I, for one, was entirely unaware that Katrina had caused a massive oil spill ( over 7 million gallons) in New Orleans. This was a fairly significant part of the disaster story that was entirely overlooked by the national media.
From Wikipedia:
The storm caused oil spills from 44 facilities throughout southeastern Louisiana, which resulted in over 7 million U.S. gallons (26 million L) of oil being leaked. Some spills were as small as a few hundred gallons; the largest are tabulated to the right. While most of the spills were contained on-site, some oil entered the ecosystem, and the town of Meraux was flooded with a blend of water and oil.[82] Unlike Hurricane Ivan no offshore oil spills were officially reported after Hurricane Katrina. However, Skytruth reported some signs of surface oil in the Gulf of Mexico.[82]
Finally, as part of the cleanup effort, the flood waters that covered New Orleans were pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, a process that took 43 days to complete.[34] These residual waters contained a mix of raw sewage, bacteria, heavy metals, pesticides, toxic chemicals, and oil, which sparked fears in the scientific community of massive numbers of fish dying.[71]
Seeing is believing. There are several photos here.
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