Extreme Toxic Playground
Extreme Makeover Home Edition came to St. Bernard Parish a couple weeks ago. For those not familiar with it, it's a reality TV show in which a crew of volunteers usually renovate a home in some record amount of days and the family comes back to this fabulous, overdone house of their supposed dreams. Well, as you can imagine, redoing a home in the parish would be a farce at the moment. At the end of March, FEMA will indicate to residents which areas will be deemed 'flood zones' and therefore demolished and which will be slated for rebuilding. So renovating a home in a destroyed neighborhood that might be demolished is not exactly useful.
So, instead, in an attempt to show its 20 million viewers that New Orleans is rebuilding, Extreme Makeover had the brilliant idea of redoing a children's playground that had been devastated by the storm. It didn't seem to matter that there are few people, let alone children, in the neighborhood and less important was the fact that the soil in the area is toxic. In the world of reality TV, what matters are the ratings and reclaiming an area destroyed by Katrina is what makes people feel all warm and fuzzy inside...
A couple weeks before, I had attended a talk hosted by the Common Ground Collective on pollution in the wake of Katrina. What residents really want to know are the simple questions, "Is food grown in my garden safe to eat? Is the soil contaminated? What are the long-term health effects of this disaster?" A very thorough soil sampling of hundred of sites in New Orleans and surrounding areas was conducted by the EPA post-Katrina. One hundred percent of the sites tested exceeded Lousiana screening standards for health risks with regards to toxins such as pesticides, heavy metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In understanding the extent of the contamination, it's imporant to realize that these weren't just ordinary waters that spilled into areas such as the Ninth Ward; this was water from canals laden with sewage and fuels. Add to that the thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals that were stored in fuel tanks, warehouses, gas stations, dry cleaners and in households that spilled out into the neighborhoods and you get an idea of the long-term health risks that may exist in the area. And don't forget the Murphy oil spill in St. Bernard Parish, one of the largest since Exxon Valdez. Looks like little Johnny will be playing in an extremely toxic playground...
Steps are being taken by organizations such as Common Ground to clean up people's backyards and gardens through bioremediation methods such as compost tea, mushrooms, and by growing special plants that leach toxins out of the soil. However, like so much in this area, the process is going to be a slow one. With the oil refinery belching out nasty fumes, the dust flying about and the chronic sore throat that I seemed to have most of the time that I was in St. Bernard, there were days when I questioned whether having people move back into the area was such a good idea. You can rebuild the city all you want but you are building on sick land.
But let's get back to the set of Extreme Makeover - Volunteers from Emergency Communities were requested to participate in the rebuilding of this playground. We were handed blue shirts, made to sign releases and then waited for an hour or so for the cameras to arrive. I spent my time looking out at a cleared and bulldozed site for the playground that was restaged to have cardboard and debris strewn back across it to make it look like the floodwaters had recently subsided and here were all these enthusiastic volunteers ready to clear the way. The length to which television will go to contrive 'reality' astounds me sometimes. I left after a couple of hours, tired of waiting around and not accomplishing much of anything except possibly bolstering the ratings of such an inane TV show. I never did see the playground, hopefully it will be of some use, eventually, if/when the neighborhood rebuilds. To be fair, there is something shiny and new in the midst of a destroyed neighborhood...perhaps that is worth something...
So, instead, in an attempt to show its 20 million viewers that New Orleans is rebuilding, Extreme Makeover had the brilliant idea of redoing a children's playground that had been devastated by the storm. It didn't seem to matter that there are few people, let alone children, in the neighborhood and less important was the fact that the soil in the area is toxic. In the world of reality TV, what matters are the ratings and reclaiming an area destroyed by Katrina is what makes people feel all warm and fuzzy inside...
A couple weeks before, I had attended a talk hosted by the Common Ground Collective on pollution in the wake of Katrina. What residents really want to know are the simple questions, "Is food grown in my garden safe to eat? Is the soil contaminated? What are the long-term health effects of this disaster?" A very thorough soil sampling of hundred of sites in New Orleans and surrounding areas was conducted by the EPA post-Katrina. One hundred percent of the sites tested exceeded Lousiana screening standards for health risks with regards to toxins such as pesticides, heavy metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In understanding the extent of the contamination, it's imporant to realize that these weren't just ordinary waters that spilled into areas such as the Ninth Ward; this was water from canals laden with sewage and fuels. Add to that the thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals that were stored in fuel tanks, warehouses, gas stations, dry cleaners and in households that spilled out into the neighborhoods and you get an idea of the long-term health risks that may exist in the area. And don't forget the Murphy oil spill in St. Bernard Parish, one of the largest since Exxon Valdez. Looks like little Johnny will be playing in an extremely toxic playground...
Steps are being taken by organizations such as Common Ground to clean up people's backyards and gardens through bioremediation methods such as compost tea, mushrooms, and by growing special plants that leach toxins out of the soil. However, like so much in this area, the process is going to be a slow one. With the oil refinery belching out nasty fumes, the dust flying about and the chronic sore throat that I seemed to have most of the time that I was in St. Bernard, there were days when I questioned whether having people move back into the area was such a good idea. You can rebuild the city all you want but you are building on sick land.
But let's get back to the set of Extreme Makeover - Volunteers from Emergency Communities were requested to participate in the rebuilding of this playground. We were handed blue shirts, made to sign releases and then waited for an hour or so for the cameras to arrive. I spent my time looking out at a cleared and bulldozed site for the playground that was restaged to have cardboard and debris strewn back across it to make it look like the floodwaters had recently subsided and here were all these enthusiastic volunteers ready to clear the way. The length to which television will go to contrive 'reality' astounds me sometimes. I left after a couple of hours, tired of waiting around and not accomplishing much of anything except possibly bolstering the ratings of such an inane TV show. I never did see the playground, hopefully it will be of some use, eventually, if/when the neighborhood rebuilds. To be fair, there is something shiny and new in the midst of a destroyed neighborhood...perhaps that is worth something...
posted by Kareen at
9:23 PM
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