The draft 2026 Cape Fear River Basin plan, one that highlights areas that need additional protection, restoration or preservation within the state’s largest and most populous river basin, is out for public comment.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources is accepting comments through Aug. 4 on the draft plan, which focuses on water quality data collected between 2000 and 2020.

The plan includes an overview of water use and availability in the basin, a brief discussion of changes in water quality over a 20-year period, existing management strategies and approaches for addressing point and nonpoint sources of pollution, and addresses ongoing studies and actions to manage and reduce pollution from emerging compounds, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and 1,4-dioxane.

Waters in the basin, including the Haw and Cape Fear rivers, have been found to be contaminated with these compounds.

PFAS, which are used in the manufacturing in a host of consumer goods including waterproof clothing and disposable food containers, do not break down in the environment and can build up in humans and animals. There are more than 15,000 of these substances today, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. While their effects on human health continue to be studied, PFAS exposure has been linked to adverse health effects including thyroid disease, high cholesterol, and increased risks of certain cancers, including kidney and testicular.

The EPA classifies 1,4-dioxane, a synthetic industrial chemical, as a likely human carcinogen.

The basin covers more than 9,300 square miles and includes portions of the urban population centers in the Triad as well as the Triangle, and the cities of Fayetteville and Wilmington. Major rivers in the basin include the Haw, Deep, Cape Fear, Black, South and Northeast Cape Fear.

The basin has experienced increased growth, poultry production and stormwater and wastewater discharges, all of which have boosted nitrogen and phosphorus levels that simulate plant and algal growth.

Written comments may be submitted by email to DEQ.DWR.BasinPlanning@deq.nc.gov or by mail to NCDEQ Division of Water Resources ATTN: Nora Deamer, Basin Planner 1611 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-1611.

Based on the 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture, agriculture in the basin has seen an overall decrease in cattle and swine numbers but a substantial increase in poultry production. 

Information on the division’s basin plans are available at Basin Planning Branch | NC DEQ. 

WILMINGTON – For more than two hours, residents in an area considered ground zero for PFAS contamination in North Carolina passionately, often angrily, chastised the Environmental Management Commission’s proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules.

Dozens of people who signed up to speak – 60 in all – at the public hearing Thursday in downtown Wilmington took turns at a podium unleashing what turned into a collective no-holds-barred rebuke of the proposed rules and, at times, the commissioners who pushed them forward for public comment.

Several of those who spoke in front of a crowd of about 230 people who filled a room in Wilmington’s Skyline Center shared stories about their own health issues, illnesses their loved ones have suffered, and family and friends they’ve lost to various forms of cancer.

Throughout the hearing, people snapped their fingers, signaling their agreement with those speaking at the podium. At the close of every short speech, the audience erupted in rousing applause and cheers.

The sheer number of people who signed up to speak prompted Environmental Management Commissioner Yvonne Bailey, the hearing officer that evening, to ask that residents limit their comments to two minutes.

“Those of us living here have advocated relentlessly at the local, state and federal level, and even at the U.N. for protection of our air and water,” said New Hanover County resident Priss Endo. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality “has proposed new surface water standards, but in response, the Environmental Management Commission is proposing regulations that will still allow 500 industries across the state to release PFAS chemicals.”

The hearing last week was the third and final the commission scheduled this year on its proposed monitoring and minimization rules for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA; perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS; and a branded compound called GenX developed by DuPont spinoff Chemours. The commission has also been hosting public hearings on similar proposed rules for the monitoring and minimization of 1,4-dioxane, an industrial solvent and likely human carcinogen that has also been found in downstream drinking water sources.

PFAS are a mixture of chemicals used in a host of consumer products from nonstick cookware and food packaging to stain-resistant carpets, water-repellant attire, and makeup.

These chemicals have been found in numerous drinking water sources in North Carolina and traced back to discharges from industrial manufacturers, landfills, firefighting facilities and publicly owned treatment works that accept industry effluent.

Ongoing research into human health effects of PFAS, of which there are more than 15,000 related compounds, have found that some of the substances, including PFOA and PFOS, have been linked to health issues such as weakened immune response, liver damage, low infant birth weights, and higher risk of certain cancers.

