Chester, Pennsylvania, located in Delaware County just southwest of Philadelphia, was founded in 1681, making it the oldest city in the state. Situated directly on the Delaware River, Chester was a manufacturing and industrial community for much of its history, though that activity began to decline starting in the 1950s. That legacy and other factors make the city of 32,000 potentially prone to a catastrophic toxic flooding event, now and in the future as the effects of climate change continue to intensify.
Despite the decline in development and population growth (the city lost more than half its population between 1950 and today), remnants of Chester’s industrial history remain. The most well-known — and most controversial — facility is the Covanta incinerator known as the Delaware Valley Resource Recovery Facility. This waste-to-energy incinerator takes solid waste from Delaware County and other parts of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland and burns it to generate electricity.
Just down the road, Monroe Energy’s Trainer Refinery produces jet fuel, gasoline, diesel, and home heating oil. The DELCORA wastewater treatment plant accepts industrial and municipal wastewater, sludge, and grease, which it then treats and returns to the Delaware River. A PQ Corporation chemical manufacturing facility is also located in Chester, along with a Kimberly-Clark paper mill.
This concentration of polluting facilities is especially concerning when one looks at the demographics of the community bearing the burden of associated health and environmental risks.
Toxic floodwater risks and environmental justice
Chester is what is known as an "environmental justice area," defined by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) as any census tract where more than 20 percent of the population lives at or below the federal poverty line or more than 30 percent of the population are people of color. More than 70 percent of Chester residents are people of color, and the median household income is $35,751 (in 2021 dollars). Compare this to Delaware County as a whole, where 33 percent of county residents are people of color, and the median household income is $80,398.
The health and environmental hazards associated with living in close proximity to facilities such as waste incinerators, oil and gas refineries, wastewater treatment plants, chemical manufacturers, and paper mills are numerous and well-documented. In Chester and similar communities across the country, exposure to air pollutants like noxious gases (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) can cause an increased risk of asthma, respiratory diseases, and cancer. Facilities located near lakes and rivers may also discharge pollutants directly into the water, leading to increased risk of drinking water contamination or other chemical exposures.
There is an additional environmental risk that is exacerbated by climate change. Toxic flooding occurs when floodwaters become contaminated with chemicals and hazardous materials, spreading these pollutants to the surrounding community and environment. Toxic floodwaters can contaminate drinking water, and exposure can lead to intestinal problems, headaches, and other illnesses. Additionally, floodwaters can wash pollutants into rivers and lakes, harming wildlife.
Climate change presents a worsening risk of flooding events due to sea level rise and the increasing severity and frequency of hurricanes and other extreme storms. The greater the number of polluting facilities in flood-prone areas, the greater the risk of toxic flooding.
Toxic floodwater risks in Chester
Chester provides an illustrative example of this risk. Located on the tidal portion of the Delaware River (the part of the river affected by ocean tides), the city's riverfront is vulnerable to both sea level rise and severe weather events. Most of the active and shuttered industrial facilities are located in this area.
In 2016, as part of the process to improve Chester’s stormwater infrastructure, professors at Widener University submitted a preliminary report to the Pennsylvania Sea Grant, assessing the number of brownfields in the city at risk of flooding. The report found 31 potential brownfield sites, which are defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.” Of those 31 sites, the report found that 19 of them were at risk of flooding.
Brownfield properties are often empty, abandoned, or unmaintained. Hazardous pollutants frequently remain on the properties, left over from their industrial uses, and unscrupulous entities may illegally dump additional trash and hazardous waste in these areas. Left unmonitored, these properties pose an often unknown but very real threat of toxic flooding in Chester.
Brownfield properties are not the only source of possible toxic floods in the city. Many of the active industries in the city are located along the riverfront. A brief analysis using the FEMA Flood Map Service Center shows that all or part of several of these facilities, including the Covanta incinerator, Monroe Energy refinery, PQ Corp chemical manufacturer, and Kimberly-Clark paper mill, are located in flood hazard areas.
Possible policy solutions
Laws such as the Clean Water Act require such facilities to develop stormwater pollution prevention plans and spill prevention, control, and countermeasure plans, which help address the risk of onsite pollutants entering the water as a result of flooding and severe storms. However, facilities that are out of compliance with these requirements increase the possibility of toxic flood events.
