[CPEO-BIF] Hurricane Rita - contamination on federal land

[Lenny Siegel]

Hurricane Rita's Toxic Wake
FEMA hasn't been cleaning up the hazardous materials on federal land, 
putting Louisiana's important wetlands at risk

By WENDY GROSSMAN/HOLLY BEACH, LA.
Time Magazine
August 29, 2006

Dozens of alligators duck and dodge airboats at the Sabine Wildlife 
Refuge, where the cleanup from Hurricane Rita is just beginning nearly a 
year after the storm hit the Texas-Louisiana border. Rita struck less 
than a month after Katrina, forcing New Orleans evacuees to flee further 
inland. Rita's storm surge demolished coastal Louisiana towns and turned 
this southwest Louisiana marsh into a toxic trash heap, leaving fields 
littered with everything from flip-flops and shampoo bottles to 
refrigerators and entire 18-wheelers. One of about 3,000 trash piles is 
5 miles long and half a mile wide. There are oil drums that look like 
soup cans the size of FedEx trucks. Work to clean up the mess officially 
begins the Tuesday after Labor Day. For now, officials are still getting 
permits and making cleanup plans. The only work being done on the canals 
is to catch oil and other hazardous liquids and keep them from going 
into the Gulf.

After the storm, FEMA cleaned up to the refuge's property line — and 
stopped. Congressman Charles Boustany (R-La.) blames the Stafford Act, 
which doesn't allow FEMA to work on government land. "We had the Army 
Corps of engineers and the EPA down there, but they couldn't go on 
federal property," he says. "You could see where the cleanup work was 
being done, and 100 yards over, there's horrendous debris and hazardous 
tanks - and nobody's touching it."

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1449037,00.html

-- 


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 at cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org