by Kevin Caruso

October 5, 2005

Paint, gasoline, bleach, drain cleaners, oil, antifreeze, and a host of other household contaminants are strewn throughout the area hit by Hurricane Katrina and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working to dispose of these items before they can affect the environment, including the ground water.

Katrina destroyed over 160,000 homes and created some 22 million tons of debris, and crews are moving from one destroyed house to the next and digging through the debris to ferret out these dangerous contaminants.

But because the debris is so extensive, the EPA is only expecting to find about a quarter of these contaminants. “If we're lucky, we'll probably get maybe 20 percent, 30 percent, somewhere right around there,” said David Romero, a spokesman for the EPA.