From a  North Carolina Health News report

North Carolina’s health goal for GenX in drinking water would drop by one-fifth if state regulators choose to use preliminary data on the compound’s toxicity from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That newly published data, a reference dose representing a maximum level of daily oral exposure considered unlikely to affect a person’s health over a lifetime, resulted from an EPA assessment of GenX’s toxicity, a draft of which the agency released on Nov. 14.

The assessment also identified specific potential health hazards posed by GenX. Among other things, the liver may be especially susceptible and available data are “suggestive of cancer.”

EPA’s proposed reference dose for GenX is 0.00008 milligrams per kilogram of body weight for daily lifetime exposure. That equates to 80 parts per trillion (ppt), a conversion that simplifies comparisons to the concentration of GenX that North Carolina considers safe in drinking water.

GenX contamination surfaced as a public health issue in June 2017, following media reports that researchers had found GenX and similar substances in the Cape Fear River, downstream from the Chemours chemical plant on the Bladen-Cumberland county line near Fayetteville.

In November 2017, under pressure from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, Chemours stopped discharging its manufacturing-related wastewater.

Last year, the state Department of Health and Human Services, or DHHS, derived its own reference dose of 100 ppt as one of a number of factors used to calculate North Carolina’s interim health goal of 140 ppt in drinking water.

In addition to the reference dose, DHHS also based its calculations on potential risks to a particularly vulnerable human population, infants, and assumed that drinking water would account for one-fifth of total exposure to GenX.

Plugging EPA’s draft reference dose into DHHS’ formula would reduce the health goal to 112 ppt.

Jamie DeWitt, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at East Carolina University, said, “EPA’s proposal appears to align more closely with the state’s conclusions, though its methodology differed from the state in a number of ways.”

For now, the state will stick with the current health goal, DHHS spokesman Cobey Culton said in an email response.

“The EPA report on GenX toxicity is in draft form and is subject to change after the public comment period. In the interim, we will continue to use our provisional health goal for drinking water of 140 parts per trillion that has been evaluated by the Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board. When the EPA releases its final reference dose, we will revisit our provisional health goal for GenX.”

The EPA will finalize the toxicity assessment following a 60-day window for public comments.  The comment period is not yet open.

“While we are in the process of reviewing the draft EPA toxicity assessment for GenX, it is clear from the EPA report that GenX is significantly less hazardous than its predecessor compounds,” said Chemours spokeswoman Lisa Randall.

The EPA’s risk assessment includes a summary of potential health hazards posed by exposure to GenX, based on available animal studies. In particular, the EPA assessment highlighted the liver as vulnerable.

“Overall, the available oral toxicity studies show that the liver is sensitive to GenX chemicals,” according to an EPA fact sheet on the draft assessment. “Animal studies have shown health effects in the kidney, blood, immune system, developing fetus and especially in the liver following oral exposure. The data are suggestive of cancer.”

The 80 ppt reference dose in the draft report is for chronic or lifetime exposure. In addition, the report included a reference dose for subchronic exposure — more than a year but less than a lifetime — of 0.0002 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, or 200 ppt.

The EPA also released a draft risk assessment for perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS, another fluorochemical.

Unlike GenX, PFBS “doesn’t appear at high levels in N.C. drinking water intakes,” said Detlef Knappe, an N.C. State professor and one of the researchers who discovered GenX in the Cape Fear River and downstream utilities.

This story is provided courtesy of North Carolina Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with North Carolina Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Brunswick County plans to fund essentially half of $99 million in water plant upgrades through a loan program administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that likely will reduce financing costs by millions of dollars.

EPA announced this month that Brunswick was among 39 applicants nationwide — and the only one in North Carolina — selected to apply for Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, or WIFIA loans.

The Brunswick County Board of Commissioners in May approved construction of a low-pressure reverse-osmosis, or RO, plant at its Northwest Water Treatment Plant.

That decision followed a study comparing options to remove GenX and other fluorochemicals in the Cape Fear River, source of the plant’s drinking water.

The contamination came to light in June 2017, following media reports that researchers had discovered GenX and a host of similar substances emanating from the Chemours chemical plant on the Bladen-Cumberland county line near Fayetteville.

Chemours officials said the GenX in the river was a byproduct of a manufacturing process that had been ongoing since about 1980.

GenX and other fluorochemicals elude conventional municipal water treatment, so they also turned up in drinking water sourced from the Cape Fear by Brunswick and other utilities serving more than 200,000 people in southeastern North Carolina.

Late last year, under pressure from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Chemours suspended all discharges to the river, capturing its wastewater from off-site disposal.

The state’s investigation also broadened to encompass Chemours’ air emissions, thought to be responsible for contamination that turned up in hundreds of private wells miles from the plant.

Last month, Chemours broke ground on a $100 million project aimed at reducing those emissions to 1 percent or less of 2016 levels.

‘It Will Greatly Benefit the Ratepayers’

The Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 2014, or WIKIA, authorizes EPA to provide federal loans or loan guarantees to organizations ranging from corporations and joint ventures to state and municipal governments to fund for drinking and wastewater projects.

A key feature is an interest rate equal to the U.S. Treasury rate at the same maturity: Participants can borrow at the same rate as the federal government. In addition, borrowers can customize repayment schedules, taking as long as 35 years to repay. Brunswick can finance as much as 49 percent of the project cost through the WIKIA program.

“The county is looking for opportunities to finance the project at the lowest possible rate for the benefit of our water customers,” Brunswick County Manager Ann Hardy said in an interview Tuesday.

“We’re not only applying for the WIKIA funding. We’re also seeking state revolving funds and any grants that might be available,” she said. “These federal and state programs that we’re able to possibly use to finance the cost of the RO plant will provide us better financing terms, lower interest rates and a cheaper cost structure than going out into the bond market with a revenue bond.”

The county won’t know its rate until the loan is secured, but Hardy said: “Typically, it’s a savings of a percentage (point) or two, maybe more” compared with a revenue bond. Over the life of the loan, that should result in millions of dollars in savings.

While construction and operating expenses may not change, the decreased financing costs should help the county keep rate increases below what they might be otherwise.

“I think it will greatly benefit the ratepayers,” Hardy said.

‘Robust Technology for Unidentified Contaminants’

Brunswick chose reverse osmosis based on a recommendation from engineering and construction firm CDM Smith, which compared options that also included granular activated carbon and ion-exchange media.

The firm’s recommendation, following a pilot test of a scaled-down RO system, stated that reverse osmosis removed more fluorochemicals more consistently than other options.

It also would be effective at removing most 1,4-dioxane, an industrial chemical used in solvents, paint strippers, greases and waxes that is classified by EPA as “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” That contaminant has turned up at relatively high levels in Brunswick’s drinking water in tests conducted in recent years.

CDM Smith also wrote that reverse osmosis “is the most robust technology for protecting against unidentified contaminants.”

Construction of the reverse-osmosis upgrades is estimated to cost $99 million. Annual operations and maintenance are expected to run $2.9 million.

The county already had planned to spend $38 million to expand the plant’s capacity and help fund a second line to convey raw river water to the Northwest plant, which serves about 70,000 customers, including those of other utilities.

The second line not only will provide redundancy in case of a break in the current line and capacity to meet anticipated growth, it also is needed because RO typically uses more water than other treatment methods. Depending on the system, as little as 85 out of each 100 gallons of raw water treated would be available for drinking.

Filtering GenX, Then Discharging It

In addition to securing funding, Brunswick also must apply to discharge wastewater under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, which in North Carolina is administered by DEQ.

That process “began in February and has proceeded with no ‘red flags’ from regulators. Bidding and construction of the project is expected to begin in June of 2019,” the county wrote in its announcement of the expansion.

John Nichols, Brunswick’s public utilities director, said Tuesday the county plans to submit the application in the next few days.

Those discharges likely will include the fluorochemicals such as GenX removed during treatment.

The current NPDES permit for the Northwest plant states it discharges its wastewater to Hood Creek, part of the Cape Fear River basin.

Coincidentally, although no other water utilities are downstream of Brunswick’s discharge, other municipal treatment plants upriver, which receive wastewater from local manufacturers, are thought to be sources of the 1,4-dioxane contaminating Brunswick’s drinking water.

