Latest Environmental Information
EIP Bi-weekly Media Report
Oct 6-8, 2005 – Gulf Coast Environmental Awareness News Event
Outlet Subject Date
The Austin Chronicle Gulf Coast October 13, 2005
The Seattle Times Gulf Coast October 8, 2005
The Dallas Morning News Gulf Coast October 7, 2005
The Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, TX) Gulf Coast October 7, 2005
Energy Compass Gulf Coast October 7, 2005
The Houston Chronicle Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Salon.com Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Dallas Morning News story appeared in:
Centre Daily Times (PA) Gulf Coast October 7, 2005
Duluth News Tribune Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Biloxi Sun Herald Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Pioneer Press Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Monterey County Herald Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
San Jose Mercury News Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Myrtle Beach Sun News Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Fort Wayne News Sentinel Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
San Luis Obispo Tribune Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Tallahassee.com, FL Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Kentucky.com Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Bradenton Herald Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Kansas City Star Gulf Coast October 6, 2005
Note: We are still tracking for stories in the Mobile Register and the Biloxi Herald. Also, KPFT-FM 90.1 FM in Houston is doing a news spot today that will talk about the news event.
The Austin Chronicle
Naked City
October 14, 2005
• Hurricane Katrina survivors from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi joined environmental advocates from the Environmental Integrity Project and other groups in a press conference Thursday, speaking out against new Republican-backed energy legislation that eliminates key air-quality measures under the guise of encouraging more refining capacity. Led by Texas oil and gas patsy Rep. Joe Barton, the measure was bullied through the House in a 212-210 vote, held open eight times longer than usual. Survivors said the legislation, which waives Clean Air Act standards and relaxes pollution-control requirements, was like being kicked when you're down since their communities, many already polluted by industry, were left voiceless while still displaced or rebuilding. Since the measure does nothing to affect pump prices or curb fuel consumption, other survivors said they feel they're being exploited to enrich oil interests. Austin GOP Rep. Lamar Smith voted for the measure; Lloyd Doggett voted no. Senate Dems have threatened a filibuster. – D.M.
The Seattle Times
October 8, 2005 Saturday
Fourth Edition
ROP ZONE; News; Pg. A4
Across the Nation
Seattle Times staff and news services
Washington
U.S. court quashes softer pollution rules
A federal appeals court yesterday rejected what it called a Bush administration attempt to "pull a surprise switcheroo" by weakening the government's authority to monitor air pollution from power plants, refineries and factories.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia annulled the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) revisions of air-pollution monitoring requirements last year.
The court's action returns for the time being a stricter, Clinton-era standard that allows the EPA and states to require more monitoring from plants when they renew their operating permits every five years.
The ruling was in a suit brought by three environmental groups the Environmental Integrity Project, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice challenging the EPA's new interpretation.
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
October 7, 2005 Friday
SECOND EDITION
NEWS; Pg. 14A
House GOP duo tangle over gas-crunch proposal Barton accused of favoring oil industry; he defends energy bill
TODD J. GILLMAN, Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - On the eve of debate today on an energy bill pitched as the answer to the gas crunch, the chairman of the House Science Committee argued that energy Chairman Joe Barton's plan helps the oil industry far more than consumers and should be killed.
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert's withering critique, in a letter to fellow lawmakers Thursday, marked a rare departure from the teamwork usually seen and demanded among Republican leaders.
Mr. Barton defended his bill, saying it would ease gas prices and shortages by encouraging construction of new refineries. And he brushed off his fellow chairman with sarcasm.
"I'd like to see Chairman Boehlert put an alternative on the table that expands refinery capacity and reduces the price of gasoline in the midterm," he said. "People say, 'Chairman Barton, we want you to do something.' That's not just the speaker of the House and the president. That's when I'm pulling up to a gas station in my district and my license says U.S. Congress. ... They say, 'What are you going to do about high gas prices?' Well, I say, 'Well, I'm going to check with Congressman Boehlert of New York.'"
The duo have tangled before.
When Mr. Barton opened an inquiry earlier this year involving global warming, Mr. Boehlert publicly accused the Ennis Republican of trying to intimidate top researchers by prying into their backgrounds and funding sources.
Mr. Boehlert called the bill "misguided," taking issue with the premise that refiners need tax breaks with prices and profits at record levels, and capacity rising for years through expansion of existing facilities.
