Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

An Absent EPA Climate Report, And A Tale Of Two Flooded Superfund Sites

NPR: Hurricane Harvey flooded more than a dozen Superfund toxic waste sites when it devastated the Texas coast in late August. An EPA report predicted the possibility of climate-related problems at toxic waste sites like those in Texas, but the page detailing the report on the agency's website was made inactive months before the storm.

The Environmental Protection Agency's 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Implementation Plan warned that those in charge of cleaning up Superfund sites should explicitly plan for more rain, bigger floods and "increased intensity of hurricanes." Based on earlier EPA climate change research, the report authors recommended that the agency change how it protects people from toxic chemical releases as sea levels rise and storms get more severe.

The report was removed from the EPA website when President Trump took office in January — it last appeared on the site the day before his inauguration.

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