October 3, 2024
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Toxic chemicals pose a silent and growing threat in floods like Hurricane Helen
People living near industrial facilities often have little knowledge of the chemicals inside, posing great risk in the event of flooding.
A photo of a flooded storage tank at the Murphy Oil Company refinery in Merrow, Louisiana, on the banks of the Mississippi River on Tuesday, September 6, 2005.
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The following essay is reproduced with permission. 
The Conversation is an online publication covering the latest research.
In late September 2024, hundreds of industrial facilities containing toxic pollutants were in the path of Hurricane Helen, a powerful storm that flooded communities across the Southeast.
Helen entered Georgia near the coast and swept through paper mills, fertilizer plants, and oil and gas storage facilities. Paper mills are among the most polluting industries on earth, with some having thousands of pounds of lead on-site due to previous production practices.
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A decommissioned nuclear power plant just south of Cedar Key was hit by storm surge of up to 12 feet, flooding buildings and industrial drainage ponds, Florida officials reported. Spent nuclear fuel stored at the site was also flooded during Hurricane Idalia in 2023, but was considered safe, Bloomberg reported.
Further inland, the storm dumped more than a foot of rain on industrial sites in the Carolinas and Tennessee. Some of it was near waterways and quickly flooded with runoff from the mountains.
In such disasters, industrial damage can unfold over several days, and residents may not hear about the release of toxic chemicals into the water or air until days or weeks later, if at all. There is.
However, pollutant emissions are common.
After Hurricane Ian hit Florida’s west coast in 2022, millions of gallons of wastewater, plus runoff containing toxic substances from damaged storage tanks and a local fertilizer mining facility, flooded coastal wetlands. It could be seen from space as it crossed over and flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. A year ago, more than 2,000 chemical spills were reported due to Hurricane Ida.
During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, chemical facilities near Houston were flooded. A cooling system failure caused some to catch fire, releasing large amounts of pollutants into the air. Emergency workers and residents, unsure of the risks they faced, blamed the chemicals for causing respiratory illnesses.
Many types of toxic substances can spread, establish, and alter the long-term health and environmental safety of surrounding communities with little awareness by residents. Our team of environmental sociologists and anthropologists has mapped hazardous industrial areas across the country and combined them with projected hurricane impact maps to help communities take responsibility for their nearby facilities.
Gulf petrochemical complexes are at risk
Risks from industrial facilities are most evident along the U.S. Gulf Coast, where many major petrochemical complexes are dangerously clustered. These refineries, factories, and storage facilities are often built along rivers or bays for ease of transportation.
However, these rivers can cause storm surge flooding, and sea levels can rise by several feet during hurricanes. Storm surge from Helen reached more than 10 feet above ground level in Florida’s Big Bend and more than 6 feet in Tampa Bay.
Oil containers and rail cars sit in floodwaters from Hurricane Isaac on August 31, 2012 in Braithwaite, Louisiana.
A recent study found evidence that hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico from 2005 to 2020 released two to three times more pollutants than during normal weather.
The impacts of these pollutant releases disproportionately affect low-income communities and people of color, further exacerbating environmental health risks.
Why residents don’t hear about toxic releases
Although this statistic is disconcerting, it receives little attention. That’s because harmful emissions remain largely invisible due to limited disclosure requirements and little public information. Even emergency responders often do not know exactly what dangerous chemicals they are facing in an emergency situation.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires major polluters to submit only very general information about chemicals and site risks to their risk management plans. Some large fuel storage facilities, such as those that store liquefied natural gas, don’t even need to do that.
These risk management plans outline ‘worst-case’ scenarios and are to be made available to the public. In reality, however, we and others have found that these documents are difficult to access, heavily redacted, and housed in federal reading rooms with limited access. The reason local authorities and national scientific review boards often maintain secrecy is to protect facilities from terrorist attacks.
Adding to this uncertainty is the fact that many states, including those along the Gulf Coast, have suspended regulations on pollutant releases during the state of emergency. Meanwhile, real-time incident notifications from the National Response Center, the federal government’s repository for all chemical releases into the environment, are typically delayed by a week or more.
We believe this limited public information about the growing chemical threat from climate change should be front-page news every hurricane season. Communities need to be aware of the risks of having vulnerable industrial infrastructure, especially as rising global temperatures increase the risk of extreme rainfall and powerful hurricanes.
Mapping and raising awareness of risks across the country
To help communities understand their risks, our team at Rice University’s new Center for Coastal Futures and Adaptive Resilience is helping industrial communities in flood-prone areas across the country to better understand such threats, both socially and technologically. We are investigating ways to better adapt to
Our interactive map shows where major polluters identified using EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory are at risk of being flooded due to increased future flood risk.
The United States has several hotspots of polluters that are prone to flooding. The shipping lanes of Houston, the coastal steel industry of Chicago, and the ports of Los Angeles and New York/New Jersey are among the largest.
But as Helen revealed, there can be major concerns in the less obvious areas. In inland areas, especially in mountainous areas, normally calm rivers can quickly turn into rapids due to runoff. The French Broad River in Asheville, North Carolina, rose nearly 12 feet in 12 hours during Helen, setting a new record for flood stage.
When a hurricane or tropical cyclone heads toward the United States, our interactive map now shows where the major pollution sources are within the storm’s predicted impact cone. The map identifies dangerous facilities at risk of flooding, right down to your address, anywhere in the country.
knowledge is the first step
Knowing where these sites are located is only the first step. Can you raise concerns and request mitigation strategies to reduce the health, economic, and environmental risks that industrial sites, which are often at risk of flooding and other damage, may pose? It’s up to the communities themselves, many of which are already overexposed and historically underserved.
These discussions cannot wait until a disaster occurs. By knowing where these risks lie, communities can take steps now to build a safer future.
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