Storm Rescuers Overwhelmed by Toxic Waste & A Miraculous Molecular Solution

Rescuers awed by ruin revealed as water recedes
By MARJORIE HERNANDEZ
Scripps Howard News Service

NEW ORLEANS - The putrid smell of toxic, mud-caked debris baking in the humid Southern heat wafted almost 200 feet above the ground.

Trees that were once green and lush are now brown and in pieces, many bending to the awesome power of a Category 4 hurricane that pounced on this city and its surrounding parishes more than two weeks ago. Murky water as black as tar in some places and dull green in others still covered parts of the city.

High-powered pumps delivered by German crews continue to drain tons of water from low-lying areas, revealing the magnitude of death and destruction Hurricane Katrina unleashed on the Big Easy.

After hundreds of search-and-rescue missions on a UH1H or "Huey" air ambulance helicopter, Capt. Timothy Eaton of the Wisconsin National Guard 832nd Medical Company still can’t get over the scope of Katrina’s reach.

"It’s biblical," he said. "The devastation is so incredible. No one agency could guess what was needed. There are just no words to describe the damage."

Although most flood-damaged areas of coastal Louisiana have been evacuated, search-and-rescue teams from the Army National Guard continued their vigil over New Orleans, taking to the skies in helicopters to canvass the area for residents who might still be trapped in their homes.

Flying over St. Bernard’s Parish, the flight crew surveyed empty streets covered knee-deep in mud. Piles of destroyed cars were scattered all over the unidentifiable streets. While some homes were down to their foundations, others somehow had withstood Katrina’s 145 mph winds.

The amount of water damage and mold, however, will eventually consume the homes, which might have to be leveled anyway, said Chief Warrant Officer Michael J. Knuppel.

In the first few days after the hurricane, helicopter crews dropped water and other supplies to people trapped in the area. Instead of evacuating right away, some residents "probably decided to stay because they had some water," he said.

Many simply didn’t comprehend the amount of water and debris in the city and decided to wait until the water levels went down, Sgt. Craig Hoffman said.

When rescuing trapped residents from their homes, the crew has several factors to consider, Knuppel said. Because the helicopter is hovering low above the ground, the flight crew must be mindful of power lines, other rescue vehicles and debris that could harm the evacuee and the crew.

While the Army National Guard canvassed from the air, Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 40 members from California’s Naval Base Ventura County, Port Hueneme, toured St. Bernard Parish, where they cleared a government building and moved destroyed cars from roadways. The crews went to other devastated areas, including Port Sulfur, about 40 miles southeast of New Orleans.

"The parish has a significant amount of planning to do as they get beyond the basic functions and take the next step to rebuild their community," said NMCB 40’s Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Adams.

Continuing northwest into New Orleans proper, the amount of devastation did not decrease. Highways into the downtown area once jam-packed were completely desolate.

The Superdome, where thousands of residents crammed in to seek shelter, was left abandoned, with huge portions of its dome destroyed by wind and smoke.

From a bird’s-eye view, the streets remained largely desolate except for the presence of military personnel from various units and civilian contractors.

The smell from residential areas submerged in water continued into the downtown area of New Orleans, an area once lauded for its colorful shops, cozy jazz bars and world-renowned restaurants.

Now, there is debris throughout the city.

"You get used to that smell somehow," Knuppel said as he maneuvered the Huey above one of the still submerged parishes.

AN ECOLOGICAL HAZARD
Report offers ’grave’ view of impact on environment

By DINA CAPPIELLO
Houston Chronicle

Drums full of hazardous medical waste and industrial chemicals float in the tainted floodwaters.

As the water recedes, it leaves behind a sludge so laden with petroleum that federal officials are having trouble analyzing it.

Millions of gallons of oil have spilled from refinery storage tanks. And at least one hazardous waste site - an old New Orleans landfill - is submerged, increasing the risk that chemicals buried long ago could escape.

These are the early signs of the environmental destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, a storm that struck one of the most industrial and polluted areas of the country when it made landfall on the Gulf Coast.

Along the hurricane’s path sat 31 hazardous-waste sites and 466 facilities handling large quantities of dangerous chemicals. What impact - if any - the storm had on these areas is still being analyzed by the hundreds of personnel deployed, including those aboard mobile laboratories and in air-pollution-scanning aircraft.

"This is the largest natural disaster that we believe the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and nation has faced," EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said during a media briefing Wednesday.

