Vulnerable Land and People: Connections

Levees, Trade, Commerce Levees are built not just for flood protection, but to aid in the transport of commerce. While they have many benefits, they also significantly restrict the flow rivers and the deposit of sediment in floodplains. Without sediment deposition, floodplains aren't able to serve the important functions of improving water quality and providing healthy habitat and breeding sites for plants and animals.

Wetlands/Coastal Barriers Natural shoreline ecosystems protect human populations from storms by absorbing storm surge. In fact, each mile of coastal marsh diminishes a foot of storm surge from storms like Hurricane Katrina. Yet, Louisiana has and continues to lose up to 40 square miles of marsh per year. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a "canal" cut into the wetlands as a shipping lane, may have made the storm surge 20% higher and two or even three times faster as it crashed into the city.
More information:
"Goodbye New Orleans: It's Time We Stopped Pretending" by Mike Tidwell
Gulf Restoration Network
USGS, National Wetlands Research Center

Toxic Contamination According to U.S. Coast Guard data, at least 575 spills of toxic chemicals or oil were reported due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, spilling over 8 million gallons of oil alone. The nine Louisiana parishes most affected contained 66 chemical plants, petroleum refineries, and petroleum bulk storage facilities. In St. Bernard parish, a 250,000 above ground storage tank was dislodged, lifted, and damaged, releasing over 25,000 barrels of crude oil and impacting over 1,700 homes in an adjacent neighborhood. The EPA tested sediment and released data accompanied by a statement that there are not "unacceptable" health risks. Yet, independent analysis of the EPA's own data suggest levels of arsenic, lead, and dangerous petroleum compounds at levels exceeding the federal and state thresholds that require investigation and clean-up action.

Solid Waste Over 100 million tons of debris were generated by the hurricances, ranging from trees and brush to thousands of destroyed homes and an estimated 350,000 ruined vehicles. Unsafe disposal of hazardous materials or burning waste will impact human and environmental health. Common, everyday products, like batteries, electronics, and household appliances are all part of the hurricane debris and all contain substances that, can contaminate soil and water with dangerous substances.

Water Quality More than 250 sewage plants sewage plants were damaged or destroyed, including 25 major ones. Over 2.4 million people were left without safe drinking water in the aftermath of the storms. Eighty-eight drinking water systems are still, as of early March, not operational.

Lifestyle Choices Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were natural disasters, but the lifestyle choices we have made as a United States population confounded the storms' devastation. An industrial area along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, nicknames "Cancer Alley" contains chemical plants that sustained damage from storms. The plants were located along the Mississippi to facilitate shipping, but have now resulted in Louisiana, one of the most impoverished areas of the country, becoming the most polluted. The area, which contains hundreds of hazardous waste sites from mines, factories, and chemical plants, houses the very industrial sites that produce many of our consumer goods such as vinyl siding, plastics, and oil.