Water pumped into Lake Pontchartrain drains into the Gulf of Mexico
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Officials hope the cleanup program will have the same result as a decades- long effort mounted by the Federal Government and four states in the Delaware River estuary, an area ringed by heavy industry and home to almost 6 million people. The Delaware's pollution problems began in Benjamin Franklin's day. By World War II, the river had become so foul that airplane pilots could smell it at 5,000 ft. President Franklin Roosevelt even considered it a threat to national security. In 1941 he ordered an investigation to determine whether gases from the water were causing corrosion at a secret radar installation on the estuary.
Although the Delaware will never regain its precolonial purity, the estuary has been vastly improved. Shad, which disappeared 60 years ago, are back, along with 33 other species of fish that had virtually vanished. Estuary Expert Richard Albert calls the Delaware "one of the premier pollution- control success stories in the U.S."
Such triumphs are still rare, and there is all too little in the way of concerted multinational activity to heal the oceans. That means pollution is bound to get worse. Warns Clifton Curtis, president of the Oceanic Society, a Washington-based environmental organization: "We can expect to see an increase in the chronic contamination of coastal waters, an increase in health advisories and an increase in the closing of shellfish beds and fisheries." ) Those are grim tidings indeed, for both the world's oceans and the people who live by them.