump"
The Gulf Coast is drowning in a poisonous stew, people are dying from
waterborne bacteria, and federal funds have been drained by years of
pro-industry policies. Katrina is one of the worst environmental
catastrophes in U.S. history.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Rebecca Clarren
Sept. 9, 2005 | From 500 feet in the air, Chris Wells, a geographer
with the U.S. Geological Survey, looked with dismay on the landscape
pounded and then abandoned by Hurricane Katrina. As Wells flew on
Wednesday above the Louisiana coastline, across New Orleans, the
marshlands south of the city, and over Mississippi, nearly every tree
was snapped, their limbs twisted around in a braid, the bark shredded
right off the trunk. The marshland below looked as though somebody had
taken a spatula and scraped away the marsh grasses, leaving a sea of
mud. Aside from a number of shorebirds, and one 8-foot alligator
swimming about 20 miles offshore, Wells saw no wildlife. What he did
see were streaks of oil, some miles long and 200 yards wide.
"It was on any body of water of any significance," he says. Hundreds of
thousands of inland acres are covered with a spotty sheen of oil. "The
landscape right now is absolutely bizarre and unreal," Wells says, from
his home in Lafayette, La. "It's emotionally draining. Even if nobody
was hurt, it's heartbreaking to see what has happened to the
environment."
Wells suspects that much of the oil has drained from thousands of boats
lying at the bottom of countless bayous, canals, and the ocean. Within
the impacted area are at least 2,200 underground fuel tanks, many
potentially ruptured, says Rodney Mallett, spokesperson for the
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. Officials also predict
that thousands of cars, lawn mowers and weed-eaters are also submerged,
leaking gas and oil into the waterways.
In addition, tens of thousands of barrels of oil have spilled from
refineries and drilling rigs in at least 13 sites between Lake
Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico. Along the coast, Katrina damaged
58 drilling rigs and platforms in the Gulf, according to Rigzone.com,
an oil and gas industry Web site. At least one rig has sunk and another
was swept 66 miles through the gulf before washing up on Dauphin
Island. It remains unclear how badly the hundreds of underwater
pipelines connecting the oil to shore have been damaged.
Yet the destruction that Wells witnessed from the sky is only the most
visible element of a poisonous stew bubbling in Katrina's wake. On
Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that bacteria
in the water flooding Gulf Coast areas are at 10 times the agency's
standard for human health, and already four people have died from
waterborne bacteria.
Although the samples are from flooded neighborhoods and not heavily
industrialized zones, officials predict that the impact zone's water is
laced with a slew of toxic chemicals such as lead, PCBs and herbicides.
This sludge will eventually settle onto the soil and filter into the
groundwater below, says Gina Solomon, M.D., a senior scientist at the
Natural Resources Defense Council. While it may be too early to predict
the levels of total contamination, many of these chemicals are known to
cause cancer, birth defects or neurological problems.
With human life still hanging in the balance and people desperate for
food, water and shelter, public officials have understandably placed
the environment in the back seat of priorities.
Yet it's become apparent that federal and state agencies had no plans
in place to deal with the environmental impact of the storm and are now
scrambling to know where to even begin to address the catastrophe.
What's also become clear is that Superfund, the federal till for
environmental cleanup, notably for Louisiana and Mississippi, has run
dry, due in large part to anti-tax and anti-regulation policies
favorable to oil and chemical industries.
"Chemical spills that would normally seem horrible on their own are
dwarfed by the huge scale of this disaster," says Solomon. "Right now,
people quite rightly are focusing on getting food and water and shelter
for the victims, but the environmental mess and contamination could
haunt this area for many years to come."
Aside from oil spills, the list of other potentially toxic ingredients
in the water drags on and on. The floodwaters in Louisiana alone have
hit nearly 160,000 homes, most stocking shelves of household cleaning
products. In piles of debris as wide as three miles along the
Mississippi coast, lead paint and asbestos cling to the remnants of old
buildings.