"The new energy bill will do nothing for consumers and will hurt taxpayers," Mr. Boehlert wrote, "but it sure will help the bottom line of oil companies."
Environmentalists accuse Mr. Barton of using refinery damage and gas spikes from recent hurricanes as a pretext to push provisions that he was unable to win when Congress passed a more sweeping energy package two months ago. They say the new bill would badly undermine clear-air rules by letting older factories and plants operate longer without having to upgrade pollution controls.
Eric Schaeffer, a former EPA enforcement chief who now heads the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project in Washington, cited one provision that would force groups that lose permit fights with refineries to pay the legal bills.
That provision is "designed to intimidate communities ... and to ram these [refinery] expansions through," he said.
An energy industry spokesman defended the proposal.
"Once again, environmentalist scare-mongering seeks to undermine common-sense reforms that shore up our energy infrastructure," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council.
Staff writer Randy Lee Loftis in Dallas contributed to this report.
E-mail tgillman@dallasnews.com
GRAPHIC: PHOTO(S): Joe Barton
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)
October 7, 2005, Friday
Bill to help build refineries would weaken clean-air laws
By Scott Streater
The battle is heating up over proposed legislation that would make it easier to build oil refineries but strip away some clean-air protections.
Congress is expected to vote today on the Gasoline for America's Security Act of 2005, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis.
The stated goal of the bill is to build refineries after hurricanes Katrina and Rita severely damaged facilities along the Gulf Coast, leading to fuel shortages and gasoline price spikes. Industry leaders say the hurricanes highlighted the need for the nation to increase dwindling fuel reserves.
But the bill also includes a number of provisions that would weaken clean-air laws. Included is a proposal that would allow the federal government to push back deadlines to comply with ozone standards in areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth that are affected by pollution blown in from other cities and states.
These provisions have drawn fierce opposition from clean-air advocates, who accuse Barton and others of taking advantage of a national tragedy to try to gut laws protecting human health and the environment.
Barton, speaking with reporters Thursday, said that despite the arguments of critics, "this bill sets in motion a chain of events that leads to lower gasoline prices."
He said, however, "I think it will be a tight vote."
Both sides stepped up lobbying efforts in Congress this week.
On Thursday, a group of hurricane survivors and clean-air advocates from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi -- where many refineries are located -- visited congressional leaders. They argued that weakening clean-air laws adds to the burden of rebuilding their communities by subjecting them to dirtier air.
"It seems to me that this is very disgusting," said Hilton Kelley, a displaced Port Arthur resident and clean-air advocate.
On the other side, labor unions sent a letter to Barton and Rep. John Dingell -- the ranking Democrat on Barton's Energy and Commerce Committee -- urging them to keep the environmental provisions in the bill.
The unions specifically support a provision in the bill that would limit federal requirements that pollution controls be installed whenever refineries and other industrial plants make expansions that increase emissions.
These requirements have slowed efforts to expand facilities, thus undermining "the competitiveness of American job sites," wrote Bill Cunningham, president of Unions for Jobs and the Environment, a Washington, D.C.-based group comprising of unions representing mine workers, boilermakers, electric utility workers and others.
Environmentalists say they do not object to expanding refining capacity, only to provisions in the bill that weaken clean-air protections.
One such measure is the proposal to extend ozone deadlines.
Dallas-Fort Worth is trying to meet a 2010 deadline to comply with federal ozone standards. If not, it could face potentially severe federal sanctions.
Barton has tried unsuccessfully to push the deadline extension through for several years. Congress declined to include it in the energy bill approved in August.
Staff Writer Maria Recio in Washington contributed to this report.
Energy Compass
October 7, 2005
FEATURE STORIES
United States: It's refining capacity, stupid
"It's refining capacity, stupid," appears to be the mantra of a White House and Republican-controlled Congress increasingly worried that high energy prices could push the USinto economic recession. "It ought to be clear to everybody that this country needs to build more refining capacity to be able to deal with the issues of tight supply," President George W. Bush told a rare White House press conference this week in the wake of two hurricanes that set the stage for a grim winter (see p3). But as Bush himself said, no new refineries have been built in the USin 30 years. The oil industry and Republicans say it's because of an exceptionally onerous regulatory regime, consumer groups and Democrats because oil companies are deliberately keeping supplies tight to ensure high profits. In Washington, the big question is what, if anything, lawmakers can do to persuade refiners to build new capacity.
