http://www.boston.com/dailynews/127/nation/Sandbags_go_from_asset_to_publ:.shtml

Sandbags go from asset to public health issue as flood waters recede

By Jay Hughes, Associated Press, 5/7/2001 04:27

NIOTA, Ill. (AP) As the Mississippi River surged from its banks last month, 180,000 tons of sand were shoveled into more than 9 million sandbags in towns from Illinois to Minnesota to help hold back the flood waters.

But now, as the river retreats and emergency officials think about cleaning up, the sandbags that helped save the towns have become sodden, polluted liabilities. Removing them is a public health issue.

''They're wet and fishy,'' said Chief Larry Granneman of the Niota Volunteer Fire Department, which used more than 200,000 sandbags to shore up the town's aged, battered levee.

Granneman said the bags must stay in place for at least another week but he and other officials know that when the cleanup begins they're unlikely to get the same help from volunteers who were there when the crisis was at its peak.

''It's more glamorous to fight the flood than to clean up when the flood waters recede,'' Illinois Emergency Management Director Mike Chamness said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gives local officials a ''reasonable time period'' after flood waters recede to remove temporary structures from levees enrolled in the corps' maintenance program. Otherwise, there are no federal guidelines on how long sandbags can remain in place, and no instructions on what to do with them, so state and local governments are left to devise their own disposal plans.

''They don't even recommend you going into the water during a flood fight because of bacteria, oil, sewage and everything else that gets in the water that's not supposed to,'' said corps spokesman Ron Fournier. ''It would go hand-in-hand that a sandbag that's been exposed to that is something you wouldn't want to have hanging around too long.''

Officials said disposal plans are largely modeled on actions taken after the flood of 1993, when sand was recycled when possible and most of the bags ended up in landfills.

Illinois expects to provide state help for many small communities that can't handle the task alone. Minnesota expects cities and counties to dispose of their own sandbags.

Kevin Smith, spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, said the bags will be thrown away and uses will be found for the polluted sand.

''The sand itself gets recycled for use in non-human contact areas. It may go to DOT (Department of Transportation) for them to mix it up with cement to repair the shoulders of roads, for example. Obviously, it doesn't go into kids' sandboxes in the backyard,'' he said.

At least some of the 400,000 sandbags in Davenport, Iowa, may end up in sandboxes, however. To recoup part of the expense of building a temporary levee, the city plans to sell ''clean'' sandbags, those that were filled but never used, for 25 cents each.

Officials hope to recycle many others. Some intact bags will be moved to help build up a levee in a flood-prone area of Davenport and the contents of others will be used as filler outside the city's compost facility.

''Some (sandbags) never left the truck,'' said city spokeswoman Jennifer Nahra. ''Of the rest, we hope we can use them wherever possible.''

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2001