New Orleans could be facing the worst of both 9/11 and, for instance, Love Canal. I can’t imagine it ever being safe for habitation unless you fill the whole city with a 3-foot-thick layer of concrete over many square miles of ultrasonically-welded barrier sheeting.

‘Just after the disaster, even though only limited environmental testing had been conducted, the EPA issued public safety reassurances about air quality. On September 21, then-EPA Chair Christine Todd Whitman, with the backing of the city government, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Federal Emergency and Management Agency, declared, “New Yorkers and New Jerseyans need not be concerned about environmental issues as they return to their homes and workplaces.”

(The above excerpt is from this article.)

This time around, no one is being told that New Orleans is safe. Quite the contrary, in fact. Almost immediately following in Katrina’s path were comments such as, “A lack of clean water is the most immediate health threat posed by the murky green water flooding Louisiana and Mississippi, health experts warned on Wednesday as authorities declared a public health emergency after Hurricane Katrina’s devastation,” and “The biggest problem is the sewage contamination of the water,” said Dr. Glenn Morris, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore.

Sorry, Dr. Morris. I’m no professor but, logically, the health risks of New Orleans will go far beyond sewage concerns. With more than 20 feet of water inundating most of the city, it doesn’t take a professor to imagine what’s in the floodwaters now, and what will be in the streets and backyards long after the floodwater is gone. I mean, c’mon, Doc. Think about it. Yeah, there’s sewage. There’s that ugly matter of decomposition. Even at this moment, watching the news update in the Google sidebar, people are stuck on sewage, and with good reason. This article, hot off of Reuters at the time of this writing, starts off with “Three people have died from bacterial infections in Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina, and tests confirm that the water flooding New Orleans is a stew of sewage-borne bacteria, federal officials said on Wednesday.” Also from that article, ‘ Rescuers are scrubbing down evacuees with soap and water at the first possible opportunity, and Gerberding said anyone who comes into contact with the water should also wash.’ Yeah, that’s tragic. Tragedy is about to ramp up to ravages-of-war levels, however, first from the flood itself and the souls who will be found only when the city’s been pumped dry.

I’m old enough to remember the footage of caskets being unloaded from military aircraft freshly back from Vietnam. (Okay, I was a kid.) That’s the only time I can recall that we as a nation saw substantial numbers of our own countrymen, neighbors…lifeless. Assuming that the media will not be controlled, we’re about to see much worse: thousands of body bags filled mostly with people who either didn’t know the levees had a good chance of breaking, couldn’t afford to leave, or simply planted their butts in their comfy chairs, casually stating that they’ve been through hurricanes before. Perhaps the media should be controlled in this case. I’m not sure that the country could handle such a sight.

Even that exceedingly grim though realistic view is but glimpse through a peephole in cave-like darkness. It won’t end there, and it won’t end for a long time. Riddle me this, Dr. Morris. What really happens when you dunk the head of a city under water and hold it there for days on end? Cars on the streets and gas stations have been submerged for days, just as a start. At the bare minimum, lubricants, gasoline, and antifreeze have already leeched into the floodwaters. According to one report, three landfills in the area were affected—only the Lord himself knows exactly what’s in landfills. Chemical and waste storage facilities: underwater. Industrial and manufacturing operations: underwater.

Decomposed bodies, sewerage, e-Coli, Norwalk, and the deadly bugs on the biological side of the equation are being reported in mainstream media. No one has really addressed the chemical side, however, except in this article from The Washington Post. ‘Even then, there may be nothing normal about New Orleans, because the floodwater, spiked with tons of contaminants ranging from heavy metals and hydrocarbons to industrial waste, human feces and the decayed remains of humans and animals, will linger nearby in the Gulf of Mexico for a decade.” (The aftermath in the Gulf of Mexico is a topic unto itself.)

“This is the worst case,” Hugh B. Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, said of the toxic stew that contaminates New Orleans. “There is not enough money in the gross national product of the United States to dispose of the amount of hazardous material in the area.”

And that’s from the same EPA that told us on the heels of 9/11 that New York was safe.

“We’ve had flooding events: Hurricane Floyd dropped 18 inches of rain in 24 hours; Isabel knocked down the power,” said drinking-water expert Brian L. Ramaley, director of the Newport News (Va.) Waterworks. “But nothing we’ve had holds a candle to what they’re facing now.”

Remember, too, that ‘Louisiana, a center of the oil, gas and chemical industries, “was known for its very weak enforcement regulations,” Kaufman said, and there are a number of landfills and storage areas containing “thousands of tons” of hazardous material to be leaked and spread.”

New Orleans could be facing the worst of both 9/11 and, for instance, Love Canal. I can’t imagine it ever being safe for habitation unless you fill the whole city with a 3-foot-thick layer of concrete over many square miles of ultrasonically-welded barrier sheeting. Just to be safe, turn the whole area into an automated, remote-controlled refinery farm. I’m not sure what to do with the ports, though. Perhaps they could also be automated, too.

Am I being alarmist? I’m not so sure, and I welcome considered responses describing the facts behind why my view is askew, especially from our chemical and environmental engineering readers. If you think I’m wrong, I calmly and respectfully ask you: Would you move to The New New Orleans and let your sons and daughters play in the yard with a hose and a kiddy pool a year from now…five…ten?

Then again, admitting such serious, on-going, life-threatening problems might indicate weakness, politically or otherwise. We can’t have that. We’re going to rebuild, dammit!

And one parting thought…

“The dilemma [involves] a financial interest in minimizing the problem,” and “employers have a vested interest in keeping everything quiet, so that employees will be productive and not frightened.” A brewing public health crisis, he argued, must be resolved through public institutions.”

Was the above said in reference to 9/11 or New Orleans?