USrefining capacity has shrunk by almost 3 million barrels per day in the last three decades, despite recent expansions totaling roughly 1.4 million b/d -- the equivalent of 12 new refineries -- according to Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group. Right now, Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Aramco are planning a $3.2 billion expansion of their Motiva refinery in Texasto make it the biggest in the US(EC Sep.16,p10). In a bid to encourage other firms to follow suit, Republicans have introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to ease environmental rules, provide tax breaks that favor expansions and ensure states do not clamp new regulations on refineries. It also envisages an easing in the Clean Air Act's controversial New Source Review (NSR) program, which requires companies to install costly pollution controls when refinery expansions or modifications increase toxic air emissions. The NSR proposals are in line with changes made by the administration that are now being challenged in the courts.
Democrats and consumer groups argue that red tape isn't the problem, greed is. They say that, over the past quarter-century, the government has received just one application for a new refinery, in Yuma, Arizona, and regulators took only nine months to grant a permit. Environmental regulations and permits haven't caused problems for expansions, either: In 1999 and 2000, the most recent years for which the government provided numbers, the Environmental Protection Agency received 12 applications for expansions. Democrats say that most were resolved within 12 months and about half were acted on in five months.
Analysts believe neither argument gives the whole picture. Federal regulators may issue permits in nine months, but firms have to jump through various hoops before they get to that stage, including environmental impact studies, local opposition and litigation. They also have to comply with environmental laws during the construction and operating phases. And at root, the question comes down to returns: Will profits justify the $4 billion-$5 billion cost of building a refinery, particularly given the industry's history of weak margins and overcapacity?
"No question over the past 15 yearsenvironmental regulations tended to lead companies to shut down or sell refineries. But I can't say it's the only factor," says Tom O'Connor, a former Mobil executive who now works for ICF Consulting. "It costs a lot of money to expand or construct a refinery and environmental regulations add to the burden." According to the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, the industry has had to invest more than $40 billion to comply with environmental rules.
Even with today's stellar margins in the US, analysts say companies are happier to build refineries in fast-growing Asian consuming countries like Chinaand India. There, a plant would take at least four years to build; at home, it would be longer, partly because of local opposition. Those who believe the refining industry is still a boom-and-bust business fear margins could collapse in the interim.
For all lawmakers' desire to do something about high energy prices, the Senate is unlikely to go along with the House refinery bill. At a recent Senate hearing, one industry expert was castigated by a Democratic Senator for suggesting that NSR should be eliminated to encourage refinery expansions. Key lawmakers say health issues have to be balanced against energy supply, and a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2001 that air pollution rules should be based on what's best for public health seems to underscore their point. Indeed, Ed Murphy, downstream general manager of the American Petroleum Institute, the biggest industry trade group, says companies aren't looking for environmental rollbacks, but regulatory certainty. "It's frustrating to hear people say we just don't want to increase capacity. What we are suggesting is if there is certainty and clarification, the market will take care of itself."
By Manimoli Dinesh, Washington
Oct. 6, 2005, 9:29PM
Refinery bill awaits vote
Measure aimed at easing the way for new projects
By DAVID IVANOVICH
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - With motorists still shelling out nearly $3 a gallon, the House is poised today to approve a bill designed to help oil companies build refineries.
Declaring "working people need gas to get to work," House Republicans will push through legislation they hope will help break the logjam that has long stymied plant construction.
"We haven't built a new refinery in this country since the mid-1970s," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Ennis. "One of the reasons is the labyrinth you have to run through to get them permitted."
Dubbed the Gasoline for America's Security, or GAS Act, the bill would help find sites for new refineries, compensate refiners trying to build plants for any regulatory or litigation delays, and reduce the number of fuels oil companies must produce.
Barton is confident his bill will pass the GOP-controlled House, albeit by a tight vote.
In the Senate, the refining legislation's fate is far less certain.
The House action comes just two months after Congress passed, and President Bush signed, an energy bill that was years in the making.
Usually lawmakers are loath to revisit an issue so quickly after passing such a major bill. But storm sisters Katrina and Rita have given a new urgency to the troubles plaguing the refining sector.
Nearly one-fifth of the nation's refining capacity remains out, which has kept gasoline prices high and raised fears of fuel shortages this winter.
Proponents of the bill point to estimates that the typical American household will spend $1,948 on gasoline this year, up 45 percent from 2002.
