? about the pumping of infected water

[lovethattink]

Won't the e-coli contaminated water being pumped out of NO infect the water source it's being pumped to?

[seashoreCM]

People will have to forget about swiimming in Lake Pontchartrain until the forces of nature gradually sweep the contaminated water out to sea.

All sewage treatment plants, should they become overloaded by rain water or whatever, will discharge untreated material.

For the city of New Orleans the pumping out of the city is a "do what you gotta do" situation.

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[catherine]

I just heard on the news that this is going to cause an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico!

[eeyore45]

A spokeswoman for the CDC was asked this from Matt Lauer of the Today Show, and she did say it will take time, but will balance out... this is a natural occurance after any kind of flooding, in any state... I can say we get these reports often in Chicago, whenever there is a heavy rain, many beaches along Lake Michigan are closed for e coli levels... (they are tested daily rain or not)

[JimMIA]

I just heard on the news that this is going to cause an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico!
What you get in major rain events like this is localized catastrophic effect (not environmental disaster), and it doesn't matter whether the water coming into the Gulf is clean or contaminated. It's fresh water pouring into a highly-saline gulf at a rate far above normal flow. So you get a very rapid desalinization of a localized area.

You can expect large fish kills all along the coast, and the news media will blame them on contaminated water, but it's really just the shock of the fresh water.

We get the same thing here every major rain event. Our flood control system diverts water to holding areas and canals, and water managers try to hold it there and disperse it gradually. But sometimes they just can't store any more without flooding and they have to dump.

[JimMIA]

Won't the e-coli contaminated water being pumped out of NO infect the water source it's being pumped to?
I'm not familiar with Lake Ponchatrain (nor do I know how to spell it), but natural lakes tend to take care of that on their own. They have one area of dense vegetation which rises from the lake bed through and above the water level (called the littoral zone) and abundant vegetation on the bed itself. That vegetation just gobbles up nasty stuff -- to the point actually, that we are creating man-made littoral zones in the Everglades as one aspect of Everglades Restoration.

The same question came up after the hurricanes in Florida. The Everglades Agricultural Area (a huge farming area around the south shore of Lake Okeechobee) was flooded and had to be pumped out. There was no option but to pump that heavily contaminated (phosphorus from fertilizer, mercury from pesticides) water back into Lake Okeechobee.

Those hurricanes were in the late summer. In December, I took an training tour of the Lake Okeechobee littoral zone with South Florida Water Management District and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers scientists. Short story -- the lake is fine. We are somewhat concerned about mercury moving up the food chain and affecting the osprey in the area, but that will work itself out.

[Deb in IA]

I just heard on the news that this is going to cause an environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico!


I would think that the salt in the sea water will kill most, if not all of the pathogenic bacteria.

However, petroleum products and other chemicals will be more of a concern, but again, I think the dilutional effects of being pumped into a body of water as large as the Gulf would negate most of the damage.

[Lisa loves Pooh]

From what I understand--the pumping when it happens goes at a very very fast rate and treating it is ineffective. New Orleans does not have the luxury of time to treat the water properly--it is more of an evironmental health hazard to leave it and treat it than to pump it and let nature take care of it.