Barrel of hazardous waste. Credit: Michigan Senate Democrats
By Anna Rossow
Capital News Service
A new Government Accountability Office study of hazardous waste facilities found them at risk of damage from climate-related events such as flooding and hurricanes.
Some are in the six-state Great Lakes region, including ones near southern Lake Michigan.
According to the study, there are more than 700 treatment, storage and waste facilities in the U.S., 68% of which are at risk of a climate hazard such as wildfires, storm surges and rising sea levels, which can be exacerbated by climate change.
The study recommended that the Environmental Protection Agency provide assistance and training on managing facility climate risks.
Kimberly Tyson, the manager of the hazardous waste section in the materials management division at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, said hazardous waste includes ignitable chemicals that may harm people.
She said the department tries to inspect Michigan facilities at least four times a year.
The department’s district staff inspects waste containers to see if they are being stored properly and are of good integrity without any leaks, she said.
“They’re also looking at the facility and making sure that it’s in compliance with our rules and nothing is out of place,” said Tyson. “They’re not getting sloppy with housekeeping and stuff like that.”
Facilities have backup plans or contingency plans in case a leak occurs, Tyson said. For example, there may be a secondary containment area to catch leaked waste, and facilities may have dust on hand to soak up leaked waste as well.
She said part of a facility’s contingency plan in case of a leak includes working with first responders and medical personnel in training scenarios so they know how to address any hazards.
Secondary containment areas are sloped to catch leaked material in one area, she said, and some facilities have a “blind sump” which pumps out the waste to dispose of it or put it through a treatment process until it is no longer hazardous.
However, according to the EPA website, flooding and rising water can cause facility infrastructure to fail.
Alan Steinman, the Allen and Helen Hunting Research professor at the Annis Water Resource Institute at Grand Valley State University, said that a hazardous waste spill can affect water quality in different ways, depending on what chemical leaks.
He said those chemicals are often corrosive and carcinogenic, meaning they have been linked to cancer.
“In all likelihood, the drinking water supply would be shut down immediately until they could deal with the leakage and then flush the system out to get rid of all of those nasty chemicals,” Steinman said.
If chemicals are released into water resources, they can have long-term adverse effects.
Steinman said the chemicals can seep into the sediments and be held in the soil. He said in some cases, it may not be worth removing them if the waste has stabilized into the sediment.
In 1985, White Lake in Muskegon County was named a U.S.-Canada Area of Concern due to toxic chemicals entering the lake through contaminated groundwater.
According to the EPA, that was due to the area’s history of chemical manufacturing and improper waste disposal.
Steinman said the state installed a purge well to remove contaminants in groundwater and that operated for 30 years. White Lake was removed from the Area of Concern list in 2014.
“Many of these cases, depending upon where the disposal facility is situated, may be on recreational water bodies, so then there’ll just be no recreational activity,” said Steinman. “The health departments would put up signage letting people know that it’s contaminated, and in many cases, it might be contaminated and held unavailable for decades.”
He said how facilities prepare for climate risks is a political question rather than a scientific one and includes whether people want to allocate funds to protect facilities from worst-case scenarios.
“It’s a matter of what the public is willing to pay and what politicians are willing to go out on a limb for,” Steinman said. “The science questions, the technical questions, are the easy ones to answer.”
“Here, it’s the human behavior ones that have become much more problematic,” he said.
The General Accountability Office, which is a nonpartisan congressional investigative agency, made nine recommendations to the EPA, such as implementing monitoring metrics to assess how facilities are managing climate risks and assess current facility standards to determine if they will adequately handle climate risks.
EPA press secretary Remmington Belford said, “We take facility preparedness very seriously and have efforts underway to help facility owners and operators better prepare for natural hazards and climate impacts that respond to the GAO’s recommendations.”