I was recently reading an article about the effects of Hurricanes Florence, Michael and Olivia and in it, they talked about the immediate effects of the hurricane: The dollar amount of damages, the number of lives lost, and how many people will be displaced.

One thing that almost never gets reported on until it's too late is the possible environmental effects.

While I cannot personally tell you the specific environmental problems that these hurricanes will bring about, I will tell you about the environmental effects brought about by Hurricane Harvey and how the same problems could occur in the states affected by this most recent round of hurricanes.

In the Houston area alone there are 16 federally recognized superfund sites. Superfund sites are sites that have been contaminated by hazardous waste that has been dumped, left out in the open, or otherwise improperly managed. Superfund is the informal name of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) which, to put it briefly, allows for the EPA to clean up contaminated sites and force parties responsible for the contamination to clean up the site or reimburse the government.

Despite CERCLA being set up specifically to clean up these sites, the clean up of these sites is often delayed, or the process is carried out slowly. This leads to temporary solutions.

This was the case for the San Jacinto River Waste pits superfund site. During Hurricane Harvey, the site was flooded and the protective cap, that kept cancer-causing dioxins from contaminating the already heavily polluted river, was damaged and released these toxins into the water and the surrounding soil. This is just one of the main other sites that was flooded and damaged during the hurricane.

What happened to the San Jacinto River Waste pits could also and probably did happen during the most recent hurricanes. The most recent hurricane (Michael) passed through Florida, which has 52 superfund sites. Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas, which combined both have 54 superfund sites. In writing about the San Jacinto Waste Pits, I used these articles by Houston Public Media and NPR.