Ed Carver, Common Dreams

Local officials, academic researchers, and volunteer responders have raised concerns about chemical and biological contamination brought by the floodwaters of Hurricane Helene in the southeastern U.S. last week, which potentially threaten the safety not only of drinking water but also the quality of soil—leading experts to call for tighter regulations on stored pollutants.

Helene struck Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26 and swept through a number of states in the days that followed. Most of the damage came from extreme rainfall that triggered flooding. The storm killed at least 232 people.

The biological and chemical threats posed by floodwaters are typically manifold, often containing, for example, e. coli from overflowing sewage systems.

While it's not yet clear what bacteria or chemicals Helene's floodwaters may have contained, the storm passed through hundreds of industrial sites with toxic pollutants, including paper mills, fertilizer factories, oil and gas storage facilities, and even a retired nuclear plant, according to three researchers at Rice University, writing in The Conversation this week.

The researchers called for tighter regulations on the storage and release of chemical pollutants.

"Hazardous releases remain largely invisible due to limited disclosure requirements and scant public information," they wrote. "Even emergency responders often don’t know exactly which hazardous chemicals they are facing in emergency situations."

"We believe this limited public information on rising chemical threats from our changing climate should be front-page news every hurricane season," they added. "Communities should be aware of the risks of hosting vulnerable industrial infrastructure, particularly as rising global temperatures increase the risk of extreme downpours and powerful hurricanes."

The devastation of infrastructure and the lack of drinking water in cities such Asheville, North Carolina, has rightly received national media attention following the storm. In North Carolina alone, more than 700,000 households lost power, and 170,000 still didn't have it as of Thursday.

Yet the National Weather Service warns that while floodwaters can create clear-cut devastation, "what you can't see can be just as dangerous." Helene also brought with it public health concerns that are less obvious, including to other, non-public sources of drinking water.

Helene's floodwaters overran many wells, rendering them unsafe to drink, at least until treatment and testing can be done. North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services advised residents not to use contaminated well water earlier this week.

One problem following Helene is that most studies of flooding's impact on drinking water have been done in coastal areas, and it's not clear how they apply to the mountainous areas of North Carolina that took the worst hit from the storm.

"We don't have a lot of knowledge about mountain flooding, from a hydrology standpoint," Kelsey Pieper, a professor in environmental engineering at Northeastern University, toldInside Climate News.

"Water velocities tend to be higher in mountain floodings because it's getting funneled into the valley, where the water is accumulating. In a coastal area, you’re going to see more water spreading out," she said. "The flooding mechanisms are different, and we know very little."

Wells tested in eastern North Carolina after Hurricane Florence in 2018 showed some detections of e. coli or total fecal coliform, which were partly attributed to industrialized hog farms in the area, Inside Climate News reported.

Crops are often rendered unsafe after flooding due to biological or chemical contamination, according to Food Safety Alliance.

Natural bodies of water are also often unsafe to swim in following floods. Virginia Department of Health and other agencies warned people to avoid them after Helene.

The period after a tropical storm brings increased risk of both biological contaminants, such as bacteria and viruses, and chemical contaminants, such as heavy metals and pesticides, according to the Duke University Superfund Research Center.

Following Helene, a grassroots volunteer cleanup effort has sprung up in western North Carolina, but it brings risks for the volunteers because of the potential contamination.

"We were supposed to get a big shipment of gloves, coveralls, masks, respirators, but we aren't," Rachel Bennett, a coordinating volunteer in the town of Marshall, which sits along the banks of the French Broad River, told the Citizen Times, an Asheville newspaper. "So, we're hoping to get more. Those are the big things because we're in cleanup right now. We need thick things."

"Right now, it's boots, and it's hard to get people to put on gloves, because when you're in this, you're like, 'I'm already exposed,'" she added.

A Marshall resident conducted a soil test this week but the results haven't come back yet, the newspaper reported.

"All of these rivers should be treated as hazmat sites," Buncombe County spokesperson Stacey Wood said at a briefing Friday, according to a local journalist. Buncombe County encompasses Asheville and Marshall is just outside it.