“(The discharge) can only include what’s being taken out of the river,” Hardy said. “You’re taking out at one point and only putting back in what you take out of the river. You’re not adding anything new to the river.

“Our primary concern is that Chemours stop discharging GenX into the river,” she said. “If they stop, then there’s no GenX to put back in.”

Nichols said county staff has met with regulators a number of times regarding its plans, including the discharge.

“We did not get any negative reaction,” he said. “We asked them if they saw any fatal flaws or major issues, and none came up.”

DEQ did not respond to an email with questions regarding the application and the discharge.

Holding the Polluter Responsible

Brunswick isn’t the only water system looking at multi-million-dollar upgrades to deal with Chemours’ contamination. The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which provides water to most of New Hanover County’s residents, is moving forward with plans to add granular activated carbon beds to its Sweeney Water Treatment Plant.

CFPUA initially considered RO but set it aside because of concerns about costs, waste-disposal challenges and other considerations.

Sweeney already has ozonation, biofiltration and UV disinfection systems, features found at only a handful of water utilities in North Carolina, and can remove most 1,4-dioxane from water it treats.

For its part, CFPUA has applied to DEQ for a $46.9 million grant to fund its construction.

In addition, Brunswick and CFPUA are suing Chemours for damages they say resulted from the contamination in the Cape Fear River. Each has maintained that, ultimately, Chemours rather than utility customers should pay for whatever measures are needed to remove fluorochemicals from drinking water. Any resolution to those claims, though, likely is years away, longer than officials were willing to wait to address their communities’ drinking water issues.

“First and foremost,” Hardy said, “the county is looking to hold those responsible for placing the chemicals in the river financially responsible. And we’re seeking to recover that through our suit against Chemours.”

Those suits have been combined into a single action. Jim Flechtner, CFPUA executive director, said the utilities are awaiting a ruling on a motion by Chemours to dismiss the suit.

A number of lawsuits claiming damages to area residents also have been consolidated.

North Carolina regulators have proposed that Chemours cut all GenX emissions at the Fayetteville Works facility by 97 percent by Friday, a feat the company insists is impossible short of shutting down the plant.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality unveiled that deadline in June as part of a court order it said was under consideration and for which it sought public input. About 100 people responded by email, most of them expressing support for DEQ’s proposals or urging more stringent measures.

DEQ has not said whether it plans to proceed with the order. Questions submitted on Wednesday for this report went unanswered.

The proposed court order centers on the role Chemours’ air emissions play in fluorochemical contamination of groundwater, including about 160 private wells where tests have shown GenX at levels exceeding the state’s 140-parts-per-trillion provisional health goal.

GenX and other fluorochemicals also have been detected in a pocket of water beneath the 2,150-acre Fayetteville Works site, “contributing to contamination of groundwater (including off-site groundwater) and adjacent surface water bodies, including Willis Creek, the Georgia Branch and the Cape Fear River. According to Chemours’ analysis, flow of onsite groundwater directly to the Cape Fear River is the most significant current source of contaminant loading in the river,” the state wrote in the court order.

The company also has charged that the 97 percent reduction is “not based on a claimed public health need.”

Instead, Chemours contends, that’s the emissions reduction believed necessary to prevent additional GenX groundwater contamination greater than 10 ppt.

That 10 ppt level is the smallest concentration that can reliably be measured: the practical quantitation limit, or PQL. Because no groundwater standards exist for GenX, under state law any amount at or above the PQL is a potential violation. Chemours learned that last September when DEQ issued its first notice of violation against the company after GenX and other fluorochemicals turned up in water samples drawn from monitoring wells at Fayetteville Works. Subsequent notices of violation also cited the PQL provision.

Chemours hopes to remedy that situation through an application submitted to DEQ in April to establish an interim groundwater standard for GenX of 70,000 ppt.

Regulators Focus on Air Emissions

DEQ’s efforts to address Chemours’ GenX-related pollution began in June 2017, concentrating on pollutant-laden wastewater discharged to the Cape Fear River. By November, DEQ had suspended Chemours’ discharge privileges, and the company began capturing all of its wastewater and trucking it to Texas for disposal. Discharges have continued from two other companies at the site: DuPont and Kuraray.

In an Aug. 3 conference call to discuss quarterly earnings, Chemours CEO Mark Vergnano told analysts the company expects to spend $35 million this year “related to process water treatment at our Fayetteville facility, in addition to associated remediation and legal costs.”

A few months into their investigation, regulators’ attention had begun to turn to groundwater, first in monitoring wells at the Fayetteville Works and eventually private wells in an expanding radius around it. At least some level of GenX has been found in more than 500 wells.

Chemours initially estimated its GenX emissions totaled about 66.6 pounds per year, but subsequent estimates steadily increased.

“Current data, as reported by Chemours, indicates that Chemours emitted approximately 2,199 pounds of GenX compounds in 2017,” according to the state.

To better understand the extent of contamination from Chemours’ airborne fluorochemicals, DEQ tested rain. For example, among a number of samples gathered between Feb. 28 and March 2, one taken 5 miles northeast of the plant showed GenX at 810 ppt.

On April 6, DEQ’s Division of Air Quality gave Chemours 60 days’ notice that the state intended to modify its air permit. State regulators wrote they “had no knowledge that Chemours was emitting GenX at current rates reported by Chemours” in December 2016 when they issued the company’s air quality permit.

DEQ offered Chemours two options to resolve the situation: Demonstrate that current GenX air emissions do not contribute to groundwater contamination or come up with a plan that persuades the state emissions will be slashed to a level that won’t pollute groundwater.

Will Wells Ever Be PFAS Free?

A few weeks following that notice, Chemours outlined a $100 million pollution-abatement plan. Interim measures include two carbon adsorption units completed in May and upgrades to scrubbers expected in October.

Ultimately, Chemours plans to have a thermal oxidizer, generating tremendous heat to pry apart fluorochemicals’ stubborn chemical bonds. Assuming construction starts Oct. 1 as planned, the thermal oxidizer will start up by the end of 2019. Altogether, the company has said, its efforts will reduce emissions to a comparative trickle, less than 1 percent of 2017 levels.

Already, early signs indicate its efforts may be making a difference.

“We have submitted monthly status reports to the DEQ, which do show we have achieved better emissions reduction results with our carbon adsorption beds than initially anticipated by this point in time,” Chemours spokeswoman Lisa Randall said Wednesday.

Concentrations of GenX measured in rain appear to be diminishing, recently to undetectable levels, a trend regulators mentioned in August during a community meeting on fluorochemicals in Fayetteville organized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Based on what DEQ presented at the EPA listening session, it sounded to me like the current abatement of air emissions with GAC is achieving greater reductions than anticipated and that GenX levels in rain were non-detect after the GAC was installed,” said Detlef Knappe, a professor at North Carolina State University and a leading researcher on fluorochemicals in water. “In a way that’s not surprising, because early on in the GAC service life, PFAS are effectively removed. The question is, for how long?”

GAC, or granular activated carbon, is the filter media in Chemours’ carbon adsorption units. PFAS is an acronym for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the class of chemicals that includes GenX and the other fluorochemicals in pollution from Chemours.

Even assuming emissions continue to drop, though, it’s unclear how long wells will remain tainted. For those with wells having GenX concentrations exceeding 140 ppt, Chemours is offering to install GAC filters.

In an interview earlier this summer, Fayetteville Works plant manager Brian D. Long said: “I’m not able to really articulate” when contaminated wells will be free of GenX.

“You know, the fluorine molecule is a pretty tough molecule, and it’s a compound that does persist in the environment. Over time, as the water is drawn out of those wells through the GAC unit, it (GenX) is going to be removed. Maybe it’s a function of how much water is pulled through that. I don’t know how long it’s going to stay.”

Chemours Seeks GenX Groundwater Standard

On a related front, Chemours petitioned DEQ in April to establish an interim maximum allowable concentration, or IMAC, for GenX in groundwater. The company suggests an IMAC of 70,000 ppt, using essentially the same reasoning that last week failed to persuade the state’s Science Advisory Board to recommend changing the state’s 140 ppt health advisory for drinking water.

IMACs establish potentially enforceable concentrations in North Carolina groundwater for substances not covered by government rules. DEQ lists 60 IMACs in a file (Microsoft Word document) on its website.

