Hundreds of hazardous industrial sites that dot the California coastline -- including oil and gas refineries and sewage-treatment plants -- are at risk of severe flooding from rising sea level if the climate crisis worsens, new research shows.
It's the first study that takes a comprehensive look at a broad suite of hazardous sites impacted from rapidly rising seas, said lead author Lara Cushing, assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA. Many of the hazardous sites this study highlights are clustered around large metro areas on the coast: San Diego and Los Angeles in Southern California; in the San Francisco Bay Area in Central California; and around Eureka in Northern California.
One of the things that came out of the meetings were concerns regarding groundwater. At first, researchers only looked at how rising sea levels affected surface water, but after hearing the community's concerns, they set out to measure how much groundwater levels would rise in the future, and how it would move toxins further inland.
Raval said it's"not a coincidence" that toxic sites such as sewage treatment plants and oil and gas facilities are located in historically marginalized communities.