Pollution around New Orleans

While it is debatable whether this is strictly hurricane related or not, it is a definite problem and there are enough Katrina references to warrant its inclusion:

From Living on Earth: (you can listen to the entire thing here)

"It may be too early to say whether the flooding dealt a mortal blow to this community. A few pre-Katrina neighborhood anchors have returned, and lightened people's hearts....But it's clear that a place that was hardscrabble before, is even harder now..

LOBET: American refineries have been running full bore, even before the 2005 hurricanes that took several offline, including Chalmette. To meet growing demand, refinery owners around the country have expanded capacity at existing plants rather than build new ones, in part because getting a permit for a new refinery is so difficult. Howard Feldman is with the American Petroleum Institute.

FELDMAN: Everybody wants the fuels, and nobody wants the refinery nearby. There are tradeoffs obviously.

LOBET: With plants running at capacity, equipment failures and accidental releases of pollutants are more common. Two years ago a federal judge in New Orleans ruled Chalmette refinery had released illegal amounts of benzene into the air more than 1200 times in the two preceding years."

And some more on Katrina recovery:

"Ford gestures at the FEMA trailers that still edge out of driveways here. Empty houses once worth 110 thousand dollars, now offer themselves up for 40 thousand as sellers pray for a buyer, a miracle. He shows a visitor past his gutted-out house to where a small frame building lists sideways."