This story was produced in collaboration with Climate Central.

As Hurricane Irma’s path turned north, Saundra Morene was told she had to evacuate her Ribault River home on Jacksonville’s Northside. But she wasn’t worried. 

Morene’s 40-year-old home had endured rainy storm seasons like the one in 2017 before. She knew how to prepare: boarding up windows, placing sand bags and purchasing water in case of a power outage.

Morene expected she’d come home to scattered tree branches and a few inches of rainfall that pooled around clogged drains. Instead, as the skies cleared and the Category 2 trudged northwest into Georgia, neighbors alerted her that Hurricane Irma left much more behind than light flooding.

Her home was filled with two feet of murky floodwater, and more water cascaded in from a leak that had opened in her roof. Everything in her backyard was swept away. The creek banks she raised her sons to love and protect were submerged.

“I was devastated.
When I came back in, my house was all wet and molded, and water damage was everywhere,” Morene said. “I was truly devastated, because I had been here for a period of time. I raised my children here.”

Hurricane Irma was a wakeup call for Jacksonville’s many low-lying, waterfront neighborhoods near downtown. With each passing hurricane season, rising sea levels leave coastal cities like Jacksonville more vulnerable to increased amounts of floodwater and costly repairs. Floodwaters and heavy rain saddled residents without flood insurance like Morene with debt for years. Her $24,000 loan from FEMA did not cover even half the cost of new appliances, flooring, mold mitigation and roof repairs.

But within those floodwaters lies a less visible threat: More than 5,000 industrial facilities, water treatment plants, former defense sites, oil refineries and nuclear power plants across the coastal United States – often in or near historically marginalized neighborhoods – are now more likely to experience flooding. 

Morene’s home sits within a mile radius of two pumping stations and 2 miles away from a lift station, sitting near the banks of a Ribault River waterway that transports sewage and wastewater.

These sites can spread toxic materials like raw sewage sludge, heavy metals and chemicals through flood waters – toxic tides that expose local communities to contaminants, traveling through drinking water, vapors in the atmosphere and ground water.

Over 10% of those facilities sit along the coastline of Florida. In Duval County, 32 industrial and defense sites and waste water treatment facilities remain at risk of catastrophic floods that spread toxic waste.

That data, compiled by University of California Los Angeles professor Dr. Lara Cushing and University of California Berkeley professor Dr. Rachel Morello-Frosch, sheds new light on how lingering racial divides exacerbate the effects of climate change. 

Climate Central, in collaboration with The Florida Trib, mapped coastal facilities most at risk of flooding historically marginalized neighborhoods with hazardous waste.

“It should be a no-brainer for the city to make every effort to find out what the contaminants are and where they settle,” Morene said.

More than half of Jacksonville’s vulnerable industrial sites are situated in neighborhoods near or in the heart of downtown Jacksonville, known as the Urban Core, home to some of the oldest majority-Black parts of the city. 

“We have historically Black neighborhoods on the Northside of Jacksonville along the river that have been left out of some policy conversations, especially when we’re talking about things like infrastructure improvement and sewer to septic conversion,” Jacksonville University professor Ashley Johnson said. 

Ash incinerators and other industrial plants were placed along the St. Johns, Ribault and Trout Rivers in the decades before there were regulations on how close industry can be to neighborhoods. Many of the ash incinerators left behind contaminated top soil once they became obsolete. 

“A lot of these neighborhoods, I talked about the legacy pollution right that exists on the Northside of Jacksonville because of a lot of the ash sites that are so persistent today,” Johnson said. 

For the ash sites that have yet to be maintained due to millions of dollars worth of clean up, they are most at risk for the spread of heavy metals and forever chemicals to local communities after heavy rain and flooding.

The Jacksonville Naval Air Station, San Pablo Waste Water Treatment Facility, Navy Fuel Depot and a former bombing site in Green Cove Springs are identified as the most at-risk sites for at least 12 major flood events. 

But industrial facilities located in the Urban Core like Maxwell House Coffee plant are still likely to flood at least one to five times annually by 2100, according to the study. The company did not respond to Florida Trib questions.

