Waste From Thousands of Old Industrial Sites May Be Released by Floods (arstechnica.com) 28
As sea levels rise, coastal areas face a growing risk of flooding. But humans and environments near urban centers and the ocean may face issues beyond rising water. These areas have also been home to a large number of manufacturing facilities. From a report: Over the years, many of them may have left toxic chemicals in the soil. And now, those areas are also being threatened by floods. When it rains too hard or the sea rises too much, people nearby can expect to be exposed to a wide variety of leftover material and chemicals, some of which aren't meant to be ingested or touched by humans. How big is the risk? Many of our largest cities lie near the sea. By some counts, in 2020, around 400 million people lived within 20 meters of sea level and within 20 kilometers of a coastline.
New research has used historical data coupled with sea level rise projections to dive into how this issue may affect the United States. It finds that as the climate warms and floods become more common, more people will likely be exposed to industrial pollution from the manufacturing sites. Urban areas and marginalized groups within them may be particularly at risk. "We have all these sites; we know where they're at," Thomas Marlow, the research's lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at New York University's Abu Dhabi campus, located in the United Arab Emirates, told Ars. "What are some of the climate risks they are facing, including from extreme weather events, rainfall -- that type of thing -- or sea level rise?"
New research has used historical data coupled with sea level rise projections to dive into how this issue may affect the United States. It finds that as the climate warms and floods become more common, more people will likely be exposed to industrial pollution from the manufacturing sites. Urban areas and marginalized groups within them may be particularly at risk. "We have all these sites; we know where they're at," Thomas Marlow, the research's lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at New York University's Abu Dhabi campus, located in the United Arab Emirates, told Ars. "What are some of the climate risks they are facing, including from extreme weather events, rainfall -- that type of thing -- or sea level rise?"
Re: (Score:1)
They're going to have to move anyway. This is probably among the least of their problems.
Re: (Score:1)
"All three of my eyes love the sight of napalm in the morning"
Re: (Score:2)
Oops (Score:3, Insightful)
Throwing loads of toxic crap into the environment for a quick buck is not such a great idea after all. Now who could _ever_ have anticipated that, I wonder.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re: (Score:2)
Ultimately, all that shit will wind up in the ocean where those gifts will keep on giving for generations to come.
Re: (Score:2)
Ultimately, all that shit will wind up in the ocean where those gifts will keep on giving for generations to come.
Indeed. Well, when people die from old age, it is usually a combination of things that does them in, everything contributing a bit to send the whole over the edge. Seems something similar applies for (supposedly) sentient species.
Re: (Score:3)
Or near a power plant, or a military base, or some field where the local power plant has been burying drums of toxic and radioactive sludge...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just was answering based on the article on Slashdot summary and it mentioned urban, and that often factories were built in close proximity.
Re: (Score:2)
"Landfills, hazardous waste sites, and other industrial facilities are most often located in communities of color [americanprogress.org]. A report titled âoeToxic Waste and Race at Twentyâ reviewed data collected over a 20-year time period and found that more than half of the people who live within 1.86 miles of toxic waste facilities in the United States are people of color. A report by the Center for Effective Government found that people of color are nearly twice as likely as white residents to live within a fencelin
Re: (Score:2)
Hm..mm.mm...do you have some criteria for telling whether fake news is gay or not?
Re: (Score:1)
Hehehe, nice!
In other news, I have acquired a stalker again. Probably somebody excessively upset because I saw right through his crap. What I want now is actually a _good_ stalker. You know, somebody that can actually do well-crafted insults, not some moron that came unarmed to a battle of whits. And somebody that does not post AC, I only see these when somebody responds to them. Well, I can hope.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? The factory owner had a very nice life, along with his children and likely their children, far away from their toxic mess.
Four-assed monkies for free! (Score:1)
That saves Doctor Mephesto a lot of toil.
Not really "news" .... (Score:3)
Like the other commenters said here so far, if you leave a mess and don't clean it up, eventually it'll cause problems for other people.
