Cleaning up the Big Easy
Almost nine months have passed since Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans. A horrible legacy lingers, seen in the broken buildings and unseen in the poisons leftover.
The multiple levee breach that killed more than a thousand people and displaced hundreds of thousands more created a "toxic gumbo" in the Big Easy, according to Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency. Kaufman broke ranks with the federal government in an interview on Sept. 15 with Newsweek magazine, where he detailed the toxic wasteland of post-Katrina New Orleans.The toxic gumbo was an entire city mixed together into a giant cesspool, according to Kaufman. Oil spilled, sewage leaked, bodies of people and animals festered in the murky waters, and cars leaked battery acid, gas, oil and engine coolant.
"Fecal matter and all sorts of toxins contaminated almost all the water that was covering 80 percent of the city," said Wilhelmina Peragine, a New Orleans resident who evacuated before the storm hit.
To help deal with this toxic legacy, Peragine organizes busloads of fellow Loyola University New Orleans student volunteers to feed residents, help rebuild homes and provide support for relief organizations. This spring, hundreds of volunteers swelled the ranks of the organizations to help in New Orleans, including 23 Western Washington University students.
The surge of volunteers was a national movement that at one time had more than a thousand students and activists helping residents. Many relief groups adopted the organizational style of the Freedom Rides of 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement.
Malik Rahim, an ex-Black Panther member and Katrina survivor, founded the Common Ground Collective, one of the first groups assembled for Katrina relief. At the Walkin’ to New Orleans rally organized by Veterans For Peace in Congo Square on March 19, Rahim took the stage and spoke about the origins of Common Ground.
"When we started with Common Ground, we started with nothing," Rahim said. "I had $20, my partner —my former partner— had $30, but we had the hope. We had the belief and the spirit that we can make a difference." Common Ground is located in the 9th Ward, the most toxic neighborhood in New Orleans, according to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. Common Ground’s mission is to work in solidarity with residents to restore the environment and the lives of New Orleans residents.
Common Ground uses a non-chemical detoxification process called bioremediation on yards and in houses. This process employs microbes, plants and fungi to clean up toxins. Their compost tea program takes the beneficial bacteria in worm castings and mixes it with molasses and water, letting it ferment for 48 hours.
"The molasses serves as a food source for the bacteria and they multiply in the billions and then when you apply it to the ground, the bacteria uses petroleum as its food source," said Common Ground organizer Lisa Fithian.
Common Ground also plants sunflowers and Indian mustard greens in a bioremediation process that uses the root systems of the plants to remove toxins from the water. This process removes lead effectively, Fithian said. After the plants soak up the poisons, Common Ground disposes them in a toxic waste dump.
Bioremediation is a critical part of rebuilding the city for the health of generations of people living in New Orleans, Rahim said. He ended his speech in Congo Square with a vision of a restored New Orleans.
"We are going to change this damn world, we are going to make this a world that is truly about peace and justice," he said. "We are going to start only talking about: how can we rebuild? How can we restore this environment for our children and grandchildren?"
Restoration of the New Orleans environment, alongside rebuilding the city, will be difficult because of the size of the problem, Kaufman said.
"A tremendous amount of toxic waste [has] to be cleaned up and disposed of," he said.
One month after the storm hit, the EPA collected 50,000 containers of hazardous waste and warned residents of E. coli, fecal coliform, lead and two staph strains in the water.
"It’s uncountable, the amount of environmental and public-health problems that most folks down there are going to see for years to come," Kaufman said.
Volunteers from across the nation, residents and relief groups like Common Ground, HOPE, and Emergency Communities are tackling those environmental and public health problems.
GUMBONAUTS
The hostile environment of the 9th Ward requires Common Ground to substantially outfit volunteers. A bulky, white, one-piece, full-body Tyvek bio-hazard suit, rubber gloves, a waterproof jacket around work boots, goggles, a respirator and duct tape to seal it all together protects the volunteers.
It costs $60 a day to feed, protect and shelter a single volunteer. Common ground provides the gear free of charge through donations from individuals, groups like Veterans for Peace and the government of Venezuela.
Black mold is the main reason for the precautions, Peragine said.
"It’s pretty much mold unlike most mold that people have experienced. Glossy black mold that covers sometimes whole walls," she said.
Black mold is a Stachybotrys mold species and is capable of killing nerve cells, according to researchers at Michigan State University. Infants and people with weak immune systems are more prone to black mold infection that can cause respiratory problems, immune suppression, infant pulmony hemorrhage and nerve damage, according to the National Resource Defense Center.
