Houston facing hazards in floodwaters
Officials in Houston are just beginning to grapple with the health and environmental risks that lurk in the waters dumped by Hurricane Harvey, a stew of toxic chemicals, sewage, debris and waste that still floods much of the city.
Flooded sewers are stoking fears of cholera, typhoid and other infectious diseases. Runoff from the city’s sprawling petroleum and chemicals complex contains any number of hazardous compounds. Lead, arsenic and other toxic and carcinogenic elements may be leaching from two dozen Superfund sites in the Houston area.
Porfirio Villarreal, a spokesman for the Houston Health Department, said the hazards of the water enveloping the city were self-evident.
“There’s no need to test it,” he said. “It’s contaminated. There’s millions of contaminants.”
He said health officials were urging people to stay out of the water if they could, although it is already too late for tens of thousands.
“We’re telling people to avoid the floodwater as much as possible. Don’t let your children play in it. And if you do touch it, wash it off,” Villarreal said. “Remember, this is going to go on for weeks.”
Flooding always brings the danger of contamination and disease. This inundation, which put nearly 30 percent of the nation’s fourth-largest city underwater, will pose enormous problems, both immediately and when the waters finally recede.
Dr. David Persse, Houston’s director of Emergency Medical Services, said officials were monitoring the drinking water system and the sewer system, both of which he said were intact so far. But hundreds of thousands of people across the 38 Texas counties affected by Hurricane Harvey use private wells, according to an estimate by Louisiana State University researchers, and those people must fend for themselves.
Harris County, home to Houston, hosts more than two dozen current and former toxic waste sites designated under the federal Superfund program. The sites contain what the Environmental Protection Agency calls legacy contamination: lead, arsenic, polychlorinated biphenyls, benzene and other toxic and carcinogenic compounds from industrial activities many years ago.
Houston also lies at the center of the nation’s oil and chemical industry, its bustling shipping channel home to almost 500 industrial sites. Damaged refineries and other oil facilities have already released more than 2 million pounds of hazardous substances into the air this week, including benzene, nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds, according to a tally by the Environmental Defense Fund of company filings to Texas state environmental regulators.
Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards said Houston’s abundance of private water wells added the city’s woes. People who evacuated return home and use them, to their great risk.
“Poop from animals and humans that normally does not get into the water supply is present” in the wells, he said, and “if they are present in water that you drink it would cause massive epidemics in a matter of days.”