Louis Skrmetta runs a family business started by his grandfather in the
1920s, sailing tourists out to Gulf Islands National Seashore. He
weathered Katrina in the back bay of Biloxi in his boat, with about 500
other ships, all trying to take shelter from the storm. Now, the 400
shrimp boats, yachts, and workboats that survived the storm are all
crammed into a bayou 250 feet wide and quarter-mile long, and it's not
a pretty sight.
"All I see is filthy nasty brown water," Skrmetta says. "Everyone is
dumping raw sewage overboard. And this is only boats from the Gulfport
area. I would imagine that every city along the coast has the same
situation. It's going to be a nightmare."
In addition to raw sewage flowing from what are now makeshift
houseboats, the EPA estimates that the more than 200 sewage treatment
facilities in the impact zone are nearly all out of order, causing
backed-up sewage to leak. Test results released Sept. 7 found that
levels of E. coli greatly exceed the EPA's recommended levels. Already
countless people are suffering from diarrhea. Vibrio vulnificus, a
gastrointestinal organism found in the gulf's shellfish, has killed one
person in Texas and three in Mississippi. Those victims had open cuts
or wounds that came in contact with bacteria-laden salt water,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC is also concerned about outbreaks of leptospirosis, a bacterial
illness carried by farm animals, causing anything from high fever and
headaches to kidney damage and liver failure. Humans contract the
disease by exposure to water contaminated with the animals' urine. For
those living in shelters, the agency anticipates higher rates of
infectious illness. "To what extent we see any outbreaks of illness
depends on if people are evacuated and provided with medical care,"
says CDC spokesperson Tom Skinner. "It's really important for people to
leave the area if possible."
In an effort to drain New Orleans and rid it of the bacteria-laden
water, the Army Corps of Engineers has begun pumping floodwater into
Lake Pontchartrain, the huge but shallow lake on the city's northern
border. Yet this water, as it recedes past New Orleans' highly polluted
areas, is most likely laced with a frightening amount of dangerous
chemicals.
>From 1941 to 1986 the Thompson-Hayward Chemical Plant, near Xavier
University in the center of town, packaged and mixed pesticides such as
DDT, the herbicide 2,4,5-T (the main constituent of Agent Orange, which
contains dioxin), and the fungicide pentachlorophenal, which also
contains dioxin. While the city and federal governments launched a
massive cleanup effort throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the remediation
was not entirely successful: 2,600 tons of herbicide-contaminated soil
reportedly couldn't be removed because it was too toxic to legally
dispose of in any state, according to a 1995 article by Mark
Schleifstein in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
At the Agriculture Street Landfill, soil and debris are laden with DDT,
lead, asbestos, and industrial waste -- ironically, everything that was
scraped from the city floor after Hurricane Betsy struck in 1965. In
1962, reports Solid Waste and Recycling magazine, "300,000 cubic yards
of excess fill were removed from ASL because of ongoing subsurface
fires. (The site was nicknamed 'Dante's Inferno' because of the
fires.)" While the EPA eventually declared the dump a Superfund site
(after the city had filled the area and built homes and a school above
the infill of trash), the only cleanup the landfill underwent was the
removal 5 inches of soil. A plastic barrier was put down and clean soil
thrown on top.
"The New Orleans area that was flooded was an industrial area where you
have all the lubricants and batteries and heavy-metal plating -- it's
just hideously dangerous," says geographer Wells. "We can't wait around
to test the floodwater before we pump it back into the lake -- people
are already dying of disease from it -- but it's a terrible thing to
do. We're going to avoid a great human disaster by doing this, but we
could be creating a damn big environmental one." Forget for a moment
the scenario of a toxic lake in the middle of a major American city;
should a future hurricane breach the levees again, New Orleans could
literally be submerged in poison.
Aside from potentially poisonous floodwaters, the hurricane likely
roiled sediment from the bottoms of the lake and its surrounding
canals, sediment that is the toxic legacy of the region's century-old
romance with the chemical industry. William Fontenot, recently retired,
spent 27 years working for the Louisiana attorney general's office,
helping citizens grapple with environmental problems. His voice weary,
Fontenot describes a few of the various companies that spent much of
the past century dumping waste into Louisiana's waterways.
