Volunteering after Katrina: Evaluating Damage to Drinking Water System

In September 2005, the Friday before Labor Day, I was asked by my employer, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to go to Louisiana to provide assistance to drinking water systems affected by Hurricane Katrina. After tracking down coworkers with whom I would work as a team, I arranged travel and took care of personal loose ends to be out of town for two weeks. The EPA, along with rural water associations, were asked to help the State of Louisiana evaluate damage to hundreds of small and medium sized drinking water systems around New Orleans. None of us knew what to expect or where we were going to be sleeping. Enthusiasm for the challenge mixed with apprehension. What we had seen in the papers and on TV was mayhem and despair. Crisis brought out the best in people. A Baptist Church let us stay in their gymnasium, and another cooked us dinner each night.

I returned to Louisiana between the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays. As you would expect, accommodations and the mission were better planned and defined than the first deployment immediately after Katrina. Semi-permanent office space and housing had been established for a joint Incident Command Center with the EPA, Coast Guard and Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

The people I met who suffered from Katrina have been the most rewarding part of my two deployments to the Gulf Coast. Here are a few.

A water operator, third generation from Saint Bernard Parish, just outside of New Orleans, still flooded, knew that there would be nothing left of his home. Yet he continued to drive a generator between three drinking water systems for the few people that returned during the day.

The manager of a dozen drinking water systems struggled to provide service without electricity, telephone or internet.

The homeowner in the middle class Lakeview District of New Orleans, who had flood water a foot into the second story, was watching masked contractors throwing personal and household items onto the curb along with drywall, which was to be picked up and taken to a landfill. I met two of her neighbors who could not enter their homes because of structural damage. While these people have some insurance and other financial means, they were still living with friends and did not know what they were going to do. This was four months after the storm.
There was the small business owner cleaning her kennel and dog grooming businesses on her own. She asked if she could get help removing asbestos floor tile she did not know existed when she bought the building. When I returned a few days later with an answer, “you need to get the tile to the curb yourself,” she thanked me for getting her the answer, and offered me a soda.

At the end of my second deployment, just before the Christmas holidays, I spent time in the beautiful area north of Chef Menteur Pass, surrounded by Lake Pontchartrain on one side, Lake Catherine on the other. The storm surge sent every single home on the strip of land out to sea. There was a family with two children and two dogs living in a tent on their empty piece of land. But one morning after the temperature dropped, they were gone. Someone from the neighborhood said, “This was a beautiful place to live.” They are lucky in a sad way, there is nothing to demolish or clean up.

Faced with all this uncertainty and devastation, the beauty that remains is in the resilience and determination of those people willing to make the best of what they have left. It has been a privilege to bear witness and offer help.

Andy Sallach is on LGB RPCV’s Steering Committee providing Financial and Membership support. He can be contacted at lgbrpcv-news@lgbrpcv.org.