Decius wrote:

Gasoline, diesel, anti-freeze, bleach, human waste, acids, alcohols... the floodwater is tea-colored, murky and smells of burnt sulfur. A thin film of oil is visible in the water....

...there do not appear to be any choices other than to pump the water into Lake Pontchartrain or the Mississippi River.

"...it's going to kill everything in those waters."

The water will leave behind more trouble -- a city filled with (toxic) mold.. Most of the buildings will have to be destroyed...

The secondary effects are going to be nasty. They are already warning of E.Coli in the water. New Orleans is essentially a tropical region. It used to have a Malaria problem. Presently rare mosquito based illnesses may start spreading out of the area...

Mold starts to grow with 72 hours of a "water event," as my mold remediation manual called it. Which means, for a bunch of old wooden buildings submerged and then soaking wet for days on end, the entire city will be unsalvagable. You can dry the visible mold away, but you can't get it from every crevice, which means it will continue to eat away from the inside. Due to the water and mold damage, the structural integrity of the buildings has been undoubtably compromised, and through all of this I cannot foresee a way to save the flooded buildings. However, there was an interesting video at CNN about landmarks that appear to have staved off flood damage (scroll down in the page).

-janelane, grimly

RE: CNN.com - Toxic water. Toxic Mold.