Mounds of Mud
Shroud Towns

SLIDELL, La. -- Water is nearly everywhere in New Orleans, while splintered wood and fallen trees crisscross the state of Mississippi. The problem in this city and along the surrounding coast in northeastern Louisiana is slightly different: a thick coating of mud that will also be challenging to clean up.

Along with pounding waves, Hurricane Katrina sent tons of muck from the depths of Lake Pontchartrain up through the bayous, settling on high ground and hundreds of homes that were left standing albeit hardly livable.

The mud fills parking lots and covers playgrounds three miles north of Lake Pontchartrain. In Slidell, a New Orleans suburb of 27,000 people, 80% of homes were damaged and 50% destroyed. Of those remaining, mud soaks porches and floors, turning beige carpet black and warping the wood underneath.

The mess is slick and viscous. It lies in pools that hiss and pop, as oxygen bubbles from bugs and other creatures beneath dot the surface. Snakes slither out of the ooze and cross drying asphalt. Water moccasins, copperheads and cottonmouths swept in from the bayous are slithering through town.

"This ain't normal mud," says Chuck Miller, pushing a broom through a sheet of mud on the porch of friends Sundara and Joshua Caruso.

"It smells like sewage," says Mrs. Caruso, 25 years old, dragging her sneaker across the linoleum, with the water separating from silt like oil and vinegar. The Carusos don't know yet if they will be able to salvage enough to move back into the house.

Getting rid of the mud is "a daunting task," says Greg Cromer, a Slidell city councilman. Struggling to restore basic services and clear power lines and roads of trees and other debris, the city lacks the equipment and manpower to clean all the mudslicks right away, he says. For now, the city is pressure-washing muddy spots and buildings with fire hoses.

The hurricane's powerful winds created waves from shallow Lake Pontchartrain that dredged some of that mud up and deposited it on Slidell and other towns and cities bordering the lake. The north side of the lake isn't the only place the mud blanketed: Officials say that when the water is finally dredged from New Orleans, it is likely to be caked in mud as well.

While messy, the mud also serves a useful purpose. Much of the land in southern Louisiana is sinking, as the sediment that created it from the Mississippi river settles. Floodwaters like those unleashed by Katrina replenish the land by dumping new sediment -- mud -- on top of it. The extra layer of soil may actually help the land to settle.

Though the mud isn't highly toxic, it does pose health concerns. Organic and fertile, it can contain virulent bacteria known as vibrios that can unleash stubborn infections and blisters if they come in contact with an open wound, local doctors say. Like the floodwaters, it could also contain sewage from ruptured sewage pipes. And it can harbor poisonous snakes.

It also has a few other surprises. Cleaning out her 100-year-old, 3,000-square-foot home and yard, Suzanne Mayfield Kriger found a turtle -- along with several pieces of her delicate crystal. It was unbroken, seemingly protected by the mud as even as it was battered by winds.

On Monday, the First Baptist Church on Pontchartrain Road in Slidell called in six workers to clean up. The church is on the east side of the railroad, considered high ground as it is almost four miles from Lake Pontchartrain. Even so, the hired crew had to use saws to cut through the mud-soaked pews that were too heavy to lift in one piece. They used squeegees for pushing out layers of mud, which had already clogged the Shop-Vac and, like water on a windshield, filled in quickly after a squeegee passed.

"If you took a chocolate slushy and tried to walk through it -- that's what this is like," says Ricky Howell of Servpro Industries Inc., a national chain specializing in the cleanup of fire and water damage. The workers were prepared to spend a month on the church buildings, particularly the activities center, where the bathrooms overflowed and raw sewage mixed in with the mud.

"You have live fish in here, like perch," says Mr. Howell, pushing a lump with his boot. The lump didn't move. "I take that back. It's finally dying."

In the parking lot behind the church, the mud was beginning to dry in areas directly exposed to the sun, turning spongelike, then rubbery, then brittle like desert cracking in the heat.

Mud is a problem but Slidell officials say they have bigger ones, such as getting the water and sewer systems going. The City Hall's first floor was covered in a foot of mud, so all civic and police services are operating out of trailers perched on a former government Superfund cleanup site. A handwritten sign taped onto the entrance door warns: "NO MUDDY FEET!"

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