For 100 years, one such company, American Creosote, situated on the
north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, near Slidell, treated wood to create
railroad ties. In the 1970s, a fire ruptured a tank and creosote
spilled onto the property and into the Mississippi River. After Coast
Guard divers took sediment samples that were 8 percent creosote, the
site landed on the Superfund list in 1983. Although the EPA cleaned up
the property and 1,200 feet of the river, it ignored the other 6,000
feet of waterway that was devoid of any living organisms.
During the 1970s in Ponchatoula, north of the lake, the Ponchatoula
Battery Co. dumped between 3 and 5 million spent lead-acid battery
cases onto the ground. The waste liquid acid was directed into holding
ponds that had no containment structures. Drainage with pH levels (the
acidic rate) high enough to burn the skin off a person's hand bled from
the facility into various ditches into Selser's Creek. This mess was
also declared a Superfund site, but, says Fontenot, "when they ran out
of Superfund money, the cleanup just stopped. The EPA and the state of
Louisiana don't want to put too much burden on industry to clean this
stuff up." He continues: "Just normal to a little rainfall has an
effect on all these sites. Just the sun shining on them affects them.
How do you think the storm affects all this?"
Citizens in Mississippi fear that burying toxic secrets is standard
operating procedure. Clinging to the north shore of Bay St. Louis, an
inlet just west of Gulfport that flows into the Gulf of Mexico, the
DuPont DeLisle plant, the country's second-largest titanium dioxide
maker, was slammed by Katrina. The facility produces 14 million pounds
of toxic waste per year, some of which is kept at on-site landfills.
>From 1999 to 2003, the most recent figures available, 2.3 million
pounds of the waste were planted in the company's landfill.
DuPont also operates four underground injection wells, which shoot
toxic waste into the earth at a depth of around two miles. In late
August this year, a jury awarded $1.5 million to the first of nearly
2,000 local plaintiffs who claimed that dioxins from DuPont, released
into the nearby air and water, caused their cancers.
Hurricane Katrina's storm surge overflowed DuPont's 25-foot-high levee,
and the site was buried under 7 to 9 feet of water. According to the
federal Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, a leaking pipe
(now repaired) released a pound of chlorine gas, and rail cars
containing coke, ore and chloride were tossed on their side. Despite
this storm surge -- the same one that flattened most of the bay --
DuPont claims that not a drop of toxic waste escaped its on-site
landfills. "Our current assessment is that damage to the plant did not
affect the environment and community due to the storm surge," the
company said in a statement to its employees.
"It's ridiculous for DuPont to claim that," says Becky Gillette, a
Sierra Club organizer in Ocean Springs, Miss., in an e-mail. "What
planet are they from? It is very distressing to think of all the poor
people going to destroyed or flooded houses, cleaning them out, their
kids in tow, without a clue about the poisons they may be exposed to in
the cleanup."
Before Tuesday, no state or federal agency had been out to the DuPont
site, according to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality
(the agency and the EPA have since visited the facility). "When
industry has a major release, they have to notify us, and they haven't
done that, so we can assume they've had no major problems down there,"
says Robbie Wilbur, the agency's public affairs specialist. "In
general, I haven't heard of any major environmental problems, but a lot
of facilities couldn't even get to them if they wanted. There's too
much debris."
Although the Chevron Oil Refinery, at Pascagoula, Miss., which
processes 325,000 barrels of crude oil a day, is also underwater,
Wilbur says that Chevron has been "taking on a lot of responsibility
themselves." As of Tuesday, the state environmental agency had yet to
conduct water- or air-quality tests anywhere in the region. Wilbur says
he doesn't know of any other state or federal task force working on the
state's environmental problems or cleanup.
Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality, on the other hand,
began to document oil leaks the day after Katrina. They took water
samples earlier this week that they expect back any day. They're
working with the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers on a plan to treat
sludge after the water subsides. One preliminary idea is to treat the
toxic soil and use it to rebuild the coast.
