This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Just across the road from the waterfront in Brunswick, Semona Holmes lives in a house surrounded by fruit trees, potted flowers, a fish pond, and—when it rains, or the tide is extra high—floodwater.

“If you can imagine this entire area here completely flooded,” she explained on her front porch on a recent afternoon. “The flooding would be—we would have, like, a river on our street.”

The floodwater has reached to her knees at times. Once, after a hurricane, her neighbor canoed down the block.

Improvements to the stormwater system have helped a bit in recent years. But Holmes’ concerns go beyond the inconvenience of an occasionally flooded street. She lives about half a mile from a former pesticide plant, which is now a toxic Superfund site—one of thousands of contaminated former industrial sites identified by........

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