Superfund Climate Resilience

Remedies at contaminated sites may be vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events. EPA's Superfund program developed an approach that raises awareness of these vulnerabilities and applies climate change and weather science as a standard operating practice in cleanup projects. The approach involves periodic screening of Superfund remedy vulnerabilities, prioritizing the Superfund program's steps to adapt to a changing climate, and identifying measures to assure climate resilience of Superfund sites.

This Web page provides an overview of climate-related initiatives within the Superfund program and shares information about strategies that can be used to evaluate and strengthen climate resilience at Superfund sites. This information does not impose legally binding requirements on EPA, states, tribes or the regulated community, and does not alter or supersede existing policy or guidance for the cleanup of contaminated sites. EPA, other federal, state, tribal and local decision-makers retain discretion to implement climate adaptation measures on a case-by-case basis.

Climate Adaptation at Superfund Sites

In 2021 the U.S. EPA Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM) issued a directive recommending approaches for EPA regional offices to consider when evaluating climate resilience throughout the Superfund cleanup process for non-federal National Priorities List (NPL) sites. When applied on a site-specific basis, climate adaptation at Superfund sites may involve:

• Evaluating climate resilience of remedial action alternatives in terms of the threshold criteria for overall protection of human health and the environment and the primary balancing criteria such as long-term effectiveness and permanence.
• Using climate change projections to assess the resilience of remedy protectiveness under future climate conditions.
• Integrating climate adaptation measures into remedy designs.
• Implementing adaptation measures to further build the resilience of existing remedies, if warranted by climate vulnerability assessment findings.
• Using the five-year process as an opportunity to evaluate resilience of existing remedies in terms of new climate projections.
• OLEM Dir. No. 9355.1-120

The Superfund program continues to update its online information about resources that can help stakeholders:

• Conduct a vulnerability assessment.
• Evaluate applicable resilience measures.
• Build adaptive capacity.

Profiles of Climate Adaptation

EPA is compiling site profiles that illustrate how climate adaptation is integrated into the Superfund program. Each profile describes assorted processes and tools that were used to design, operate and maintain remedies and associated infrastructure in practical and innovative ways addressing the site’s specific climate vulnerabilities.

• Climate Adaptation Profile: Allen Harbor Landfill, Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center
• Climate Adaptation Profile: American Cyanamid Co. 
• Climate Adaptation Profile: Continental Steel Corp.
• Climate Adaptation Profile: General Motors (Central Foundry Division) 
• Climate Adaptation Profile: Iron Mountain Mine
• Climate Adaptation Profile: Port Hadlock - Site 10 North End Landfill
• Climate Adaptation Profile: Rocky Mountain Arsenal 
• Climate Adaptation Profile: Solvents Recovery Service of New England, Inc. 

• Climate Adaptation Profile: Wyckoff Co./Eagle Harbor

Climate Vulnerability Assessments

Superfund site remedies are inherently designed to maintain protectiveness under current climate conditions. However, climate vulnerability assessments (CVAs) may be needed for certain sites where high-level screening identifies significant changes in future site conditions (such as temperatures, precipitation rates and sea level rise) and associated remedy protectiveness. EPA developed a place-based CVA process to help cleanup project stakeholders:

• Consider key factors that influence development of a site-specific climate change projection.
• Assess how changing climate conditions may affect remedy protectiveness
• Identify adaptive actions needed to address remedy protectiveness vulnerabilities and ensure remedy resilience under future climate conditions.
• Conducting Climate Vulnerability Assessments at Superfund Sites

Related Information

Executive Order 14008 requires federal agencies to develop climate action plans that describe their agency’s climate vulnerabilities and steps to be taken to bolster adaptation and increase resilience to the impacts of climate change. In October 2021, EPA released its updated Climate Adaptation Action Plan for 2022-2026. The plan accelerates and focuses attention on five priority actions the Agency will take to increase human and ecosystem resilience as climate changes and the disruptive impacts increase.

• 2021 EPA Climate Adaptation Action Plan

In accordance with the action plan, twenty EPA offices developed and released implementation plans that provide details on specific actions they will take to protect human health and the environment and to increase resilience as our climate changes. Actions pertaining to the national Superfund program are described in the OLEM implementation plan; priority actions in 2022-2023 included:

• Delivering core training on climate adaptation. 
• Updating and expanding the series of climate resilience technical fact sheets pertaining to contaminated site cleanups.
• Deploying technical capacity to provide climate vulnerability assessments.
• Expanding vulnerability assessments of sites in communities located near contaminated sites.
   
• OLEM 2022-2023 Climate Adaptation Implementation Plan

Climate adaptation planning for the Superfund program has also been informed by key EPA studies completed over recent years. In 2012 EPA conducted a preliminary vulnerability assessment of all NPL sites to identify those with remedies likely to experience significant exposure to climate change effects due to the sites’ geographic or topographic locations and the types of remedies existing or anticipated. The assessment indicated that a significant number of the NPL sites were susceptible to flooding associated with sea level rise or floodplain proximity.

In 2018 EPA evaluated the status of remedies in place at 251 Superfund sites in EPA Regions 2, 4 and 6 that were exposed to tropical force winds or inundation associated with three major hurricane strikes during the preceding year. The evaluation indicated that the resilience redundancies built into the Superfund program and previously implemented at the sites were critical to successfully maintaining long-term protectiveness of remedies at all the sites, despite temporary suspension of remedial activities at certain sites during or after the hurricanes.

• Evaluation of Remedy Resilience at Superfund NPL and SAA Sites

General Information

Strategies for building climate resilience within the Superfund program may apply to existing or planned remediation systems. The strategies also may be applied to cleanups conducted under other regulatory programs or through voluntary efforts to ensure remedy resilience to the potential effects of climate change. Implementing the strategies must remain consistent with existing regulatory requirements for site cleanup, including requirements under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act.

EPA's Vocabulary Catalog on the topic of climate change defines several key terms:

• Vulnerability: The degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes. Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude and rate of climate variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity and its adaptive capacity.
• Resilience: A capability to anticipate, prepare for, respond to and recover from significant multi-hazard threats with minimum damage to social well-being, the economy and the environment.
• Adaptation: Adjustment or preparation of natural or human systems to a new or changing environment which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities.
• Adaptive Capacity: The ability of a system to adjust to climate change (including climate variability and extremes), to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities or to cope with the consequences.