{"id":782029,"date":"2026-07-24T15:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T15:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782029\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T15:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T15:15:13","slug":"when-the-water-rises-in-brunswick-so-does-fear-of-whats-in-it-mother-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782029\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Water Rises in Brunswick, So Does Fear of What\u2019s in It \u2013 Mother Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\"A<\/p>\n

Semona Holmes via Grist<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by\u00a0Grist<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n

Just across the road from the waterfront in Brunswick, Semona Holmes lives in a house surrounded by fruit trees, potted flowers, a fish pond, and\u2014when it rains, or the tide is extra high\u2014floodwater.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can imagine this entire area here completely flooded,\u201d she explained on her front porch on a recent afternoon. \u201cThe flooding would be\u2014we would have, like, a river on our street.\u201d<\/p>\n

The floodwater has reached to her knees at times. Once, after a hurricane, her neighbor canoed down the block.<\/p>\n

Improvements to the stormwater system have helped a bit in recent years. But Holmes\u2019 concerns go beyond the inconvenience of an occasionally flooded street. She lives about half a mile from a former pesticide plant, which is now a toxic Superfund site\u2014one of thousands of contaminated former industrial sites identified by the federal\u00a0Environmental Protection Agency<\/a>. Holmes is worried about what the floodwaters contain.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything from that chemical plant has flowed into our community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything from that chemical plant has flowed into our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists want to get a better handle on what, exactly, has flowed into this community\u2019s air, soil, water, and people. Researchers from six institutions will soon launch Georgia\u2019s first Superfund research center, with $15 million from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Over five years, the team of scientists from Emory University, the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Morehouse School of Medicine, Spelman College, and Texas Tech University will look at Glynn County\u2019s four toxic Superfund sites, including the one near Holmes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The work has two main goals, according to Emory public health professor Noah Scovronick. \u201cOne is to understand the health effects of past chemical exposures, and the other is to try and reduce people\u2019s future exposures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To do that, they\u2019ll study links between the toxic substances at the former industrial sites and possible health effects, and conduct environmental sampling to figure out how and where people may have been exposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll also need to model impacts of climate change, like rising seas and stronger storms. On sites that have toxic materials stored in structures or under caps, flooding could breach those containment measures, which are supposed to keep people safe from exposure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be sure that the remediation that is ongoing at those sites is resilient to extreme weather moving forward,\u201d Scovronick said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The researchers met with community members like Holmes to plan their work, so that the studies can answer the lingering questions Glynn County residents have about the industrial pollution in their environment.<\/p>\n

Holmes and her family already don\u2019t drink their tap water or eat seafood from Glynn County waterways. But she said they need more information about what chemicals they\u2019ve been exposed to, and the possible consequences. She has six grandchildren, several of whom attend an elementary school just blocks from the nearest toxic site.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want them to be healthy,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd you don\u2019t want to worry that they\u2019re playing on a playground that has contaminated soil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if the new research uncovers damage that can\u2019t be undone or exposure to health risks that can\u2019t be reversed, Holmes said, it\u2019s important to have all of that documented\u2014and acknowledged by the companies that operated the industrial sites in Glynn County.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows that you care about humanity,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd that you are able to acknowledge that, \u2018Yeah, by our actions, we have possibly contaminated an entire county.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But beyond that recognition of wrongdoing, Holmes said, \u201cThere has to be continued action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Semona Holmes via Grist Get your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-782029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}