Six Georgia universities have launched a $15 million research center to test whether rising seas and worsening storms are spreading toxins out of four contaminated sites in Glynn County. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is funding the five-year effort, the state’s first dedicated Superfund research center. A national investigation flagged one of those sites, the marshfront LCP Chemicals plant, as a top climate risk years before this money arrived.
Half a mile away, Brunswick resident Semona Holmes watches floodwater climb toward her porch after almost every hard rain. She wants proof of what exactly rides in on that water.
A $15 Million Grant Targets One Toxic Marsh
The grant brings together researchers from Emory University, the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Morehouse School of Medicine, Spelman College and Texas Tech University. Emory leads the work through its Rollins School of Public Health.
“One is to understand the health effects of past chemical exposures, and the other is to try and reduce people’s future exposures,” said Noah Scovronick, an Emory public health professor helping lead the project.
The center’s director, Dana Barr, a professor of environmental health at Emory’s Rollins School, said the project pairs exposure science with direct community partnerships to guide healthier decisions for families, clinicians and policymakers.
Glynn County, home to Brunswick and St. Simons Island, holds four of Georgia’s 23 Superfund sites, tightly clustered along the old industrial waterfront. Each is a leftover of manufacturing that stopped decades ago but left its chemistry behind.
| Site | Size | Main Contaminants | Key Dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| LCP Chemicals | 813 acres, mostly marsh | Mercury, PCBs, PAHs, lead | Industrial use 1919 to 1994; listed 1996 |
| Brunswick Wood Preserving | 84 acres | Creosote, pentachlorophenol, chromium, copper, arsenic | Operated 1958 to 1991; listed 1984 |
| Terry Creek Dredge Spoil Areas / Hercules Outfall | Tidal marsh, four source areas | Toxaphene | Discharges 1948 to 1980; proposed for listing 1997 |
| Hercules 009 Landfill | About 17 acres | Toxaphene, contaminated groundwater | Waste dumped mid-20th century; fenced and monitored |
Every site now faces a newer question: whether its containment can outlast a changing coastline.
Did Regulators Already Know This Marsh Was at Risk?
Yes. A 2019 federal audit found that roughly 60 percent of the nation’s most contaminated Superfund sites sit in areas threatened by flooding, storm surge, wildfire or sea level rise, and a later investigation named Brunswick’s LCP Chemicals site as one of just 49 facing the worst combination of those risks nationwide.
The Government Accountability Office found that 945 of 1,571 nonfederal Superfund sites sat in at-risk zones. Investigators separately found that nearly 100 sites would flood if the sea rose by just a foot.
A year later, a joint investigation by NBC News, Inside Climate News and the Texas Observer identified 49 sites facing a triple threat nationwide, meaning each sits in a flood plain, floods on a regular basis and lies exposed to hurricane storm surge all at once. LCP Chemicals, contaminated with mercury and PCBs on the Georgia coast, made that list.
Flooding could also breach the physical barriers meant to hold the chemicals in place. “More exposure to extreme weather could actually release more of the contaminants into the environment,” Scovronick said.
At LCP Chemicals, EPA already caps contaminated sediment and monitors a mercury plume in a surficial aquifer. At Terry Creek, a concrete cap holds residual toxaphene out of the marsh. “We want to be sure that the remediation that is ongoing at those sites is resilient to extreme weather moving forward,” Scovronick said.
Semona Holmes Watches the Tide from Her Porch
Holmes lives across the road from Brunswick’s waterfront, in a house surrounded by fruit trees, potted flowers and a fish pond. When it rains hard, or when the tide runs unusually high, floodwater finds her yard too.
“If you can imagine this entire area here completely flooded,” Holmes said on her front porch on a recent afternoon. “We would have like a river on our street.”
The water has reached her knees before. After one hurricane, a neighbor paddled a canoe down the block instead of walking.
Stormwater upgrades in recent years have helped some, Holmes said. But her worry runs deeper than a flooded street. Her house sits about half a mile from a shuttered pesticide plant, now a Superfund site under federal oversight.
Everything from that chemical plant has flowed into our community.
Holmes said that, describing her fear about what the floodwater carries into her yard and street.
Her family has already made its own call on the risk. They do not drink the tap water. They do not eat fish or crab pulled from Glynn County’s waterways.
