Preliminary Analysis of Lake Pontchartrain Pollution after Hurricane Katrina

Lake Pontchartrain played a very important role for the damage control processes in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. After recharging flood waters back into the lake, the city was able to welcome its residents earlier than otherwise possible. However, this operation may yield Lake Pontchartrain to be a source of water pollution in years to come. In this paper, we examine the self-cleaning capacity of Lake Pontchartrain after recharge of the flood waters into the lake. Since the chemical content's of the recharged flood water is not known, three contaminants are selected for this study as representative contaminants for their different physicochemical properties. The results show that for highly hydrophobic contaminants, dilution will not be a solution. For this case we estimate that the lake will require about 80 years recovering from the stresses created. A more volatile compound will disappear from the lake system in about a year. A pesticide will stay in the system in harmful quantities for about 13 years.