Construction of refineries had long been hurt by poor returns on investment. In recent years, however, refiners' profit margins are riding high. Refining analyst Jacques Rousseau with Friedman Billings Ramsey this week raised his earnings estimates for independent refiners through 2006.
Barton contends that by reducing the regulatory risks, his bill could spark a refining construction boom.
Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group representing the major oil companies, said the Barton bill sends a powerful signal to policymakers.
Environmentalists accuse House Republicans of trying to use the hurricanes to gut air and water regulations.
"What's happening here is exploitation of this national tragedy to really benefit special interests by allowing industry to pollute more in a way that will harm public health," said John Walke, clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project, doesn't believe refiners really will be interested in building new refineries, or making major expansions, until the "economics change and, more specifically, until imported gasoline gets more expensive."
The bill would require the president to identify sites on federal lands — including three closed military installations — that could be used as sites for new refineries.
The Energy Department would be the lead agency for finding sites for power plants. But state governors also would play a key role.
Because refinery projects can be held up for years because of regulatory or legal issues, the bill would authorize the Energy Department to compensate companies whose projects are delayed because of "something out of the ordinary," Barton said.
Barton's bill also would codify the Bush administration's interpretation of an environmental rule known as New Source Review. Refiners long complained they were being forced under the New Source Review rules to install new pollution equipment when making modest plant modifications or doing routine maintenance.
Environmentalists charged the Bush administration has tried to severely limit when New Source Review would kick in. They filed suit and had some success in court.
That provision has angered a number of Democrats, including Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, whose district includes many refineries along the Houston Ship Channel. Green has argued that the bill's New Source Review language could hamper Houston's program to clean up the city's air.
Barton's bill will also address the complaints of refiners about the patchwork of local rules that requires them to produce 17 gasoline and diesel fuel blends. The proposed bill would pare that to six fuel formulas.
Since Katrina first threatened the Gulf Coast, motorists across the country have been lodging complaints of price gouging. But federal law does not prohibit charging excessive prices. The new bill would ban price gouging nationwide.
On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., has drafted a similar, although less ambitious, refining bill. Inhofe has vowed to push ahead with his legislation, although no committee hearings have been scheduled.
Barton's bill includes a provision that would overturn a 28-year ban on oil tankers in Washington's Puget Sound. That prompted Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to threaten to filibuster any bill that contained such language.
And House members late Thursday were already considering dropping that language.
david.ivanovich@chron.com
Chronicle reporter Samantha Levine contributed to this report
Salon.com
October 7, 2005 Friday
Feature
Toxic gumbo
By Katharine Mieszkowski and Mark Benjamin
HIGHLIGHT: The EPA is failing to protect the Gulf Coast's homebound citizens from Katrina's poisons.
"On behalf of Mayor C. Ray Nagin and the city of New Orleans, welcome home!" the mayor announced Sept. 25 in a public statement. "You are entering the city of New Orleans at your own risk. Standing water and soil may be seriously contaminated; avoid contact." Limit your exposure, the mayor continued, "to airborne mold and wear gloves, masks and other protective materials to protect yourself. You must supply your own protective equipment."
"I'll give you 10 bucks for your boots," says Donna Harney, a fourth-grade teacher, to a reporter wearing knee-high black waders. Harney is standing on the oil-caked driveway of her best friend's house on Jacob Drive in Meraux, just southeast of New Orleans. A headache-inducing stench fills the air. A faint waterline rings the house, just inches below the top of the front doors. A chocolate-brown line covers the bottom quarter of the house. That's the oil line.
It forms a bathtub ring around a row of 20 or so modest brick houses that stretch up and down the street. Most look salvageable from the outside, but that illusion is dispelled the moment you step inside. Behind every front door is a toxic junkyard, where the remains of each family's possessions, rearranged by floodwaters into garbled piles -- and infested by weeks of mold and rot -- are coated in a putrid mud, thick with crude.
"Oil is everywhere," says Harney with disgust. "It's encrusted on the vehicles. It's on the houses." It's also on Harney's blue-and-white sneakers. She says that every store within 100 miles is sold out of rubber boots. Driving to Meraux, Harney says, "I cried on my way in, I'm not ashamed to say."
An umbrella of environmental laws, including the Superfund law, gives the Environmental Protection Agency considerable authority -- and in some cases the responsibility -- to ensure messes get cleaned up right. And the mess in southern Louisiana, as EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson himself admits, is "the largest natural disaster we've faced."