"We are concerned about the water, we are concerned about the land, but we are also concerned about the air," he said.

"It is certainly a volume problem," he said referring to the debris, "but in other cases, it is a hazardous materials problem that needs to be dealt with."

Reaction to the report
The briefing was the grimmest and most comprehensive picture of the hurricane’s toll on the environment offered by the EPA since the storm struck 2 1/2 weeks ago .

The status of the air, water and soil in the affected areas will help determine when it will be safe for people to return. Already, the agency has issued advisories warning people not to wade in or drink the floodwaters based on early tests that found it contained high concentrations of bacteria and the toxic metal lead.

Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said the briefing he got Wednesday from the EPA was a "a grave and sobering assessment."

"We heard that the degree of environmental damage is considered catastrophic," Jeffords said.

Among the developments revealed Wednesday:

•More recent tests on floodwaters detected a new suite of chemicals, including hexavalent chromium, a chemical used in metal plating, and arsenic, which is used to treat wood.
•More than 5,000 containers, containing everything from gas to medical waste, have been collected.
•The EPA has instructed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to use booms to prevent the oil and gasoline floating on top of the water from entering canals, the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. Aerators - blowing oxygen in the water - have been set up in some canals to help fish breathe.
•On flights over the area, officials detected the industrial chemical chloroacetic acid leaking from a 55-gallon drum, a gas-well fire and numerous oil spills and sheens, although monitoring detected no chemicals above federal workplace standards.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, in charge of the 16 now-closed wildlife refuges along the Louisiana coast, said the storm reduced one - the 18,273-acre Breton National Wildlife Refuge - to half its size and caused $94 million worth of damage to its facilities. About 50 sea turtle nests were lost on the Alabama coast. And dunes harboring an endangered mouse, and trees that are home to endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers, have been destroyed.

The science behind it
Assessment of the storm’s environmental damage was delayed for more than a week while federal officials charged with keeping tabs on public lands and waters helped with rescue operations. The EPA took its first water tests Sept. 3. Earlier this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent a research vessel into the Gulf to begin assessing the storm’s effects on the fish, water and sediments.

"We have had some reports of fish kills. But there were also some prior to the hurricane from some harmful algal bloom activity," said Peter Ortner, the chief scientist for NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami.

But he cautioned that with more time, Katrina could wreak more havoc, including in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, another locale officials will be studying.

The science itself has been hampered by the storm. Analysis of air pollution was hindered since some of the state’s monitors were down, either from damage or no electricity, according to the EPA. Flooding has restricted access to some sites and limited soil testing. And the National Marine Fisheries Service laboratories in Pascagoula, Miss., were severely damaged.

The EPA is just beginning to assess the water quality in Lake Pontchartrain, the Gulf and Mississippi River, receptacles for the tainted soup that covered New Orleans.

The largest oil spill documented to date occurred at the Murphy Oil Corp. refinery in Chalmette, La., where floodwaters lifted a storage tank off the ground. When the steel tank settled, the structure crumpled and 819,000 gallons of oil spilled into the refinery and surrounding St. Bernard Parish, a company spokesman said.

"The vast majority was contained in refinery boundaries, but an undetermined quantity did go beyond that. It could have affected some of the neighboring houses in the area, but we will have to see," said Mindy West, a spokesman for Murphy, which processes 125,000 barrels , or 5.25 million gallons, of crude oil per day.

Mycoremediation: Mushrooms can Save the World Breaking Down the Most Deadly Chemicals with Mother Nature’s Magic

From a piece of tissue the size of one tenth of your little fingernail, what we call a clone, cells can be grown exponentially into millions of pounds of mushrooms in as little as several months. More than 10% of the growing medium or "substrate" (straw, sawdust, compost, most agricultural and forest debris) can be converted into a protein- and vitamin-rich food. Not only are these mushrooms nutritious, they have demonstrated abilities in enhancing the human immune system, and they produce a slew of natural antibiotics. Yet it is the residual mycelium in that substrate that holds the greatest potential for ecological rehabilitation.

Mycelia can serve as unparalleled biological filters. When I first moved to my property, I installed an outdoor mushroom bed in a gulch leading to a saltwater beach where clams and oysters were being commercially cultivated. An inspection showed that the outflow of water from my property was jeopardizing the quality of my neighbor’s shellfish with the bacteria count close to the legal limit. The following year, after the mushroom beds were colonized with mycelium, the coliform count had decreased to nearly undetectable levels. This led to the term I have coined "mycofiltration", the use of fungal mats as biological filters.

