Flood risk

Hundreds of industrial facilities with toxic pollutants were in Hurricane Helene’s path as the powerful storm flooded communities across the Southeast in late September 2024. Near the coast and into Georgia, Helene swept over paper mills, fertilizer factories and oil and gas storage facilities. Paper mills are among the most polluting industries on the planet – some with thousands of pounds of lead on-site from prior production practices. Florida officials reported that a retired nuclear power plant just south of Cedar Key experienced a storm surge of as much as 12 feet that inundated buildings and an industrial wastewater pond. Spent nuclear fuel stored at the site, which also flooded during Hurricane Idalia in 2023, was believed to be secure, Bloomberg reported. Further inland, the storm dumped more than a foot of rain on industrial sites in the Carolinas and Tennessee, some near waterways that quickly flooded with runoff from the mountains....

After Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans in 2021, Kirt Talamo, a fourth-generation Louisianan, decided it was time to go. He sold his flooded home, purchased his grandmother’s former house on New Orleans’ west bank, which hadn’t flooded, and moved in. It felt good to be back within its familiar walls, but his mind was on the future. “My other house wasn’t supposed to flood, and now insurance costs are going through the roof; it’s bad,” he told us. “I wanted to keep my grandma’s place in the family, but I don’t know how much longer I can stay. I’d love to, but it’s unsustainable.” When hurricanes and other disaster strike, they often trigger presidential disaster declarations, opening the way for large sums of taxpayer money to flow to affected communities. Some of that money will go immediately to help people in need. Some will go to rebuild public infrastructure, like roads and levees. And some of it will...

Heavy downpours and a thick snowpack in the Western mountains and Upper Midwest have put communities in several states at risk of flooding this spring – or already under water. Flooding is the costliest type of natural disaster in the U.S., responsible for about 90% of the damage from natural disasters each year. It happens almost every day somewhere in the country. Yet, much of the aging infrastructure meant to protect U.S. communities is in bad shape and, in some cases, failing. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s dams, levees and stormwater infrastructure a D grade in its latest report card, in 2021. Help is coming. Congress authorized billions of dollars for infrastructure projects under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. But there’s a problem: New infrastructure planning frequently relies on historical flood patterns for its benchmarks rather than forecasts of changing risks as the climate warms. We study flood ris...

Hundreds of industrial facilities with toxic pollutants are in Hurricane Milton’s path as it heads toward Florida, less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded communities across the Southeast. Milton, expected to make landfall as a major hurricane late on Oct. 9, is bearing down on boat and spa factories along Florida’s west-central coast, along with the rubber, plastics and fiberglass manufacturers that supply them. Many of these facilities use tens of thousands of registered contaminants each year, including toluene, styrene and other chemicals known to have adverse effects on the central nervous system with prolonged exposure. Farther inland, hundreds more manufacturers that use and house hazardous chemicals onsite lie along the Interstate 4 and Interstate 75 corridors and their feeder roads. And many are in the path of the storm’s intense winds and heavy rainfall. Black dots indicate facilities in EPA’s...

How a community recovers after a disaster like Hurricane Ian is often a “chicken and egg” question: Which returns first – businesses or households? Businesses need employees and customers to be able to function. Households need jobs and the services businesses provide. As an urban planning researcher who focuses on housing recovery after disasters, I have found in my research that they’re mutually dependent. However, in coastal communities, the recovery of tourism-based businesses like restaurants and hotels depends in large part on the return of affordable housing for employees. Rockport, Texas, where Hurricane Harvey made landfall in 2017, is an example of the challenge. It’s a small community that caters to vacationers and sport fishermen, including celebrities like country singer George Strait, who filmed an ad campaign in 2018 urging tourists to return to Rockport. Drawing tourists isn’t easy without fully functioning restaurants and hot...