DEQ did not respond to questions regarding the status of Chemours’ petition, and Chemours said it was unaware of any change.

Brian D. Long cemented a reputation early in his career as a go-to guy for tough jobs.

It’s a quality worth mentioning in a LinkedIn profile, where Long writes of having taken on a number of “’fix it’ type of assignments.”

Asked about the reference, he explained: “I would go into a plant and they’d say, ‘We’d like you to run this area, but we have this safety issue or this productivity issue.’”

So last year as Chemours cast about for someone to pilot a particularly thorny “fix it” assignment — stepping into the eye of the regulatory, legal and community-relations storm centered on its fluorochemical operations at the Fayetteville Works — it looked to its plant in Louisville, Kentucky, then in the hands of 46-year-old Long.

Nearly six months into his new posting, Long already can point to a number of significant changes. He’s overseen the first steps in a project the company says has ratcheted down its fluorochemical emissions and eventually will winnow it to no more than one percent of 2017 levels. He’s turned away from a public relations strategy based largely on silence, instead holding public meetings, talking with journalists and discussing the company’s plans.

The tasks ahead, though, are daunting. State regulators have threatened to ask a court to impose an emissions-reduction schedule Chemours insists can be met only by shutting down. Meanwhile, many of the plant’s neighbors, including hundreds who learned last year the company’s chemicals had contaminated their wells, continue to view the company with deep suspicion.

‘Extremely, Extremely Clean Water’

Late last year, as the state partially suspended Chemours’ National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit, the company capped the pipe channeling its production-related discharge to the Cape Fear River. Since then, on an average day it trucks about 70,000 gallons of wastewater to Texas for disposal.

Still, GenX and other fluorochemicals from the plant turn up in the Cape Fear, prompting attention to sources such as soil and groundwater at the 2,150-acre site, for decades home to multiple lines of fluorochemical production. Recent tests on soil revealed levels of GenX as high as 32 million parts per trillion, some of which, the company theorizes, washes into storm- and cooling-water channels during heavy rains, so crews began digging it out, removing more than 4,400 cubic feet of soil, almost enough to bury a basketball court beneath a foot of dirt.

That soil contamination likely contributes some of the host of fluorochemicals in water drawn from several monitoring wells at the site. Those wells tap a “perched zone” of water above the water table. The company has pumped about 18,500 gallons of pollutant-laden water from the perched zone, which it believes could be leaking into the lower aquifers that migrate toward the Cape Fear.

As with much of the pollution tied to the Fayetteville Works, including hundreds of tainted private wells, the soil and groundwater contamination resulted largely from Chemours’ air emissions, the target of significant regulatory attention and the company’s recent abatement plans.

“Assuming we have a discharge to the river, we should be able to do that with extremely, extremely clean water — provided we get the permit from the state.”

Brian D. Long, Chemours Plant Manager

In May, Chemours began using carbon adsorption units as a stopgap to whittle down emissions until it can construct the centerpiece of a promised $100 million pollution-reduction project. That keystone, a thermal oxidizer, essentially is a high-end incinerator, using tremendous heat to break the stubborn carbon-fluorine bonds that make fluorochemicals invaluable to industry and intractable in the environment.

In a recent interview at the Fayetteville Works, Long said he is “extremely confident” the carbon-adsorption equipment has trimmed air emissions by 40 percent. Upgrades in October should at least double that reduction.

Once the full system goes online in late 2019 or early 2020, Chemours plans to use it to throttle air emissions and to cut down on liquid waste, which will be vaporized and sent through the thermal oxidizer. In the end, overall fluorochemical pollution will drop by 99 percent compared with 2017 levels, Long said.

“There still might be some (fluorochemicals) in the water that are tough,” Long said. “We will take that water stream through a series of layered emission-reduction technologies such as ion exchange, reverse osmosis and possibly GAC (granular activated carbon) to get all the rest out. Assuming we have a discharge to the river, we should be able to do that with extremely, extremely clean water — provided we get the permit from the state.”

Would this work have happened had researchers’ discovery of GenX and related substances in the Cape Fear River and a downstream public water system not surfaced last summer? “No,” Long said, “not in this manner.”

“Do I think we would have eventually gotten there as a company? Absolutely, because I know the kind of chemistry company that (Chemours CEO) Mark Vergnano wants to run and he is running and will be running.”

A ‘One-Sided and Inaccurate’ Narrative

Regaining his company’s discharge privileges is far from Long’s most immediate regulatory challenge. He also must reconcile Chemours’ schedule for its emissions-reduction project with the far tighter one threatened by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. DEQ is considering asking a Bladen County Superior Court judge to order a 97 percent emissions reduction by Aug. 31. Chemours hopes to achieve 80 percent by October.

In response, Chemours filed a “status report” with the court, in part to counter DEQ’s “one-sided and inaccurate factual and legal narrative.” DEQ’s “97% interim demand is essentially a demand that Chemours do either what is not technologically possible at this point or shut the Fayetteville Works facility,” the company wrote.

Does Long think Chemours was being treated unfairly, maybe singled out? He at first seemed reluctant to respond, then decided differently: “I don’t know of any other company in the state that is being asked to do the things that we’re being asked to do.”

DEQ spokeswoman Megan S. Thorpe declined to say whether the state would stick with its schedule, citing pending litigation.

“We are carefully considering public comment on the draft order now,” Thorpe said.

‘A Bit of a Deficit’ in Trust

Those comments, including emails from about 100 people, largely express support for DEQ’s proposals or urge stricter action. Many also testify to the lack of faith many residents have in Chemours and, sometimes, in their government.

“This is the first year I have had good students explain that their conservation efforts and acts of good environmental stewardship didn’t matter because the government allowed companies to contaminate our water and land anyway.”

LaDonna Coates, Bladen County science teacher

LaDonna Coates, who described herself as a Bladen County science teacher, wrote: “This is the first year I have had good students explain that their conservation efforts and acts of good environmental stewardship didn’t matter because the government allowed companies to contaminate our water and land anyway.

“These were students that couldn’t use the well water on their property due to extreme levels of GenX, and then had the county explain they wouldn’t run water lines to the northern part of the county due to cost.

“My students are smart, and this year taught them that government doesn’t care about people, only money, and companies are allowed to ruin water and land, so why does it matter if they try to conserve water or reduce litter?”

Long acknowledged Chemours’ relationship with the community is “in a bit of a deficit.” He said he hopes the company’s pollution-abatement efforts can change that, but he’s also trying a different public-relations approach. Until early this year, Chemours typically offered terse or no comments on important developments. An empty seat served to represent it at several public meetings.

By reversing that public-facing opacity, Long seeks to rehabilitate the company’s relationship with its neighbors. It’s a strategy he said has been welcomed by the 400 employees and contractors working in Chemours’ facilities.

“They go to church with people who are concerned. They live in the communities with people who are concerned. And they’re neighbors,” Long said. “I’m sure they get asked some of the same hard questions that I get asked. I’m sure that for a period of time they were frustrated because we weren’t talking. And I know now that they’re very happy that we’re in an outreach position where we’re going out and getting into the community.

“My goal here is that people just listen to us and watch us. And then decide whether they can trust us. Trust is not something you can command. It’s not an entitlement. It’s something that has to be earned over time.”

‘I Will Never Trust Chemours’

Long took his most significant image-building step in June, inviting residents to a “town hall” in St. Pauls. No similar events are scheduled, though Chemours may hold others, including in communities downstream where GenX and other substances turned up in public water systems serving hundreds of thousands of people.

In Long’s view, the St. Pauls meeting “went well. It was the first time as a company that we were really in front of our community, very locally. We didn’t have all the answers to all the questions, but it’s important to start a dialogue and it’s important to listen, so we had some takeaways from that town hall.

“It’s very clear to me there were a lot of questions around the GAC units,” he said, referring to the granular activated carbon filters being tested at a handful of contaminated private wells. “There were questions around the pilot studies and questions around ‘when can we have ours?’ So to me, one of the things that’s really important for those homeowners that have wells that are greater than 140 parts per trillion of GenX is that we figure out how to get those units there.”

In July, just a few days after this interview, the company announced it was opening the GAC filter program to any owner of a well testing above the state’s 140 ppt health goal.

