Hurricane Katrina breathes life into Gulf

[LSDeep]

TAMPA BAY, Florida (1 Sep 2005) -- An oxygen-free dead zone at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico may be headed toward recovery, thanks to Hurricane Katrina.

Though the eye of the storm missed the Tampa Bay area by hundreds of miles, its winds and waves broke up a warm- water, cold-water layer that scientists say caused a massive die-off of marine life on the Gulf bottom.

On Wednesday, scientists with the state's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute found dissolved oxygen in areas off Clearwater Beach that had none last week.

These anoxic (without oxygen) areas had been trapped in a death locker created when a dense layer of warm water settled on top of colder water near the bottom.

This stratification, called a thermocline, trapped red tide toxins near the bottom, killing crabs, shrimp, coral and other marine life.

As the organisms decomposed, they consumed what dissolved oxygen was left.

The thermocline kept oxygen from filtering down to the anoxic bottom.

''Katrina had enough winds or surge to mix up the water to get rid of the stratification,'' said Cindy Heil, senior scientist at the institute.

''That means dissolved oxygen was normal on the whole water column from top to bottom. This is the first stage in recovery,'' Heil said.

Heil cautioned that the institute's boats only were able to test sites up to 15 miles from the coast because of rough weather.

The agency has been testing dissolved oxygen levels off Clearwater since early August.

''We didn't get out to 20, 25 and 30 miles because it was too rough,'' Heil said.

''But the shelf is shallow, so I would expect those sites to be the same.''

The institute began testing the water after divers from Sarasota County to Pinellas County reported a devastated ocean bottom.

Although there are no official estimates of the economic effect, divers and charter boat captains have said the die-off has killed their respective businesses.

Red tide continued to cause scattered fish kills this week, the latest at the mouth of Tampa Bay and in the Panhandle.

A number of redfish in the 40-pound range washed ashore at Fort DeSoto Park on Tuesday.

That same day, massive fish kills were reported off Franklin County southwest of Tallahassee.

Last week, fish kills were reported off Taylor County.

Heil said scientists do not know if the latest red tide outbreaks in northern Florida are related to the bloom that has gripped Southwest Florida since January.
SOURCE - TBO

[LSDeep]

Toxic trouble in New Orleans water

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) -- The toxic brew of chemicals and human waste in the New Orleans floodwaters will have to be pumped into the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain, raising the specter of an environmental disaster on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, experts say.

The dire need to rid the drowned city of water could trigger fish kills and poison the delicate wetlands near New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi.

State and federal agencies have just begun water quality testing but environmental experts say the vile, stagnant chemical soup that sits in the streets of the city will contain traces of everything imaginable.

"Go home and identify all the chemicals in your house. It's a very long list," said Ivor van Heerden, head of a Louisiana State University center that studies the public health impacts of hurricanes.

"And that's just in a home. Imagine what's in an industrial plant," he said. "Or a sewage plant."

Gasoline, diesel, anti-freeze, bleach, human waste, acids, alcohols and a host of other substances must be washed out of homes, factories, refineries, hospitals and other buildings.

In Metairie, east of New Orleans, the floodwater is tea-colored, murky and smells of burnt sulfur. A thin film of oil is visible in the water.

Those who have waded into it say they could see only about 1 to 2 inches into the depths and that there was significant debris on and below the surface.

Experts said the longer water sat in the streets, the greater the chance gasoline and chemical tanks -- as well as common containers holding anything from bleach to shampoo -- would rupture.

Officials have said it may take up to 80 days to clear the water from New Orleans and surrounding parishes.

Van Heerden and Rodney Mallett, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, say there do not appear to be any choices other than to pump the water into Lake Pontchartrain or the Mississippi River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, a key maritime spawning ground.

"I don't see how we could treat all that water," Mallett said.

The result could be an second wave of disaster for southern Louisiana, said Harold Zeliger, a Florida-based chemical toxicologist and water quality consultant.

"In effect, it's going to kill everything in those waters," he said.

How much water New Orleans holds is open to question.

Van Heerden estimates it is billions of gallons. LSU researchers will use satellite imagery and computer modeling to get a better fix on the quantity.

Bio-remediation -- cleaning up the water -- would require the time and expense of constructing huge storage facilities, considered an impossibility, especially with the public clamor to get the water out quickly.

Mallett said the Department of Environmental Quality was in the unfortunate position of being responsible for protecting the environment in a situation where that did not seem possible.

"We're not happy about it. But for the sake of civilization and lives, probably the best thing to do is pump the water out," he said.

The water will leave behind more trouble -- a city filled with mold, some of it toxic, the experts said. After other floods, researchers found many buildings had to be stripped back to concrete, or razed.

"If you have a building half full of water, everything above the water is growing mold. When it dries out, the rest grows mold," Zeliger said. "Most of the buildings will have to be destroyed."

Copyright 2005 Reuters.