Katrina has Turned the Gulf Coast into a Chemical Cocktail

The urgency grows each day as volunteer work crews fill trash bins and dump trucks with items ranging from shards of metal to piles of computers.

In effect, much of the coastal gulf has been turned into an open sewer. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 212 wastewater treatment plants have been disabled or impaired — 114 in Louisiana, 85 in Mississippi and 13 in Alabama.

New Orleans constitutes a nasty brew of toxic chemicals and harmful bacteria, but the long-term environmental effects of the city's beating by Hurricane Katrina remain unclear, scientists say.

More troublesome are the quantities of unknown compounds seeping into the water from petrochemical refineries and chemical warehouses, from dry-cleaning shops and home garages to home and office computers.

“Flood-damaged computers and other electronic equipment sometimes can be dried out and restored,” said David R. Thomas, of Scrap It Out, LLC and www.scrapitout.com, the Austin, Texas-based company specializes in properly handling old and damaged computers.

The cost of recovery can be high, but it might be worth it for business with expensive computer systems or to recover personal information containing especially valuable data and information.