DEQ officials, however, told residents it had not OK’d that expansion and cautioned that it “does not consider point-of-entry filtration units like GAC filters a long-term solution to the GenX problems in the Fayetteville area.”

Ultimately, the state wants Chemours to give residents the option of connecting to municipal lines. Chemours says that’s too expensive for most well owners.

Harvey Trutenko was among about 200 people who in June traveled to Faith Tabernacle Christian Center in St. Pauls for the town hall. To enter, he and others submitted to bag searches and metal-detector sweeps for weapons.

“I was expecting to see that,” Trutenko said. “Based on all the other meetings that we’ve been to, people are pretty upset. I figured when Chemours showed up to a meeting finally there would be some kind of security.

“I wasn’t expecting them to be escorting people out for just asking a simple question.” Reportedly, two people considered disruptive by organizers were ejected before the meeting ended.

“That meeting was kind of a joke,” said Trutenko, a social studies teacher at Luther Nick Jeralds Middle School in Fayetteville. “Basically, they tried to pacify us, telling us everything was going to be OK. I think the answers were basically CYA (cover your ass) on Chemours’ part. They didn’t want to admit any guilt on anything.”

In June Trutenko and his wife abandoned their house in the Point East neighborhood, about a mile from the Fayetteville Works. Tests show GenX in his well at about 170 ppt, he said, and he tired of worrying about what comes out of his taps and waiting for a fix more permanent than the bottled water Chemours has offered.

“We’ve invested basically everything we have into that house so that we can sell that house so that we could have our retirement,” he said. “Now the house is basically worthless. I don’t think anybody would be interested in buying the property.

“I personally will never trust Chemours, just because of their history.”

‘Operate Safely and Take Responsibility’

Another Point East homeowner, Mike Watters, has thrown himself into trying to understand the issue. He participates in the well-filter pilot study, works with scientists studying potential fluorochemical contamination in vegetables and keeps in touch with neighbors. Recently, Watters gathered a few dozen signatures on comments submitted to the state urging, among other things, that Chemours be required to provide municipal water to owners of wells where any amounts of GenX and other fluorochemicals were detected, not just those above 140 ppt.

“I’ve talked to about 600 people. I only found two people who, while they want municipal water, just don’t want PWC water,” Watters said, referring to Fayetteville Public Works Commission, a local water utility.

Both Watters and Trutenko are among several residents who have sued Chemours over contamination on their properties. The company faces a slew of other civil actions from residents, environmental groups, utilities and governments, along with a federal criminal investigation.

For his part, Watters said he thinks the state should let Chemours to proceed with its proposed pollution-abatement schedule.

“I think we need to give them time to get the full implementation of the scrubbers,” he said. “That’s not stuff that you just pull off the shelf. I do not think that plant will ever shut down nor do I expect it to. I expect them to operate safely and take responsibility for what they did.”

Last of a series

WILMINGTON – Kemp Burdette gestured behind him to one of the newest additions in his office, which sits just a few dozen yards from the Cape Fear River and close enough to its eponymous Memorial Bridge that the low thrum of truck traffic trundling overhead often accompanies conversation.

Among his other duties as riverkeeper at Cape Fear River Watch, Burdette offers suggestions to people looking to reduce their impacts on the environment, and he strives to serve as an example.

“We used to tell people to drink tap water,” he said. “That was one of our top five things you can do to help the environment, to drink tap water, because we have a really good water treatment plant in Wilmington. It’s one of the best in the state, probably among the top 10 percent in the country.”

That was before last summer, when news broke that GenX and other substances from the Chemours plant about 100 miles upriver had contaminated the Cape Fear and drinking water sourced from it by the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, whose state-of-the-art filtration technology proved unable to remove the fluorochemicals.

Ongoing state and federal investigations revealed the chemicals have been discharged to the river since at least 1980. Regulators subsequently found similar substances from Chemours, such as byproducts of its Nafion production, also have polluted the river and that the company’s air emissions contributed to the tainting of hundreds of private wells around the plant.

During an interview late last month, Burdette cocked his head toward a water dispenser in a corner of a conference room. “I installed this water tank here. I’m in this position now that I can’t tell people to drink the tap water. We know GenX is there at levels below the state’s health standard, but all this Nafion stuff is in there at levels a bit higher. I’m not comfortable drinking tap water. I occasionally drink it, but my water intake from taps has gone way down. I think people in Wilmington are drinking a lot less tap water.”

‘Partisanship Is Still a Helluva Drug’

Many residents affected by the contamination have taken similar personal steps, installing home water-filtration systems or buying bottled water.

Some have done more. Ad hoc groups coalesced around the issue. Mary Alice and Skip Hinshaw are among about 340 New Hanover County residents enrolled in the first research effort on GenX and similar substances in humans. Mike Watters of Cumberland County has taken on a citizen-scientist role, working with researchers to study the potential uptake of GenX in his homegrown vegetables.

But has water quality become an issue with enough priority to affect how people may cast their votes and what they expect of the state’s elected leaders in terms of protecting their drinking water?

Aaron King, a professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, said he and his wife started buying bottled water at the local Costco after last summer.

“I have a newborn at home and toddler,” King said. “When everything first broke, a lot of people were really concerned. To the extent somebody was going to take action, we’ve seen that. Some people would attend meetings. Some would get reverse-osmosis systems for their homes or buy bottled water. If all this went down in August of this year, it would be a different situation. But once people have adjusted to what they feel like is safe for them and their family, I just wonder how much staying power this issue will have.

“If you went on the street and asked people if they care about GenX, people will say they care about it,” he said. “But that’s a whole different story than caring about it enough to vote or to vote for someone you might not otherwise have voted for. If you are a Republican, I don’t know that this is the issue where people are going to say, ‘Oh, I’m going to support a Democrat now.’ Partisanship is still a helluva drug.”

‘People Who Are Passionate Can Move the Needle’

A few weeks ago at Cape Fear River Assembly’s 45^th annual meeting in Wilmington, GenX dominated discussion. Among those presenting was Detlef Knappe, a professor at N.C. State University and a member of the team of scientists who found Chemours’ fluorochemicals in the water.

“I put a bunch of chemical names on a slide, and I said, ‘Which of these has gotten the most attention?’ Well, of course GenX. I said, ‘Here’s all this other stuff that’s out there, some of it in higher concentrations and of similar health concern.’

“I think the percentage of the people who embrace the larger issue is pretty small. I think if you were to survey the people in Wilmington about 1,4-dioxane or bromide or perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid (PFMOAA), I don’t know how many people would really immediately say, ‘I’m as concerned about those as I am about GenX.’”

Like GenX, the chemicals Knappe mentioned are considered to be emerging contaminants, a growing list of unregulated substances ranging from pharmaceuticals and personal-care products to pesticides and endocrine-disrupting compounds that have turned up in drinking water in the United States and worldwide.

“I think if you were to survey the people in Wilmington about 1,4-dioxane or bromide or perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid, I don’t know how many people would really immediately say, ‘I’m as concerned about those as I am about GenX.’”

Detlef Knappe, Professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering, N.C. State University

“I’m amazed at the energy that some people have put into this and the amount of research they’re doing,” Knappe said. “Certainly, there is a good segment of the population that has devoted a lot of time and energy to that. They have become very well-educated on the topic, mostly through their own research and reading. That’s probably a minority. I think there’s a large number of people who have heard about GenX and are worried about GenX, but they may not be as aware of the other contaminants that are in the water.”

Burdette said he believes the experiences of the last year eroded the largely unchallenged and widespread assumption that water people drink is safe.

“I do think the public has realized around here that there’s not this elaborate, well-funded system out there that is designed to look at drinking water supplies, protect them, do checks on them, monitor them on a regular basis. Before all of this, I and other people just kind of imagined that our water was going to be protected, because, you know, you have to have water, so you think it’s going to be clean. We have a Department of Environmental Quality that’s probably doing all kinds of things to protect our water supply.

“Now, I think what people realize that’s not the case, that water is not a resource that’s particularly well protected. It’s treated, and there’s a fair amount of effort that goes into water treatment, but we’re treating for the same things we were treating for 100 years ago. We’re trying to get out bacteria and get out things that affect taste and odor, but we’re way behind on treating for the kinds of things that are being produced now, really complicated molecules that stick around for a long time and interact with other stuff.”

