The Environmental Protection Agency says it has recovered 517 containers of "unidentified, potentially hazardous material" from highly contaminated toxic waste sites in Texas that flooded last month during Hurricane Harvey. The agency has not provided details about which Superfund sites the material came from, why the contaminants at issue have not been identified and whether there's a threat to human health. At least a dozen Superfund sites in and around Houston were flooded in the days after Harvey's record-shattering rains stopped. The EPA said at the time that its personnel had been unable to reach the sites, though they surveyed the locations using aerial photos. The companies responsible for cleaning up the site, Waste Management and International Paper, have said there were "a small number of areas where the current layer of armored cap is thinner than required."

Source: Los Angeles Times September 25, 2017 01:05 UTC