>> washington post reporter bob woodward is our "washington journal" guest monday at 7:00 a.m. eastern, talking about his new book, "fear: trump in the us who." then on tuesday at 8:30 a.m. eastern, ken starr joins us to discuss his book "contempt: a memoir of the clinton investigation." watch next week on c-span's "washington journal." host: emily atkin at our table this morning. staff writer for the new republicans. wrote several pieces of late about the hurricane. hurricane florence as it makes landfall today. she'll take your questions and comments here this morning about preparedness. that te on july 17, nearly five million households registered for fema assistance in 2017. more an the previous 10 years combined. the wildfires in california were their own behemoth, requiring

more federal response contracts than hurricanes harvey and irma combined. fema's response to hurricane maria was also the longest sustained air mission to food and water air delivery in fema history according to the fema action report. hurricane irma was one of the largest sheltering missions in history with . million people nder evacuation order. fema wasn't prepared. couldn't be prepared for this hurricane season and hurricane florence today. has anything changed your mind? guest: absolutely not. you can't fema be prepared for magnitude of diversity of disaster that hit last year. and you can't really be prepared for this kind of hurricane that's hitting north carolina, south carolina right now. they are too big, they are too unpredictible. they are massive challenges no matter what. obviously climate scientists say

because these storms are being fueled by a warmer weather atmosphere they are even worse. and when our administration doesn't seem to accept that reality sometimes, i think it's hard to be prepared for the larger, more dangerous reality when you don't accept that that reality exists. host: you also wrote about recently the potential public health. we read a little bit before you came out here about the hog population in north carolina. talk more about what it looks like in north carolina and what are the potential impacts and what are people doing in preparation for florence to prevent a public and environmental disaster? guest: sure. every hurricane -- every large hurricane is a public health disaster because you have large flood problems, right. floodwaters themselves still warm breeding grounds for

disease pathogens from mosquitoes. most of the people who die in hurricanes, they die from floodwaters. they don't die from high winds. so you have public health problems of every hurricane. with florence, there's a unique threat because the track of the storm is going through two large industrial areas. hog farming country and coal country. there you have several dozens of lagoons of animal feces -- north carolina has nine million hogs, it's almost as many people that are in north carolina. so any hog produces about as much waste as two or three grown adult humans every day. at waste drips through great -- grates and goes into these lagoons. it's the same situation with coal. there are a lot of coal plants in that area of north carolina

that burn coal and the waste, the ash which contains heavy metals like arsenic, chromium, lead, that's also stored in unlined pits. you can imagine with the rainfall totals that we're expecting with hurricane florence that's probably the largest threat we see from the storm. both have the potential to overflow. the hog companies and farms have been -- they say they have been taking preparations for this to happen. for instance, with the manure lagoons across the area, the track of the storm, they have in the last few days have been scrambling to empty them or lower the levels. but what they do when they do that, they take it out and spray the waste fertilelizer on fields, crop fields. that's still the potential, risk to run off into drinking water systems.

they'll try to cover them but what we have seen with previous storms the storms are unpredictable and sometimes protection measures fail. the only way to protection yourself against those threats is to make sure those lagoons aren't there in the first place. host: you also write about superfund sites. in preparation for florence the environmental protection agency is monitoring nine of the nation's most toxic sites known as superfund sites where various chemicals and pest at this tudesrisk spread due to rainfall. that's only a fraction of the sites in florence's path which counted more than 60. what is a superfund site, explain how it works. guest: it is basically -- the easy way to describe it it's one of our most toxic sites, contaminated sites in the country. the superfund program was created because during the industrial revolution we didn't have environmental regulations like we do now. we had industrial facilities, wood makers, plastic makers,

pesticide makers, chemical makers that produced a lot of pollution. and they wound up contaminating the ground water and soil around them. then those companies eventually went out of business or bankrupt before they were able to pay for clean cleaning up these contaminated sites. -- for cleaning up these contaminated sites. they come under the jurisdiction of the e.p.a. which has to look for funds and ways to clean them up. we have over 1,000 in the united states today. what you don't want is a lot of these toxic sites to get completely inundated with floodwaters because some of the toxins, which can range from bad to extremely bad types of toxins, cancer causing type things, you don't want floodwaters to take those chemicals, run them off into more ground water and aquifers and drinking water sources. unfortunately because these are industrial sites, so many

