Greenpeace

What do we know about Hurricane Katrina that you don't? Maybe more, maybe less. Here in the zone, things are chaotic. There's much work to be done and not much time for overview. We have to focus on the tasks at hand and so we may know less about the overall situation than folks watching television from a distance. We arrived around midnight last night; the good folks at the Louisiana Environmental Action Network let us park our vehicles in their driveway and use their office this morning. We can report that at least on their street in Baton Rouge there's water enough to flush toilets but not enough for a shower and it's not safe to drink.

After a few hours sleep, Mark, Mike and Christian spent a good portion of the day flying over the lower Mississippi in a helicopter. Several communities are nothing more than ruins standing in floodwater. Boats and barges rest on now-dry land, others are capsized and submerged in the river and attendant channels.

We saw spilled oil from ruptured holding tanks at Bass Oil Enterprises and Chevron facilities. Crews were on scene spreading booms and trying to contain the spills, but oil was seeping into the marshes in every direction.

That's direct observation; MSNBC reports 44 oil spills in southeastern Louisiana (including the two above), the Dallas Morning News reports that the total oil spilled by Katrina may rival that spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989.

The federal government is finally here in force. Military helicopters crossed our path several times. The airport in Hammond from which we took off is being used as a forward deployment area for a team from Customs and Border Protection. The highway is alive with pickup trucks, back windows bearing "FEMA" placards run off on a copier.

Local environmental groups are nearly overwhelmed. Aside from caring for their own families and lost houses, activists are trying to use their Warholian 15 minutes of media attention to attempt to explain decades of ecological abuse corporate America has heaped on the region. Then they try to get the attention of federal bureaucrats so that some of the money appropriated for relief actually does some good for the enviroment and doesn't all wind up leaving town in the pockets of federal contractors.

Stephanie and Kenny are off investigating the effects of the storm on chemical plants in Mississippi. We heard from them that they're on their way back, but it's getting late, they've got a 150-mile drive and there are thunderstorms moving through the area. Groundstrokes light up Baton Rouge, the power flickers, then catches and flashes back on. The rain pools quickly, reminding us of how close the water table is to the surface of the earth here and how water - and toxic chemicals - flow both ways.