The news broadcasts are constanntly reminding us how toxic the waters in New ORleans are, with sewage and fuel and decaying bodies and such. Now that they are pumpint the water out of New ORleans, are they just pumping this toxic mess into the lake?
I’m glad you asked this. I can’t imagine the lake will be usuable for quite some time. Is it a source of drinking water for the city?
I read about this - one of the options a Dutch engineer gave was to store the polluted water in a pocket at the bottom of the lake, and clean it up from there later. This is supposedly possible because the polluted water is heavier than the cleaner water.
What about petroleum distillates (fuel and other chemicals) that float on water?
As for the OP, I suspect that they are worrying about getting the water off the streets and worrying about ecological damage later. I’ve seen some pretty nasty water being pumped out on the news - there seems to be no treatment involved.
I’ve said it before, but New Orleans is at the mouth of one of the largest river systems in the world, most of which system was completely unaffected by the disaster. Despite all of the rest of their problems, I suspect that a supply of fresh water (provided they can clean out the stuff currently in the city) is not one of them.
CBS, or was it ABC, just had a story in which they tested a sample of New Orleans floodwater for bacterial contamination. This being America, they failed to say precisely which test they were running for which bacteria, however they did tell us that the measured level was 47,000 times the accepted contamination limit for water.
If they ran a fecal coliform test, for which the limit is 200-2000 fecal coliforms per 100 m, depending on use, then the NO water would be at 9,400 to 94,000 coliform per 100 ml. That’s dirty water.