A sledgehammer hitting a moldy surface creates an impact cloud with spore levels 500 times what the National Resource Defense Council considers to be a dangerous concentration in a residential zone.
To combat black mold and to make the building safer, Common Ground sends a bioremediation team out to spray down the houses with effective microorganisms before and after the volunteer work.
The bacteria and yeasts in the spray eat the mold spores and colonize the surfaces mold grows on, preventing its regrowth, according to a bioremediation guide Common Ground refers to.
After spraying, volunteers enter the rotting remnants of a home with foggy goggles and masks filtering toxins from the humid air. Pictures hang on the wall, some clocks still work, clothes are still in drawers and dirty mirrors reflect the presence of white-shrouded strangers sometimes walking eye-level with the water line.
As volunteers pull out the corroded remains, they sometimes leave a pile of items that appear salvageable or meaningful for a resident to sift through.
Months of decay have turned commonplace household items into health hazards.
"Whatever you do, do not open a refrigerator," is the loudest point in Common Ground’s daily safety briefing. Volunteers are told to duct tape refrigerators shut and leave them for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to safely deal with.
One returning resident did not know about the dangers in his fridge, and in the process of removing the sealed biohazard, the duct tape broke and the food that had festered for six months in an anaerobic icebox sloshed out. The spill shimmered because of all the flies that came to feast on the wretched jambalaya. The putrid, primordial aroma permeated the mask of Western senior Chad Robertson, who compared the smell to dog feces.
After a house is clear of objects and debris, volunteers pick up sledgehammers and crowbars to gut a house bare. Targets include the dry wall, trim, doors, insulation and carpet. The aim is to remove all the materials that could have absorbed the toxic gumbo so residents can restore their houses safely.
Peragine said she questioned whether restoration is enough. Upon moving to New Orleans three years ago, she said she thought the levels of poverty and illiteracy were disgusting.
"Sixty-five percent of the city could not read above a sixth-grade level," she said. "And that is not some sort of cultural deficiency. That is like neglect by larger society of a pretty non-diverse group of people who happen to be black."
John Rybczyk, a former Louisiana resident and assistant professor at Huxley College of the Environment at Western, said the problems facing New Orleans residents are not new.
"The water quality there was not great in the first place," Rybczyk said.
The toxic gumbo is the result of a century of petrochemical and chemical industry operation, earning the area from Baton Rouge to New Orleans the title "Cancer Alley," Rybczyk said.
Plants, fungus or microbes cannot remedy the historical and grave danger that faces New Orleans.
The Mississippi River has not deposited sediments and nutrients in New Orleans since Albert Baldwin Wood’s levees enabled city growth below sea level in the early 1900s. The levees disturbed the natural cycle of sediment deposition and the cycle of subsistence continued downward, Rybczyk said. New Orleans is slowly sinking, he said.
"It’s sinking, and it’s sinking and it’s sinking and as long as those sediments aren’t getting onto that land to build more land then its just going to sink out of existence," Rybczyk said.
The possibility of an underwater Big Easy might become a reality much sooner, Peragine said.
"If another hurricane hits this city, this city would turn into an Atlantis," she said.
New Orleans faces a host of problems: cancer, black mold, diseases, sinking homes, annual hurricane dangers, racial barriers and great economic disparity. Katrina brought some new problems, while the waters and wind exacerbated the old.
These problems settled in the wake of a national focus on war and oil, but Katrina exposed the racial and socioeconomic problems, Peragine said.
"Something is really wrong, because obviously level five levees aren’t being funded and people aren’t getting the help they need," Peragine said.
For Michael Blake, a veteran of the Iraq war, rubble, smashed houses, wrecked lives and ravaged land are all surrealistically familiar.
"Looking at the devastation along the Gulf Coast, it’s reminding us [veterans] all very much of Iraq — the way the buildings look bombed out, just the destruction," Blake said in a speech before Rahim’s at the Walkin’ to New Orleans rally.
Blake struggled with what he saw as he marched with Veterans for Peace from Mobile, Ala. to New Orleans.
"It’s really hard to come to grips with," Blake said, standing amidst signs that read: Every bomb that is dropped in Iraq explodes in New Orleans.
Sam McNeil spent two weeks in New Orleans during his spring break. McNeil spent time with Common Ground, Emergency Communities, HOPE and Loyola University Community Action Program working on bioremediation, gutting houses, interviewing residents and volunteers, feeding and serving victims. He is also putting together a video about New Orleans with fellow volunteers.