WILMINGTON – Wayne Lewis stood before state environmental regulatory officials Monday night and told the story about his wife.
He described how, on an evening in 2009 just before she went to bed, she started vomiting blood. He detailed how the couple was shocked by her medical diagnosis: sclerosis of the liver. He explained how the doctors who made that diagnosis at the University of North Carolina Medical Center in Chapel Hill could not determine how or why she got the disease.
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“She never drank,” Lewis said, referring to alcoholic beverages. “The only thing she would drink was water, unsweetened tea, maybe a little Sprite. When we went out to eat it was unsweetened tea. She didn’t smoke. They ruled out Tylenol because she didn’t take Tylenol.”
She was tested a handful of times for hepatitis. The results always came back the same, negative.
“They said it was no reason for her to have that disease and that’s why I brought you my report from my water,” Lewis said.
Preliminary and final results indicate that his drinking water contained a total per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, concentration of 381.5 parts per trillion, more than 50 times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum contamination level for legacy compounds PFOA and PFOS, and nearly 40 times higher than limits established for a handful of other compounds, including GenX, which is manufactured upriver near Fayetteville.
Lewis was the first in a string of residents predominately from New Hanover and Brunswick counties who braved the evening chill Monday to speak during the state-held public hearing at Cape Fear Community College on proposed health standards for PFAS in groundwater. The hearing was the second of three held in recent days, the last of which was in Raleigh Tuesday night.
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Most of those who spoke at the hearing in Wilmington shared sentiments of frustration with the state Environmental Management Commission for not adopting health standards sooner, for including only three substances — there are anywhere from 12,000 to upwards of 15,000 related compounds — of the eight for which the Department of Environmental Quality had proposed standards, and for what the commission’s critics call pandering to the very industries responsible for discharging the chemical compounds into the environment.
Looking back: Commission members balk on 5 proposed PFAS standards
Hearing officer Jacqueline Gibson, one of the 15 commission members, listened as residents from the lower Cape Fear region urged the commission to adopt health standards for PFAS as a class of chemicals, rather than as individual chemical compounds, for both groundwater and surface waters.
The Cape Fear region was rocked by news in 2017 that the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works facility, some 70 miles upstream of Wilmington, had for decades been discharging PFAS into the Cape Fear River, groundwater and air, contaminating drinking water sources for tens of thousands of residents.
Chemours is not the sole discharger of these chemical compounds — varied PFAS are used to produce everyday goods like food containers, waterproof clothing and stain-resistant carpets — into the region’s drinking water sources. Communities, private well owners and utilities throughout the state are struggling with PFAS contamination.
Earlier this fall, the commission, whose role is to adopt rules to protect, preserve and enhance the state’s water and air resources, voted to move forward with a proposed draft rule outlining health standards for PFOA, PFOS and GenX in groundwater.
The EPA classifies those first two compounds as likely carcinogens. Researchers are still trying to grasp the potential health effects of GenX, a compound specific to Chemours’ plant on the banks of the Cape Fear River.
The proposed rule omits the five other compounds that DEQ had sought to include in proposed groundwater limits.
“We’re worried about our health and we don’t want unnecessary groundwater exposure,” Brunswick County resident Joanne Levitan said. “It’s time to stop putting business interests ahead of people to protect the citizens of North Carolina from PFAS by enacting proposed groundwater standards and further by regulating all PFAS as a class.”
In October, DEQ Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers set interim maximum allowable concentrations for eight PFAS, including PFBS, PFNA, PFHxS, PFBA and PFHxA.
State groundwater rules grant any person the right to request the water resources director establish an interim maximum allowable concentration for a substance for which a groundwater standard has not been set. Rogers set the limits after an Alamance County couple made the request for him to do so.
Rogers will, within a year, recommend to the commission whether any of the interim maximum allowable concentration should be replaced or terminated.
Dr. Robert Parr, a retired emergency physician and Wilmington resident who spoke before the Environmental Management Commission Monday, listed the human health effects associated with PFAS, including various types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, weakened immune function and decreased liver and kidney function.
“It is well past the time that the EMC stopped fooling around and playing around with deadly chemicals, toxic pollutants that endanger public health and safety,” he said. “Now is the time for the EMC to fulfill its primary responsibility and defend present and future generations of North Carolinians from protecting, preserving and enhancing our state’s air and water quality resources.”
Brunswick County resident Jonathan Pattishall described the difficulties he’s had with getting answers on how he can get his private well tested for PFAS.
“I’m asking you to adopt rules governing PFAS as an entire class of chemicals,” he said. “This process is already difficult and confusing enough. Most people who are on private wells are not chemists or lawyers. They’re not government administrators. We don’t handle this kind of information. We need the EMC and the DEQ to help us out, to make it easier by drafting separate rules for all PFAS.”
The commission is expected to decide whether to approve the hearing officer’s report and final fiscal and regulatory impact analysis on the draft rule in May 2025. If approved, the rule would be presented to the state Rules Review Commission next summer.
If the rules commission approves the draft rule, it would become final in July, roughly five years after Lewis lost his wife in 2019.
She spent her final 10 days in an intensive care unit. She was 58.
After Gibson proclaimed the hearing adjourned, Lewis shouted from his seat, “Does it do any good? Or, are you just going to do what you want to do?”
Public comments on the proposed draft rule will be accepted through Dec. 31 by email to GWTriRevComments@deq.nc.gov or by mail to Bridget Shelton, NC DEQ Division of Water Resources, Planning Section 1611 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, N.C. 27699-1611.