Mycelium produces extracellular enzymes and acids that break down recalcitrant molecules such as lignin and cellulose, the two primary components of woody plants. Lignin peroxidases dismantle the long chains of hydrogen and carbon, converting wood into simpler forms, on the path to decomposition. By circumstance, these same enzymes are superb at breaking apart hydrocarbons, the base structure common to oils, petroleum products, pesticides, PCBs, and many other pollutants.

For the past four years I have been working with Battelle Laboratories, a non-profit foundation, whose mission is to use science to improve environmental health. Battelle is a major player in the bioremediation industry, and widely used by the United States and other governments in finding solutions to toxic wastes. The marine science laboratory of Battelle, Sequim, Washington became interested, as their mandate is to improve the health of the marine ecosystem. Under the stewardship of Dr. Jack Word, we began a series of experiments employing the strains from my mushroom gene library, many of which were secured through collecting specimens while hiking in the old growth forests of the Olympic and Cascade mountains. We now have applied for a patent utilizing mycelial mats for bioremediation, a process we have termed "mycoremediation".

After several years, and redundant experiments to prove to naysayers that our data was valid, we have made some astonishing discoveries. (I am continually bemused that humans "discover" what nature has known all along.) The first significant study showed that a strain of Oyster mushrooms could break down heavy oil. A trial project at a vehicle storage center controlled by the Washington State Dept. of Transportation (WSDOT) enlisted the techniques from several, competing bioremediation groups. The soil was blackened with oil and reeked of aromatic hydrocarbons. We inoculated one berm of soil approximately 8 feet x 30 feet x 3 feet high with mushroom spawn while other technicians employed a variety of methods, ranging from bacteria to chemical agents. After 4 weeks, the tarps were pulled back from each test pile. The first piles employing the other techniques were unremarkable. Then the tarp was pulled from our pile, and gasps of astonishment and laughter welled up from the observers. The hydrocarbon-laden pile was bursting with mushrooms! Oyster mushrooms up to 12 inches in diameter had formed across the pile. Analyses showed that more than 95% of many of the PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) were destroyed, reduced to non-toxic components, and the mushrooms were also free of any petroleum products.

After 8 weeks, the mushrooms had rotted away, and then came another startling revelation. As the mushrooms rotted, flies were attracted. (Sciarid, Phorid and other "fungus gnats" commonly seek out mushrooms, engorged themselves with spores, and spread the spores to other habitats). The flies became a magnet for other insects, which in turn brought in birds. Apparently the birds brought in seeds. Soon ours was an oasis, the only pile teeming with life! We think we have found what is called a "keystone" organism, one that facilitates, cascade of other biological processes that contribute to habitat remediation. Critics, who were in favor of using plants (as in "phytoremediation") and/or bacteria, reluctantly became de facto advocates of our process since the mushrooms opened the door for this natural sequencing.

In this series of experiments, our group made two other significant discoveries. One involved a mushroom from the old growth forest that produced an army of crystalline entities advancing in front of the growing mycelium, disintegrating when they encountered E. coli, sending a chemical signal back to the mother mycelium that, in turn, generated what appears to be a customized macro-crystal which attracted the motile bacteria by the thousands, summarily stunning them. The advancing mycelium then consumed the E. coli, effectively eliminating them from the environment. The other discovery, which I am not fully privy to, involves the use of one of my strains in the destruction of biological and chemical warfare agents. The research is currently classified by the Defense department as one mushroom species has been found to break down VX, the potent nerve gas agent Saddam Hussein was accused of loading into warheads of missiles during the Gulf War. This discovery is significant, as VX is very difficult to destroy. Our fungus did so in a surprising manner.

We believe that buffer zones around streams work primarily because of the mycelium resident in the first few inches of soil. Buffers with multi-canopied trees and shrubs combined with grasses, and the debris fall-out they provide, afford a mycologically rich zone, filtering out run-off from adjacent farms, highways and suburban zones. The mycologically rich riparian zones are cooler, attract insects which lay larvae (grub for fish), and then foster bird-life. Once the riparian zones achieve a plateau of complexity, they become self-sustaining. Amazingly, I have not heard of a single researcher ever mention the primary role fungi play in riparian buffers, let alone the purposeful introduction of mycelial colonies to protect watersheds. This method is ingeniously simple in its design and yet seemingly out of grasp of politicians. The prejudice against mushrooms is a form of biological racism-mushrooms are just not taken seriously.

