In the aftermath of the 1000-year flood that hit southern Louisiana in August, environmental and public health concerns are mounting as the waters recede.

Residents want to know why many areas that never flooded before were left in ruin this time, raising questions about the role water management played in potentially exacerbating the flood. The smell of mold lingers on streets where the contents from flooded homes and businesses are stacked in piles along the curbside, as well as in neighborhoods next to landfills where storm debris is taken.

Polluted Floodwaters

I met up with Frank Bonifay whose home and business are in the Spanish Lake Basin region, about 20 miles south of Baton Rouge.  We went to his home on Alligator Bayou Road, which for weeks after the flood was only accessible by boat.

Car in front of flooded home off Ridge Road in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, on September 2. ©2016 Julie Dermansky 

On our way we drove past the Honeywell Geismar chemical plant near Saint Gabriel, where workers were dumping soda ash into standing floodwater next to the plant. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) explained via email that the workers were adding soda ash to the water and circulating it with pumps to raise the pH following a release of sulfuric acid and oleum that occurred during an August 13 rainstorm.

“Anything stirred up by the flood in the industrial corridor is ultimately going to end up at my land,“ Bonifay told me. It angered him that the LDEQ didn’t inform residents with property nearby like himself.

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