Roughly one-third of all federal sites on EPA’s Superfund list are vulnerable to rising sea levels, according to a report released Tuesday by the agency’s Office of the Inspector General.
The report determined 49 of the 157 federal Superfund facilities are potentially at risk from sea-level rise or increased storm surges.
Ocean waters spilling into some of the nation’s most polluted sites not only put millions of people at risk of exposure to dangerous contaminants, but it also means “the federal funds expended to implement those remedies would have been wasted,” the report says.
Unlike some other inspector general evaluations, the analysis does not include recommendations for EPA. The agency “did not provide a formal response to our draft report,” the report says, but does incorporate the “technical comments” EPA provided throughout “as appropriate.”
