Background:
On the first day of Atlantic Hurricane Season, Healthy Gulf is releasing an Analysis of Hurricane Ida Pollution Reports titled Murky Waters: Hurricane Preparedness and Response for Polluters Long Overdue.
Hurricane Ida left a trail of oil, gas, and chemical pollution across Southeast Louisiana far beyond what was initially reported.
In the months following the August 29, 2021 landfall of Hurricane Ida, reports of pollutant releases due to the storm were examined by aggregating and analyzing otherwise unorganized data from several reporting agencies.
In total, the assessment of Hurricane Ida-related release data shows that there were 2,230 pollution events that occurred directly or indirectly because of the hurricane.
Among those were 171 oil spills involving at least 229,633 gallons cumulatively.
There were 257 reports of oil spills or sheens, and 22 of these oil spills and sheens added up to an area that equaled over 25 square miles.
There were 48 instances of air pollution reported, with over 1 million pounds of pollutants emitted.
Despite the alarmingly high numbers, these totals are almost guaranteed to be an undercount of what was actually released due to severely lacking data protocols by the response agencies involved.