Superfund Safety: What Happens When Wildfires Blaze & Floodwaters Surge Into Toxic Sites?
New Report: The EPA's Own Watchdog Says Many Federal Superfund Sites Face Increasing Threats From Natural Disasters.
Toxic & Vulnerable
When you live in California, like I do, fire season is always on your mind. Research from last year showed that it is indeed starting earlier and lasting longer in almost every region of the state than it did two decades ago.
Mild winter weather combined with hotter temps this spring mean wildfires could start even earlier this year, particularly in Southern California.
Not only is that a problem for the neighborhoods and businesses in the Golden State but also for the toxic waste. You see, it doesn’t stay put when disaster strikes.
You can bury it, cap it, fence it off, and slap a government seal on it, but the earth doesn’t care about your paperwork—and neither does a wildfire or a flood.
The EPA's own watchdog is sounding the alarm
Across the country federal Superfund sites, places so contaminated that the federal government has designated them national emergencies, are sitting in the path of disasters. We all know that wildfires and floods have become worse, more frequent, and more destructive. You can read more about it here and here.
The EPA’s own internal watchdog (the Office of Inspector General) released a series of three reviews last month to identify Superfund sites that may be at risk from sea-level rise or increased storm surge, inland flooding, and wildfires.
That means the agency itself wasn’t saying it loud enough.
The numbers tell a frightening story
Of 155 federal Superfund sites analyzed for wildfire exposure, 31 of them, or one in five, face real wildfire risk.
Seventy-one percent of those are out West, where anyone with eyes has watched the skies turn orange and entire towns disappear overnight. Of the sites that were supposed to be reviewing their wildfire vulnerability, two out of three hadn’t adequately addressed it. Two out of three. Uhhhh, WTF?!
On flooding, it’s even worse.
About one in three federal Superfund sites with sufficient data for analysis could be at risk from inland flooding. Most of them are on the Atlantic coast, which, last I checked, is not exactly known for being dry.
We already have a real-world preview of what this kind of disaster looks like. When Hurricane Harvey slammed Texas in 2017, floodwaters picked up dioxin chemicals from the San Jacinto River Waste Pits and carried them into neighborhoods. Into streets. Into yards. Into homes.
After the storm, officials checked dioxin levels in the river sediment nearby and found it was more than 2,000 times higher than EPA standards.
Your neighbors are in the crosshairs
I want to be clear about something. The contamination at these Superfund sites doesn’t disappear just because someone puts a fence around it.
These are federal facility sites, owned and operated by the U.S. government, and they average more than 6,000 acres each. About 3 million Americans live within a mile of one and 13 million live within three miles. These are your neighbors. Your kids. Your parents.
These sites are prioritized for environmental cleanups to contain or remove hazardous substances. They are full of asbestos, lead, radiation, and other hazardous materials, and they are not getting cleaned up fast enough.
When a wildfire rips through a site loaded with toxic materials, those contaminants don’t just burn up, they become airborne. They travel. They get into lungs.
When a flood overruns one of these sites, the poisons don’t stay put. They hitch a ride downstream into the water table, into the soil, into communities that had no idea the risk was coming.
The rules exist. Nobody's enforcing them.
The EPA guidance already requires that these sites conduct five-year reviews that address natural disaster threats. The rule exists. It’s on the books. The problem isn’t that nobody wrote it down. The problem is that nobody is making sure it’s being followed, and in the meantime, the climate is not waiting for anyone to get their act together.
It’s the same story, over and over. Someone knows. The data is sitting in a drawer somewhere. Yet the people who live in the shadow of these sites, the ones who drink the water and breathe the air and let their kids play outside, they’re the last to find out and the first to pay the price.
How did we get here?
The EPA’s Superfund program began in 1980 to help clean up some of the country’s worst hazardous waste sites and to respond to local and national environmental emergencies. But since then, how many areas have been thoroughly cleaned? How many people are even aware that they exist?
A Superfund site is any land that has been contaminated by hazardous waste and identified by the EPA as a candidate for cleanup because it poses a risk to human health and/or the environment.
Most of these sites are “discovered” when the presence of hazardous waste is made known to the EPA, meaning communities usually find them first because people get sick. Then, these sites get placed on the National Priorities List (NPL).
This is not a partisan issue. Toxic plumes don’t check your voter registration before they settle in your lungs. Floodwater doesn’t ask your income level before it carries poison into your basement. This is about whether the people we put in charge of protecting us are actually doing their job.
The fix isn’t complicated, even if it isn’t easy.
Every federal Superfund site needs a genuine, rigorous review of its climate vulnerabilities, wildfire, flooding, storm surge, all of it, and that review needs to drive actual action, not just paperwork.
The remedies that have already been put in place, often at enormous public expense, need to be protected from the disasters that are coming. Because the question is no longer whether these disasters will arrive. They’re already here.
Get loud before it's too late
We know what happens when we look away. We’ve seen it. We’ve lived it. I’ve spent my career sitting across from families who were told everything was fine, right up until it wasn’t.
The difference between a community that gets justice and one that gets poisoned is almost always this: whether enough people get loud before it’s too late.
So here’s what I’m asking you to do.
Find out if you live near a Superfund site. You can look it up right now at the EPA’s website. If you do, contact your local representatives and demand to know whether that site has had a current five-year review, and whether that review actually addresses natural disaster risks.
Don’t accept a form letter. Don’t accept “we’re looking into it.” Ask for the report. Read it. Share it. And if your representatives can’t answer you? That’s your answer.
The EPA has the authority to require these reviews. Congress has the authority to fund and enforce them. The only thing that’s ever made either of those institutions move is people who refused to be ignored.
I was a single mom with no law degree when I helped hold a corporation accountable for poisoning an entire town. I turned my anger into questions, and those questions into evidence, and that evidence into accountability.
You can do the same thing. The reports are public. The risks are documented. The people in charge are on the record.
Now they need to hear from you.
I was out in Northwest Georgia last week holding town hall meetings on the ongoing PFAS contamination crisis there. Northwest Georgia carpet manufacturers used PFAS in their manufacturing process for years, discharging millions of gallons of toxic “forever chemicals.”
Communities can't defend themselves when they don't know the truth. Town halls help get information to the people.
PBS also produced a great documentary about the toxic legacy of the carpet industy. You can watch it here.
As always, thanks for reading and sharing this information with your friends and neighbors! Have a question or comment? Drop it in the comments below.
I live about 5-10 miles from the San Jacinto River Waste Pits and not only did that happen during Harvey, but they still stupidly allow barges upstream from the Interstate 10 bridge over the river and twice now the barges have gotten loose and damaged the bridge during other storms. I'm beginning to wonder who is stupider: EPA (who cannot figure out a way to clean it up) or Texas Dept of Transportation. They may be equal in brains.