On Sept. 27, President Biden declared a federal emergency in Louisiana in light of the recently discovered report of contamination of New Orleans’ source of water.
The Mississippi River has been found to have saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico running up its riverbed, rapidly rushing towards public drinking facilities and piping. With both the Mayor of New Orleans and Louisiana’s state governor filing for a recognized emergency and aid from the federal government, the threat of public safety is clear.
With a possible public water crisis on the horizon, knowing concerns can be very important. Consuming saltwater involves major health risks, where intake can result in heightened blood pressure, kidney damage, dehydration, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and a loss of calcium due to the increase of sodium levels in the body.
People are already experiencing the effects of the saltwater intrusion and have been adapting to preserve their health. According to ABC News, “Around 2,000 residents in Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, were already relying on bottled water this summer after salt water infiltrated the area’s water systems.”
The process of saltwater intrusion has been happening for a very long time, but only recently has it increased to a magnitude where saltwater is getting so far up the Mississippi River.
The New York Times found that on Oct. 28, the saltwater will reach Carrollton, a neighborhood in New Orleans that contains a plant that yields over 135 million gallons of purified water a day before distributing it to the city. Once the saltwater makes it to the plant, it will begin to be distributed throughout New Orleans’ facilities as public drinking water, in addition to corroding the purifying plant.
New Orleans’ residents will potentially have to confront the danger of saltwater corroding many other water treatment facilities, piping and any other structure that is not capable of dealing with a high amount of saltwater in its system, in addition to the huge financial burden on the city for having to replace and reconstruct these pipes and facilities.
The increase in magnitude of saltwater intrusion is a result of a recent drought in the area, which lowered the water level of the Mississippi River. Now that the river has less water flowing out in the ocean, saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico has an opportunity to sneak its way up the river, in the form of a wedge riding along the river floor.
“In short, there’s not enough freshwater flowing down the Mississippi River after months of extreme heat and low rainfall.” CNN shared, “Exceptional drought – the worst category – has spread across parts of Louisiana and Mississippi.” “Extreme drought is also present upstream, where a lot of the river’s water originates…”
This problem has been clearly emphasized to be an impact of changing climate patterns.
Such global warming has left New Orleans stretched for resources beyond just public water supply. Abnormal drought over the Mississippi River region hindered the river’s flow rate, allowing for the saltwater intrusion, but the harsh sunlight and heat also cast over many of the region’s prime agricultural areas. This is threatening the food supply for a ginormous portion of people, whether living in an area away from the environmental impact or not.
Agricultural devastation also brings havoc unto the financial stability of farmers’ lives and those reliant on the produce.
This drought has also led to an increase in ocean levels throughout the Gulf of Mexico and all large bodies of water. As it is mentioned on NASA’s official website, the two main reasons behind rising global ocean levels have been a result of drastic global warming: the increase of water from melting glaciers, ice sheets and icebergs, and additional enlargement of the water’s volume from heating.
New Orleans is located barely above sea level, with areas ranging from 15 feet above sea level to 5 feet below. If this continues, there is a risk of the city being submerged underwater.
The intrusion isn’t the only saltwater-related dilemma the city of New Orleans is facing. Over the past 90 years, the Mississippi River Delta has suffered from a loss of over 2,000 square miles of marshland. “An area roughly the size of Delaware,” according to the website Restore The Mississippi River Delta.
This is due to rapid coastal erosion. Ocean water wears and tears down the few natural barriers and islands in between the gulf and the city of New Orleans, swallowing marshlands at an unprecedented rate equal to one football field every 100 minutes.
(Getty Images)
In an attempt to prevent this from continuing at such an extreme, the city of New Orleans has produced a proposal addressing a way to circumnavigate further coastal erosion damage, available to see on Nola.com. It calls for $50 billion to be spent mainly between water flow throughout wetlands, barrier island maintenance and stabilization, creation of land bumps to reduce storm surge damage, marsh creation projects, restoration and support of land using dredged sediment, freshwater and sediment diversions, as well as integrated projects combining theseideas.
The financial burden from environmental struggles in the New Orleans area is already at an extreme. Hurricanes and other high-intensity weather patterns drastically add to this amount, constructing a great financial danger that comes from the potential of severe unexpected damage.
With the added impacts of a contaminated water supply, strain for food, ecological disaster and unprecedented financial instability, residents of the New Orleans area have started to look towards moving to places free from dealing with these direct effects, such as Portland, Oregon.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School’s Environmental Science teacher, Derek MacDicken, offered some insight regarding what this could mean. “Even if our weather doesn’t change enough to be feeling those impacts,” he said. “We’re going to be feeling the impact of an influx of people, we’re going to be feeling the impact of an influx of strain on resources.”
Portland is not the only place where we will see this.“This is going to be a trend we see in a lot of areas around the world,” said MacDicken.
It is important to see that change isn’t hopeless. The effects of climate change are not set in stone. “The ability is there for us to make some major strides,” said MacDicken. “But it can be hard. Our situation doesn’t change if you stand still.”