Mycofiltration is a natural fit to John Todd’s "Living Machine®" use of estuary ecosystems to break down toxic wastes. The marriage of upland use of mushroom mycelium with estuary environments could solve-in the short term-some of the greatest challenges threatening our ecosystem, and truly give meaning to the word "sustainability". We are currently moving towards unifying these two friendly technologies in the creation of a new paradigm for the 21st century. However, we need help.

Conclusions

What our team has discovered given our elementary research is that the fungal genome has far greater potential in treating a wide variety of environmental and health concerns than we could have conceived. Although we have looked at just a few of the mushroom species resident in the Old Growth, clearly these ancestral strains of mushrooms have survived millennia due to their inherent ability to adapt. These adaptive mechanisms are the very foundation of ecological stability and vitality in an increasingly more rapidly changing environment. Mushrooms are "smart" fungi. These discoveries coming to me are perhaps no accident. Your reading this article is perhaps no accident. Regardless, let’s take advantage of a unique coincidence to empower individuals, communities and vast ecologies by harnessing the power of mushroom mycelium.

What can you do? Delineate your garbage into categories. Not only compost all organic debris, but segregate the refuse into piles appropriate for a variety of desired mushroom species. Inoculate cardboard and paper products, coffee grounds, and wood debris with mushroom spawn. Teach children about the role of fungi, especially mushrooms, in the forests and their critical role in building soils. Encourage mushrooms to grow in your yards by mulching around plants. Take advantage of catastrophia-natural disasters are perfect opportunities for community-action recycling projects. We should learn from our elders. Native peoples worldwide have viewed fungi as spiritual allies. They are not only the guardians of the forest. They are the guardians of our future.

http://fungiperfecti.com/mycotech/mycova.html


A front-end loader pushes thousand of gallons of sludge down the street in Chalmette., La. The oil was spilled into a residential neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina breeched storage talks at a refinery.
National Guard entrenched in muck on disaster’s front lines

By J. Jioni Palmer
NEWSDAY

CHALMETTE, La. - Slogging through the muck — at times knee-high — in a door-to-door quest to account for every life lost, members of the Colorado National Guard’s Bravo Company 1-157 Artillery Unit say their will is being tested in more ways than they thought imaginable.

The stench is overwhelming — often in homes where food and other perishables have rotted in the sweltering heat for almost two weeks since Hurricane Katrina smacked southeastern Louisiana.

On the streets that are passable on foot, each step is laborious, making the recovery process painstakingly slow.

"It’s like stepping knee-deep in a Port-A-Potty," Sgt. Noah McElroy said during a momentary break from covering an area just east of Parish Road. His assessment is greeted by a chorus of "yeah, that’s it" and "you got it" from fellow soldiers.

The Colorado unit arrived about a week ago and is one of several teams in the parish now charged with reconnaissance — determining if there are bodies of people or pets and which units should return to deal with them.

Joseph Brocato, operations chief of the Central Maryland Task Force — a collection of fire and police personnel from the Baltimore area — said his people are trudging through three types of terrain, none desirable.

"The dry is better than the sludge, and the sludge is better than the wet," he said.

Aside from hampering the recovery process, the more time that passes, the more treacherous the conditions become to the health of the rescue crews.

William Goodwin, chief of the Baltimore Fire Department, said the accumulated sewage, oil, myriad chemicals — household and industrial — and stagnant water has created a toxic gumbo that grows more deadly with each passing hour.

The slow ebb of the floodwaters, on top of the heat and humidity, are a perfect recipe to allow bacteria to germinate with potentially lethal consequences.

While rescue workers are not likely to ingest the contaminated goop, he said, sloshing around in it could send droplets flying into open eyes and mouths. Or a misstep could send a rescue worker tumbling face-forward.

In addition, Goodwin said, the bacteria is airborne in many sections of St. Bernard Parish.

"In certain areas, it is already a serious threat," he said, after examining parts of the parish where extensive mold infestation has overtaken homes.

Brocato said the conditions are "slowing our people down because we have to take extra precautions."

Recovery workers wear rubber boots — often hip-waders — two pairs of gloves and, in some cases, respiratory equipment. Brocato said he and team leaders are constantly reassessing the perils of each mission.

