Topic: Numbers, Schmumbers
Hell will be paid, like it or not, on the Gulf Coast. The hell is in the water and there is no way to take care of this problem easily. Let's start with a circumstance that occurred in the U.S. just a little over 10 years ago.
Milwaukee had a severe cryptosporidiosis outbreak when the bacteria was released into the drinking water supply by a sewage spill. 400,000 people became ill and over 100 people died. Read about it at CNN Health.
One of the interesting factors in this particular case was that the Cryptosporidium was a difficult form to kill. It had developed an armor plating that made it difficult to kill. It was impervious to many common treatment forms. The estimated cost of that outbreak was $96,244,000. That is difficult to bear for a local economy. Read the full CDC PDF file on the cost of the Milwaukee outbreak.
Bacteria in sewer water can lead to serious disease outbreaks. Some of the culprits, derived from long study, are:
E coli - a nasty common bacteria that kills the very young and very old and makes life miserable for those in between. My own experience with E-coli included almost incontrollable diarrhea, vomiting and a hideous weakness that knocked me down for almost two weeks. I caught it while photographing a sewage bypass.
Hepatitis A - Attacks the liver and produces diarrhea, vomiting and jaundice.
Salmonella Typhi - Commonly known as Typhoid Fever. Yeah, yeah, gone from America. Not, however, gone from places that deliver thousands of illegal immigrants each year.
Crytosporidium - See Milwaukee above.
I could take the list on for a long run, but you should have gotten the point by now. Sewage is dangerous. Sewage is filling New Orleans. When the city is drained, that sewage will be pouring into water supplies around New Orleans. Suffice to say that shellfish from the mouth of the Mississippi and the gulf coast will be on the "Bill does not eat" list for a long while.
Then there is the cleanup. For persons living in the affected zone, this will be a nightmare. An interesting little piece on chlorine and cleanups. But for the government, the cleanup will cost a fortune.
It begins with the sewage system. First, a good bet is that the pumps are shot. This means that pumping stations will need to be replaced. To get the water out of New Orleans, everything will have to be pumped uphill. We all know that poop runs downhill. Those pumping stations aren't cheap.
Then comes the exhausting repair of damaged or destroyed lines. There is a logistical problem with this, insofar as actually locating the lines can be problematic. Consider the infrastructural grid in a city as old as New Orleans. A safe bet is that the blueprints will be essentially useless. Often, the blueprints do not reflect the reality of field repairs. A line was shifted here or moved there based on need and availability of space. Workers from the public works department will literally have to search for the breaks with tactics like: walking and feeling where the soil is soaked (hard in a flood zone), following the stench to the broken pipe and searching for the sounds of running water and bubbling. Getting a handle on the damage is going to take time.
All the while, the health conditions will deteriorate. This is a dangerous mess for humans to encounter. It could take a long while to get it under control. New Orleans will have to commit serious resources to solving these problems. And with health conditions like that, there will be a need for much medical care.
This is one mess that could have serious health consequences. Not just for New Orleans, but for people around the region and consumers around America. I hope they're on top of this.
I'll post on the toxic element next.
