Extreme weather is forcing federal agencies to rethink who bears the risk in superfund sites

Guest:	Erin Barnes‑Weaver
Title:	Deputy assistant inspector general for evaluation at the EPA Office of Inspector General
Summary:	As natural disasters grow more frequent and intense, new EPA Inspector General findings suggest some federal facility Superfund cleanups may fail when conditions overwhelm existing remedies; pushing environmental and health risks into surrounding communities.

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Terry Gerton Before we dig into the report I really want to talk to you about today, I want to ask you just to refresh our collective memory about Superfund sites. What are they? Where are they located? Why are they important?

Erin Barnes‑Weaver Yes, thank you. Superfund sites include both non-federal superfund sites and federal facility superfunds sites. Non-federal sites are privately owned and tend to have industrial waste, where federal facility superfund site could be current or former military bases, radiological labs, defense research laboratories, and they can have a complex mix of contaminants like munitions, radiological waste, and other things. There are 157 federal facility Superfund sites across the country, which was the focus of our work, and they really are all over the country.

Terry Gerton EPA Office of the Inspector General just released a report looking at the risks of those superfund sites to exposure from natural disasters and collectively found dozens of those sites at risk from sea level rise, inland flooding or wildfire. Talk to us about what it would mean at one of those places if they were impacted by a natural disaster.

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Erin Barnes‑Weaver Certainly. So I’ll note too that there are about 13 million people that live within three miles of one of these federal facility sites. 3 million people live within one mile. As I noted, they’re all over the country. Some are in major population centers like Los Angeles and San Francisco and the Chesapeake Bay area. So a disaster at one of the sites can really harm these communities. I’ll use wildfire as an example. If a wildfire were to hit one of these sites, it could release contaminants in the air through combustion. And that would harm the nearby community, as well as downwind communities. And that’s really what our report sought to highlight, which is a systemic risk to all of these sites from potential disasters. We’re not saying these disasters are for sure going to happen or that there’s an imminent threat or danger, but our reports show that these things could happen and it’s really important to take those risks into account and plan accordingly.

Terry Gerton As you think about the kind of risk, sea level rise is a very different impact from a wildfire or from a flood or storm surge. And the geography is really different at all of these different sites. So how does that complexity and variability make planning for EPA much harder?

Erin Barnes‑Weaver You’re absolutely right. There is wide variability among these sites. There’s just not a one size fits all universal approach to the cleanup remedies at these sites, some sites have been contaminated for decades and these ongoing assessments that we talk about in our reports are really important to make sure that the remedies are still functioning as intended, that assumptions on exposure pathways and toxicity data are still valid. And whether any new information has come to light that could question the protectiveness of these remedies. Again, all of these sites are different in addition to unique site conditions. The weather patterns near these sites are also quite unique, as you know. And so it’s really important for these sites to take those unique factors into account through these five-year reviews. And what we did was a very high level national screening of the risks to all 157 federal facility sites. But again, it’s really important for each of these sites to do its own individual screening based on its unique conditions.

Terry Gerton You mentioned the remedy process, and it is unique for each site, depending on what they’re dealing with and their unique circumstances. But many of those remedy systems were designed decades ago. How well are they holding up under today’s more frequent and intense disaster conditions?

Erin Barnes‑Weaver You’re right. I mean, some of these sites have been on the national priorities list for decades, and over those same decades, as you note, these extreme weather events are just increasing in their frequency and severity, which really does raise the risk level. But again, these five year reviews are opportunities to assess those risks and plan accordingly. Some sites are doing this and adjusting their remedies and others may need to. I’m gonna use inland flooding as an example. If a flood were to hit one of these superfund sites, that could spread contamination to an area that might’ve already been cleaned up, which means that cleanup work has to be redone. So taxpayers are paying for multiple cleanups instead of just one. But if a site owner, through its five-year review process, identifies an inland flooding risk, they can do things like raise or relocate infrastructure, install berms on the property that help direct the water flow and, you know, take other resilience measures. EPA actually has technical guidance on these and other resilience measures that these sites can consider as part of their five-year review process.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Erin Barnes-Weaver. She is deputy assistant inspector general for evaluation at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General. These findings have big implications for federal employees who are responsible for overseeing these sites and for their partner organizations who may be contracted to support them. What challenges would you say they face as they’re trying to balance their distribution of effort and resources between long-term remediation and acute disaster response.

Erin Barnes‑Weaver Well, instead of really looking at long-term versus acute responses, we try to focus on preparedness generally and whether these sites account for these disaster risks as part of their five-year reviews. So our report series does show that there are risks from various natural disasters and that sites can use the five-year review process as a proactive planning tool to assess these risks and put preparedness measures in place. I will note, though, on superfund cleanups and hazardous waste cleanups, the topic of Superfund is a key part of our oversight portfolio, and we’ll continue to monitor and evaluate those and other challenges.

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Terry Gerton These Superfund sites, especially because they’re federally funded or under federal supervision, but responsibility spans EPA and other agencies, so how does the EPA collaborate across organizational boundaries, and did you find examples of where coordination and collaboration are working well?

Erin Barnes‑Weaver Well, and the fact that these federal facility superfund sites have so many stakeholders, that just adds to their complexity. We did not evaluate specifically the extent to which these federal partners are coordinating at each of these 157 federal facility sites. But the five year review process does give EPA and these other stakeholders some visibility into the unique concerns and conditions at those sites. Again, they’re really valuable forward planning tools. And EPA has guidance that these five-year reviews should note disaster risks, but our reports found that they aren’t always incorporated.

Terry Gerton You put these findings out using EPA StoryMap, and we’ve talked about that a couple of times on this show. I think it’s fabulous. But why did you choose that mode? How are you hoping that that changes the communication about the findings?

Erin Barnes‑Weaver Well, as an office of inspector general, we’re always looking for ways to innovate and the story map just allows us to share our message with a wider audience and in a mobile format. And they, as you note, I think are just really cool. It’s just a nice visual way to look at our findings. This was our second story map and we did one last fall on air quality monitoring.

Terry Gerton One of the other things that’s interesting to me about this report is that it is a report without recommendations. Tell me first, why you chose that approach and second, what you hope EPA does now that they’ve got this assessment on their desk.

Erin Barnes‑Weaver Well, yes, so your listeners who are familiar with our work may notice that these reports look very different from our traditional evaluation reports that have a recommendation section. And frankly, that was quite intentional. As we started doing our work on sea level rise, we noticed these risks and wanted to quickly get that message out, on inland flooding and wildfires as well, especially ahead of wildfire season. There’s been recent news reporting on how experts anticipate a very active wildfire season this summer, so we wanted to use a report structure that quickly conveyed our findings and highlight the risks to these sites. In terms of what we want EPA to do, we have provided EPA with the lists of sites that we think need to do a better job of assessing their disaster risks in their five-year reviews, and the agency thanked us for that information.

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