2006 CPEO Brownfields List Archive

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>
Date: 29 May 2006 07:09:08 -0000
Reply: cpeo-brownfields
Subject: [CPEO-BIF] Hurricane cleanup continues
 
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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