HumidCity

I was sitting down to relax a bit after work, aimlessly surfing the news stories on the web when I ran across this disturbing little piece in Wired about trace quantities of pharmaceuticals in the groundwater nationwide.

Of course New Orleans turns up about a third of the way in when they begin talking about faulty testing data:

In several cases, officials at municipal or regional water providers told the AP that pharmaceuticals had not been detected, but the AP obtained the results of tests conducted by independent researchers that showed otherwise. For example, water department officials in New Orleans said their water had not been tested for pharmaceuticals, but a Tulane University researcher and his students have published a study that found the pain reliever naproxen, the sex hormone estrone and the anti-cholesterol drug byproduct clofibric acid in treated drinking water.

Read the whole piece, it will give you a few chills. In the meantime I would love to talk to anyone who has any knowledge of this, if you do please leave a comment or drop us an email.

Loki, Founder HumidCity

I hope my favorite librarian is aware of this. Wonka the Invisible, master of the 100 day lack of plan, strikes again.

Shortsighted Mayor Gives New Orleans PL Board Chair the Boot - September 11, 2006 - Library Journal
As the New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) has struggled to rebuild in the post-Katrina landscape, one constant has been board chair Tania Tetlow, a law professor at Tulane University who has led the effort to restore buildings like the Alvar Street Branch (coordinated by LJ) and the Children’s Resource Center. But Mayor Ray Nagin chose not to reappoint Tetlow, leading two of her colleagues to protest and offer to let her serve the remainder of their terms. “It doesn’t make sense to throw away this asset,” Bill Settoon, the board’s vice chair, told the Sept. 2 Times-Picayune.

FLOODING COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED SIERRA CLUB PRESENTS “GEOLOGY OF KATRINA”

NEW ORLEANS – Anyone who wants to understand the geologic setting of New Orleans and how the sediments buried below the levees led to their failure and the flooding of the city should attend the next meeting of the New Orleans Sierra Club.

Stephen Nelson, PhD, Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Tulane University will present “Geology of the Katrina Disaster” at 7 p.m. on Sunday, May 21, 2006 at the Carrollton United Methodist Church, corner of Freret and South Carrollton streets. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

The meeting is open to all people and is free of charge.

Dr. Nelson has visited all the levee breaches and he will provide an analysis of the reasons for the engineering failures at the 17th St, London Avenue and Industrial canals. Dr. Nelson says his presentation will show that flooding could have been avoided if simple geologic principals had been followed.

“We’re going to talk about the geological conditions that existed at the time of Katrina and how they led to breaches in the levees,” says Dr. Nelson. “We’re not going to talk much about what happened in the Lower Ninth Ward as the surge waters were simply too high there. But the failure of levees and floodwalls at the 17th Street and London Avenue canals was not due to overtopping but to failures to account for the geological conditions present beneath those levees.”

Dr. Nelson will discuss the geologic landscape of the area going back 5,000 years and will explain changes that occurred up until the day the hurricane struck. He will present a comprehensive slide show that contains numerous images to back up his points.

Since Early November, 2005, Nelson has been conducting field trips to the levee breaches for interested parties from throughout the New Orleans community as well as visitors from out of state and students enrolled in his natural disasters course. For more information about Dr. Nelson, visit his website at: www.tulane.edu/~sanelson.

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The Sierra Club’s 750,000 members work together to protect communities and the planet. The Club is America’s oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. The Delta (Louisiana) chapter of the Sierra Club has more than 3,500 members and has been active in local conservation projects for more than 30 years. For more information, contact the organization’s website: www.louisiana.sierraclub.org.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Chris Smith, Media Relations Coordinator
(504) 884-4008