Across the country, Cushing and Morello-Frosch, the lead researchers, found that toxic sites are notably more likely to be located near neighborhoods that have higher proportions of poverty, low voter turnout, people of color, those who rent their homes or do not have a car, elderly individuals or households where English is not spoken.

Such neighborhoods are “anywhere from 15% to about 40% more likely to be hosting an at-risk site within one kilometer” of where they live, Morello-Frosch said.

When contaminated floodwaters spread to local communities, residents run the risk of ingesting or inhaling a variety of hazardous waste particles linked to long-term health issues. The flooding of wastewater facilities can expose those nearby to fecal coliform bacteria released from sewage sludge. Once floodwaters retreat from homes, harmful viruses and microbes linger, leaving them severely ill if not properly managed.

However, it may take years for health hazards to manifest after heavy metals and toxic chemicals are released by the flooding of an industrial facility. Constant exposure through contaminated ground and drinking water can lead to heart issues, respiratory illnesses, skin conditions and cancer.

Sea-level rise puts Jacksonville at risk

As sea-levels rise, the direct impact is clear near industrial sites that sit along the St. Johns River’s creeks and tributaries.

During Hurricane Irma, over 1 million gallons of sewage sludge spilled into the St. Johns River within the span of a few days. High flood waters and power outages of sewage and wastewater facilities managed by the JEA left the city with roughly $30 million in damages to its infrastructure.

In the aftermath of polluted floodwaters of Hurricanes Matthew and Irma in 2017 that rushed into Jacksonville communities, the city has made efforts to prevent making the same mistakes twice. 

During 2024 Hurricanes Helene and Milton, JEA had more generators to keep sewage facilities powered during heavy rainfall, high-speed winds and moderate flooding. 

Mayor Donna Deegan’s administration and JEA has funneled millions of dollars into phasing out failing septic tanks that leave sewage sludge and harmful bacteria in the St. Johns River and other waterways.

Fecal-coliform bacteria is one of the main contaminants found in Duval waterways.

The city has also committed $105.4 million to restore McCoys Creek to a natural waterway in an effort to counter storm surge and flooding during storms. The CSX headquarters is at risk of two major flooding events annually by 2100 sits at the mouth of McCoys Creek, one of the many indicators demonstrating need for repair.

But advocates and residents say it is not enough to turn back the clock on the impacts of rising sea levels on industrial facilities and those that live around them. 

While the city carries out long-overdue maintenance of water and electrical facilities and natural waterways, non-governmental organizations and initiatives are left with the weight of scrutinizing and testing the waters surrounding privately owned industrial sites. 

The St. Johns Riverkeeper is one organization based in Jacksonville that seeks to sustain the health of the river’s 8800-mile watershed. The organization often fills in the gap of addressing environmental protections with initiatives like “red flag” sampling of water and assessing stormwater permits.

“Looking at all the permits, the reporting and any sort of studies that have been done on this type of waste on sewage sludge is the first step. Then most of the time we do something we call red flag sampling, since we’re a small staff, small organization, we can’t sample the whole river like we would like to, but we do identify places that can give us a good indication that there’s a problem,” chief advocate of the St. Johns Riverkeeper Lisa Rinaman said. 

Although the Florida Department of Environmental Protection did not speak to specific industrial sites across Jacksonville, the agency emphasized in a statement that minimizing the effects of hurricanes and flooding is a part of state legislation and wastewater permit compliance. 

While addressing extreme weather and other environmental issues may be a local priority, policy on a state and national level has lost bipartisan support. 

The Office of Resilience, an initiative created by former Mayor Lenny Curry in 2019 and continued by the Deegan administration to address adapting to a changing climate for the future of Jacksonville, declined an interview and to offer comment for this story. 

Downtown, which sits along the banks of the St. Johns River, has received tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in a City Hall-led effort to boost new development. Renovating EverBank Stadium, construction progress on the Four Seasons Hotel, a riverfront plaza and new housing developments have all benefitted from public subsidies.

But local climate activists question how new developments and the protection of the waterways will coexist if fortifying Jacksonville against future flood events is not being considered.

“You can’t make a resilient city without good policy,” said Jimmy Orth, executive director of the St. Johns Riverkeeper.

Trinity Webster-Bass covers education for The Florida Trib. You can reach her at trinity.webster-bass@floridatrib.org.