The risk posed by toxic flooding can be addressed in a variety of ways:
Stay tuned to this space for more on toxic flooding and other hazards in the Delaware River basin in the weeks and months ahead, and be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our email list.
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Kimberly Shields | April 17, 2023
Chester, Pennsylvania, located in Delaware County just southwest of Philadelphia, was founded in 1681, making it the oldest city in the state. Situated directly on the Delaware River, Chester was a manufacturing and industrial community for much of its history, though that activity began to decline starting in the 1950s. That legacy and other factors make the city of 32,000 potentially prone to a catastrophic toxic flooding event, now and in the future as the effects of climate change continue to intensify.
Sophie Loeb | April 12, 2023
On the 16th of every month, I dread it: opening my Duke Energy bill. After the shock of seeing our first electric bill of $182 back in October 2022, I knew we were in for a long winter. I thought I was imagining bills going up every month, but it’s not all in my head. In December 2022, Duke Energy rates where I live in Asheville, North Carolina, rose 10 percent due to increased fuel costs. I’m in a privileged position, but the price hike still hurts. But there is a better way.
Katlyn Schmitt | April 11, 2023
On April 10, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Private Well Safety Act (HB 11/SB 483) before it wrapped up the 2023 legislative session at midnight (Happy Sine Die!). With its passage, the Private Well Safety Act will provide roughly 830,000 Marylanders who get their drinking water from a private well with the necessary resources and information to monitor and safeguard their household drinking water and ultimately protect their and their family’s health.
Federico Holm, Katlyn Schmitt | April 10, 2023
The Maryland Senate has just one day left to pass a bill that would deliver greater energy savings for Marylanders through the EmPOWER program — the state’s energy efficiency and weatherization program. The bill would build on the success of the EmPOWER program by ensuring lower energy bills for low-wealth Marylanders, as well as greater public health and climate benefits that coincide with improved energy efficiency.
Kimberly Shields | April 3, 2023
In a recent post, my colleague M. Isabelle Chaudry provided readers with an overview of some of the toxic chemical threats facing the Delaware River basin in the northeastern United States. In this post, I dig deeper into the modern history of flooding in a region that will be home to 9 million people by 2030 and how this poses a growing risk of toxic floodwaters for families and communities in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York.
Sidney A. Shapiro | March 30, 2023
The American public has lost faith in expertise. The reason why, as author and national security expert Tom Nichols points out in his 2017 book The Death of Expertise, includes the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, the number of “low-information voters,” political leaders who traffic in “alternative facts,” and, as Nichols puts it, a “Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and lay people, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers — in other words between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all.” Bill Araiza offers another important insight in his book, Rebuilding Expertise: Increasing legal and political efforts to oversee agencies have resulted in the deterioration of civil service expertise and, with it, of public faith in government. On the front end, these efforts send a message that expertise can’t be trusted. On the back end, when the government stumbles in carrying out its functions, the message is that experts are not so expert after all. What is missed, as Liz Fisher and I contend in our book, Administrative Competence, is that law and politics can hold agencies accountable and still facilitate their capacity to do their job. Araiza’s last chapter ably discusses how this can be done.
James Goodwin | March 16, 2023
The regulatory policy world is often a sleepy one — I’m the first to admit that — but last week was a notable exception. In addition to a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on regulations, the Biden administration’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) wrapped up efforts to solicit public input on its recommendations for broadening public input in the regulatory process.
Daniel Farber | March 16, 2023
EPA proposed new regulations last week to reduce the water pollution impacts of coal-fired power plants. As EPA regulations go, these count as fairly minor. They got a bit of news coverage in coal country and industry publications. But they will eliminate the discharge of thousands of tons of pollutants, including a lot of metals that pose health problems. The rulemaking illustrates the highly technical nature of regulations and the lawless nature of Trump’s EPA. It also gives some clues about where the Biden administration may be headed in the way it approaches regulatory decisions.
James Goodwin, Marcha Chaudry | March 15, 2023
The Delaware River Basin is a vital ecosystem that provides drinking water for millions of people and supports diverse wildlife, recreation, and agriculture in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. Unfortunately, industrial activities in the basin contaminate the water with toxic pollutants, leading to a variety of negative impacts on human health and the environment and endangering industrial workers.