Despite the variety of plans, the agency is overwhelmed, says
communications director Rodney Mallett, a native of Louisiana. "I have
no idea about how many oil refineries are impacted. I don't know about
the Superfund sites. This is something like no one has ever seen.
Nobody ever planned for anything like this."
The EPA has no estimates on how long recovery will take because it
doesn't have a full picture of the environmental impact. Only three of
New Orleans' 148 pumps are currently working, and it could take 80 days
before the floodwaters drain from the city and its outlying suburbs
into Lake Pontchartrain. Only then, following water and soil quality
tests, can a comprehensive cleanup picture emerge.
Yet finding money to clean up the environmental contamination won't be
easy. The Superfund bank account, money that would normally be used to
pay for cleaning up hazardous waste sites that are "an act of God," is
essentially broke. The tax on chemical and oil industries that pays for
Superfund cleanups expired in December 1995. According to the most
recent statistics, a 1998 report by the U.S. Public Interest Research
Group, an environmental and health advocacy agency, $4 million for
cleaning up hazardous waste sites goes uncollected every day the tax is
not restored.
In fact, every year for the past decade congressional representatives
have attempted to reauthorize the polluter payments, and every year the
bill has been voted down. The Bush administration has consistently
opposed the fee. Without the inflow of industry's money, taxpayers have
instead funded the Superfund budget. Today, most of the $1.2 billion
currently appropriated from the general revenue fund has already been
committed to other sites around the country.
"The Superfund is supposed to be our safety net when Mother Nature is
at fault," says Lois Gibbs, director of the Center for Health,
Environment and Justice, a nonprofit group based in Falls Church,
Va. "These fees could make a large dent in the costs of cleanup." Gibbs
poses the question that geographer Wells also asked, one that the
nation will likely spend the next several years trying to answer. "The
entire community is now a hazardous waste dump. How do you clean up an
entire city, an entire region?"
Andi
--------------
Every object, every being,
Is a jar of delight.
Be a connoisseur.
~Rumi~
Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into
something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It's in our hands.
~Cathy Better~
Things which matter most should never be at the mercy of things which
matter least.
~Johann von Goethe~
Dr. Andi Stepnick
Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology
300-C Wheeler Humanities Building
Belmont University
Nashville TN 37212-3757
Direct Line: (615) 460-6249
Office Manager: (615) 460-5505
Sociology Fax: (615) 460-6997
----- Original Message -----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Saturday, September 10, 2005 9:20 pm
Subject: TEACHSOC: Re: Affirmative Action
>
> Elizabeth (and others):
>
> I have used two articles in my course on race and ethnicity:
> -Duster, Troy. "Individual Fairness, Group Preferences, and the
> California Strategy," in Robert Post and Michael Rogin, eds. Race and
> Representation: Affirmative Action (New York: Zone Books, 1998), pp.
> 111-133 (actually, much of this book is useful, but I like Duster's
> analysis best)
> -Fish, Stanley. 1993. "Reverse Racism, or How the Pot Got to Call the
> Kettle Black." Atlantic Monthly.
>
> Kane, Thomas J. 1998. "Racial and Ethnic Preferences in College
> Admissions." Pp. 431-56 in The Black-White Test Score Gap, edited by
> Jencks, Christopher and Meredith Phillips. Washington, DC: Brookings
> Institution has some more quantitative material on the benefits (and
> who benefits how much).
>
> I don't know much for gender-based Affirmative Action, though.
>
> --Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur
> New York University and Queens College, CUNY
>
> Elizabeth Durden wrote:
> > Hello All,
> > Thanks again to all the great Katrina posts over the past week.
> >
> > I need to do some reading on affirmative action -- very broad, I
> know. If
> > any of you assign readings dealing with Affirmative Action in
> your classes,
> > I would appreciate your citations. I would love to get a great
> review> piece, one that tackles not on the policy and
> justifications for
> > Affirmative Action but also provides some 'measurement' of who
> has been
> > assisted by the policy.
> >
> > As always, thanks. Elizabeth
> >
> >
> > Elizabeth Durden, Ph.D.
> > Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> > Bucknell University
> > Lewisburg, PA 17837
>
>
