Greenpeace

I wanted to know how and why this speedy recovery will create even more damage. I don't agree with it but I would like to know the science of it.

Below is what I sent to several newspapers, some reporters etc.,in spite of any property rights issues, I now believe that everyone needs to get out of the area, In addition to what I have copied and pasted below, I have been reading about some relief workers and citizens in Slidell, LA, they stayed throughout and have been trying to clean up and rebuild, they are located next to another Superfund site, and in the same county with others, one of the poisons in their backyards is naphthalene-the US Army mixed it with palmitate to produce napalm. The cleanup of these sites has been poorly handled, most of the sites simply too toxic to fix, and the reason that we are not seeing reports on the assessment of these risks, is that the administration has left it up to the Louisiana Chemical Association to assess and deal with any problems, the problem with that is that the LCA is basically the companies themselves, the head of Dow is number two on the board. This area is actually a hot zone, Here is what I sent- Below here I will just copy and paste excerpts, I will be glad to send you the full reports if you wish. I am sickened, and I am heartbroken and I am afraid. I hope that I am wrong, but the consequences are to great for our government to gamble on me being just another conspiracy theorist. I am not a scientist, I have contacted some of them, but I have a sick feeling about this and suddenly I see a possible and logical, if evil, explanation for the administration's slow response to the disaster, and it would also explain the weird reports of volunteer relief workers being turned away, the road checkpoints (in this country?), even the reports of FEMA sending away of truckloads of water and ice, communications lines being cut, and on and on, maybe I am wrong, but it does seem to fit. The excerpts here tell of only two of the very large number of Superfund sites, and then there are the sites that are not Superfund, the potential gravity of this is not being relayed to the public, this is very dangerous, when we see the reports of people being allowed to return, the stories of people going in to assist, the real danger needs to be uncovered here and the public has to know, all reports on public health safety concerns are relatively light and lacking in real, serious information. From rand.org TOXIC CHEMICAL FACTORY LITIGATION:1 ATKINS v. HARCROS2 In 1931, the Thompson-Hayward Chemical Company purchased one acre of property in Gert Town, a neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana, and began building a chemical factory.3 At that time, Thompson-Hayward was a Missouribased company that manufactured pesticides, and the residents of Gert Town were predominantly white, working-class families.4 The factory opened for production in 1941.5 At first, it only produced dry pesticides and all manufacturing took place indoors. But by the end of the 1940s, Thompson-Hayward was mixing wet pesticides in large outdoor vats; by the late 1950s, the company was also mixing wet and dry herbicides outdoors.6 This level of production continued for 20 more years. According to local residents, the outdoor kettles occasionally overflowed and the buildings emitted dust and fumes.7 In 1961, the factory and the name Thompson-Hayward were sold to T H Agriculture and Nutrition Company, Inc. (THAN), a subsidiary of the Netherlandsbased North American Philips Corporation (Philips).8 In 1975, activity at the factory began to slow. Production of wet pesticides and wet herbicides ceased, and for two years the factory produced only dry products.9 Manufacture of dry products ended in 1977, and the building was used solely as a warehouse for the remainder of the decade. In 1981, the factory and the name Thompson- Hayward were sold to Harcros Chemicals, Inc.10 Harcros first used the building to store industrial chemicals, dry-cleaning supplies, and pest-control supplies. Finally, the facility was closed entirely in 1986. The factory housed a large variety of chemicals over the five decades it was operative, including aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane, and DDT; the herbicide 2,4,5,-T (the main constituent of Agent Orange, which contains dioxin); the fungicide pentachlorophenal, which contains dioxin; and the dry-cleaning solvent perchloroethylene. 11 Even after production ceased, there were perchloroethylene and pesticide spills, and generally lax containment of toxins. The demographics of Gert Town also changed over the years. It is now a predominantly African-American neighborhood; some areas are impoverished, while others are working-class. Many of the factory’s closest neighbors complained among themselves of the dust and odor; however, economic considerations prevented them from taking significant action. The factory provided jobs for the residents and brought outside business into the community. In 1987, employees of the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board were struck by noxious fumes while conducting a routine maintenance inspection of the storm sewers near the facility.13 They reported the incident to the Water Board environmental enforcement office, and a preliminary investigation conducted in October 1987 revealed that the sewer system adjacent to the factory was contaminated with high levels of trichloroethane and tetrachloroethane—the components of the toxic dry-cleaning chemical, perchloroethylene.14 A cleanup of the facility’s drain lines into the local sewers commenced on October 30.15 On March 3, 1988, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issued an order requiring Harcros to halt the release of chemicals from the facility and also to remove and dispose of chemical wastes that remained in the sewer system.16 Eight months later, the DEQ and the Louisiana Department of Agriculture issued a joint order that required additional cleanup of the sewer system and the submission of a plan to remediate the site.17 Remediation services contracted by Harcros began in May 1989.18 The first step in