The backlog of unfunded Superfund sites, in 17 states and Puerto Rico, includes an abandoned mine in Maine, where an open dump is contaminated with arsenic and lead; a Louisiana wood protection facility contaminated with creosote and a toxic stew of volatile organic compounds; and a grain storage facility in Nebraska contaminated with a fumigant containing carbon tetrachloride. Nineteen of the 34 are threatened by climate change, the GAO found.
Kathy Setian, a former EPA Superfund site manager, warned that some of these unfunded sites pose unknown dangers because they have not done the same sustained repairs as cleaning sites.
“If there are threats to climate change for the unfunded sites, we do not know what they are because we do not even look to them for remediation,” Setian said. “The threats are not being addressed.”
Reviewing Trump’s Transactions
In addition to Whitehouse’s call to assess climate threats at every site, one former EPA official said the incoming Biden government should review all agreements negotiated by Trump EPA on Superfund websites with businesses that are accountable.
“You will want to see if the responsible parties get preference,” said Mathy Stanislaus, who served as assistant administrator to the EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management during the Obama administration.
Stanislaus said such reviews should first focus on any agreements negotiated by the crippled Trump EPA since the election. Since 2019, the agency has been run by Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, while the Superfund program is led by Peter C. Wright, a lawyer who previously worked for Dow Chemical and represented the company in negotiations with the EPA on Superfund sites. .
Stanislaus said he was also concerned about a list of recommendations in 2017 outlining ways to streamline the cleanup process, proposed by a Superfund Task Force set up by Scott Pruitt, Trump’s first EPA administrator. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt was one of the EPA’s most hostile critics.
One of the incentives Pruitt has urged the EPA to consider as a way to make quick clean-ups is to reduce the burden on ‘cooperating parties’, or companies working with the EPA to disinfect their websites, a goal Stanislaus said could be read as an invitation to cut favorable deals with the industry. The task force also recommended reducing oversight costs for ‘high-quality’ businesses.
The EPA did not respond to requests for comment.
In September 2017, Pruitt scored points with community leaders and environmental activists in Houston when he visited a notorious Superfund site, the San Jacinto Waste Pits, which was flooded by floodwaters during Hurricane Harvey.
An EPA diving team has just confirmed that the damage to a concrete mantle led to a leak of dioxin into the river stream, and Pruitt has announced that the extremely dangerous human cancer will eventually be removed from the site.
But as the incoming Biden government takes over the program, the Trump timeline for removal has now been extended from 27 months to an estimated seven years and the EPA has relaxed the proposed requirements for waste disposal. Environmentalists argued that the sampling was deficient and that the removed waste should be disposed of in a safer area than currently proposed.
Rock Owens, who oversaw the Harris County attorney’s environmental department for more than twenty years before retiring in October, said he hopes the new team will impose stricter disposal standards.
“As they go through the design process, things will be reviewed – and our hope is that the issues regarding disposal will be exhausted,” he said.
Meanwhile, San Jacinto landfills remain vulnerable to further leaks – especially with stronger hurricanes fueled by climate change.
In vulnerable provinces like Harris, Owens said, “We need to solve the problem of climate change – it has to do with everything.”
Environmental justice: Years of broken promises
When the Obama-EPA searched for ten less privileged neighborhoods near Superfund sites in 2009 to participate in an environmental justice program, officials selected Eastside in Jacksonville, Florida, near the Kerr-McGee Superfund site, a former manufacturer and storage of pesticides and fertilizers. facility.
Each of the ten communities, from Staten Island, New York, to Yakima Valley, Washington, received $ 100,000 grants to address environmental justice issues. The relatively small number spoke of the modest ambitions of the EPA’s environmental justice program at the time.
In Jacksonville, there was talk of building a comprehensive health care center. But the program included only enough money for a study of fish and shellfish in local fish streams, the placement of 24 signs warning of the dangers of eating the fish, and a seminar on how to build rain barrels, according to the EPA.
“We’re been knocking on EPA’s door for 20 years,” said Teena Anderson, a member of the Eastside Environmental Council, a grassroots organization that represents the residents around the Kerr-McGee site, which advocates for job training, nutrition programs and assistance for the elderly. “We do not have much to show for it.”
Trump’s latest budget proposal included a 70 percent reduction in EPA spending on environmental justice programs, from $ 9.5 million to $ 2.7 million.
Mustafa Santiago Ali, who served as a co-administrator in the EPA’s office for environmental justice in the Obama administration, said he understands the cynicism Anderson feels after years of unfulfilled expectations.
“There will have to be a rebuilding of trust between the federal government and frontline communities,” said Ali, who is now vice president of environmental justice, climate and community revival for the National Wildlife Federation.
Biden has proposed that the EPA’s Environmental Justice Advisory Board and the Environmental Justice Council be increased as entities in the White House, both reporting to the White House Council chair on environmental quality.
In addition to setting up the Department of Environmental and Climate Justice within the Department of Justice, Biden suggested that the EPA’s Civil Rights Enforcement Office be reviewed to empower communities under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “which is the worst experiencing effects of climate change and fenceline communities. which is located next to pollution sources. ”
For that, his EPA need look no further than the Superfund program.
An EPA study in September found that an excessive number of colored people live within 3 km of Superfund sites, highlighting the fact that communities that are historically understaffed sit in the shadow of these toxic sites.
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In Jacksonville’s Eastside neighborhood, 81 percent of the residents are colored, and 30 percent of the households live below the federal poverty line.
From her front yard, Carol Gafney can see a chain fence around the 31-acre Kerr-McGee Superfund site, now a sprawling, empty piece of land where large amounts of fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides were manufactured and stored from 1893 to 1978.
Like many in her neighborhood, Gafney relies on food stamps and struggles to make car and home payments. She said she felt abandoned by government agencies, especially the EPA.
“We live where no one cares about us,” she said.
The cleanup of the Kerr-McGee yard dives after ten years in the Superfund program, a decade that yielded little but resentment, fear and frustration in Eastside.
“This is the chance for the EPA to act and keep its promises,” said Jacksonville activist Anderson.
Along with fulfilling the idea of a health center that was discussed a decade ago, she said she hopes the EPA will help the community with the development of work skills, nutrition programs and senior programs.
A big first step, she said, would be for the agency to enter the community and listen.
“The community needs to be part of writing the story for its future,” Anderson said. “By coming to the community, they will send a message that they are correcting wrong things.”