Stephen

the Baltimore Sun article is dead on, but I suspect, like Ken, that 
little will come in this direction.

I check out tomdispath.com regularly, & he has some fine piece, but 
linked to this, from today (or tomorrow by date), from the nzherald, 
which sounds about right after the prez's pitiful performance last 
night, which even people from USToday & ABC on Charlie Rose were saying 
looked too little too late & weird all alone in shirtsleeves in a big 
square nice & dry:

New Orleans 'unsafe for a decade'
 
  12.09.05
  By Geoffrey Lean
 
  Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city 
unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a senior US Government 
official predicts.

And, he added, the Bush Administration is covering up the danger.

Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental 
disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way 
the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to 
health.

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 
results of those it had tested public.

"Inept political hacks" running the clean-up will imperil the health of 
low-income migrant workers by getting them to do the work.

His intervention came as President George W. Bush's approval ratings 
fell below 40 per cent for the first time.

Yesterday, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, turned the 
screw by criticising the US President's opposition to the Kyoto 
Protocol on global warming.

He compared New Orleans to island nations such as the Maldives, which 
are threatened by rising sea levels.

Other US sources spelled 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 270,000 tonnes 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.

Few people are better qualified to judge the extent of the problem. Mr 
Kaufman, who has been with the EPA since it was founded 35 years ago, 
helped to set up its hazardous waste programme.

After serving as chief investigator to the EPA's ombudsman, he is now 
senior policy analyst in its Office of Solid Wastes and Emergency 
Response.

He said the clean-up needed to be "the most massive public works 
exercise ever done", adding: "It will take 10 years to get everything 
up and running and safe".

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."

He said the water being pumped out of the city was not being tested for 
pollution and would damage Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River 
and endanger people using it downstream.

- INDEPENDENT

Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton  Ab  T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320

The temper is fragile
as apparently it wants to be,
wind on the ocean, trees
moving in wind and rain.

		Robert Creeley