Climate change raising risk for millions near 327 Superfund sites
Anthony Stansbury propped his rusty bike against a live oak tree and cast his ¿shing line into the rushing waters of Florida’s Anclote River.
When he bought a house down the street last year, Stansbury said he wasn’t told that his slice of paradise had a hidden problem. The neighborhood is adjacent to the Stauffer Chemical Co. Superfund site, a former chemical manufacturing plant that is on the list of the nation’s most polluted places. That 130acre lot on the river’s edge is also located in a Àood zone, AP wrote.
“Me and my kids ¿sh here a couple times a week. Everyone who lives on this coast right here, they ¿sh on this water daily,” said the 39-year-old father of three.
Stansbury is among nearly 2 million people in the US who live within a mile of 327 Superfund sites in areas prone to Àooding or vulnerable to sea-level rise caused by climate change, according to an Associated Press analysis of Àood zone maps, census data and US Environmental Protection Agency records.
This year’s historic hurricane season exposed a little-known public health threat: Highly polluted sites that can be inundated by Àoodwaters, potentially spreading toxic contamination.
In Houston, more than a dozen Superfund sites were Àooded by Hurricane Harvey, with breaches reported at two. In the Southeast and Puerto Rico, Superfund sites were battered by driving rains and winds from Irma and Maria.
The vulnerable sites highlighted by AP’S review are scattered across the nation, but Florida, New Jersey and California have the most, and the most people living near them. They are in largely low-income, heavily minority neighborhoods, the data show.
Many of the 327 sites have had at least some work done to help mitigate the threat to public health, including fencing them off and covering them in plastic sheeting to help keep out rain water.
The Obama administration assessed some of these at-risk places and planned to gird them from harsher weather and rising seas. EPA’S 2014 Climate Adaptation Plan said prolonged Àooding at low-lying Superfund sites could cause extensive erosion, carrying away contaminants as waters recede.
President Donald Trump, however, has called climate change a hoax, and his administration has worked to remove references from federal reports and websites linking carbon emissions to the warming planet.
“Site managers had started reviewing climate and environmental trends for each Superfund site, including the potential for Àooding,” said Phyllis Anderson, who worked for 30 years as an EPA attorney and associate director of the division that manages Superfund cleanups until her retirement in 2013.
“The current administration appears to be trying to erase these efforts in their climate change denials, which is a shame.”
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has said he intends to focus on cleaning up Superfund sites, and he appointed a task force that developed a list of sites considered the highest priority. The Stauffer site in Florida is not on it.
Like Trump, Pruitt rejected the consensus of climate scientists that manmade carbon emissions are driving global warming. His task force’s 34-page report makes no mention of the Àood risk to Superfund sites from stronger storms or rising seas, but eight of the 21 sites on EPA’S priority list are in areas of Àood risk.
Despite EPA’S announced emphasis on expediting cleanups, the Trump administration’s proposed spending plan for the current 2018 ¿scal year seeks to slash Superfund program funding by nearly one-third. Congress has not yet approved new spending plans for the ¿scal year, which began Oct. 1.
Pruitt’s of¿ce declined to comment this week on the key ¿ndings of AP’S analysis or why the agency appears to no longer recognize an increasing Àood risk to toxic sites posed by the changing climate.
However, Jahan Wilcox, an EPA spokesman, said, “Despite fear-mongering from the Associated Press, not a single dollar has actually been eliminated, as Congress still hasn’t passed a budget.”
Many Àood-prone Superfund sites identi¿ed through AP’S analysis are located in low-lying, densely populated urban areas. In New Jersey, several polluted sites have more than 50,000 people living within one mile.
In Hoboken, across the Hudson River from New York City, the site of a former manufacturing plant for mercury vapor lamps sits within a mile of almost 100,000 residents, including 7,000 children under ¿ve.
The Martin Aaron Inc. Superfund site is in the heart of Camden’s Waterfront South, a low-income neighborhood of crumbling row houses and industrial facilities stretching along the Delaware River.
The 2.5-acre lot, which takes up most of a city block, has been home to a succession of factories dating back to 1886 that included a leather tannery. The air around the fenced site hangs heavy with the nose-stinging odor of solvents. Testing found that soil and groundwater under the site contained a witch’s brew of highly toxic chemicals, including PCBS and pesticides.