September 13, 2018

Hurricane Florence’s Forecasted Path Includes About 9 Toxic Waste Sites

The EPA is monitoring Superfund sites in the event of flooding.

NOAA via Getty Images

This story was originally published by HuffPost. It appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Environmental Protection Agency is monitoring nine hazardous waste sites in the Carolinas in the event that Hurricane Florence unleashes toxic chemicals.

“EPA Regions 3 and 4 are closely monitoring the projected path of Hurricane Florence,” an EPA spokesperson told HuffPost in a statement, adding that agency staff “are conducting the necessary response planning to support any requests from response partners that are related to potential discharge and/or releases of oil or hazardous materials.”

Sites in Virginia may be added over the coming hours or days. 

The EPA regularly monitors Superfund sites—areas where toxic waste has collected, posing health and environmental risks—that are expected to be targeted by hurricanes in the lead-up to the storms, but toxic waste has been known to seep out of these sites due to floods and rain.

Last year, for example, the agency wasn’t able to prevent waste from being released or the protective cap from being damaged at the San Jacinto River Waste Pits Superfund site in Texas following major flooding during Hurricane Harvey, causing the spread of dioxins, environmental pollutants that can cause reproductive and developmental problems and cancer. The EPA announced a $115 million cleanup plan for the waste site in April.

“The coal-ash sites are very vulnerable to this hurricane and any other,” Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Bloomberg. “The risk is probably not that rain is going to fall into the pits. The risk is that land and water will compromise the dams.”

The storm, which is slated as a Category 4 but might strengthen to a Category 5, is expected to make landfall on Thursday morning. President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in both North and South Carolina, and the states’ governors ordered more than 1 million people to evacuate. 

Even if lives are spared, property and analytics firm CoreLogic warned that the storm will come with severe economic repercussions. The reconstruction costs for homes in the storm’s path could hit an estimated $170.2 billion.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate