Students help Louisiana residents rebuild after massive oil spill

Updated 2:20 PM July 5, 2007

Students help Louisiana residents rebuild after massive oil spill

By Claudia Capos
School of Natural Resources and Environment

Nearly two years ago, Hurricane Katrina tore through St. Bernard Parish, La. Rising flood waters dislodged a 1 million-gallon crude-oil storage tank at the New Orleans Murphy Oil refinery, contaminating 1,700 homes in an adjacent one-square-mile neighborhood. Today, residents of the devastated area remain on hold. Some are still living in Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA)-provided trailers or with relatives, uncertain about when, or whether, they will return to their oil-stained homes.

A multidisciplinary team from the School of Natural Resources and Environment is doing its part to help residents of the area move forward. The group of students has just completed a two-year environmental-justice study of St. Bernard Parish and the Murphy Oil spill, which occurred in September 2005.

The four graduate students involved in the master's degree project also have compiled a free 100-page citizens' handbook, entitled "RESPOND: A Residential Oil Spill in St. Bernard Parish, LA," which they are distributing to parish residents.

The handbook is intended to inform displaced families about the extent of the contamination problem in their neighborhoods and to help them take a sustainable approach to rebuilding their community.

The Michigan team, which includes Heather Gott, Katherine Foo, Suzanne Perry and Meredith Haamen, made several fact-finding trips to New Orleans and worked closely with the nonprofit community-service organization Louisiana Bucket Brigade to conduct citizens' soil-sampling projects and to interpret the laboratory results from collected samples.

The students also created a survey, which they used to interview 200 respondents, in order to learn where information gaps existed and how best to communicate reliable facts to residents.

"In our survey, we found that people were frustrated with the lack of information or the conflicting information they were receiving from state and federal government agencies," says Gott, a third-year graduate student who is pursuing a dual degree in environmental justice and environmental law. "Residents wanted more definitive guidelines on what to do. We hoped to give them peace of mind by providing information that would help them make informed decisions."

Gott and her project team members raised $20,000 to help pay for the project and the printing of 200 copies of the handbook, which is available on line at sitemaker.umich.edu/respond.

It contains sections on risk evaluation, the health effects of different types of contamination in homes and gardens, suggestions for phyto-remediation (plants that absorb contaminants), and guidelines for community organizing and neighborhood-scale projects.

"We tried to celebrate the beauty and rich culture of the parish by including photos taken by residents and by highlighting local environmental heroes," Gott says. "Rather than instilling fear, we sought to answer residents' questions in a positive way and to give the community the tools to respond constructively."

Project advisors, including environmental-justice advocate and professor Bunyan Bryant, public-health specialist Gregory Button and statistician Elaine Hockman, provided guidance to the students.

"This project was unique because it was community-based and we spent a lot of time listening to peoples' needs and responding in a way that we hoped would assist them," Gott says. "There are a lot of residual contamination questions in the parish and throughout greater New Orleans. We hope our work will serve as a model to communities that face similar challenges."

Students help Louisiana residents rebuild after massive oil spill

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