Typically, midterm elections such as November’s draw far fewer voters than those that include presidential races. That factor, Burdette said, may amplify the impact of water quality on the outcome of some contests.

“It’s that rule, that not many people are voting,” Burdette said. “The people who are passionate about things can move the needle. When whatever pollsters do their work, I suspect GenX and water quality and water issues will be factors.

“I don’t know if it would change the mind of somebody who votes Republican to vote Democrat. It might convince somebody who was pretty ambivalent about politics to vote, to start to make the connection and demand that their elected officials take the actions they think are needed to address this problem.”

First of two parts

WILMINGTON – For a time it seemed as though last year’s revelation that GenX had tainted the Cape Fear River and downstream drinking water supplies might be a wake-up call for North Carolina to look more closely at the water its residents drink.

Reports had surfaced in recent years detailing high levels of contamination by substances such as 1,4-dioxane, with health threats far better defined than GenX’s, yet legislators devoted far more attention to paring or weakening environmental regulations and cutting funds for its enforcement.

This time – as GenX-related contamination grew to encompass a host of other fluorochemicals, with pollution found in air and rain, groundwater and private wells, and turning up in a jar of honey – lawmakers seemed poised to take tentative steps toward understanding the scope of water contamination, not just from GenX and other per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, but from emerging contaminants in general.

Certainly, they would not provide funding sought by the governor to begin rebuilding North Carolina’s regulatory agencies, but Senate and House bills responding to alarms about GenX did allocate money to take a broad, open-ended look at contaminants in North Carolina’s drinking water statewide.

At the end of May, though, the North Carolina General Assembly pressed the snooze button on that notion. Lawmakers approved and sent to Gov. Roy Cooper a bill that includes $9.3 million to assess drinking-water contamination but, after learning industry found the original scope “most troubling,” they took care to restrict efforts solely to the class of chemicals that includes GenX.

‘Very Little Has Changed’

A week before that legislative wrangling, North Carolina State University professor Detlef Knappe sat down for an update from state regulators at the Department of Environmental Quality.

Knappe has been among the most visible of those involved in scientific research to define the scope of contaminants such as GenX emanating from the Fayetteville Works, a 2,150-acre riverside industrial site owned by Chemours. He has spoken at multiple public forums, testified at legislative hearings, conducted further research on filtration methods and contamination in groundwater and food near the Chemours plant, and tried to keep up with torrents of emails from concerned residents seeking information.

This recent meeting with DEQ, however, was not about GenX and the Fayetteville Works. Instead, Knappe wondered where things stood regarding the state’s efforts to address a different emerging contaminant called 1,4-dioxane.

An industrial solvent used in a range of products including paint strippers, pharmaceuticals and shampoos, 1,4-dioxane is “likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” according the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has established a lifetime health advisory of 0.35 parts per billion in drinking water, a level exceeded in testing at water utilities in several North Carolina communities. Water drawn from the Cape Fear River watershed accounted for seven of the 20 highest 1,4-dioxane concentrations found in the United States as part of the EPA’s most recently completed round of testing for unregulated contaminants in drinking water.

Before GenX grabbed headlines and his attention last summer, Knappe had spent years researching 1,4-dioxane and working with DEQ on steps to identify sources of the contamination and try to reduce their levels. With obvious, sometimes dramatic progress regarding GenX, Knappe was curious: What has happened in the meantime with 1,4-dioxane?

“There was a perception that things had become better,” Knappe said in a recent interview. “I think that perception was maybe the result of some data that suggested that at the known discharger locations Greensboro, Asheboro and Reidsville, that two of them were self-reporting changes that industry had made. And all of that appeared to result in dramatically lower levels of 1,4 -dioxane discharges from Greensboro and Reidsville.”

Last November, having developed a method to analyze 1,4-dioxane to conduct its own testing, DEQ restarted its monitoring program, Knappe said.

“When the state shared those data, I focused primarily on what’s going on in Pittsboro compared to the data we had four years ago,” he said. “My conclusion was that very little has changed. I think they agreed.”

‘There Is Not Yet a New Philosophy’

DEQ has had “very solid” accomplishments regarding the Fayetteville Works and GenX, Knappe said. Since last year, state regulators have issued three notices of violation regarding Chemours contamination and filed a civil complaint in state court.

Under pressure from the state, the company ceased discharging its manufacturing-related wastewater into the Cape Fear, capturing it instead for transport to Texas, where it is injected in deep wells.

In April, regulators told Chemours to “show to DEQ’s satisfaction that they can operate without further contamination of groundwater or we will prohibit all GenX air emissions.” In May, Chemours announced that it had installed carbon bed adsorption technology, part of a promised $100 million investment the company says will eliminate at least 99 percent of air emissions. DEQ has connected those emissions to contamination of hundreds of private wells, some of them miles from the plant, and recently told Chemours to devise a “permanent” solution for people depending on those wells.

“On the GenX front, I think they’re doing a super job,” Knappe said. “All the things I see the Division of Air Quality is doing and Division of Solid Waste is doing and the Division of Water Resources is doing, it’s very solid. They’re trying to cover many bases. I think they’re thinking through all the different aspects of how the contamination is spreading and trying to get as much information with the limited resources they have.”

Knappe said he’s less sure whether similar issues get the same level of attention or what might have happened regarding GenX had it not been reported in the media.

DEQ knew researchers had identified the GenX in the Cape Fear as early as June 2015, when department staff met with company officials to discuss it. What it planned to do with that information remains unclear during the two years that elapsed until June 7, 2017, when the StarNews published the first story online. Requests to interview DEQ Secretary Michael Regan and Assistant Secretary Sheila Holman for this article went unfulfilled.

“One lesson learned is some researcher like me publishing a paper and distributing the paper widely is insufficient. It really takes the media to disseminate the information and then the general public and elected officials all pulling on the same string.”

Detlef Knappe, Professor of civil, construction, and environmental engineering, N.C. State University

A review of DEQ records regarding its work at the Fayetteville Works during those two years revealed none of the GenX-focused water sampling, site visits and other enforcement-related measures that started in June 2017. In a letter to the EPA, Gov. Cooper wrote that state regulators launched their investigation into the matter June 14, 2017.

By September, after GenX turned up in several of Chemours’ monitoring wells, DEQ had issued the first notice of violation and filed a civil complaint against the company.

“One lesson learned is some researcher like me publishing a paper and distributing the paper widely is insufficient. It really takes the media to disseminate the information and then the general public and elected officials all pulling on the same string,” Knappe said.

By revisiting the situation with 1,4-dioxane, Knappe sought to “test the waters a little bit to see whether anything has really changed. I’m not fully convinced it has, not in a proactive way. There is not yet a new philosophy that’s pervasive in DEQ or DHHS (Department of Health and Human Services) or in the legislature.”

‘It Often Takes a Big, Ugly Crisis’

Others have different perspectives. Robin Smith, a Chapel Hill environmental lawyer, spent 12 years as an assistant secretary for the environment at DEQ’s predecessor, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

“I will say, from what I know about how this bubbled up initially from the results of the study being reported to DEQ and EPA, my sense is there was not a lot of context for the information in the beginning,” Smith said, referring to the scientific research study on GenX in the Cape Fear. “GenX was not something that was in the (discharge) permit. It was not something the regulatory staff was looking for. When the study was done, because there was not a health study or drinking water standard for GenX, there was not a context to put the issue in.

“Ultimately, the health advisory levels were developed by DHHS, which gives you a benchmark to figure out: ‘Well, is this a good number or a bad number?’ If you don’t have a standard to compare it to, it’s a little difficult to know what to do with it.

“I don’t think they had lost track of it entirely,” Smith said. “There was an intention to go back and pull together folks to try to understand what this meant. And then this thing took off.”

“I recognize that DuPont’s permits have been issued by Democratic-controlled DEQs just as much as Republicans, so in that regard, we failed on those permits across the board, no matter who was in control.”

Kemp Burdette, Cape Fear Riverkeeper

As for DEQ’s approach before last summer and after, Smith said, “I don’t know that I have seen changes so much. Enforcement, especially on a big complicated issue, is a progression through a number of steps, like in this case, when they discovered that air emissions were a big part of the problem. They seem to be following all the normal steps, pursuing groundwater contamination and air emissions. It’s typical for a messy enforcement situation.”

Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette said he’s “pretty pleased in general with the way DEQ responded from last September on. I think they’ve started to take this situation pretty seriously.

“I recognize that DuPont’s permits have been issued by Democratic-controlled DEQs just as much as Republicans, so in that regard, we failed on those permits across the board, no matter who was in control.

“I haven’t seen any kind of memo that’s been sent around that says, ‘we’re going to re-evaluate all these permits,’ but I feel like the agency has been rocked by GenX. I think, in general, the folks at the agency think this is a problem that they are behind on, and they need to be thinking about it.”

Smith said DEQ’s overall approach to regulation largely reflects the political environment in which it operates.

“It’s often less about the agency staff than it is about the signals being sent by legislators and sometimes the governor’s office. The agencies know who they work for. This is rarely about what they personally would like to see happen than it is about the political universe,” she said.

“At what point is the majority of that political universe willing to do something significant? It often takes a big, ugly crisis to get there.”

Knappe acknowledged political pressure is the “other elephant in the room. I’m sure there are a bunch of people (at DEQ) who would be more proactive if the repercussions wouldn’t be so bad.”

Regulators in North Carolina function in a fluctuating political environment but one where lawmakers, overall and in a fairly bipartisan way, have tended to look sympathetically on the interests of business.

“Democratic or Republican, it’s always been a business-friendly legislature,” Smith said. “Governors and to some extent legislators have differed in terms of their willingness to take tough steps, but those tough steps almost always came in response to something approaching a crisis situation like GenX.

“We went through something very similar with hog farms back in the 1990s. I think generally there’s a desire on the part of the legislature to be business-friendly and concerned about the economic impacts of cracking down on an industry, especially if it employs a lot of people. Then a situation blows up, and it becomes clear that there’s a need to take strong action.

“We’ve been down this road before. It’s an interesting case study in how a legislative philosophy bumps up against a real-world problem.”

‘Many Chemicals in Those Water Supplies’

That business-friendly approach was on display last month as measures to deal with GenX evolved in legislative negotiations.

Before incorporating the GenX-related measures into the final budget-adjustment bill, lawmakers agreed to changes urged by the North Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, WRAL.com reported.

The alliance is a lobbying group of more than 50 companies, including GenX manufacturer Chemours. It requested the removal of references to the state’s 140-parts-per-trillion health advisory for GenX. It wanted clarification on a provision requiring companies to release detailed information about the chemicals they discharge into state waters under permit. The alliance also singled out the portion it deemed “most troubling,” one that would have taken a broad snapshot of drinking water statewide and scrutinized its contents.

In a letter to legislators obtained by WRAL, alliance President A. Preston Howard Jr. wrote: “Possibly the most troubling provision of the bill is the provision that tasks the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory and DEQ with sampling all of the local government water supplies and conducting non-targeted analysis on those samples. I feel comfortable saying with some certainty that this high-resolution analysis will most assuredly reveal that there are many, many chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other consumer products in those waters supplies. Most will be detected at very low levels. But just as was the case with GenX, there will be very little information about the toxicity of those substances, resulting in the same or similar controversies over whether the concentrations pose any significant risk to public health or the environment. The expanded scope does nothing more than open a Pandora’s box on emerging contaminants.”

All three requests are reflected in the final text of the budget-adjustment bill, which makes clear its fluorochemical focus and other restrictions in several sections. For example, the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory will receive $5 million to coordinate research at the state’s universities, but only on PFAS such as GenX.

DEQ will get a mass spectrometer capable of conducting “targeted” analysis rather than the one it had sought, which would have been capable of “non-targeted” testing.

Targeted analysis involves looking for a specific, known substance. It answers the question: Is this in the water? Non-targeted analysis is more flexible, revealing substances in water samples even when researchers may be unsure what they are looking for. The question is more open-ended: What is in the water?

“While I am disappointed that the language in the bill was changed from the broader focus on emerging contaminants to the more narrow focus of PFAS, I can argue that it is a first step in the right direction,” said Knappe, who is helping lead a collaboratory-funded program announced in April to determine resources needed to establish what he called an “observatory” for water contaminants.

“The bill provides universities across the state and DEQ with funding to establish a collaborative framework to study PFAS occurrence in drinking water sources. By studying all public water systems across the state, residents will learn whether PFAS are present in their drinking water sources. Non-targeted analysis is becoming more and more routine, meaning it will become impossible to keep one’s head in the sand.”

For Smith and others, the provision makes clear that the legislature remains reluctant to invest in the state’s regulators.

“The provision in the bill that has to do with obtaining a mass spectrometer has specifications that are not as sophisticated as what DEQ asked for,” Smith said. “It doesn’t seem to be a money issue, but there continue to be ways in which the GenX provision keeps holding back funding (from DEQ) or sending it in another direction. That’s been a very clear trend throughout the past year.

“To me what’s happened over the last year has looked for a while like tension largely between the House and the Senate, but the Senate seems to be particularly wary of authorizing additional actions by the department and appropriating additional funds to the department. They’ve moved somewhat in terms of GenX, but it’s hard to see that carrying over more broadly into water quality issues.”

Next: Partisanship and public health

WILMINGTON – Nearly 11 months to the day after news broke that Cape Fear Public Utility Authority could not remove GenX contamination in drinking water, its board will learn what staff considers to be the best option for filtering such fluorochemicals.

The recommendation, to be presented at CFPUA’s board meeting Wednesday, follows months of work with engineering firm Black & Veatch to gauge the efficacy of two filtering options. The utility released the firm’s report Wednesday. While some data analysis remains incomplete, granular activated carbon, or GAC, appears to be the utility’s likely choice over ion exchange, or IX. Both methods reduced concentrations of GenX and related substances. Neither could consistently remove all of them completely.

“It could be we need to do more study, but we think enough of the pieces to the puzzle will be in place (by the board meeting), said Jim Flechtner, CFPUA executive director. “We’ll have the cost estimates from Black & Veatch that says, ‘If you spend this much money on construction and this much every year in maintenance, here’s what you can expect in terms of removal.’”

The upgrades are estimated to cost about $50 million. If the board gives the go-ahead, construction would follow a one-year design process and take about two years. The project would increase ratepayers’ bimonthly bills by about 16 percent.

CFPUA hopes to recoup those and other GenX-related costs and damages, totaling $1.7 million so far, as part of a lawsuit filed against Chemours and DuPont, which formed Chemours in 2015. Both companies have operated the chemical plant at the Fayetteville Works, about 100 miles upriver from Wilmington, which is the source of GenX in the water.

“The lawsuit hasn’t been settled by any means,” Flechtner said. “In my opinion, it’s something that we shouldn’t have to be paying, but it’s the reality of our circumstance. It’s something that we do need to spend money on right now.

“There has to be a community dialogue. We represent all of our community. This is a decision we’ll all have to make,” he said. “Our job is to lay out all the information we have, explain what we know and what we don’t know and say, ‘Here’s what we can do, here’s what it will cost, and here’s the benefit we think the community would receive from it.’”

If the board decides to move forward, the utility would spend a year designing the upgrades and two more years constructing them.

CFPUA’s filter tests and water monitoring were funded in part by $185,000 allocated in N.C. House Bill 56. Last month, Flechtner presented a final report on CFPUA’s HB 56 work to House Select Committee on North Carolina River Quality.

Among other things, his report noted that GenX accounts for only a small percentage of the 30 fluorochemicals found in CFPUA’s water. And, he told the committee, much remains unknown: Analysis by researchers at the University of North Carolina Wilmington turned up five fluorochemicals never mentioned in scientific literature. Little to nothing is known about the health effects of most of the 30 substances, either singly or in combination. Fluorochemicals in general persist for many years, so how long contamination may remain in the river and water systems such as CFPUA’s remains unclear.

Some committee members reportedly questioned Flechtner’s objectivity, with Rep. Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, charging that Flechtner “made the problem look bigger than it really is.”

Flechtner responded that he was simply providing “perspective,” according to news reports.

For CFPUA, figuring out how to deal with emerging contaminants such as GenX involved pioneering tests on the effectiveness of GAC and IX.

In choosing between the two, CFPUA is considering more than just GenX removal. For example, fluorochemicals aren’t the only contaminants in the water, and GAC may be better at removing substances such as some pharmaceuticals and beauty aids.