industrial sites need water to produce steam, to produce cooling. loot of them happen to be near -- a lot of them happen to be near rivers like drinking water sources. you pointed out in the piece which i wrote on wednesday the e.p.a. was monitoring nine superfund sites in hurricane florence's path. yesterday afternoon, thursday, the e.p.a. sent out an email saying they were now monitoring -- i counted 40 superfund and other hazardous sites. oil facilities and then other sites that handle hazardous materials. that didn't include georgia. they were still counting the number of sites there. unfortunately we have a toxic waste problem across the united states that always presents itself when there is a hurricane because these sites are dotted across the country. host: we're talking about the public health and environmental impacts of hurricane florence this morning with emily atkin,

she covers science and environmental politics for the new republic. explain what the new republic is for people who don't know. guest: the new republic is a magazine of politics and culture . we come at it from a progressive perspective and we have been here for over 100 years. host: what is government's prediction for the rest of hurricane season? guest: well, the government scientists predicted that this hurricane season was going to be an average to above average hurricane season. actually up until now it was really quiet. there hadn't even been many named storms forming in the atlantic at all. we had seen more in the pacific, which is strange. now we have about -- i think we have up to five storms churning in the atlantic. we're not sure where they are going to go. as you remember from last year, late september, early october, is the peak of this season. late september is when we saw harvey and then irma and then maria. the way the atlantic looks right

now, it looks like something like that could happen again. but at the same time weather hurricanes are so unpredictable, the fact this storm alone is on the track it's on is mind-boggling to people. that it's coming in to the north carolina coast and then sort of dripping southward before it's going to go north and then slow down and people are like, what? it's hard to predict what's going to happen. we know that the atlantic looks like -- sort of like a soup of swirly, awful little things. they could all pan out. they could not. what everybody who has experienced a hurricane knows, it only takes one storm to make a difference. host: what were some of the public health, environmental impacts of last year's hurricane season, harvey, irma, maria. guest: we saw such unique public health threats with harvey and

irma. obviously we see the ones we see all the time with standing water nd the flooding damages. in texas, harvey hit the heart of the nation's petrochemical facilities. if you have ever been to houston, you know, houston or galveston, you know there is almost a city of refineries, chemical processing plants just lining next to the houston corridor. harvey went right through that. you might remember there was an explosion at a chemical plant. all these plants had to shut down in preparation for this storm. hen an oil refinery or coleburning plant, whenever they shut down, they release a ton of emissions into the air. there were air pollution threats. there were water pollution threats from sort of just tanks of gas and other

substances. knocking over and getting into the flood water. floodwater is something you don't want to touch no matter where you are. just assume it's full of sewage because our sewage systems in this country are so old. that was the big problem in hurricane irma, they overflow when they flood. if you see floodwaters assume there is sewage in it. also assume there is anything else from any other industrial facility that's around. and harvey had a lot of industrial facilities and florida had a lot of -- had a big sewage problem because just florida sewage infrastructure is very old and decrepit. host: who is responsible to clean it up? guest: local, state, federal government, public pressure. i mean everybody plays a role in these things. it's not a really, fun easy answer. it would be great if we could just say county governments are the ones or state governments

are the ones who need to act. you need -- the first thing you need to have to fortify your infrastructure to prepare for these storms is public desire to have your governments do that. public infrastructure like sewage, that's -- it's just not the sexiest thing to ask for, to campaign for. i think we should invest $13 billion in our sewage infrastructure to fortify it against storms. that's really not -- but the will to do that comes from eople asking for it. so every government agency plays a role and the public plays a role. host: hear from callers. matthew in washington, d.c. you're up first. caller: yes. i just wanted to speak to the idea of responsibility versus accountability. there's been some callers this morning, discussion about who is responsible, whether it's the

state, local, federal. of course it's everybody. it's a collaborative effort. puerto rico, they pay between $3 billion and $4 billion in federal taxes. in light of this recent report from g.w., independent report, statistical analysis, reviewing death certificates where it's been determined that 3,000 people lost their lives, i just find it absolutely disgraceful that the president of the united states is trying to deny that report because of his perception that it might be a reflection on him and his followers are just willing to fall in line and point fingers and try to distract away from that. i think it's terrible. host: emily atkin. guest: i realized when this was happening yesterday when the president said this independent study from g.w.u. said 3,000 people died in puerto rico, it wasn't -- it was fake. it was a plot by the democrats

to make him look bad. it's false, obviously, but the -- it's also not terribly surprising. the president and his base, they don't trust constitutional -- i.n.s. constitutional -- institutional science, and you see that with their rejection of the science of human caused climate change. the science that says that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere make -- they cause global warming and they make rainfall that's stronger, etc., etc. but the rejection of peer-reviewed science and rejecting this death toll number is a rejection of that science. it's also a way to say don't trust scientists, trust me. the scientists are the democrats. so it's part of that -- it's part of that whole theme there. host: we heard from a caller earlier who said that the university who came up with the number of deaths in puerto rico