remediation was to remove all toxic substances to a hazardous waste dump.19 Most of the buildings on the site had to be torn down because the bricks and cement had absorbed DDT and chlordane. This task was complicated by the presence of asbestos in the walls of the older structures. After Toxic Chemical Factory Litigation 321 the remediation crews tore the buildings down, they removed four feet of soil and the site was paved over with asphalt. The entire effort was estimated to cost $4 million and lasted four months. During this period the crews removed 75,000 gallons of toxic liquids along with millions of pounds of soil and concrete. The remediation was not entirely successful, however; 2600 tons of herbicide-contaminated soil reportedly could not be removed because it was so toxic that it could not be legally disposed of in any state. from Univ Mich As you drive into the Gordon Plaza subdivision you notice neatly groomed one-story brick homes, you see clean streets and well manicured lawns, and it is obvious that you are in a neighborhood where the homeowners take enormous pride in their homes. What you do not see is the sorrow and grief of a community who lost a daughter at the age of 16 to cancer, which her family attributes to the chemical laden soil she played in and the produce she ate from the family garden. You do not see the pain of a community that has lost mothers and fathers prematurely to cancers, heart attacks and ‘unknown causes’. You do not see the women who have lost their breasts to breast cancer or the 2 men who were shocked to discover that they also had breast cancer. You do not see the tension, stress and frustration between neighbors. You do not see the fear in the eyes of a mother when her child steps on the front lawn. What you soon realize by reading signs posted on front lawns, is that you are driving on, and these people are living on a former city dump with soil that the United States Environmental Protection Agency tested to have over 150 chemical in it, 50 of which are cancer causing. The Agriculture Street Landfill Community is located on top of an old city dump in New Orleans, Louisiana. The city dump was opened from 1909 to the late 1960’s. The 190 acre dump received waste from households, construction debris, ash from municipal waste incinerators, and debris from the devastation of Hurricane Betsy in 1965. No documents were kept as to what materials were dumped into the landfill but anything from household garbage to service station oil waste was dumped here, and the landfill was often on fire and commonly referred to as ‘Dante’s Inferno.’ Shortly after the dump (which was 17 feet deep and covered 95 acres) was closed it was covered by a light layer of sand. In 1969, the city and federal government supported and financed the building of a low-income community on the landfill. Part of the landfill was developed into three subdivisions, Press Park and Gordon Plaza, a housing complex for the elderly, and a small business complex. Part of the landfill was left as undeveloped land. In 1997 the EPA decided on a remedial plan, which was to remove 2 feet of soil from the area surrounding residents homes. After the soil is removed a plastic liner and a mesh liner is placed down and clean soil (sand) is placed on top of it. It is estimated that this clean-up plan, after completed will only clean up 10 percent of the site. Homes, sidewalks, driveways, roads and other obstructions cover the other 90 percent. So, only soil that is directly exposed will be cleaned up as the EPA predicts that it is unlikely that the “clean” soil will be re-contaminated by the surrounding “dirty” soil regardless of the sites’ low elevation and high water table. from solidwastemag.com 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.) The ASL can be thought of a sort of Love Canal for New Orleans -– and now it sits under water. The ASL site is three miles south of Lake Pontchartrain and about 2.5 north-northeast of the city's central business district (roughly halfway between the old French Quarter and the shore of Lake Pontchartrain). Disturbingly, the site is also very close to the Industrial Canal Levee, a section of which collapsed and allowed flood waters to pour in, almost directly in the direction of the ASL site. Government reports describe ASL as being "bounded on the north by Higgins Boulevard and south and west by Southern Railroads right-of-ways. The eastern boundary of the landfill extends from the cul-de-sac at the southern end of Clouet Street, near the railroad tracks to Higgins Boulevard between Press and Montegut Streets." 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. From Truth Out From 1941 to 1986 the Thompson-Hayward Chemical Plant, near Xavier University in the center of town, packaged and mixed pesticides such as DDT, the herbicide 2,4,5-T (the main constituent of Agent Orange, which contains dioxin), and the fungicide pentachlorophenal, which also contains dioxin. While the city and federal governments launched a massive cleanup effort throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the remediation was not entirely successful: 2,600 tons of herbicide-contaminated soil reportedly couldn't be removed because it was too toxic to legally dispose of in any state, according to a 1995 article by Mark Schleifstein in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. At the Agriculture Street Landfill, soil and debris are laden with DDT, lead, asbestos, and industrial waste - ironically, everything that was scraped from the city floor after Hurricane Betsy struck in 1965. In 1962, reports Solid Waste and Recycling magazine, "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.)" While the EPA eventually declared the dump a Superfund site (after the city had filled the area and built homes and a school above the infill of trash), the only cleanup the landfill underwent was the removal 5 inches of soil. A plastic barrier was put down and clean soil thrown on top.

Let the casinos move inland and give the water's edge back to the wetlands.

i would like to know what afect all this oil spilling will have ? really what can be done about it if any thing.