“We view it (GAC) as a better defensive barrier than one (IX) that’s so specifically targeted to one compound,” Flechtner said. “Just from the broad look at it, GAC would make more sense.”

What about reverse osmosis, or RO? Some experts believe RO could be better at tackling GenX. GAC likely will work best with so-called “long-chain” fluorochemicals such as PFOA or C8, which GenX replaced. Its effectiveness may diminish for substances with fewer carbon atoms — “short-chain” fluorochemicals — such as GenX and similar substances in CFPUA’s water.

CFPUA initially considered RO but set it aside because of costs, waste-disposal challenges and other considerations.

Brunswick County, which also draws drinking water from the Cape Fear River, is looking at an RO system, but that may be driven by considerations beyond GenX.

For one thing, despite its inability to remove GenX, CFPUA’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant, where murky Cape Fear River water is turned into something drinkable, is considered a state-of-the-art facility compared with plants such as Brunswick’s.

Sweeney’s technology includes ozonation, biofiltration and UV disinfection, features found at only a handful of water utilities in North Carolina. As a result, unlike Brunswick and many other utilities, CFPUA can remove most 1,4-dioxane, a likely carcinogen, from water it treats.

Utilities such as Brunswick and Fayetteville Public Works Commission have detected 1,4-dioxane in drinking water at levels exceeding the EPA’s health advisory for long-term consumption.

“I don’t see us going with reverse osmosis for several good reasons. We’ve already invested in good treatment at Sweeney, so we need to make good use of the investments we made,” Flechtner said.

“It takes a lot of water to use an RO system. We have the capacity to treat 44 million gallons a day. To treat 44 mgd with RO would exceed our allocation of raw water. We’re not at 44 million gallons a day, but we have to look to the future.”

Months spent monitoring the water and testing filtration options have focused CFPUA more intently on the challenges posed by emerging contaminants such as GenX tainting the Cape Fear River, source of almost four-fifths of the 17.4 million gallons sent to New Hanover County customers on an average day.

The work also thrust CFPUA into roles usually filled by regulatory agencies such as the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“We’re much more aware of emerging contaminants,” Flechtner said. “Our role as a utility is much different than EPA or DEQ. It’s their job to understand what chemicals are out there, whether they’re being discharged to the environment, what health impacts there might be and how that might affect drinking water. It’s our job to comply with the regulations and provide water that meets or exceeds those standards.

“In this case, something happened,” he said. “We have something in the river that we don’t know what the health effects are, and we can’t treat for it. Certainly, my perspective has changed about how the system works and whether it is effective and adequate. We’re doing this because no one else was.”

Lindsey Hallock, CFPUA’s director of public and environmental policy, said, “New Hanover is one of many utilities. Imagine how inefficient it would be if we decided this is the way we’re going to do things: Each utility is going to do its own testing and spend its own money and set its own standards and treatment goals.

“That can’t possibly be the solution,” Hallock said. “The solution is figuring out how to control these things at the source, figuring what are the appropriate levels that protect public health, protects the environment and protects people downstream while allowing businesses to operate. The only way that can happen is at the regulatory level.”

Since last summer, state and federal regulators have provided an increasing flow of answers to many urgent questions posed by the discovery of fluorochemicals such as GenX in the Cape Fear River and downstream water systems.

For example, they know those chemicals came from the Chemours plant at the Fayetteville Works on the Bladen-Cumberland county line. They connected contaminated groundwater near the site, at least in part, to Chemours’ air emissions. They are deep into investigations to determine whether any rules were broken by Chemours and DuPont, which created Chemours as a separate company in 2015.

A vital question remains largely unresolved: What risks to human health are posed by these substances, which have contaminated water in Southeastern North Carolina since at least 1980?

An important step toward an answer is underway at labs in North Carolina State and East Carolina universities and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Exposure Research Laboratory in Research Triangle Park. There, scientists led by N.C. State professor Jane Hoppin work to analyze blood drawn last November from about 300 New Hanover County residents who likely drank water containing GenX and some of the 16 related substances under examination.

The researchers announced this month they found at least some of the substances in tap water sampled at the homes of most participants. By the end of summer, they hope to say whether those chemicals showed up in people’s blood. Tests on urine await development of analytical tools.

“I think this is the first GenX study (on humans) because no one was thinking about GenX until last year,” said Hoppin, deputy director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment, or CHHE, at N.C. State. “Most epidemiologists would want to know more about the analytical method for blood and urine and what the half-life (or time to excrete half the substance) was before they would design the study. Since we are actually creating the analytic method, based on ones for other chemicals, we are the first to do this work.”

In addition to testing for GenX and other fluorochemicals, researchers will check thyroid and liver function and cholesterol levels. Previous research linked changes in those to exposure to some fluorochemicals, including PFOA, or C8, the substance GenX replaced.

C8 contamination in the mid-Ohio Valley sparked a series of regulatory and legal actions, including a class-action lawsuit filed in 2001 alleging C8 from DuPont’s Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, tainted water supplies of about 80,000 people in Ohio and West Virginia. DuPont settled in 2004, funding a $70 million health project that included tests on people affected, analyzed by the C8 Science Panel.

“The C8 Science Panel study found probable links between PFOA and thyroid disease and high cholesterol,” said GenX research team member Jamie DeWitt, a professor in the department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at ECU. “We also know that these chemicals as a class are typically associated with liver toxicity in experimental animal models, and some studies of PFOA-exposed human populations also have identified changes in markers of liver health.

“Then you go to the literature and determine what other studies have found,” DeWitt said. “They found positive associations between these health outcomes and levels of PFOA in the serum. GenX replaced PFOA. It makes sense to evaluate similar health outcomes for similar compounds.”

Differences in scale between the C8 Science Panel study and N.C. State’s mean determinations about “probable links” are less likely for GenX or the other substances. The C8 panel spent millions of dollars from a legal settlement to look at more than 69,000 people. Hoppin’s group has $275,000 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and about 300 participants.

“We are doing an enormous amount of work on a very short time frame for not very much money,” Hoppin said.

Even so, comparisons between fluorochemical levels in the study group and biological markers or other factors about them may provide signals pointing to promising avenues for future research.

“I think that the NCSU GenX study should be primarily viewed as an exposure study: If GenX and other fluoroethers are ingested via the drinking water, are the compounds detectable in people’s blood and urine?” said Detlef Knappe, an N.C. State professor on the research team. “Once we know that, we will assess whether individuals with higher fluoroether levels have altered levels of clinical measures such as those related to thyroid and liver function that are frequently associated with exposure to more well-studied fluorochemicals such as PFOA.”

Despite their differences, the C8 study and this one on GenX share a crucial feature: Both study groups comprise people exposed to fluorochemicals in their drinking water, from DuPont in the case of C8 in Ohio and West Virginia and from its spin-off Chemours for GenX in New Hanover County.

“Epidemiology is a mostly observational science as we can’t dose people with things and see what happens,” Hoppin said. “Most people don’t like to feel that they are part of an experiment: natural or otherwise. So epidemiology studies the world as it happens: Some people smoke. Some people are exposed to GenX. Others run marathons.

“By studying the real world, we can generate real-world answers, but we have to deal with all those uncontrolled factors that you wouldn’t have in an experiment.

“The only way that we will be able to study these chemicals is to look among people who have been exposed.”

Dr. Alan Ducatman, a professor of environmental health sciences at West Virginia University’s School of Public Health, led a team that created a public website summarizing information from the medical tests of those affected by C8 contamination in Ohio and West Virginia.

Ducatman said while people may be anxious for Hoppin and her team to finish, the work takes time.

“The capability to create the ‘natural experiment’ — the unintended but very real exposures in this watershed — happens much faster and much more completely than the ability to fund studies, which takes time, and do studies that measure the outcome, which takes a lot more time,” Ducatman said. “Impatience is human and reasonable. It is not going to speed things up, however. The slower speed of the environmental science is not because the research team would not like to go faster. It is dictated by what is possible to do.”

Take blood, for instance. Analysis occurs on a “brand new” mass spectrometer at EPA’s Research Triangle lab, but there’s no ready recipe at hand to analyze blood for the presence of several of these substances, including GenX. In those cases, the team must adapt existing methods.

