Nestled in the valley of Mount Katrina, roughly 20 mucky acres on the eastern end of the recently-reopened, massive Old Gentilly Landfill in eastern New Orleans, lies the white goods processing/staging area. For the uninitiated in debris removal, the white goods waste stream comprises stoves, washers, dryers, household appliances, air conditioning units, hot water heaters and the big stinky‑refrigerators. When a half million New Orleanians evacuated, they left behind refrigerators and freezers full of what people in these parts love to eat–pots of red beans and rice with sausage, gumbo, shrimp, fish, deer meat, alligator sausage and andouille. Mix it all together, seal in an airtight container, turn off the power, add heat and let it fester and ferment for two months, or six. Get the picture? Well, smell may not be easily conveyed in a print medium, but the abundance of maggots, brown goo and respirators (worn by workers) may offer a hint of the pungent aroma that wafted through virtually every neighborhood in the city for the past few months as residents placed their fridges curbside and have come together here in a communal, odiferous meeting of the smells.
Here, stoves, air conditioners freezers and refrigerators enjoy merely a brief, sordid interlude on their journey from loving homes to the recycling facility at Southern Scrap. This is where the environmental response team (a joint venture of the U.S. EPA, Coast Guard and Louisiana Dept. of Environmental Quality) extracts Freon from units before they are crushed and sent to a metal recycler. “We have collected a total of 301, 776,” said Cindy Fanning, information officer for the response team. “From that total number, 268, 802 units have had Freon extracted from them.” The refrigerant goes to a recovery contractor for permitted reuse.