At the end of November, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report entitled “EPA Should Take Additional Actions to Manage Risks from Climate Change”. They looked at flood, storm surge, wildfires and sea level rise and concluded that about 60% (945 in number) of the non-federal National Priorities List (NPL, aka Superfund sites) are at risk of severe weather events. (Some federal sites have heavy contamination too, but these are managed by their respective federal agencies and not included.) The Associated Press conducted similar analysis in 2017 and found 327 Superfund sites at risk for flooding. They also found that 2 million people live within one mile of each of these sites.
The New York Times researched a similar topic in 2018, but on chemical sites that are not on the Superfund list. They found about 1,400 sites that handle toxic chemicals and are in locations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) considers at high risk of flooding. For example, a chemicals plant in Baytown, Texas released sodium hydroxide and benzene into the environment after Hurricane Harvey swamped the plant. Chevron Phillips, owner of the plant, successfully pumped some of the contaminated water into 80 steel tanks, but most of “the product was lost in the floodwater” according to a local EPA spokesperson.
Investors, state and local policy-makers, taxpayers and residents are increasingly interested in the potential impact of climate change on their investments and on their communities. Numerous companies are “circling the wagons” to come up with the best measurement and assessment models for risk from weather events. These analyses typically assess the probability of flood or wildfire or storm surge in a particular geographic area but it is equally important to combine this analysis with proximity to Superfund and chemical sites. The map below, lifted from the GAO report, may look like the U.S. has a bad case of the measles, but these are Superfund sites on the NPL that are also at risk of extreme weather events. Flood, storm surge and fire release toxic chemicals into water, air and soil, resulting in complex cleanup costs and potentially harmful and costly health effects.
GAO matched geographic data available from FEMA with the non federal Superfund database. FEMA provides a tool that details coastal and river flooding in the “National Flood Hazard Layer” which can be found here. FEMA defines the highest risk of flood as an area having a 1% annual chance of flooding. FEMA considers areas with .2% and higher, per year, to have a moderate chance of flooding. The Chevron Phillips plant mentioned above is located in an area FEMA designates with .2% risk. A detailed interactive map of these areas may be found here (click the map under “media”).
CERCLA, (the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act) mind you, was passed in 1980 – nearly forty years ago to clean up Superfund sites and the depicted sites above have not yet degraded to a safe level. (To be fair, not all sites depicted are forty years old.) What’s changed however, is an increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.
To contain toxic chemicals from spreading, the EPA has historically followed a procedure of “capping” sites of contamination. However, as Jeff Cunningham, University of South Florida civil engineering professor told the AP, capping a site works as long as the chemicals can degrade to a safe level before the cap is breached by flooding or another type of failure.
The federal government does not have explicit rules for containing toxic chemicals in flood (or wildfire) prone areas. According to the New York Times article, state and local governments do not require extra precautions for handling toxic chemicals in flood prone sites either (at the time the article was written in February 2018). We do not know yet how to accurately analyze the quality of containment at a site under a variety of scenarios, nor is there a focus on disclosure of the risk of a breach, given various scenarios. As a beginning however, it is important for all stakeholders to start asking about the quality of containment, and perhaps what stressors might breach that containment (e.g. Category 1 or only Categories 4-5 hurricane).
Has EPA Added Another “Hoax” to the Administration’s List?
The President’s views that climate change is a “hoax” are widely known. For those interested, here is a chronicle of his statements and actions on the subject. The current EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler is a former coal industry lobbyist. The previous administrator, Scott Pruitt was Attorney General in the State of Oklahoma and sued the EPA at least 14 times according to the linked article. Following a series of investigations over conflicts of interest, his spending habits, capped off by a deeply discounted rental of a condo from a lobbyist representing clients that are regulated by the EPA, he resigned in September, 2018.
In this context, we point out that the current administration has scrubbed the EPA mission of references to climate change. Interestingly, the administration retains a link (sourced as of December 6, 2019) to the old site and you can see the change in mission. With this in mind, it is not surprising that EPA rejected three of GAO’s four recommendations. GAO comments that the EPA does not align “its process for managing risks with agency-wide goals and objectives, which do not mention climate change. Without clarifying this alignment, EPA cannot ensure that senior officials will take an active role in strategic planning and accountability for managing these risks.”
US OMB’s Circular A-123 called for agencies to implement enterprise risk management. “Enterprise risk management is a tool that allows agencies to assess threats and opportunities that could affect the achievement of their goals.” The GAO report continues: “The principles of enterprise risk management apply at all levels of the organization and across all functions, such as those related to managing risk to human health and the environment from the potential impacts of climate change effects at nonfederal NPL sites.”
The EPA’s strategic plan from 2018-2022 “does not include goals and objectives related to climate change” (pg. 35). Guidance for program managers in the Office of Land and Emergency Management does not include or mention climate change. This approach is a major policy pivot from to the 2014-2018 strategic plan, which included addressing the threat of climate change as one of the four strategic goals of the administration. In 2014, adaptation of Superfund remediation to climate change was included in an agency-wide plan that identified how NPL sites might be affected. In addition, guidance to program managers in 2016-2017 included climate change adaptation as one of four areas of national focus.
In fairness, EPA managers do take into account changing conditions related to Superfund sites. A number of officials told GAO that while they take changes into consideration, they do not have specific direction from leaders in how to manage those risks. It is not clear to managers in the field whether EPA could require a “potentially responsible party” (PRP) to consider climate change impact in the cleanup and remediation process. However, GAO points out that headquarters officials state that considering climate change is consistent with “CERCLA criterion that requires officials to consider the long-term effectiveness of remedies…”
EPA’s response to the GAO report repeated its strong belief that existing resources and procedures are adequate to “ensure that risks and any effects of severe weather events, that may increase in intensity, duration, or frequency, are woven into risk assessments at nonfederal NPL sites.” In fact, the Assistant Administrator repeated this exact statement five times in its four-page response letter to GAO.
The point here is a fine one — not that field managers or headquarters officials fail to take severe weather events into account in their mission to protect human health and the environment. Rather, acknowledging that a changing climate may have major negative effect on NPL sites as well as non-Superfund chemical sites, is not part of EPA’s mission nor is it infused into its enterprise risk management strategy. This is in direct contrast with prior administrations’ approach. Without management guidance down to the field level, responses can be ad hoc and inconsistent, increasing the probability that something important could be missed.
For those wishing to go further, EPA has an interactive tool to learn about the status of cleanups in your community.