“Before they go to the mass spectrometer, we need to do some extraction to remove the protein and other parts from the blood to make it easier to detect GenX,” Hoppin said. “But before we do all that, we need to be sure that the method that we plan to use can detect GenX and other fluorochemicals at the levels present. So, we need to do some initial analysis to be sure that we can see something. And, of course, we need to talk to each other, look at the preliminary results and think about them before we use our precious samples that we have collected from individuals.

“Since we are actually creating the analytic method, based on ones for other chemicals, we are the first to do this work. Regularly I receive calls asking about labs for GenX. And, then there’s the issue of half-life: No one wants to go to their precious samples and run an analysis where you are unlikely to detect something. So our study will provide these key pieces of information to conduct further study of these compounds.”

Other researcher team members include Dr. David Collier and C. Suzanne Lea, both ECU professors, and from N.C. State postdoctoral researcher Nadine Kotlarz, professor Robert Smart and Katlyn May, director of CHHE’s Community Outreach and Engagement Core.

Reflecting County Demographics

A number of organizations have been tapped to help recruit participants and provide staff and facilities in Wilmington to take the samples and communicate results. Those include Cape Fear River Watch and the New Hanover County Health Department and the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

The team had hoped to recruit 400 people, as reflective as possible of New Hanover County’s demographics.

New Hanover County NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell said that despite disseminating information at meetings, on social media and in emails, “they still had a low turnout of African-Americans. I thought the numbers would have been higher, given the amount of outreach that was done.

“It might have been scheduling,” said Maxwell, who did not participate because of a conflict on the sample dates. “It could have been trust. I think the community is pretty aware of GenX.”

She said the group plans to try again at a health fair from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 5 at MLK Center in Wilmington. That’s when Maxwell plans to enroll herself.

“We can’t see how this impacts African-Americans unless they hold out their arms and have their blood taken,” Maxwell said. “It might be different for us than others, but the only way to find out is for us to participate.”

Front page featured photo: Steve Johnson/Flickr

WILMINGTON – Mary Alice Hinshaw pulled out a report detailing test results of water from her home, one of 198 sampled as part of the first study on the human health effects of GenX and related substances recently found in New Hanover County’s drinking water.

She turned to a graph showing the distribution of GenX levels in all homes tested, each plotted as a black dot, most of them tightly clustered into a flattened diamond with results between 25 parts per trillion and 75 ppt. Three strays stood out above the rest.

“See that little dot right there, right at the top?” Hinshaw said. “That’s our house. We’re at 100 parts per trillion.”

Hinshaw and her husband, Skip, were among about 75 people at a forum Tuesday night at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where members of a North Carolina State University science team conducting the study answered questions about the water tests.

What the science team releases next, likely not until late summer, no doubt will be far more interesting: analyses of blood from the Hinshaws and about 300 other study participants who live in the homes where water was sampled. Some homes had more than one participant. Researchers are also developing methods for urine tests, and those results will likely come later.

“What we will have is the first study on these substances in the human body,” said lead investigator Jane Hoppin, a professor in the department of biological sciences and deputy director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment at N.C. State.

Begun last year, the study was funded by a $275,000 grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, or NIEHS.

Researchers tested tap water for 17 substances, finding most of them in at least some homes. Guidelines for safe concentrations in drinking water exist for just three of the 17. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services last year established an “interim health goal” of 140 ppt for GenX. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set a “lifetime health advisory” of 70 ppt for PFOA, also known as C8, and PFOS, at 70 ppt either individually or in combination. None of the N.C. State study results exceeded those levels.

For three of the substances targeted — Nafion byproduct 2, PFMOAA and PFO2HxA — researchers lacked benchmark samples needed to “train” their equipment. So while they detected the presence of those chemicals, they could not definitively determine concentrations. Even so, data collected indicated average concentrations of those three may be greater than that of GenX.

“It was important to do these water analyses to give us a sense of the current exposure levels,” said Nadine Kotlarz, an N.C. State postdoctoral researcher who is leading the sample analysis. “They’re not representative of exposure in the long term. It’s important to remember that prior to June 21, on average there were about 600 ppt of GenX in the treated water and sometimes as high as 4,500 ppt in the treated water.

“The blood levels may be able to give us more information about long-term exposure of individuals living in Wilmington,” Kotlarz said

Tuesday’s meeting was meant to help participants understand and, if possible, act on the water test results, Hoppin said. Researchers explained how they conducted the sampling, which occurred between Nov. 3 and Dec. 8. For context, they placed those dates on a timeline along with results from New Hanover County’s water system and those of samples taken from the outfall into the Cape Fear River from the Chemours chemical plant believed to be the source of at least most of the substances being studied.

They also discussed home water filters: Under-sink reverse osmosis seems to work best, some activated-carbon filters may be effective, and maintenance is crucial, regardless of type.

Researchers cautioned against reading too much into the individual results. A high level at one home such as the Hinshaws’ does not mean levels there are always high.

That fluorochemicals contaminate New Hanover County tap water is unlikely to surprise most people who have followed the issue. The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority began its own testing of raw and finished water last year, funded in part by $185,000 allocated in N.C. House Bill 56.

GenX has consistently turned up, though recently in significantly diminished concentrations, in treated water sent to customers’ taps from CFPUA’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant, which draws from the Cape Fear and accounts for almost 80 percent of the 17.4 million gallons the utility distributes to customers on an average day. The remainder comes from groundwater.

“This work confirms what our pilot study results have shown: There are a number of other unregulated compounds in the water in addition to GenX and our plant is currently unable to filter them out,” Lindsey Hallock, CFPUA’s director of public and environmental policy, said in a separate interview.

Hoppin’s study team includes scientists from East Carolina University and N.C. State.

Among them is Detlef Knappe, an N.C. State professor and one of a group of researchers who in 2013 and 2014 detected GenX and related chemicals in the Cape Fear River and at CFPUA’s Sweeney plant. That discovery gained public attention last summer after their results appeared in news reports.

Since then, state and federal regulators, lawmakers, criminal investigators, private attorneys and others have focused on the Chemours fluorochemical plant at the Fayetteville Works on the Bladen-Cumberland county line.

Chemours and DuPont, which owned the plant until 2015 when it spun off Chemours as a separate company, have made GenX commercially there since 2009. The companies have used GenX and the substance it replaced, C8, to make a number of products, most famously Teflon. C8, also made at the Fayetteville Works until about 2014, was phased out under an agreement between the Environmental Protection Agency and manufacturers. It has been linked to cancer and other serious health problems and embroiled both companies in numerous lawsuits involving contamination in the mid-Ohio Valley, including one settled last year for $671 million.

One factor North Carolina regulators learned early in their investigation: The GenX in the river did not come from the process used to make it. The company manufactures GenX under the terms of an EPA consent order that requires it ensure virtually none of the substance escapes into the environment. Instead, Chemours officials said, the contamination researchers found was a byproduct of an unrelated process operating at the plant since about 1980. The same EPA consent order governing GenX’s manufacture exempts the same substance created as a byproduct from those restrictive terms.

Over the second half of last year and into 2018, regulators also found GenX and related fluorochemicals in groundwater at the plant, in private wells more than three miles away, in a lake and in the air and rain sampled as far as seven miles from the plant. Tests are underway or planned to determine if fish and vegetables may be tainted.

Late last year, Chemours agreed to stop discharging any of its manufacturing-related wastewater into the Cape Fear River, instead transporting it to Texas for injection into deep wells. Even so, GenX and related substances continue to turn up in water samples, contamination that may originate from spills at the plant, deposits from air emissions or rain, or seepage of groundwater at the Fayetteville Works that winds up in the Cape Fear.

“That will probably persist for decades,” Knappe said Tuesday.

For Mary Alice and Skip Hinshaw, life since last summer has meant learning and adapting. They had drunk water from the tap since moving to the area in 1992. Now they use bottled water.

“I wasn’t overly concerned about it,” Mary Alice said. “I took it for granted that it was all right to drink. You don’t think of something as basic as your water being contaminated.”

And while she wants to see her blood sample results, that’s not what has her impatient.

“I’m impatient in that I’d like the problem to be resolved to the extent it can be,” she said, “to get rid of those particular chemicals and take precautions against other emerging contaminants in the water.”

Learn More

• N.C. State’s GenX exposure study