And again, I say much of this points to the inefficiency of central government. Taxpayers pay the salaries and costs of operation of groups like the EPA, yet when they're warned of toxic sites in desperate need of clean-up, they fight people every step of the way.
I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri where we wound up with most of the radioactive waste from Mallinckrodt Chemical working on uranium refining during WWII for the Manhattan Project.
https://www.mvs.usace.army.mil... [army.mil]
Some "remediation" was done over the years, but it turns out quite a bit of that was simply a waste hauler taking truckloads of radioactive soil from near Lambert airport and dumping it in a landfill in Bridgeton (in the middle of the night).
Since then, the landfill has had an underground fire smoldering for years and years, and rain runoff from the landfill has caused high cancer rates in a whole community near there. The EPA just made excuses, claimed everything was "under control", and stalled on taking action.
https://www.ksdk.com/article/t... [ksdk.com]
So sure, you can try to use "climate change" as the reason some of this cleanup needs to be done. And if that scares people into doing something about it? Great... But the problem is bigger than something it's causing for the first time.
Schadenflorida (Score:2)
Not unexpected news. (Score:2)
There are 1333 "Superfund" sites on the National Priorities List. Lots of those sites are problematic in the way described in the article - toxic hotspots waiting for a natural disaster to spread them around.
https://www.epa.gov/superfund [epa.gov]
Better look now, because the way things look, the site will disappear soon... followed by the complete EPA.GOV domain... followed by the EPA.
Well, that might be taking it a bit far. But it's hard to think two people sharing a broom closet in the basement of a government comp
And now some facts about the EPA's powers (Score:3)
As clearly recorded here, the situation is far less bad than you're suggesting. Yes, SCOTUS did smack their wrist for overstretch of their powers, but they have a lot of powers left.
https://www.latimes.com/opinio... [latimes.com]
Really? (Score:2)
2mm to 3mm per year (Score:2)
Of course, sea level has been rising 2mm or so per year for around 200 years now. In the past few decades, there has been a small increase, to around 3mm/year, with no acceleration. So an increase of 10cm/century.
While that's not great, it does not justify these panic-filled articles. No, we are not going to be underwater in the year 2100.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, no problem unless it jumps again to 4mm per year, and then 5mm per year, and beyond, but, yes, no acceleration.
Re:2mm to 3mm per year (Score:4, Informative)
The concern doesn't just end with "rising sea levels won't affect this directly", it also covers the fact that rising sea levels and climate change mean changes in weather patterns.
In 2004, a village called Boscastle on the north Cornwall coast in the UK, not particularly known for flooding of any degree, saw a months worth of rainfall in 2 hours in the surrounding area - this caused flooding of around 9 foot in the village itself. The village was devastated, and hundreds of people were airlifted to safety.
Three years later, it happened again.
These are not normal events.
Think of the "safe" places where toxic waste is stored out in the open - theres a lot more of those places than you think.
Take, for example, Sellafield on the Cumbrian coast in the UK - site of many nuclear reactors both old and new. Its also the site of some of the most worrying nuclear waste in the world - open air storage ponds dating back to the 1950s, containing nuclear waste of all degrees from low level processed waste up to (lots and lots of) high level spent nuclear fuel rods. And a lot of it has degraded to the point where the waste is actually a highly radioactive toxic sludge lying at the bottom of the ponds rather than whatever it used to be.
And no one really knows whats in the pools - its known in a general sense, but the pools were never actually managed so its nearly impossible to say with any degree of accuracy where in the pools specific waste lies. Or its condition (beyond "fuck me, thats bad"). Or its quantity (beyond a visual "yup, lots of it").
If those storage ponds flooded and released waste into the environment, it could very easily contaminate most of the UKs western coast, the Irish Sea and the east coast of Ireland. And thats before currents take it further afield - a particularly bad release could render New York uninhabitable...
So yeah, its a problem now.