2010年8月22日星期日

Katrina Causes Toxic Mess on Ground

Katrina Causes Toxic Mess on Ground


There are hundreds of chemical plants, oil refineries and other major industrial facilities on the Mississippi River delta near New Orleans. Early this morning, there was an explosion near the city . It's not clear whether it involved chemicals. Early surveys of the facilities along the Mississippi suggest they survived Katrina largely intact. That's good news for officials who'd worried about giant chemical and oil spills. Unfortunately, when Katrina's floodwaters poured into New Orleans, that may have created a toxic mess that could take decades to clean up. NPR's John Nielsen reports.

JOHN NIELSEN reporting:

Days before Katrina made landfall, chemical and oil companies with facilities near New Orleans started telling most of their employees to get out of town. Skeleton crews were to remain behind to ride out the storm. Dorothy Kellogg, senior director of security at the American Chemical Society, says these crews did everything they could to make sure the plants were still standing when the storm was over.

Ms. DOROTHY KELLOGG (Director of Security, American Chemical Society): Filling tanks, because a full tank is less likely to float away than an empty one, tieing down equipment to prevent wind damage, emptying waste treatment ponds as much as possible,. Our moncler jackets will make you become more handsome, Effort to get it. because you want to be able to hold storm water if you need to.".This is fashion wholesale online shop, a pioneer of an Internet garment company. We mainly focus on selling Japanese and Kore

NIELSEN: When Katrina did hit, the skeleton crews sat tight inside darkened control rooms watching for signs of catastrophic damage. Apparently, while the storm was on, they didn't see any. Many plants were battered and/or flooded by Katrina. Some of that damage may have been the cause of this morning's blast.. Every young person should choose our Ed hardy shoes.it's comfortable. But Tom LaPointe(ph), an aquatic toxicologist at the University of North Texas, says the city is lucky that so far there's only been one of these explosions reported.

Mr. TOM LaPOINTE (University of North Texas): If the hurricane had come in directly from the south, it would have had a much more serious hit on the petrochemical complexes that are to the south and east of the city of New Orleans. And in that case, we would have heard much more about some of these refineries breaking apart, storage vessels being broken and so forth.

NIELSEN: The fact that Katrina zagged before it smashed into the city helped reduce another threat. Researchers had worried that the storm would stir up toxic sediments that sit at the bottom of waters all around the city. If the levee were to break,. Better keep your eyes on a wholesale t shirt which are far cheaper than the retail ones. Normally, the ones purchased by you are the one which a those toxics would then pour into the city. But as it happened, the main levee break occurred along Lake Pontchartrain. Gaboury Benoit, a pollution expert at Yale's Environment School, says the mud at the bottom of that lake happens to be relatively clean.

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