Katrina's Floodwaters Inundate NOLA's Own Love Canal

The people of New Orleans used to call the toxic waste site in central New Orleans "Dante's Inferno" because of the underground fires that burned there. But today the Agriculture Street Landfill - among the most dangerous toxic waste sites in the country - is submerged beneath Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, raising the possibility that highly poisonous chemicals will leak out into the environment and harm humans and other living things.

The story has not been widely reported in the mainstream U.S. media; a Nexis search conducted today turned up a brief mention of the toxic hazard in the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald and Canada's Toronto Sun. However, a Canadian trade publication called Solid Waste & Recycling last week reported on the potential disaster-within-a-disaster.

"The ASL can be thought of [as] a sort of Love Canal for New Orleans - and now it sits under water," the story said. "It's not outlandish to consider the possibility that toxic waste from the landfill may mix with floodwaters and spread far beyond the old landfill site."

That potential scenario is not unlike what actually happened - albeit less dramatically - at Raleigh's Ward Transformer site. There carcinogenic PCBs from old electrical equipment have washed into the environment over the years and contaminated Little Brier Creek, Brier Creek Reservoir, Lake Crabtree and Crabtree Creek, rendering fish in those waters dangerous to eat.

Declared a federal Superfund site in 1994, the 95-acre Agriculture Street Landfill contains more than 50 cancer-causing contaminants including arsenic, lead, mercury and pesticides. In the late 1960s, New Orleans and the federal government financed the building of a low-income community on part of the landfill, according to an environmental justice case study published by the University of Michigan. Residents soon began complaining about unusual patterns of diseases, including an unusually high number of breast cancers in both men and women. The concerns sparked an investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the site's eventual placement on the National Priorities List for cleanup.

To date, the EPA has not issued any statements addressing specifically the threat the landfill presents in Katrina's wake. However, the agency and the Department of Health and Human Services have issued a general caution for those who come into contact with the floodwaters, noting that they are contaminated with "raw sewage and other hazardous substances."