was democratic -- was aligned with democrats. have you heard that? what do you know about that if anything? guest: i hadn't heard that, to be honest. however, i think universities sort of tend to be aligned with democratic institutions, at least students, young people tend to be a bit more progressive. and political views change once people get older. but just based on how this administration has treated scientific institutions and talked about science, it wouldn't be surprising to me if many more people in the scientific field are starting to reject -- at least maybe not the republican party, but donald trump's republican party. t's absolutely possible that g.w.u. is -- the scientists are registered democrats, but the whole idea of science is that

it's supposed to be an objective process, and the idea of peer review is that you are being reviewed and checked by your peers from all different walks of life. that's why science works. it shouldn't matter who you are. what your internal bias is. the beauty of the scientific process is that your community checks you. and calls out your bias. that happens before those results are published. host: "the new york times" calls the president's claim false and they say 3,000 figure comes from an estimate in a study by independent researchers at george washington university and commissioned by the puerto rico government. they have a link here to the study. the researchers found the government data documented 16,608 deaths from september, 2017, to - september, september, 2018. they tried to avoid accounting people who died for any reason like old age.

find out more if you want if you go to the study and and find it if you search independent researchers at george washington university. vince in orange beach, alabama. go ahead. caller: yeah. i completely agree that there probably was that amount of deaths. puerto rico's been rammed by democrats for the past 50 years. luke at the democratic cities in this country, it's the most crime and most poverty. they mismanaged. they have stolen. so, yeah, it probably happened that way. but to think that settledle science and global warming is accurate, there's thousands of scientists and published papers saying all of that was a scam. the hockey stick was a scam. all the projections over the past 20 years have not come to pass as far as global temperatures. as far as sea rise. i live on the beach. been here for 20 years. the sea level has not raised one

inch. we have had less hurricanes and strorks over the past 10 years than any time in the past 100 years. all their claims and predictions are just bogus. the sky is falling garbage for a political agenda. host: what are the scientists saying about -- like this meteorologist writing in today's "washington post," climate change made this monster. guest: climate change makes the earth warmer as a whole. it puts greenhouse gas, which are heat trapping, into the atmosphere. and the atmosphere can hold more heat. they also can hold more moisture. it's basics physics. when the atmosphere can hold more museture. that doesn't mean you are necessarily going to get more hurricanes. it just means that when a hurricane comes or any precipitation event comes more going rain, ice, hail is

to be able to fall. it's hard when an event is happening to place the exact climate change footprint on it. fingerprint on it. we do know the basic physics. what i would say to the caller is i would challenge you to find those thousands of peer reviewed studies and published journals that say the science is a scam. that say that it's a hoax. i think you would actually be hard-pressed to find those in reputable scientific journals. of course there are scientists who don't think that human-caused climate change is a problem or as big of a problem as other scientist does. that will always be the case. but you have to look at is the number of papers and the number of scientists who do compared to those who don't. there are a range of numbers that have been put out there from 90% of climate scientists say this is a real and human

caused problem that's making weather events worse. maybe 97%. it depends which peer reviewed paper you want to look at. the fact remains that it's always in the 90's. and any other risk you would take, if you had a 90% risk of dying from cancer if you kept smoking, if you had a 90% risk of falling into a grate if you walked over it, what would you do? would you say no? it's interesting to me that this idea persists just with this particular sign particular field. but not with anything else. host: virginia, waldorf, maryland, good morning. caller: good morning. i just have a few things to say. i have a house, small town, rocky mountain, north carolina, ey always forget about the small pocketstowns.

they go into the big towns. i'm like right off the tar river which constantly floods. any time a hurricane comes through, greensboro, goldsboro, we just flood. and they always forget about us. it's like these pocket towns. and they go out to the big wide areas, insurance companies play it like it's a game. we're paying for these multimillion dollar houses that are on the outer banks. it's crazy. it's just not well prepared. it's not well planned. i think insurance companies play a big part in how things are done. i think they do it incorrectly. they just never let the pocket towns. guest: one of the things this hurricane is going to make people realize is that storm surge and coastal towns are not the only places that are affected by huge catastrophic weather events. like you said north carolina has

cape fear, has the neuse river. all these large river systems that overflow at the drop of a hat. as the storm comes inland, as storms come inland and starts dumping anywhere from 10 to 40 inches of rain on to these areas, these -- the areas where you live are going to see flooding, too, and damage they never expected. there is going to have to be a recalculation by insurance companies and property owners and developers on how they deal with these problems. host: caldwell, texas. you caller: good morning. when it comes to disasters decades some ex speerns after going to disasters we ask the government to fix it

