Catastrophic billion-dollar extreme weather events are on the rise. Are hazardous waste management facilities and environmental remediation systems at risk of a major failure from unrecognized vulnerabilities associated with these extreme weather events?
GHD’s Roy Thun shines a light on why industries and facility owners need to be prepared to deal with new ‘make or break’ commercial and reputational risks associated with our new climate reality: The increased severity and cumulative impacts of higher frequency severe weather events.
For both public and private sectors alike, including industries like federal defense agencies, oil and gas, mining, chemical, and other heavy industrial manufacturers that manage portfolios of environmental sites, changes in the severity and frequency of severe weather events pose a new level of vulnerability and risk to their remediation systems, hazardous waste containment systems, and ongoing environmental management obligations. If compromised, the results can be catastrophic, with uncontrolled hazardous wastes escaping into the environment causing long-term harm to drinking water supplies, property and ecological systems, as well as potential disruption to core business operations and license to operate in critical geographies.
The National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (commonly referred to as the National Contingency Plan or NCP) considers long-term effectiveness as a principal criteria for remedy protectiveness. For decades hazardous waste management facilities and remediation system designs have been built around the potential exposure to a “100-year event”. This is effectively a 1 in 100 chance of an event (e.g. flood) being equaled or exceeded in any given year and an average recurrence interval of 100 years.
However, what if there are two or three of these events in a space of just five years? Or worse yet, in just five months? What potential impact does that have on the resilience of hazardous waste management remedies across the globe?
Global evidence strongly points to a continuing increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. In March 2016, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a report on the Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change, noting the marked increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather events. For example, in 2011, Texas reached drought status and within the following six years had experienced three 500-year flood events, significantly above and beyond the standard 100-year storm which has been accepted as the basis for design of many environmental remedies across the state. In 2018, the U.S. Global Change Research Program lead by NOAA published the second volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) report, which further highlights anticipated future impacts to communities, economy, natural resources and infrastructure due to extreme weather and climate change.
Between 2016-2018, in the U.S. alone, the cumulative cost of increasing severe weather events exceeded $4.5 billion in estimated damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) who is responsible for preserving, monitoring, and assessing climate and historical weather data.
Continuing to design remediation and hazardous waste management solutions in accordance with old assumptions, that have proven to be no longer true, will not be sufficient to protect companies, communities, or the environment in our new climate reality.
There are major reputational and commercial risks to companies responsible for managing past, current and future environmental liabilities. Understanding the resiliency of hazardous waste management facilities and environmental remedies to extreme weather events is principle to providing assurance that the public, environment, and core business operations will remain protected.
To hear more about how you can improve the resiliency of your hazardous waste management facilities, remediation systems and environmental management obligations, contact Roy Thun at roy.thun@ghd.com.
Meet Roy
Roy is an accomplished environmental portfolio manager and complex sites strategy expert with GHD’s environmental group, which has developed a holistic approach for companies looking to evaluate and improve the resiliency of their current and future remediation systems, environmental management obligations, and hazardous waste management facilities.
He has over 30-years’ of diverse experience in consulting and as a former BP environmental manager. Roy has managed several Superfund sites, including the Anaconda Smelter NPL site, one of the Nation’s largest Superfund sites. In addition, he has overseen assessment and remediation efforts at former refineries, nuclear and chemical waste sites and petroleum products distribution terminals. Roy is an At-Large Board of Trustee for the Sustainable Remediation Forum (SURF) and an established thought leader in the area of remedy resiliency to extreme weather. Roy is also one of the founding members of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority Sustainability Council. He also leads GHD’s Southern California Sustainable Groundwater Management practice and co-leads GHD’s Complex Site Strategy Review program. In addition, Roy has been a key contributor to several Interstate Technology & Regulatory Council guidance documents, including the 2017 Remediation Management of Complex Sites and 2016 Long-term Contaminant Management Using Institutional Controls. Roy also supported the development of the 2017 ASTM Standard Guide for Recognition and Derecognition of Environmental Liabilities.
