( Michael Paulsen / Houston Chronicle ) He had heard the stories of dead bodies rotting in the streets.
He knew that the city of New Orleans had totally broken down.
Any sense of optimism the reporter had for the Crescent City’s recovery suddenly went dark.
It was "the moment went the bottom had fallen out," as Douglas Brinkley documented in "The Great Deluge."
Today, in Puerto Rico, they’re not drinking out of hotel fountains.
They’re drinking out of Superfund sites.
Fences around a toxic well were torn down and the water contained was pumped out to citizens desperate to bathe, wash dishes and, yes, imbibe, CNN reported last week.
This can’t be the bottom falling out, because somehow EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wants to keep digging.
He has proposed an EPA budget that slashes 30 percent from Superfund cleanups and 37 percent from Superfund enforcement, according to a report by the Environmental Defense Fund.
Houstonians warned for years a natural disaster could rupture the storage tanks filled with dioxin and wash the carcinogenic chemical into the San Jacinto River.