Monday, September 12, 2005
It's what you don't see that kills you.- Redux
From the NY Times Dan Barry gives us a detailed description of the water that is receding from the city and back into Lake Pontchartrain.
You cannot drink it, you cannot bathe in it, you can barely stand the smell of it. No child stands ankle-deep in it with plastic bucket. No preacher wades into it to baptize a sin-sullied flock.--------------------------------------------
What laps against this city's shores, and some of its homes, churches and stores, is not water but a kind of anti-water. Green-black more than blue-green, it evokes nothing of the cathartic promise that Bruce Springsteen often sings of, only destruction, disease and death.
The State Department of Environmental Quality has taken issue with descriptions of the water that have bloomed like algae: the "toxic soup," the "toxic stew." Darin K. Mann, a spokesman for the agency, said water testing by state and federal officials has so far not supported the word "toxic."Read it all, if you have a strong stomach.
"It's more where you'd characterize it as a 'bacterial soup,' " Mr. Mann said, citing the elevated levels of E. coli. He added that "septic" might also suffice.
How about "horrible" - the word used by Jason Davis, the co-owner of an auto-body shop who now knows.
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"It smells so bad out there when you stir it," Mr. Davis said.
When asked whether he had touched the water, he looked as though his Southern heritage had been called into question.
"Definitely not," he said, then added, "I saw a couple of dead rats, and if it's killing rats, it's bad."
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