Floods and firestorms can spread toxins from Superfund sites

Wildfires and flooding exacerbated by climate change threaten to unleash contaminants from some of the most polluted sites across the United States, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned in a report publicly released Monday. According to the watchdog agency, about 60 percent of these sites are vulnerable to extreme weather events made worse by a changing climate.

Superfund sites are locations so contaminated that they’ve been placed on a National Priorities List by the Environmental Protection Agency. Of 1,571 nonfederal Superfund sites spread across the country that the GAO examined, 945 are vulnerable to some of the most extreme effects of climate change. The GAO plotted these 945 climate-vulnerable locations on an i...

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