Hurricane Harvey-Related Diseases Have Increased, Health Officials Warn

[Igel]

1. Here's the source for the "theverge" rewrite.

https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-statement-san-jacinto-river-waste-pits-superfund-site-data

Harvey damaged the cap. The 70000 ng/kg sample was the undisturbed sediment. If it weren't higher than the clean-up target, there'd be no cap.

Unstated is the extent to which the cap was damaged, and in what way it was damaged.

Took me a while to figure out what the EPA was even talking about. Pictures of the site helped. Apparently the waste pits are mostly containment ponds that were fenced off portions of wetlands or river. They're covered by rock and cement, but can be eroded. It's probably one of the sites that an ABC news team visited shortly after the hurricane and breathlessly asked why if they could get to it the EPA couldn't; the answer in this case is simple, they had to send divers down and the ABC team was either in a boat or in a helicopter and basically got to the space 10 or 15 feet above the actual site.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Flooding-threatens-to-release-toxins-into-the-San-12169379.php provides a bit more background.

Not much comment on the Harris County's health authority's spiffy new mobile service. Except to note that where my kid goes to school there's been an uptick in illness. No flooding for most of those kids. Newsweek often suffers from a bad case of post-hoc-ism.