The Rice University researchers called for better preparation for future storms in the form of stronger regulation. They've developed a map showing the U.S. areas that are most vulnerable to chemical pollution brought on by floodwaters. One hotspot is the area of Texas and Louisiana full of petrochemical industry sites.

The climate crisis, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and likely contributed to Helene's development, experts have said.

In addition to their immediate damage, storms like Helene can have surprising long-term impacts. A study published in Nature this week found that tropical storms—even those far less deadly than Helene—typically lead to many thousands of excess deaths in the 15 years that follow their arrival.

More than 100 election officials across eight swing states in the U.S. presidential race have engaged in partisan election denial in recent years, raising fears they could try to turn the November result in favor of Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to a report released Friday.

The 88-page report, produced by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), details the election denial history of 102 county and state election officials in Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The authors found that election deniers have majority control of 15 county election boards in those states and of the statewide board in Georgia.

"What was striking to us about our research is how much election denialism and the voter fraud lie have infiltrated and taken over the Republican apparatus in each of these critical states," Arn Pearson, CMD's executive director, toldThe Guardian.

"With 102 deniers on election boards in the swing states, the potential for creating chaos is enormous," Pearson added.

The three Republicans on the five-member Georgia state election board support Trump's baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged. Last month, they changed the rules so that they'd have more power to refuse or delay certifying election results while conducting unspecified investigations, and they appear to be preparing more rules changes before November 5.

Trump recently commended the three Republicans by name at a rally in Atlanta, saying they were "on fire" and were "pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory."

In 2020, Trump lost to President Joe Biden, a Democrat, by only about 12,000 votes in Georgia, one of the states expected to be closely contested again this year as the Republican former president faces off against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

Trump faces criminal charges in Georgia for trying to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. Four other defendants in the felony racketeering case have already pleaded guilty.

Marc Elias, an election lawyer who advises the Harris campaign, said the new rules in Georgia were "somewhere between insidious and insane." He and many other experts have emphasized that election boards are not meant to carry such power. Making a football analogy, Elias said that the rules gave "the scoreboard operator the opportunity to investigate for themselves whether a touchdown was scored," as he toldThe New Yorker Radio Hour.

Partisan conspiracy theories among election officials go well beyond Georgia, the CMD report shows. Pennsylvania has 29 election administration officials loyal to Trump—the most of any of the eight states—and they control the boards in seven counties there, the report says.

The report looks not just at election officials but also other Republican "election deniers" including U.S. congressional candidates and party officials from the eight states. The authors found 239 election deniers including the 102 election board officials.

CMD defined someone as an "election denier" if they had done any of the following: "denying that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election"; "espousing baseless claims or conspiracies about election and voter fraud during the 2020 election or subsequent elections"; "refusing to certify election results, or calling on others to refuse to certify, based on unfounded accusations of interference or fraud"; "expressing support for partisan or 'forensic' audits of 2020 election results"; "filing or expressing support for litigation aimed at overturning election results"; "participating in or supporting the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol or 'Stop the Steal' events."

Experts differ on whether Republican efforts to subvert the election, should Trump lose, will be more or less effective than in 2020.

"Our democracy's firewalls held fast in 2020, but election deniers and MAGA extremists have spent the last four years infiltrating election administration and political party positions in order to disrupt and cast doubt on the 2024 election results," Pearson said in a statement accompanying the report.

However, officials not loyal to Trump have also had more time to prepare for potential election interference, and the Electoral Count Reform Act, passed by Congress in 2022, could make it harder for Trump's efforts to succeed, experts say.

Pearson indicated that Trump's allies on election boards may not ultimately succeed at overturning the election but could sow doubt that damages democracy.

"While it is highly unlikely that these officials, along with deniers in Congress, will be able to prevent certification of the 2024 election results, they are in a prime position to force litigation and delay what should be a ministerial task while they and their allies whip up false claims of voter fraud, noncitizen voting, and a stolen election," he said.

CMD's report follows those of many other media outlets and watchdog groups in recent months, with broadly similar findings, if different exact figures. A CBS Newsinvestigation in May found 80 election-denying officials in seven battleground states. Rolling Stone and American Doomfound nearly 70 in six states in July. And last month, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington issued a detailed report identifying 35 "rogue" officials.