Toxic waste sites aren’t prepared for hurricane season
Flooding during Hurricane Harvey (andrewtheshrew/Pixabay/)Hurricanes can be made exponentially worse by whatever lies in their path. Unfortunately, that’s often the toxic waste of some of the most extractive, pollutive industries.Take Hurricane Florence, for instance. The storm’s intense downpour triggered the spill of coal ash, the arsenic-laced substance that remains after burning coal, from a coal-fired power plant in North Carolina. Hurricane Harvey’s torrential waters also quickly turned toxic with industrial chemicals, including dioxin—a chemical linked to cancer and reproductive issues—released from a heavily contaminated, abandoned paper mill along the San Jacinto River in Texas. Hurricane Sandy’s vicious waters caused Newtown Creek, one of the most polluted waterways in the country, to overflow into the surrounding Queens and Brooklyn communities.As climate change spurs worsening hurricanes, it comes with an increased potential for toxic waste to be unleashed on nearby communities, which are more likely to be low-income neighborhoods of color. It’s...