Delta Waters After
Katrina Now OK for Recreation, Officials Say
October 24, 2005 — By John Heilprin, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — While casting a nervous
eye at Hurricane Wilma, federal and state officials reported Friday that
the latest pollution data in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
indicated for the first time that the Mississippi Delta was again a safe
place to swim.
"This is encouraging for recreational uses, but the data should not be
used for assessing the safety of consuming shellfish," Benjamin
Grumbles, head of the Environmental Protection Agency's water office,
told reporters.
Environmental and health officials had previously recommended that
people avoid contact with floodwaters that have since been pumped into
Lake Pontchartrain and should use soap and clean water to decontaminate
themselves if contact couldn't be avoided. Sediment left behind should
be avoided because of fecal bacteria, chemicals, metals and other
contaminants it might contain, officials said Friday.
Water samples from 20 locations in the Gulf of Mexico's river channels
and near shorelines were collected aboard The Bold, EPA's sole ship for
monitoring ocean and coastal waters. The data from Sept. 27 to Oct. 2
showed the presence of a type of sewage-related bacteria, Enterococcus,
but at levels that didn't violate freshwater or marine water standards,
the agency said.
EPA was awaiting further analysis for another type of sewage-related
bacterium, Clostridium perfringens, which also causes diarrhea, nausea
and other stomach illness.
The agency on Friday dispatched officials to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency's regional headquarters in Atlanta and EPA's own
emergency center in Tallahassee, Fla., to deal with any oil or hazardous
material spills from Wilma.
FEMA and other federal and local agencies urged residents in Florida and
the Gulf of Mexico to watch closely Wilma's path. Some areas of the
Florida mainland were ordered evacuated ahead of the powerful,
slow-moving hurricane.
"We, like everyone else, have our eyes on the tracking of Hurricane
Wilma," Grumbles said.
In New Orleans, EPA has been allowing raw sewage not fully disinfected
to flow into the Mississippi River in at least two places because of
broken treatment facilities, said Chris Piehler, senior environmental
scientist for Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality.
Grumbles said EPA was "closely monitoring the situation."
There have been no such identifiable releases of sewage contamination in
the Gulf of Mexico's waters along Mississippi, said Phil Bass, director
of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality's Office of
Pollution Control.
"We're still advising, not because of water contamination, but because
of debris primarily in our waters, to stay out of the (Mississippi)
Sound," Bass said. "We're happy to report that some of our shrimping is
back in operation. Our fin fishery appears to be healthy and that's
beginning to come back."
Federal officials emphasized they were only commenting on the safety of
swimming or boating in Mississippi Delta waters and accidentally
swallowing a gulp. They still recommend not drinking the water and
expressed caution about consuming undercooked or raw shellfish such as
oysters.
The Food and Drug Administration "has no reason to question the safety
of commercially available seafood from Mississippi, Louisiana or
Alabama," said Donald Kraemer, the acting head of its seafood office.
Kraemer said none of the pollution data shows contamination "at or above
levels of concern" for crab, shrimp and most fish with fins.
Steve Murawski, chief science adviser to the Commerce Department's
National Marine Fisheries Service, said all the federal data sampling
and test results have been coordinated through the White House's Council
on Environmental Quality.
Murawski noted that all the results were preliminary, since some of the
contaminants might take time to work their way through the water, air
and land, and into the food chain.
Source: Associated Press |