But Louisiana environmentalists, who for decades have battled oil companies and government agencies to improve the human and natural health of their polluted state, say EPA's tests are insufficient and its health warnings inadequate. "They read like 'Hints From Heloise,'" says Rick Hind, legislative director of the Greenpeace Toxics Campaign. National critics stress that EPA failed to comprehend the pollution that arose after the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11 and may be repeating the same mistakes in the Gulf Coast.
"That entire area has to be cleaned up before people move back in," says Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. "You could have tens of thousands of people getting seriously ill."
To describe the EPA's response to Katrina, "the two adjectives I would use are 'understaffed' and 'overwhelmed,'" says Oliver Houck, who runs the environment program at the Tulane University Law School. In past years, Houck says, federal and state agencies have been "primordial" in their failure to monitor pollution released from industrial facilities along "Cancer Alley," the swath of the Mississippi River that winds from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, dotted with 136 petrochemical plants and six refineries, all belching dense airborne toxins.
The oil spill in Meraux spouted from Murphy Oil Corp. Located in the working-class St. Bernard Parish, it's bordered by a farm of giant white circular tanks, where oil is stored for processing. During Katrina, one of the tanks ruptured, dumping raw crude into floodwaters, sewers and swimming pools. Murphy Oil says the spill is between 10,000 and 20,000 barrels. The U.S. Coast Guard puts it at 19,500 barrels, or 800,000 gallons. Today the oil and mud have dried and formed a cracked black layer of frosting on lawns and driveways.
Katrina caused at least 40 oil spills from Gulf Coast refineries and storage tanks, dumping more than 8 million gallons of crude into southern Louisiana towns, wetlands and shorelines. The Murphy spill is not the biggest. That honor goes to the one in Plaquemines Parish, where 3.7 million gallons of crude leaked from tanks.
The Exxon Valdez polluted Alaska's Prince William Sound with 11 million gallons of oil. But mopping up crude in the variegated Louisiana landscape will be far more difficult than it was in Alaska, where the oil was confined to one place. To date, according to the Coast Guard, 70,000 barrels of oil have dispersed into marshes and evaporated, while 55,000 barrels remain to be cleaned up. The fate of 2,000 underground tanks of petroleum products remains unknown.
Oil is not the only toxin that saturates Louisiana and threatens the health of residents returning to New Orleans and adjacent parishes. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality reports that muck covering the area is contaminated with human waste and bacteria, including E.coli, a fecal bacterium. It estimates that between 1,000 and 5,000 railroad cars have been damaged by Katrina, including some carrying chlorine or sulfuric acid. The EPA says water may be polluted by arsenic and lead from paint and the batteries of 350,000 submerged cars. Shattered homes and businesses are contaminated with asbestos and mold.
Currently, with the EPA at the helm, state and local crews are trolling Louisiana's streets and waterways in trucks and boats, conducting water, soil and air tests. The EPA is posting the results on its Web site, accompanied by guidelines for returning citizens. It advises them to wear gloves, goggles and respiratory protection. It tells them to open windows to avoid explosive gases and possible carbon monoxide poisoning. Remove and discard wet material that may have mold or bacteria, it says, and avoid mixing household cleaners that can produce toxic fumes.
But environmentalists and EPA staffers say that environmental agencies are not conducting adequate and comprehensive tests, meaning that people are returning to the Gulf Coast without sufficient information about health hazards. Ultimately, the decision to allow people to return to the Gulf Coast resides with state and local authorities like Mayor Nagin. On its Web site, the EPA defines its role as merely helping decision makers make an informed decision. EPA deputy administrator Marcus Peacock told a House panel Sept. 29 that the EPA was responsible for "preventing, minimizing or mitigating threats to public health, welfare, or the environment."
But critics say the agency should be more active in preventing people from returning to the Gulf Coast. "The EPA has not done a thorough assessment of the contamination of [St. Bernard] parish or any other parishes that have been contaminated," says Hugh Kaufman, an EPA senior policy analyst at the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. On Sept. 12, EPA Science Advisory Board member Richard Gilbert stated that the EPA's current plan of sampling 24 affected areas was "very limited in scope" and didn't address the full spectrum of contamination throughout the area. "I expect that questions will be asked about whether the data are applicable to non-sampled flooded parts of Louisiana that are close to chemical plants or other potential sources of pollution," he said.
