[CPEO-BIF] Hurricane cleanup continues

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

After 9 months, EPA cleanup continues
Nearly 9,000 tons of waste removed

By Mark Waller
New Orleans Times Picayune
May 28, 2006

The floodwater drained long ago, the oil spills are over and government 
tests of soil, water and air found no catastrophic contamination in the 
fallout of Hurricane Katrina. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency 
keeps dozens of staffers working full time in the New Orleans area.

Katrina, it turns out, created cleanup tasks of a type and scope few 
people might have considered before the disaster. Nine months after the 
hurricane, the EPA is still extracting refrigerant from ruined 
appliances, properly disposing of electronic components and even 
inspecting the vials and beakers in abandoned high school chemistry 
laboratories.

"It's just the large volume of it," said John Martin of the agency's 
regional office in Dallas, currently on a Katrina tour supervising the 
New Orleans area operation. "It's just mind-boggling."

The EPA occupies about half of a technical college campus in Metairie as 
a command post for its Katrina response. It monitors the Murphy Oil 
spill cleanup in St. Bernard Parish. It operates a hazardous household 
waste sorting station in eastern New Orleans. And it continues to 
educate homeowners about separating different kinds of debris as they 
gut or demolish their flood-ravaged houses.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/news-15/1148796421199590.xml

--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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