Holmes has six grandchildren. Several attend an elementary school just blocks from the site near her house.
“We want them to be healthy,” she said. “And you don’t want to worry about, they’re playing on a playground that has contaminated soil.”
The Grant Funds Five Linked Studies
The award funds five studies over five years. One expands an existing exposure and health study, looking for links between toxicant levels and metabolic disease. A second focuses on toxicology, aiming to help regulators set safer limits for toxaphene, a pesticide banned in 1990 that still lingers in Glynn County’s groundwater and marsh sediment.
The remaining three studies look outward, across the county rather than inside a lab:
- Soil and water sampling across Glynn County to map how people actually come into contact with the contamination.
- Flood and storm modeling to trace how rising water and stronger storms could carry toxicants beyond each site’s boundary.
- Remediation testing in the marshes and tidal creeks, evaluating lower-impact ways to clean up contamination without further disturbing fragile wetlands.
Barr said the approach could reach past Georgia. “It can provide a model for addressing environmental contamination and protecting public health in vulnerable communities nationwide,” she said.
Centers like this one are rare. Fewer than two dozen Superfund Research Centers operate nationwide, funded by NIEHS since Congress created the program under a 1986 law. The program has backed research at 35 universities since 1987 and currently supports work at 23 of them, from Duke to the University of Southern California. Georgia had never hosted one until now.
An Old Pollution Fight Meets a Skeptical Washington
Majority Black neighborhoods grew up next to the factories that later became Brunswick’s federal cleanup sites, and the exposure has not been shared equally.
A peer-reviewed study of 97 Brunswick natives, tied to two of the county’s Superfund sites, found that 40% carried higher concentrations of a toxicant than the national average, with Black participants showing higher exposure than white participants. The study left many participants with more questions than answers after decades without being told about the risk.
That history is meeting a change in Washington’s posture toward environmental justice work. In July, EPA Region 4 Administrator Kevin McOmber, a Trump appointee since February 2025, toured Brunswick’s Superfund sites with his staff. He sounded upbeat about redevelopment, saying he gets “excited about these sites for the reuse opportunities that are there.”
But McOmber suggested EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin views environmental justice initiatives as inefficient, The Current, a nonprofit newsroom covering coastal Georgia, reported. “The Administrator on that particular topic wanted to make sure that every dollar that’s being spent is being spent on fixing things, you know, environmental improvements,” McOmber said.
Emory’s research center runs on federal health science money, not EPA cleanup funds, so the two efforts operate independently, at least for now.
Holmes Wants the Contamination Documented
Even if the research confirms harm that cannot be undone, Holmes said the documentation itself matters, along with an acknowledgment from the companies that once ran the plants.
“It shows that you care about humanity,” she said. “And that you are able to acknowledge that, ‘yeah, by our actions, we have possibly contaminated an entire county.’”
Recognition alone will not satisfy her. “There has to be continued action,” Holmes said.
Her fish pond still sits a few steps from the porch, a few feet from where the water rises. It is waiting, like the rest of Brunswick, on the next hard rain.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is a Superfund Site?
A Superfund site is land the Environmental Protection Agency has designated as contaminated enough with hazardous substances to require federal oversight and cleanup. The label comes from the 1980 law that created the program, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.
What Pilot Study Led to This Grant?
Emory ran a 2023 pilot study of about 100 Glynn County residents that measured chemical exposure levels before the university and its five partners applied for the larger, five-year grant that created the new center.
Is Toxaphene Still Used Anywhere?
No. The United States banned toxaphene in 1990 after decades of use, mostly to protect cotton crops from insects. It persists in Glynn County’s groundwater and marsh sediment today because it breaks down very slowly in the environment.
Who Is Responsible for Cleaning Up Brunswick’s Contamination?
Under federal Superfund law, the companies tied to the pollution, or their corporate successors, are generally required to pay for or perform cleanup, with EPA oversight. Hercules LLC remains the named responsible party for the toxaphene sites.
How Is a Research Center Different from EPA’s Cleanup Work?
EPA crews handle the physical cleanup: capping, removing and monitoring contamination on site. The university center instead studies health effects, exposure pathways and climate resilience, then feeds findings back to regulators and residents.
