The EPA’s own internal watchdog is sounding the alarm about a slow-moving public health crisis: roughly 100 of the nation’s most contaminated toxic waste sites sit in areas vulnerable to flooding and wildfires, putting millions of Americans at risk.

The EPA’s Office of Inspector General released three reports detailing the threat, which centers on Superfund sites, the federal designation for the country’s most severely polluted properties. These are locations where decades of industrial activity left behind cocktails of hazardous chemicals, heavy metals, and other toxins. Many were capped, contained, or partially remediated under the assumption that they would stay put. Climate-driven disasters are challenging that assumption.

When floodwaters rise over a Superfund site, containment systems can fail. Contaminated soil can wash into waterways, groundwater supplies, and neighborhoods. Wildfires pose a different but equally serious threat, as burning vegetation and soil can release stored toxins into the air and alter the chemistry of contaminated ground, potentially mobilizing pollutants that had previously been stable.

The inspector general’s findings put a precise number on a danger that environmental advocates and researchers have warned about for years. With approximately 100 sites identified as sitting in flood- or wildfire-prone zones, the reports make clear this is not a hypothetical risk. It is a present and measurable vulnerability.

The timing adds urgency to the findings. The Trump administration has moved to reduce the EPA’s budget and workforce, raising questions about the agency’s capacity to monitor and respond to contamination threats. Staff cuts at the agency have already drawn scrutiny from environmental groups and lawmakers who argue that Superfund oversight requires consistent, on-the-ground attention.

The inspector general’s office operates independently within the EPA, making it one of the few internal mechanisms capable of producing candid assessments of agency shortcomings. The trio of reports represents a pointed challenge to EPA leadership to address both the physical vulnerabilities at these sites and the administrative capacity needed to manage them.

For communities living near these sites, the stakes are direct. Superfund locations are often concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color, populations that already carry a disproportionate burden of environmental exposure. A flood that breaches a contaminated site doesn’t just threaten the immediate vicinity. It can spread toxins through drainage systems, into rivers, and across the broader region.

South Carolina is no stranger to this dynamic. The state has multiple Superfund sites, and coastal and low-lying areas face repeated flooding from hurricanes and heavy rainfall events. When storms like Florence and Dorian soaked the Carolinas in recent years, concerns about contamination at industrial and waste sites surfaced quickly. The inspector general’s new reports give those concerns a national framework.

The reports do not simply catalog the problem. They carry the weight of official findings from within the agency itself, which makes it harder for EPA leadership to dismiss the concerns as outside criticism. The inspector general’s office can recommend specific corrective actions, and those recommendations create an accountability trail that Congress, advocates, and journalists can follow.

What the reports do not resolve is whether the EPA has the political will and the resources to act. Superfund remediation is expensive and slow under the best circumstances. Adding climate adaptation requirements, such as reinforcing containment structures or accelerating cleanups at high-risk sites, would require funding and staffing commitments that currently appear uncertain.

Public records and congressional oversight will be critical tools for tracking whether the agency responds to the inspector general’s findings with concrete action or lets the reports gather dust. The OIG can flag vulnerabilities, but enforcement and follow-through belong to agency leadership and, ultimately, to the administration setting the budget priorities.

For now, millions of Americans living near these sites face a straightforward question without a straightforward answer: if a major flood or wildfire hits a nearby Superfund location this spring or summer, is the EPA prepared to respond? Based on the inspector general’s own assessment, the answer is not reassuring.