Appearing Sept. 29 before a House subcommittee on the environment, Erik D. Olson, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said it was the EPA's moral and legal obligation to warn and protect the nation's citizens. Yet based on NRDC's research in the Gulf Coast, he said, he was concerned that EPA was both delaying its test results and doing a poor job of communicating the results to people who didn't have Internet access. "Unfortunately, EPA apparently has decided to 'punt' to local authorities the responsibility to protect citizens' health in the wake of the massive Katrina-related oil and hazardous chemical releases," he said.
Long-term risks from the pollutants now being found in and around New Orleans include cancer, birth defects, spontaneous abortions and asthma. The EPA has also underplayed the threat of mold. Health experts say trillions of mold spores, exacerbated by the late summer heat, could sicken a large population of children, people with asthma, older residents, and people with weakened immune systems, the New York Times reports.
Houck says some illnesses might not show up for years or may never be identified by health authorities. Katrina wiped out many impoverished communities in southern Louisiana, and often indigent people cannot afford to go to doctors. "They are going to get sick and they are not going to know why," Houck says.
Despite the destruction and health dangers, the EPA has not taken measures to prevent people from returning to southern Louisiana. And Nagin seems intent on bringing people back fast. "There is a huge tension between redevelopment as soon as possible and cleanup as well as possible," Houck says. Jean Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, says the agency would like to proceed with more caution, but allowing people to return to their homes "is not really our decision. We can advise the mayor, but it is his decision whether or not he wants to bring people back in. That is not something we have control over."
The EPA is sending mixed messages. It recently issued a press release stating that levels of benzene, a known carcinogen, are "slightly elevated" around Murphy's Oil USA. But the actual test results, buried in fine print, reveal that benzene levels are 45 times higher than the state standard. Some of the EPA data has confused Nagin himself. At a Sept. 19 press conference, Nagin said an EPA report to him on the danger of returning to some neighborhoods was confusing. "We also looked at the [EPA] report as it relates to flooded areas," Nagin said. "And it was a very clever attorney who wrote the report. So it basically bounced on both sides of the issue and didn't really tell you much."
While the mayor may be prematurely opening the gates to New Orleans to get business humming again, people are driving past the grime and gunk -- and health warnings -- for the simple reason that they want to see their homes again and save what they can. "In America, your home is your castle, and now it's a contaminated castle," says Darryl Malek-Wiley, Louisiana environmental justice organizer for the Sierra Club. "People deal with that in all sorts of different ways. Some go into denial." And some, like Harney, who uses roofing tiles that have flown off her friend's house as steppingstones across the sludge on the driveway, go into shock. Harney looks disgusted as she steps through the front door. The duplex is rented by Edie Labarriere, a single mother and Harney's best friend, who lived here with her two sons, ages 12 and 9, before Katrina. Since the hurricane, the family has been living with Harney at her house in Harahan, La. Just now, the Labarrieres are on their way here to salvage what's left of their things.
From the outside, the duplex doesn't look too bad. A yellow X is spraypainted on each of the two front windows, indicating that it's been checked out by search-and-rescue. The number 0 on both X's indicate that no one's been found, dead or alive.
Inside, three wooden kitchen chairs are lodged at crazy angles. They are stuck in a tar pit of thick, black, rancid goo, which is peppered with random household items: a clothes hanger, stray pieces of paper, and what was once a maroon raincoat. There's nowhere to step that isn't black mire, which holds everything within its oily grasp.
In the backyard, the children's bikes sit encrusted in filth. "I guess we won't have to take their bicycles home," she sighs. A hammock, ripped from its tree, lies plastered to the backyard fence, which now leans into the neighbor's yard. Near the back door, the muck on the ground grows smoky gray, then a sickly green. "Ewww," she says. "I gotta go in there, people. God, this stuff stinks. Am I a good friend or am I a good friend?"
Soon after Katrina, St. Bernard Parish president Henry Rodriguez dubbed the area "another Love Canal." A few weeks later, says parish spokesman Steve Cannizaro, Rodriguez consulted with the EPA, "and they told us the area was not toxic, and we decided everyone has a right to see their home, and so we let them back in."
