At a Sept. 14 press conference, EPA administrator Johnson defensively stated, "Everyone is looking to EPA for what are the results and are these done in a scientifically appropriate and sound way? We're doing that. We're not trying to be bureaucratic. We want to make sure the results are ones that we can all stand by."

Critics say they don't believe the EPA is trying to cover up the widespread destruction and health hazards in southern Louisiana. But they have little faith in the federal agency's ability to assess the grievous problems and be forthright with the public. As we know, it's not first time the EPA has faced this issue.

The collapse of the Twin Towers four years ago blanketed lower Manhattan in a dust of asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete. Within days, then-EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman was assuring New Yorkers that the air was safe and encouraged them to go back to work at Wall Street. "I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breathe," Whitman said in an EPA press release a week after the towers fell.

But an EPA inspector general's report in August 2003 concluded that Whitman did not have sufficient data to support her calming tone. The report says the White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" about the environment at Ground Zero. Critics have long speculated that the White House wanted to get New York's financial motor, Wall Street, up and running again -- pollution be damned.

To date, nobody knows what the environmental impact has been on the thousands of people, including pregnant women, who lived and worked near Ground Zero. A study by the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York showed that nearly 80 percent of 9,000 first responders may have suffered some lung ailments and half still had those problems a year after the attacks. Several studies are under way on the possible long-term effects on pregnant women and infants living near Ground Zero.

Twelve Manhattan residents sued EPA last year alleging that the agency may have endangered the health of tens of thousands of workers and residents in lower Manhattan. That case is pending.

Pressure to open New Orleans, says Kaufman of EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, is as intense today as it was on Wall Street soon after Sept. 11. "The appearance of 'back-to-normal' gets local industry going, then real estate, and so on," he says. "It's the same issue today, except that the locations and contaminants are different, and people talk with a different accent."

A week after the attacks in New York, the EPA instructed citizens to use a wet rag or wet mop to clean their apartments, though in some cases the dust may have been contaminated by asbestos. On Sept. 14, 2005, the EPA instructed citizens returning to New Orleans to "wear gloves, goggles" and use "respiratory protection" when handling material that may contain asbestos, a known carcinogen.

The two messages are "eerily similar," New York Democrat Rep. Nadler wrote in a letter to President Bush on Sept. 21. "I am deeply concerned that many of the same mistakes made by EPA in response to 9/11 are being repeated on the Gulf Coast."

"This is a potential catastrophe," Nadler says today. "We don't want two catastrophes. We had maybe a thousand killed from the hurricane. You want another thousand killed because of the environment? Maybe five thousand?" Nadler wants to see the EPA conduct a more thorough environmental assessment of the city, rather than just through its spot samples. He also wants EPA to ensure that private companies are held liable for contamination.

That wish, according to environmentalists, shows few signs of coming true. Both the EPA and the Louisiana DEQ have signaled that they will rely on regulated industries to police themselves and tell the government if there has been some major spill. The EPA administrator during the Clinton administration, Carol M. Browner, once announced an initiative to crack down on illegal pollution along the Mississippi River because some companies could not be trusted. Browner at the time said there was an "unprecedented amount of illegal pollution in the Mississippi River drainage." Asked at the Sept. 14 press conference about leaks or damage from companies that line the drainage, or Cancer Alley -- Johnson said he was "not aware" of any problems. "The companies are going to do their own assessments, so we're all working very cooperatively to try to do an assessment."

Today, more than a month after Katrina's wrath, taking inventory of the wholesale environmental destruction remains premature -- for both the EPA and the activists. "We are still in the assessment stage in a lot of this," says Kelly of the Louisiana DEQ. "The problem is so monumental that nobody has dealt with anything like this before."

As she steps gingerly through the muck in the Labarrieres' backyard, Harney is cheered when she finds a crocheted picture that spells "Labarriere." The hanging is a gift she'd bought for the family and promised Edie's 9-year-old, Andrew, she'd try to recover. She carefully extracts the cream-colored crochet from its glass frame, thinks about trying to salvage the smudged pane, and decides against it. She folds up the crochet carefully and puts it in her pocket. Taking a long, panoramic look at the surrounding debris, her cheer vanishes. "You can't live in this place," she says. "You can't live down here."

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