Date of Award

8-16-2024

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Earth and Ocean Sciences

First Advisor

Robert Hardy

Abstract

As climate change increases extreme weather events, efforts of managed retreat will also increase, particularly through housing buyout programs. The largest scale housing buyout programs are run through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). These buyout programs focus primarily on flood hazards and exclude anthropogenic hazards. This policy is problematic in the modern technological age where compound hazards, including those involving toxin releases, are occurring more frequently. In this thesis, I investigate how disaster policies account for the intersection of these hazards in Community Development Block Grant-Mitigation buyouts in Cheraw, South Carolina. The Huckleberry Park buyouts occurred in the Wilson Branch watershed; an area of Cheraw affected by flooding from Hurricane Florence as well as Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) contamination from a Superfund site upstream. I ask: What are the narratives of flooding in the Wilson Branch watershed? How did the presence of toxins impact the Huckleberry Park buyouts? How do federal and state policies account for flood and toxin hazards? To answer these questions, I performed a qualitative case study utilizing interview, archival, and observational data. My methods of analyzing this data were critical/contextual analysis and discourse analyses. I found that buyout participant motivations were heavily influenced by the toxins upstream that were washed inside their homes during Hurricane Florence. There were multiplicities of care elicited by the toxins, but residents did not receive the justice they had hoped for. Limited options led residents of Cheraw to creatively utilize a flood buyout to facilitate toxin buyouts. However, residents of Cheraw affected by the toxins – but “insufficiently” flooded – were left without a way to escape the toxin exposure. Disaster policies are influenced by acts of God and neoliberal ideologies through widespread budget cuts and the narrowing of how major disaster is defined. This creates a landscape where there are more adaptation options for flooding than toxins. This differential treatment of often intersecting and compound hazards has implications across the United States. I argue that disregarding toxins in disaster aid limits the options of vulnerable communities, thereby perpetuating adaptation oppression.

Rights

© 2024, Victoria Ponds

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