From Surviving to Thriving: Disaster in Disaster: The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act Must Be Enforced
Sarah Lamdan, Professor of Law at CUNY Law School, co-authored this post, which is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
This chapter is excerpted from a law review article that is forthcoming in U. Arkansas Law Review, titled "Taking a Page from FDA’s Prescription Medicine Information Rules: Reimagining Environmental Information for Climate Change."
What Happened?
In August 2017, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit the southern United States in rapid succession. These massive hurricanes wrought widespread devastation — destroying buildings, flooding neighborhoods, and taking lives. Harvey shattered the national rainfall record for a single storm, dropping more than 50 inches of rain in a 36-hour period. Thousands of stranded Houstonians waded through chest-deep floodwaters. Unbeknownst to them, those residents were wading through more than just water. Many storm victims were in fact wading through a toxic stew. The same floodwaters that filled the streets had also inundated scores of industrial facilities and at least 13 of Houston’s 41 Superfund sites. According to the Houston Chronicle, “In all, reporters cataloged more than 100 Harvey-related toxic releases — on land, in water and air. Most were never publicized.”
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
In August, 2017, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma brought widespread devastation to the southeastern United States, destroying buildings, flooding neighborhoods, and taking lives. Harvey shattered the national rainfall record for a single storm, dropping over 50 inches of rain in a 36-hour period. The Houston area suffered massive flooding, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers attempted to balance flooding behind strained older retention dams while releasing water to avoid dam breaches.
However, even before the unprecedented rainfall of Hurricane Harvey, severe problems had been noted at the dams. In 2016, the Army Corps noted that the dams needed repair and that a failure would be catastrophic. The federal government concluded that the dams were in critical condition in 2009. The Army Corps had multiple opportunities to evaluate the state …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
What Happened
According to the Houston Chronicle, there were more than 100 releases of hazardous substances into land, air, and water during and after Hurricane Harvey. At least one dozen of the Superfund sites listed in or near Houston were flooded during the storm.
On September 3, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acknowledged breaches at 13 area Superfund sites. Later in September, the EPA reported that it had recovered 517 containers of potentially toxic hazardous waste from Superfund sites that flooded during Harvey. In its first mention of these releases on September 22, 2017, the agency provided no information as to where the materials had come from, what they were, or how hazardous they were.
More than a month after the hurricane, EPA acknowledged a serious breach …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report. Click here to read previously posted chapters.
On August 23, 2017, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of emergency as Hurricane Harvey approached the Texas Coast. That state of emergency was ultimately expanded to 60 counties in Texas. Emergency declarations in Texas (as in many states and for the federal government) allow the governor to unilaterally suspend specific rules and regulations if they are expected to hinder disaster recovery. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) asked Governor Abbott to suspend dozens of environmental rules on August 28, 2017, as Harvey was continuing to pummel Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast area.
The waiver request specified air quality rules related to emission “upset” events as well as monitoring and releases of unpermitted Volatile Organic Compounds. Predictably, the request indicated …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
Lachlan Brain, a 22-year-old electrical lineman from Tennessee, traveled to Houston following Hurricane Harvey to help with the relief effort, working for T&D Solutions, a company that specializes in maintaining and repairing power lines and related equipment. While working inside a bucket truck on August 25, 2017, Brain leaned across an electrical line, came into contact with a live wire, and was electrocuted. Line personnel and first responders attempted to revive him unsuccessfully, and Brain died.
According to reports, Brain had been eager to travel to Texas for the relief effort. He had become an electrical lineman just a year before, after attending training courses at the Southeast Lineman Training Center in Trenton, Georgia. He felt that working as an electrical lineman was his true calling, according to his …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
As millions of Americans in Houston and throughout Florida and Puerto Rico are acutely aware, the most dangerous aspect of a hurricane is the water. In Houston, the 50 inches of water that fell over the course of a few days broke records and overwhelmed the city’s flood control system. In Florida, Hurricane Irma’s storm surge ravaged coastal communities hundreds of miles up and down the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. And in Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria dumped more than two feet of rain in some areas, generating floodwaters more than a dozen feet high in low-lying areas throughout the island.
The pathway of waterborne devastation was different for each of these storms. But as the winds faded and the waters receded, one thing that remained in each of these …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
We have seen the pictures before. A man and his dog, both wet and disheveled, gliding down the middle of a residential street in a rowboat past downed power lines. As they drift, they pass the tops of cars parked at the curb, immobile. As they drift further, they see a woman and child standing on the roof of a darkened house, dazed. Is the child missing a toy or maybe a pet? Is the woman missing a spouse or maybe a child?
Now consider sitting at home watching the game or a movie or the news when the TV flickers and then goes out, along with all the other lights and electrical appliances in your home. After a minute or two your concern rises as you reach …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
The 2017 hurricane season demonstrated the “second disaster” phenomenon. Climate-fueled storms are the first, named disaster. The second disaster is the tragedy that results from the lack of preparedness of decision-makers — at all levels — who have failed to plan in a manner consistent with the risks presented.
Perhaps few phenomena underscore that more than the post-disaster displacement and long-term relocation that climate change is increasingly inducing. While there is an infrastructure to manage post-disaster displacement and support displaced persons, its ability to effectively and equitably support individuals and communities has been lacking.
For planned, long-term relocation, the circumstances are more concerning. The United States has no coherent and coordinated regulatory approach to address the core questions facing communities that will need to relocate: Who is …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
Three months before Hurricane Irma hit Florida, the state relaxed what many had considered to be one of the best building codes in the country. That wasn’t an anomaly. A report by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety found that many states along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts either lack building codes or have relaxed them in recent years.
When jurisdictions fail to plan, or plan too little, they squander the opportunity to avoid or mitigate significant problems. Houston and surrounding Harris County, have seen massive in-migration and development in the last 20 years on some of the least absorbent soils in the nation, but has not developed adequate stormwater infrastructure. Behind Orleans and Jefferson parishes in Louisiana, Harris County ranks third in the nation for the …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report. Click here to read previously posted chapters.
In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Eileen and Jeff Swanson faced the unthinkable. They had just paid off the last of the mortgage on their $225,000 home in the Canyon Gate neighborhood of Houston, where they lived with two sons, one of whom is severely developmentally disabled. During the storm, a foot of water inundated their home, and in its wake, they faced $60,000 in costs to repair the damage. Like many Houston residents, the Swansons had no flood insurance.
The lesson one might be tempted to draw is the one Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Brock Long promoted in a recent congressional hearing: that reform of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) should focus on ensuring that those …
