WELCOME TO BILL'S CORNER!

Dear Constituents,

These are busy times at NOAA Fisheries Service, and I apologize for being out of touch with Bill’s Corner. This month I’d like to relay information about NOAA’s post-hurricane environmental monitoring.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused a significant amount of damage to Gulf fishing industries. Much of this damage – such as infrastructure loss – is obvious, while some is not so observable. In the days after Katrina made landfall, teams of NOAA scientists scrambled to help the Gulf States assess environmental impacts caused by the hurricane. We launched a comprehensive plan alongside the states and other federal agencies to collect samples from water, marine species, and sediments from Gulf waters. NOAA is committed to monitoring the safety of seafood coming out of the Gulf of Mexico, and we are testing for anything that might pose a public health risk.

Of particular concern is the large amount of oil that was released into the marine ecosystem and the tainted water that was pumped from the streets of New Orleans back into Lake Pontchartrain. The lake feeds into the Mississippi River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico. We sampled both in offshore and nearshore areas off Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. We sampled from the mouth of the Mississippi River and directly from Lake Pontchartrain. Our efforts, combined with those of our state partners and federal partners at the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Geological Survey, have been comprehensive.

Our analyses of initial samples collected two weeks after the hurricane found no evidence to-date of toxins (chemicals) or pathogens (bacteria) that would harm people. The initial sampling was important to develop a baseline for comparison for any environmental changes we may see in the future. We collected a second round of samples five weeks after the hurricane, and we are set to collect a third round in the next few weeks. Our sampling and analyses will continue over the next several months, and we will communicate our findings to the public as they become available.

NOAA also is assessing the more obvious hurricane damage – something we call infrastructure loss. We know from NOAA fly-overs of the affected areas and from on-site reports that most Gulf fishing boats were damaged or destroyed, as were many bait and tackle shops and seafood processing facilities. Many fishermen lost their homes. We have launched a comprehensive community profile study to determine the extent of this loss and associated economic impacts. We have teams on the ground in coastal communities throughout the Gulf that are surveying the damage. We’ll compare these results to the community profiles we completed before the hurricanes for a comprehensive picture of damage the industry sustained.

Because we know the losses are too great to imagine, we have declared that the Gulf fishing industries in the Florida Keys and from Pensacola to Galveston are in a state of disaster and failure. This declaration paves the way for Congress to appropriate federal aid to help the industry recover. As Congress continues to work out federal aid packages for the recovery and restoration of the Gulf of Mexico, we will keep our constituents informed of any decisions relative to the fishing industry.

I extend a personal thanks to everyone who has donated money and time to the hurricane relief effort. As we enter the holiday season, please keep the coastal residents of the Gulf States in your thoughts.

Stay safe and I’ll see you next month,

References

NOAA’s Hurricane Environmental Impacts Site