Many citizens and activists in St. Bernard Parish, also home to a ExxonMobil refinery, wanted to return home but didn't trust the EPA. In late September, 180 residents of the parish met at a Holiday Inn in Baton Rouge, seeking information about pollution in their neighborhood. Everyone was full of questions: "What is EPA doing?" "How big was the spill?" "What is Murphy going to do?" In fact, St. Bernard residents are so suspicious of the local oil companies that over a year ago they persuaded the parish to hire an independent environmental engineer.
But today, says Kenneth Ford, president of St. Bernard Citizens for Environmental Quality, the engineer is nowhere to be found. "We're disappointed," says Ford. "Without his scientific proof that the parish is not contaminated, no one should be allowed in right now."
Cannizaro replies that the parish is comfortable with the EPA's advice to allow people to return. What's more, he says, the parish of 68,000 residents "is one step away from being financially destroyed; businesses are flat on their ass." People need to return and start buying and building again. "You can't operate a government without taxes," he says.
Canvassing the parish in late September is a four-man crew from Greenpeace. They have spent weeks living in a Cruise America R.V. with an aluminum boat strapped on top, documenting the environmental destruction on the Gulf Coast. They have taped the letters "TV" on the windshield of their Jeep to make passing military and police security checkpoints easier. In weeks of surveying the damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Greenpeace guys attest that they've seen some hideous sights, like an offshore oil rig in the Gulf that's been ripped from its moorings and turned upside down, leaving a five-mile-long oil slick in its wake.
John Hocevar, a marine biologist for Greenpeace, says that 40 percent of the coastal wetlands in Mississippi have been so damaged they're no longer able to perform their ecological function as a natural water filter and habitat to birds and wildlife. In Port Arthur, Texas, they saw a refinery so damaged by Hurricane Rita that two of its storage tanks had imploded. But the neighborhood surrounding Murphy Oil is by far the worst that they've encountered.
"This community could have rebuilt but Murphy Oil killed it," says Mark Floegel, a toxics campaigner for Greenpeace. "It would have been bad. But the oil spill makes it so much worse."
Currently, the company is working with the Coast Guard and the EPA to mop up the spill. Dump trucks, steam shovels and hydraulic pumps scoop up contaminated soil around the tank and pump the oil into tankers. The workmen are dressed in heavy boots and yellow hazard pants. One tells the Greenpeace crew flatly: "Nobody here is going to answer any of your questions."
The Murphy spill was such a direct hit to the neighborhood that the company is already facing two class-action lawsuits brought by lawyers on behalf of St. Bernard residents. Another suit is being brought by the owners of the Paris Palms Shopping Center in Chalmette for the damages it suffered. In response, Murphy has announced that it will give $5 million to hurricane relief to the area through the United Way, the local school system and the parish itself.
The oil spill is clearly the final indignity after a brutal storm. But environmentalists fear that the real story isn't getting out.
"So far, from what we've seen, we don't really have any reason to believe that what we're being told is really the whole story," says Hocevar. "If you don't look, there's nothing to see," he continues. "We have an administration that has been cutting back on the EPA investigative enforcement." According to a 2004 report by the Environmental Integrity Project, the number of civil lawsuits filed by the federal government under the Bush administration dropped 75 percent from the number in the last three years of the Clinton reign. Eric Schaeffer, the former head of the EPA enforcement office, who oversaw the project, told the Los Angeles Times, "If you're a big energy company, you're basically on holiday from enforcement."
Greenpeace isn't conducting independent testing of the air or groundwater, but other groups are. Under normal circumstances, a small nonprofit, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, distributes air-sampling kits to residents who live near refineries and petrochemical plants so that they can independently monitor what's being spewed into the air around them. But post-Katrina, the group sent a professional sampling team from Dynamac Corp. into St. Bernard Parish to take 10 soil samples. The results are due soon. NRDC also plans to work with local environmental groups to conduct a battery of independent tests.
Senate Republicans, led by Environment and Public Works Committee chairman James Inhofe -- who has declared that global warming is a hoax -- have introduced a bill that would allow EPA to waive clean water and air laws during the cleanup. The EPA itself is drafting a plan that would allow the agency to waive state regulations on smog emissions or pollutants pouring out of coal plants. In response, Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said: "It's bad enough that big polluters want to exploit the tragedy to pollute more, but it's even worse that Washington Republicans want to help them do it."
