Toxic Trouble: Hundreds of Superfund sites face flood risks
When he bought a house down the street last year, Stansbury says he wasn't told that his slice of paradise had a hidden problem. The neighborhood is adjacent to the
"Me and my kids fish here a couple times a week. Everyone who lives on this coast right here, they fish on this water daily," said the 39-year-old father of three.
Stansbury is among nearly 2 million people in the
This year's historic hurricane season exposed a little-known public health threat: Highly polluted sites that can be inundated by floodwaters, potentially spreading toxic contamination.
In
The vulnerable sites highlighted by AP's review are scattered across the nation, but
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.
President
"Site managers had started reviewing climate and environmental trends for each Superfund site, including the potential for flooding," said
Like Trump, Pruitt rejects the consensus of climate scientists that man-made carbon emissions are driving global warming. His task force's 34-page report makes no mention of the flood risk to Superfund sites from stronger storms or rising seas, but eight of the 21 sites on
Despite
Pruitt's office declined to comment this week on the key findings of AP's analysis or why the agency appears to no longer recognize an increasing flood risk to toxic sites posed by the changing climate.
However,
Many flood-prone Superfund sites identified through AP's analysis are located in low-lying, densely populated urban areas. In
In
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.
Earlier this month, workers used heavy machinery to remove contaminated soil and to pump polluted water from deep underground. Long range plans approved by
Just around the corner,
"It's really contaminated, there's a lot of stuff in the ground, but I don't know what all it is," said Skinner, 53, who works at a nearby scrap metal yard and has lived in Waterfront South since he was a teenager.
Foul-smelling water filled the streets there during Superstorm Sandy in 2012, flooding many basements, long-time residents said. Census data show about 17,250 people live within a mile of the Martin Aaron site — 65 percent are black and 36 percent are Latino.
Across the nation, more than 800,000 homes are located near flood-prone toxic sites. Houses are at risk of contamination if intense flooding brings water into them, and many more people could be affected if the contamination seeps into the ground, finding its way into drinking water.
"We place the things that are most dangerous in sacrifice zones, which in many instances are communities of color where we haven't placed as much value on their lives," said Ali, who worked at
The Stauffer site in
Environmental regulators say the site now poses no threat to people or the environment because the current owner, the pharmaceutical company
Covering toxic waste is often a cheaper option than completely removing the pollutants, but the installations are not always as long-lasting as the chemicals buried beneath them, said
"As a long-term strategy, capping only works if the contaminants degrade to safe levels before the capping system eventually fails. What if it takes centuries for some of these contaminants to degrade to safe levels?" Cunningham said.
Damage to a protective cap from storm-fueled flooding has already occurred at least once this year.
In October, the
Seventy-six-year-old
Leisner said barrels of chemicals at the Stauffer site self-ignited while crews were working. He said he's disappointed neither the company nor
"Burying things rarely helps. And if you've got a chemical that is that toxic ... I think you need to find a way to reuse, recycle and remove (it), to a place where it's not going to contaminate groundwater," he said.
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