Hurricane Katrina: What are the Environmental Impacts of Hurricane Katrina?

Hurricane Katrina's Flooding Contaminated Groundwater:

Household hazardous wastes, pesticides, heavy metals and other toxic chemicals created a witch's brew of flood water that quickly seeped down into and contaminated groundwater across hundreds of miles. "The range of toxic chemicals that may have been released is extensive," says Johns Hopkins University of environmental health sciences professor Lynn Goldman. "We're talking about metals, persistent chemicals, solvents, materials that have numerous potential health impacts over the long term."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers Hurricane Katrina the biggest disaster it has ever had to handle. According to Hugh Kaufman, an EPA senior analyst, environmental regulations in place to prevent the types of discharges that occurred during Hurricane Katrina were not enforced, making what would have been a bad situation much worse.

The reason for the environmental disaster during Hurricane Katrina was that environmental regulations were not at a high priority. But how could environmental regulations be on any ones mind when a catastrophe like this occurs. How do you balance a catastrophe such as this one as wll as environmental regulations. That is something the EPA will have to plan for future crises such as this one.