06:12 PM CDT on Thursday, September 29, 2005

Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- At least 140,000 south Louisiana homes and businesses are uninhabitable because of floods and winds from Hurricane Katrina, the state's top environmental official said Thursday.

The buildings make up a large chunk of the 22 million tons of debris the storm left behind, said Mike McDaniel, chief of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. The number of buildings that should be condemned and bulldozed could be as high as 160,000, McDaniel said.

The figures are the result of the agency's first overall damage assessment of the parishes affected by the storm.

However, McDaniel's agency does not have authority to condemn the properties. That power lies with local officials, such as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. The mayor plans to form a commission to consider how to rebuild the city, part of which may be deciding which homes and businesses need to be razed.

The storm also destroyed 350,000 cars and other vehicles, McDaniel said, many of which sat under water in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish for weeks. Auto salvage companies have begun scrapping the vehicles for parts.

Another 1 million stoves, refrigerators and other appliances must be disposed of, McDaniel said.

McDaniel spoke at a news conference with Stephen L. Johnson, head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Johnson said Nagin's plan to allow certain New Orleans residents and business people back into the city this week created "a myriad" of potential health concerns: no drinkable water and no working sewer system, plus bacteria- and petroleum-laden floodwater and its residue, which could cause illness.

"EPA is very concerned about the opening of those parts of the city," he said. "There are a whole lot of factors that need to be weighing on the mayor's mind."

McDaniel said the region faces plenty of other environmental problems: 176 low-level radiation leaks, tens of millions of gallons of hazardous materials, such as cleansers and bleach, polluted floodwater that was pumped into Lake Ponchartrain, raw sewage that is still pumping into the Mississippi River. High bacteria and elevated fecal coliform levels have been found in flood waters pumped back into the lake, though the state health department said that is normal after a hurricane. Data from the lake so far show no levels of toxic chemicals that would warrant restrictions on consumption of seafood harvests, the health department said.

"However, by cooking seafood thoroughly, risks associated with bacteria in ambient waters are diminished to below levels of concern," said Jimmy Guidry, the state health officer.