"It may come to the point that it is not worth the risk," he said, pausing as if to absorb the weight of that decision — that some of the deceased might not be recovered for some time.

Goodwin shook his head in frustration. "Who would have thought that in day 12 of a disaster, we’d still be asking ourselves these questions? Usually at this point, we’re well into the rebuilding."

Further compounding the cleanup, officials said, is where to pump all the contaminated water.

Sending it into the Mississippi River just funnels it downriver into the surrounding wetlands and the Gulf of Mexico, endangering a host of wildlife and marine life, with broader implications for the region’s extensive commercial and recreational fishing industries.

Lake Pontchartrain, the waters of which eventually flow into the gulf, provides a slightly better option, Goodwin said, because it is a large, somewhat stable body of water.

"In the hazardous-material business, the key is dilution, dilution, dilution," he said. "The further you dilute something, the more benign it becomes."

Hurricane Recovery: Toxic, Oily Goo Covers Region

San Jose Mercury News

Environmental technician Tommy DeSaro squatted in a supermarket parking lot in this industrial suburb of New Orleans, his yellow boots sticking and making squishy noises in six inches of oily slime.

"It’s like walking on honey," DeSaro said Monday, scooping up a handful of the goo with a plastic shovel and shaking it into a sample jar. Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that these sediments — the leftovers of Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters — are anything but sweet.

The sediments in parts of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes are so contaminated with petroleum products that the EPA has not been able to sort out what other potentially hazardous chemicals are spread across the region, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in a news conference.

The smear zone' Oily sediment contamination is widespread in testing all along a swath of New Orleans and into St. Bernard Parish, locally called "the smear zone," Johnson said, pointing to a map of dozens of sampling sites. "Clearly we've got a petroleum -- at least in the sites behind me -- problem," Johnson said. But that is just part of the environmental fallout from the nation's worst natural disaster in the past generation: Floodwaters were full of feces and bacteria. Public drinking water systems weren't working. A tremendous yet unknown amount of debris -- some of it hazardous -- needs to be disposed of. The storm damaged 31 toxic Superfund sites and 466 chemical, manufacturing or sewage-treatment plants. EPA officials keep finding empty drums of hazardous material, including one large, red hazardous medical waste container. There have been 396 calls to the EPA and Coast Guard hotline regarding oil and chemical spills. The oily muck is turning out to be especially difficult. "It appears everything on this side has oil," said Michael Szerlog, the on-scene coordinator for EPA's emergency response team. "We didn't know the extent of the oil contamination." Oil overwhelming No sediment test results are in yet because scientists still are trying to get around the overwhelming taint of petroleum, Johnson said. But he said eventually results will come in and will get posted publicly. "Given what we see, we'd advise a great deal of precaution" in handling tainted sediments or coming in contact with the muck, Johnson said. There have been five oil spills in New Orleans, Johnson said. The Murphy Oil Co. spill in St. Bernard Parish involved 880,000 gallons. It has been stopped. "A lot of very serious decision-making has to occur," said Mike McDaniel,secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. "There are a lot of questions about safety and health hazards." He said many homes in the worst-hit areas,whichare covered with potentiallyhazardous muck, "ultimately will have to be disposed of." But it may not be as bad as it sounds, said Louisiana State University environmental-studies Professor Ed Overton, the head of a federal chemical analysis team for oil spills. Oil is biodegradable. <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy.html"target="_blank"><img alt="Toxic Sludge is Not Good for Children or other Living Things!" src="http://www.prwatch.org/images/tsigfy.gif" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color:#ff0000;">BioGems -- Saving Endangered Wild Places </span><span style="font-size:100%;">A project of the Natural Resources Defense Council</span> </span><a href="http://www.savebiogems.org"><span style="font-size:130%;">http://www.savebiogems.org</span></a> <a href="http://www.endofsuburbia.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.endofsuburbia.com/end_banner_anim.gif" border=0 ALT="The End of Suburbia is at Hand!"></a> <table width="300"><a href="http://www.sun.com/one/" target="_blank"><center><img src="http://www.one.org/uploads/one_video.jpg" width="135" height="263" border="0"></a> <font face=impact size=+2 color=6600ff><marquee direction=left width=100%><b>²³×²³×¤º°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤ פº°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS." -- Mahatma Gandhiײ³×º°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤×¤º`º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤

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