EPA: La. water systems support

DALLAS – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has deployed resources and staff to communities in Louisiana dealing with drinking water and wastewater system outages during recovery from Hurricane Laura. This support comes in response to the Louisiana Department of Health’s (LDH) requests to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Teams are conducting assessments of drinking water and wastewater systems in Louisiana, respectively, and reporting their findings to EPA. Drinking water systems remain heavily impacted with many systems not operating at all or operating with restrictions. EPA dispatched four subject-matter experts in drinking water and wastewater to assist FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. These teams will coordinate joint evaluations with LDH for drinking water and wastewater. EPA also deployed a mobile drinking water lab from Kansas. The lab is certified to perform bacteriological analysis among other types of analyses. The mobile lab and support staff arrived in Lake Charles on Sept. 3 to assist with processing drinking water samples for bacteria and residual chlorine. (Source: EPA 09/04/20) https://response.epa.gov/hurricanelaura