Risk Of Flooding At Superfund Sites Increases With Climate Change

Millions of Americans live near Superfund sites, areas the federal government considers contaminated as a result of hazardous waste that was dumped, mismanaged or otherwise left out in the open.

Many of those sites are still awaiting cleanup.

And with climate change triggering sea-level rise, experts are ringing the alarm bell about the threat of flooding at Superfund sites, which could put the communities that surround them at risk.

The longtime mayor of Navassa, North Carolina, a small town outside Wilmington, long suspected the wood treatment plant that sat in his community had left behind a toxic legacy.

It closed its operation in the 1970s. But when crews began construction of a bridge over Sturgeon Creek in the middle of town, that’s when Mayor Eulis Willis says they made a startling discovery.