A draft for the EPA plan states that for the agency to act there must be "an Act of God or another event that could not have reasonably been foreseen or prevented." "They call it an act of God," says Malek-Wiley of Louisiana's Sierra Club. "But I was just in St. Bernard Parish and it was heartbreaking to see that people's lives are now coated with a film of oil from Murphy. God didn't put the oil tanks in those people's backyards." At a Sept. 14 press conference, EPA administrator Johnson defensively stated, "Everyone is looking to EPA for what are the results and are these done in a scientifically appropriate and sound way? We're doing that. We're not trying to be bureaucratic. We want to make sure the results are ones that we can all stand by."
Critics say they don't believe the EPA is trying to cover up the widespread destruction and health hazards in southern Louisiana. But they have little faith in the federal agency's ability to assess the grievous problems and be forthright with the public. As we know, it's not first time the EPA has faced this issue.
The collapse of the Twin Towers four years ago blanketed lower Manhattan in a dust of asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete. Within days, then-EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman was assuring New Yorkers that the air was safe and encouraged them to go back to work at Wall Street. "I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breathe," Whitman said in an EPA press release a week after the towers fell.
But an EPA inspector general's report in August 2003 concluded that Whitman did not have sufficient data to support her calming tone. The report says the White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" about the environment at Ground Zero. Critics have long speculated that the White House wanted to get New York's financial motor, Wall Street, up and running again -- pollution be damned.
To date, nobody knows what the environmental impact has been on the thousands of people, including pregnant women, who lived and worked near Ground Zero. A study by the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York showed that nearly 80 percent of 9,000 first responders may have suffered some lung ailments and half still had those problems a year after the attacks. Several studies are under way on the possible long-term effects on pregnant women and infants living near Ground Zero.
Twelve Manhattan residents sued EPA last year alleging that the agency may have endangered the health of tens of thousands of workers and residents in lower Manhattan. That case is pending.
Pressure to open New Orleans, says Kaufman of EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, is as intense today as it was on Wall Street soon after Sept. 11. "The appearance of 'back-to-normal' gets local industry going, then real estate, and so on," he says. "It's the same issue today, except that the locations and contaminants are different, and people talk with a different accent."
A week after the attacks in New York, the EPA instructed citizens to use a wet rag or wet mop to clean their apartments, though in some cases the dust may have been contaminated by asbestos. On Sept. 14, 2005, the EPA instructed citizens returning to New Orleans to "wear gloves, goggles" and use "respiratory protection" when handling material that may contain asbestos, a known carcinogen.
The two messages are "eerily similar," New York Democrat Rep. Nadler wrote in a letter to President Bush on Sept. 21. "I am deeply concerned that many of the same mistakes made by EPA in response to 9/11 are being repeated on the Gulf Coast."
"This is a potential catastrophe," Nadler says today. "We don't want two catastrophes. We had maybe a thousand killed from the hurricane. You want another thousand killed because of the environment? Maybe five thousand?" Nadler wants to see the EPA conduct a more thorough environmental assessment of the city, rather than just through its spot samples. He also wants EPA to ensure that private companies are held liable for contamination.
That wish, according to environmentalists, shows few signs of coming true. Both the EPA and the Louisiana DEQ have signaled that they will rely on regulated industries to police themselves and tell the government if there has been some major spill. The EPA administrator during the Clinton administration, Carol M. Browner, once announced an initiative to crack down on illegal pollution along the Mississippi River because some companies could not be trusted. Browner at the time said there was an "unprecedented amount of illegal pollution in the Mississippi River drainage." Asked at the Sept. 14 press conference about leaks or damage from companies that line the drainage, or Cancer Alley -- Johnson said he was "not aware" of any problems. "The companies are going to do their own assessments, so we're all working very cooperatively to try to do an assessment."
Today, more than a month after Katrina's wrath, taking inventory of the wholesale environmental destruction remains premature -- for both the EPA and the activists. "We are still in the assessment stage in a lot of this," says Kelly of the Louisiana DEQ. "The problem is so monumental that nobody has dealt with anything like this before."
As she steps gingerly through the muck in the Labarrieres' backyard, Harney is cheered when she finds a crocheted picture that spells "Labarriere." The hanging is a gift she'd bought for the family and promised Edie's 9-year-old, Andrew, she'd try to recover. She carefully extracts the cream-colored crochet from its glass frame, thinks about trying to salvage the smudged pane, and decides against it. She folds up the crochet carefully and puts it in her pocket. Taking a long, panoramic look at the surrounding debris, her cheer vanishes. "You can't live in this place," she says. "You can't live down here."
