John Pardue Quotations

But the evidence is still out on whether any of the sludge left behind on the streets and in homes and businesses after the water was pumped out is particularly toxic. I would certainly still caution anyone cleaning up and handling that material not to do it without good protective clothing and gear.

From the perspective of chemical or environmental contamination, it could have been much worse. One advantage is that we have so much water in the city and that dilutes out the chemicals. People shouldn't have an irrational fear of chemicals in the water. I'm more concerned about the viral and bacterial things. There's going to be a lot of gastrointestinal and public health issues.

We realize as people clean their homes out, they're moving all this mud and material out to the curb, where it's eventually going into the storm drain system. Every rain we get for the next six months or beyond will put more material into the lake.

We don't see the very elevated levels of toxics that would make you think of this water as toxic waste.

While there are a lot of chemicals in the water, they probably don't rise to the level of an acute toxin. Probably the biggest danger right now is the sewage.

There's just a whole smorgasbord of chemicals that are getting in the water.

Are the schoolyards and people's yards going to be so contaminated that we're going to have to scrape them up? That's the big unknown right now. It's not a very rosy picture, I'm afraid.

You really can't talk about cleaning up the city until they get all those vehicles hauled out.

The numbers don't show any smoking guns, but I am concerned about people setting up shop in there before that question is answered.

Clearly, there's going to have to be an environmental assessment of a lot of different areas of the city before people can go back in and live.