As of Thursday afternoon, excess water from Hurricane Ian had prompted at least a dozen sewage treatment facilities in Florida to discharge raw or partially treated waste, which may contain bacteria or other pathogenic organisms as well as high levels of nitrogen and phosphates, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Now, as the storm heads into South Carolina, attention is turning to sites that could be at risk.
Charleston, which is in the storm’s forecast path, has a number of industrial facilities in low-lying areas adjacent to waterways, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center. These sites include a plastic pellets operation, a paper mill, concrete and asphalt plants and scrap metal facilities.
South Carolina does not require such facilities to submit stormwater data or plans to the state, said Geoff Gisler, senior counsel at the legal center, so it’s unclear how prepared they are. . “We have no idea if they meet their requirements for normal storms,” he said. “When you have a major storm like this, we’re very concerned that the facilities won’t be ready.”
Scientists say storms like Ian are being made more powerful and more unpredictable by climate change.
Further inland, the state is home to hundreds of farms, including poultry farms and other types.
Blakely Hildebrand, senior counsel at the legal center, expressed concern that heavy rainfall could cause poultry manure, which is often kept in uncovered pits, to flow into waterways.
In 2018, flooding and heavy rains from Hurricane Florence caused industrial sites in the Carolinas to overflow. More than 100 manure lagoons have been flooded, releasing nutrient-rich hog waste into the environment, which can contribute to algal blooms.
Although several wastewater treatment sites in Florida have reported waste discharges, it could be days, weeks, or even years before there is a full damage assessment, said Erik Olson, director. principal of health and food at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Until people take soil samples, you don’t know what the damage might be,” he said.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there were more than 600 hazardous material spills, at sites including several Superfund sites and sewage treatment plants. Two years after Katrina, soil samples taken by the NRDC found high levels of arsenic in playgrounds.
Another reason the extent of the damage may be difficult to discern immediately is due to the many types of smaller infrastructure, such as household septic tanks, which are not monitored by the state.
And farms, golf courses and city parks sometimes use large amounts of fertilizer, which can get into rivers and streams, especially after heavy rains and floods.
The state does not monitor runoff at these locations, said Catherine Kling, an environmental economist at Cornell University who has worked on water quality with the Environmental Protection Agency. “These are just everywhere, and a small leak of a lot of them can have a huge impact on the environment,” she said.
Phosphates and nitrogen, commonly found in high concentrations in fertilizers and wastewater, are the single biggest water quality problem in the United States.
Florida’s marine ecosystems have been particularly degraded by this runoff in recent decades. Last year, more than a thousand manatees died in Florida, in record mortality linked to pollution and algal blooms.
Before the storm made landfall in Florida, environmental groups had raised concerns about open sewage ponds associated with Florida’s phosphate mining operations. Florida produces most of the country’s phosphate, a key component of fertilizers, in an area east of Tampa called Bone Valley.
The pools at these phosphate sites can contain hundreds of millions and in some cases billions of gallons of wastewater containing radon, uranium, radium and other carcinogens, said Ragan Whitlock, attorney from the Center for Biological Diversity.
Concerns centered on Piney Point, a phosphate plant which is being closed, and a pond in Mosaic-New Wales, a phosphate manufacturing site. Representatives from both operations confirmed on Thursday that they had not detected any violations.