immediately. anything note heavily happen over the last 50 disasters as a country, as a nation. as citizens, we're aware of the problem. they fix our problem immediately because we all have to come for her and contribute positive response. because we're going to keep having these disasters. i think they are causing -- being for caused because of man. man have a lot to do with a lot of it. i don't believe it's just science. i think it's man contributing in a negative way more than a positive way. we could all understand from the experiences that we can do a lot of positive things to solve a

lot of the world problems going on right now, but we have to unite as a people and as a nation. host: leave it there. emily atkin, what is the status of the federal government responding to preparing for climate change? guest: well, you may have seen at least in north carolina, north carolina there was a study being commissioned by some scientists saying that sea level rise on the north carolina coast by going to rise by 39 feet the year 2100 if climate change continued on the track that it was going. and the north carolina government wound up rejecting that study, throwing that study away. if it had accepted it there probably would have been some

restrictions on development on the north carolina coastline. that didn't happen and development thrived there. and for many years, for many years in north carolina, since about 2010, climate change was a dirty word. i remember when i was covering the issue early in 2014 there was a big news story about how the governor of the town pat mccleary banned the word climate change being used at his department of environmental conservation. you see things like that happening in our federal government all the time now. cking out of the playbook of that government in north carolina. trying to avoid the word. trying to stop studies that will tell you how much sea level rise s going to happen. at the e.p.a. a large program to

expand where the flood plain really is since flood level has risen and stronger, more intense storms. how we should expand the flood plain and warn people. that program was stopped. programs to prepare superfund sites, to fortify them for stronger storms from the e.p.a., they were put on a halt. like the caller said, a lot of these things are preventable. i was talking to you earlier about the lagoons, man new lagoons, coal ash pits in florence's path. that's mostly in north carolina. in south carolina they have a lot of similar problems. but due to public pressure and a lawsuit, a lot of these pits were drained and excavated. and now environmental advocates, public health advocates aren't worried about what will happen when the storm goes over them. because there was action taken. there are things we can do, and things we can do that don't even -- we don't have to solve the

climate change problem today to make some of these pub lig health threats less serious. host: -- public health threats less serious. host: new jersey, good morning. caller: good morning. she was talking about the farms, farms spreading pig feces. omething i never heard of. usually they spread cow feces not swine. let's just jump to the n.s.f. and how much is their budget, ow much they usually make. so they usually have 98% of the science community needs to agree with the census in order for anyone to hear you. then you got to think about people are saying the insurance companies, jump to puerto rico, wasn't it 30% of the island didn't even have power before

they were wiped out? 3,000 people, that's a lot of people. how much are they asking for? like $187 billion or something. how much puerto rico is asking for? host: what's your point, zach? then we'll have emily atkin respond. caller: fema, sandy, fema came in and gave out $2,000 to everybody, anyone and everyone who walked up until the budget was gone. we came in and did all we could. we found out later there was stockpile of water and all sorts of goods they didn't give to us. so when they say the president didn't help out puerto rico, fema got alt funding and money they needed to, and then when they got there, they really didn't do anything. host: your thoughts? guest: there's no federal government system that we have that is perfect and operating really well.

and i can't say to you how fema's failures in sandy translated to fema's failure in puerto rico or in louisiana or in texas. there's never going to be a perfect disaster response. and every single storm has its own identity. its own problems. and every single response will have its own problems. we can make as many comparisons as we want, but what i would recommend is sort of just looking at these storms individually, seeing what went right, and what went wrong. people in fema and in the federal government are trying their best, but they have to use -- the funding they are working with anti-leadership they are working with. it's up to us to assess whether we're happy with t a lot of people in puerto rico are not happy with their leadership of their local government and the

federal government. and one thing i'll add about the first thing you mentioned about cow feces, pig feces. the issue we're talking about in north korea, it's because that's hog farming country. if you look at the concentration of farms, it's all swine. and they don't normally spread the swine feces on cropland. they are doing it because right now -- right now because they have to empty the lagoons that it's stored in. so they are just spreading it on cropland to try and empty the lagoons. host: you can follow emily atkin's reporting if you go to new republic dot-com. and at twitter at new rp and emily atkin, thank you >> the founder of world central kitchen. he reflects on his efforts to feed the people of puerto rico after hurricane maria.

he speaks at a book store live at 7:00 p.m. eastern. prime time schedule, starting at 8:30 p.m. eastern on c-span ben bernanke and former treasury secretary, tim geithner and paulsen talk about the 2008 economic crisis. >> c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impath you. saturday morning, a