Water Along Gulf Coast Declared Safe
Posted on: Monday, 24 October 2005, 18:00 CDT
By Scott Streater, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
Oct. 22--Federal health officials said Friday that the water along the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast is clean enough for swimming and that shrimp and fish caught in the region are safe to eat.
That conclusion is based on numerous samples collected at 20 locations at the mouth of the Mississippi River, near the Gulf of Mexico, in the weeks since Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana in August, killing 1,200 people and causing billions of dollars in damage.
But federal officials caution that more monitoring is needed, largely because they acknowledge that the full extent of the environmental damage may not be known for months or even years.
"These preliminary results are encouraging, but we need to keep on guard," said Ben Grumbles, assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water.
"After a large hurricane, the effects on water are not immediate. So for the coming year, we will continue to monitor for any new impacts," he said.
The water samples, which were measured only for bacteria associated with human and animal waste, are the first from the Gulf to be released since Katrina.
The storm flooded most of New Orleans, requiring billions of gallons of water filled with toxic chemicals and bacteria to be pumped into Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, which empties into the Gulf.
In addition, millions of gallons of oil spilled from refineries and storage facilities, and some of it went into the Gulf. Not all of the spilled oil has been cleaned.
That's one reason for the ban on harvesting oysters and mussels off the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, said Donald Kraemer, acting director of the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Seafood.
Other than that, Kraemer said, the "FDA has no reason to question the safety of commercially available seafood from Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama."
Chris Piehler, a senior environmental scientist at the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, promised that regulators will not stop monitoring anytime soon.
"We want the nation to know we're going to stay on top of the quality of the seafood in Louisiana, to make sure that in the long term it remains safe for everyone," he said.
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Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)
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