specifically addressed climate change’s impact
for Superfund sites, the investigators said.
The current EPA said in a statement it recognizes
the importance of making the toxic waste
sites “resilient” against weather extremes.
“The Agency has taken measures to include
vulnerability analyses and adaption planning
into Superfund activities,” the EPA said.
A GAO review of climate-change-minded
planning for keeping the arsenic, mercury,
PCBs and other dangerous waste at Superfund
sites away from the public and environment
found big differences among the 10 EPA
regions nationally.
Officials at four EPA regions were able to point
to changes they’d made at Superfund sites to
try to adapt to climate change, the report said.
At the other EPA regions, however, officials
said they had not looked at climate-change
projection for flooding or rainfall to gauge risks
at Superfund sites, investigators said.
In the EPA region covering Texas and four
other south-central states — a region that
includes the Gulf of Mexico and Houston and
other oil and petrochemical hubs frequently
battered by hurricanes — officials “told us
that they do not include potential impacts
of climate change effects or changes in the
frequency of natural disasters into their
assessments,” the GAO investigators wrote.
In the Great Lakes states, meanwhile, regional
EPA officials “told us that they do not have
any formal direction on how to address risks
from climate change and are waiting for EPA
headquarters to provide information on how to
do so,” the report said.