In floods like Hurricane Helene, toxic chemicals pose a silent and growing threat

In floods like Hurricane Helene, toxic chemicals pose a silent and growing threat

By James R. Elliott, Dominic Boyer, Phylicia Lee Brown & The United States conversation

The following essay is reproduced with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.

Hundreds of industrial facilities containing toxic pollutants were in Hurricane Helen’s path when the powerful storm flooded Southeast communities in late September 2024.

Near the coast and in Georgia, Helen invaded paper mills, fertilizer plants, and oil and gas storage facilities. Paper mills are among the most polluting industries on the planet – some with thousands of pounds of lead on site from past production practices.

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Florida authorities reported that a retired nuclear power plant just south of Cedar Key experienced a storm surge of up to 12 feet that flooded buildings and an industrial wastewater pond. Spent nuclear fuel stored at the site, which was also flooded during Hurricane Idalia in 2023, was considered safe, Bloomberg reported.

Farther inland, the storm dumped more than a foot of rain on industrial sites in the Carolinas and Tennessee, some near streams that were quickly inundated by mountain runoff.

In disasters like these, industrial damage can extend over several days, and residents may not hear about toxic chemical releases into the water or air until days or weeks later. or even if they discover it.

However, pollution discharges are frequent.

After Hurricane Ian crossed the west coast of Florida in 2022, runoff including hazardous materials from damaged storage tanks and local fertilizer extraction facilities, in addition to millions of gallons of water spent, was visible from space, flowing through coastal wetlands into the Gulf of Mexico. A year earlier, Hurricane Ida caused more than 2,000 chemical spills.

During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, floodwaters surrounded chemical facilities near Houston. Some caught fire after cooling systems failed, releasing huge amounts of pollutants into the air. Rescue workers and residents, who did not know what risks they might face, blamed the chemicals for respiratory illnesses.

Many types of toxic materials can spread, settle, and change the long-term health and environmental safety of surrounding communities – often without residents’ knowledge. Our team of environmental sociologists and anthropologists have mapped hazardous industrial sites across the country and combined them with projected hurricane impact maps to help communities hold nearby facilities accountable.

Gulf petrochemical complexes at high risk

Risks from industrial facilities are most evident along the U.S. Gulf Coast, where many large petrochemical complexes are clustered and exposed to danger. These refineries, factories, and storage facilities are often built along rivers or bays to facilitate access for shipping.

But these rivers can also cause flooding from storm surges that can lift the ocean several meters during hurricanes. Storm surge from Helene was more than 10 feet above ground level in Florida’s Big Bend and more than 6 feet high in Tampa Bay.

A recent study found pollution releases two to three times greater during hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico than during normal weather conditions from 2005 to 2020.

The effects of these pollution releases disproportionately affect low-income communities and people of color, further exacerbating environmental health risks.

Why residents may not hear about toxic releases

The statistics are disconcerting, but they attract little attention. Indeed, hazardous releases remain largely invisible due to limited disclosure requirements and a lack of public information. Even emergency responders often don’t know exactly what hazardous chemicals they encounter in an emergency.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires large polluters to record only very general information about chemicals and on-site risks in their risk management plans. Some large-scale fuel storage facilities, such as those containing liquefied natural gas, are not even required to do so.

These risk management plans describe “worst case scenarios” and are intended to be publicly available. But, in reality, we and others found them difficult to access, heavily redacted, and kept in federal reading rooms with limited access. The reason often given by local officials and national scientific review boards for this secrecy is to protect the facilities from terrorist attacks.

Added to this opacity is the fact that many states – including those in the Gulf – suspend restrictions on polluting discharges during emergency declarations. Meanwhile, real-time incident notifications from the National Response Center — the federal government’s repository for all environmental chemical releases — typically lag by a week or more,

We believe this limited public information about growing chemical threats from climate change should make headlines every hurricane season. Communities need to be aware of the risks of hosting vulnerable industrial infrastructure, especially as rising global temperatures increase the risk of extreme rainstorms and powerful hurricanes.

Mapping risks nationally to raise awareness

To help communities understand their risks, our team at Rice University’s new Center for Coastal Futures and Adaptive Resilience is studying how industrial communities located in flood-prone areas nationwide can better adapt to such threats, both socially and technologically.

Our interactive map shows where high risks of future flooding threaten to inundate top polluters that we identify using the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory.

The United States has several hotspots that are home to clusters of flood-prone polluters. Houston’s Ship Channel, Chicago’s waterfront steel industries, and the ports of Los Angeles and New York/New Jersey are among the most important.

But, as Hélène revealed, big concerns can also arise in less obvious areas. Inland, especially in the mountains, runoff can quickly turn normally calm rivers into fast-rising torrents. The French Broad River in Asheville, North Carolina, rose about 12 feet in 12 hours during Helene and set a new flood record.

When hurricanes and tropical storms head toward the United States, our interactive maps now show where the top polluters are within the storm’s projected cone of impact. The maps identify hazardous facilities prone to flooding right down to the address, anywhere in the country.

Knowledge is the first step

Knowing where these sites are is only the first step. It is often up to communities themselves, many of which are already overexposed and historically underserved, to raise concerns and demand strategies to mitigate the health, economic and environmental risks that industrial sites at risk of collapse can pose. flooding and other damage.

These discussions cannot wait until disaster is imminent. By knowing where these risks may lie, communities can take steps now to build a safer future.

This article was originally published on The conversation. Read the original article.