Love Canal-type landfill submerged in New Orleans floodwaters

[Rose Siding]

Overlooked in many news reports about the unfolding storm disaster in the southern United States, especially in the City of New Orleans, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, is a potentially dramatic pollution issue related to a toxic landfill that sits under the flood waters right in the city's downtown, according to map overlays of the flooded area. The situation could exacerbate the already dire threat to human health and the environment from the flood waters.

The Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL) is situated on a 95-acre site in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The ASL is a federally registered Superfund site, and is on the National Priorities List of highly contaminated sites requiring cleanup and containment. A few years ago the site, which sits underneath and beside houses and a school, was fenced and covered with clean soil. However, three feet or more of flood waters could potentially cause the landfill's toxic contents – the result of decades of municipal and industrial waste dumping – to leach out.

Houses and buildings that were constructed in later years directly atop parts of the landfill. Residents report unusual cancers and health problems and have lobbied for years to be relocated away from the old contaminated site, which contains not only municipal garbage, but buried industrial wastes such as what would be produced by service stations and dry cleaners, manufacturers or burning. The site was routinely sprayed with DDT in the 1940s and 50s and, in 1962, 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.)
.....
Locate that site on a map (see websites below), and then overlay published maps of New Orleans flooding, and one finds the old toxic landfill is situated right in the middle of a huge area of three-foot flooding. That industrial area is almost continuously connected with water to the downtown and northern areas of the city. It's not outlandish to consider the possibility that toxic waste from the landfill may mix with floodwaters and spread far beyond the old landfill site.

http://www.solidwastemag.com/article.asp?id=47051&issue=09012005

[KT2000]

1. Oh no

there needs to be an environmental justice legal team in there. Someone emerged after 9/11 in New York, certainly there must be some in that area who could pull it together. Calling Bob Martin - the once ombudsman to the EPA for polluted upon communities. He is great.

[Maestro]

2. NOLA

is now so polluted and I do not see or hear much being said about it, groundwater, soil, etc... I just don't see how it will be very inhabitable any time soon.

[neverforget]

3. Not much is being said because Bush is in charge and he hates

the environment. Well, maybe not hate, but certainly exploit.