Nearly a decade has passed since residents in the Lower Cape Fear region first learned through a local newspaper article that Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County had for decades knowingly discharged PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River.

Since then, public drinking water utilities that pull raw water from the river have spent millions of dollars upgrading their facilities with filtration systems and methods to keep PFAS out of their final product.

Chemours, under a 2019 consent order, has had to test thousands of privately owned drinking water wells for contamination.

“The 2019 consent order was a start,” resident Jim Nesbit said. “It’s not enough. Your mission is to protect the health of the people of this state. Use the full authority you have to take on the pollution of corporations.”

The PFAS monitoring and minimization rules the commission agreed to put out for public comment have remained under a hail of verbal fire from residents, the public utilities that provide their drinking water, and environmental organizations throughout the Cape Fear region.

As written, the rules do not set specific discharge limits or penalties for PFAS dischargers found to be in violation of those rules.

“As a 33-year water professional and former EMC member, I am testifying that the voluntary minimization plans, as proposed, are ineffective,” Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Ken Waldroup said Thursday. “They’re essentially empty facades that do not solve the problem. These minimization plans do not remove PFAS from the Cape Fear River because all reductions are voluntary. Voluntary plans are simply ineffective. Upstream dischargers have had decades to disclose and minimize their PFAS discharges. Unfortunately, history has shown that dischargers only do so in response to effective regulation with specific mandatory limits or mitigation.”

Dr. LeShonda Wallace, who serves on the advisory board for the GenX Exposure Study, one that is measuring GenX and other PFAS exposure in area residents, said the proposed rules ignore science.

Instead, the proposed rules prioritize corporate convenience over public health, she said.

“The impacts are also economic as well as generational,” Wallace said. “PFAS contamination reduces property values, and it shifts the cost away from the polluters and on to the rate payers. Environmental protection and justice requires that those who cause the pollution pay to prevent it and that they pay to clean it up, and I urge the commission to reject these ineffective minimization rules and adopt enforceable, evidence-based standards that reduce pollution at the source.”

Lifelong New Hanover County resident Chip Jackson carried a doll baby with him to the podium.

“I came here tonight to tell this panel how ignorant I have been. I’ve been ignorant because nine years ago I trusted you people. I trusted you to do something,” he said. “I’ll give y’all a pro tip. When you see a baby float by in a stream, you look upstream to see who threw it in the stream.”

Resident Rosemary Schmitt said she simply wants to trust that the water coming out of her tap is not harmful.

“Drinking water should be safe, not something that comes with a list of side effects,” she said.

Just two weeks away from graduating with an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Tyler Raines said he was in a conundrum.

“I don’t have much else to say that hasn’t already been said about the economic, environmental, and social impacts of PFAS on the health of all human beings,” he said. “As I think about where I’m planning to root myself post-graduation, I find myself at a loss. Do I stay here in Wilmington and get poisoned by PFAS or do I go back to my home in Fuquay-Varina and get poisoned by 1,4-dioxane?”

The Environmental Management Commission could decide as early as September to approve or reject the proposed rules. If adopted, those rules would go to the Rules Review Commission for final approval by early next year.

Written comments on the proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules are being accepted by email to publiccomments@deq.nc.gov with the subject title “PFAS minimization” or by mail to Karen Preston, DEQ-DWR NPDES Permitting Section, 1617 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC  27699-1617.

FAYETTEVILLE — Proposed monitoring and minimization rules for industrial dischargers of 1,4-dioxane and the public sewage plants that accept those facilities’ waste fail to protect North Carolinians’ drinking water, speakers at a public hearing said Tuesday.

All but one of the 13 people who spoke at the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s hearing at Fayetteville Technical Community College criticized the proposed rules, arguing those rules fall short in reducing the amounts of 1,4-dioxane discharged into people’s drinking water sources and lack enforcement.

Those comments mirror ones articulated at the commission’s April 9 hearing on the proposed rules in Hickory. A third hearing is scheduled for May 12 in Jamestown.

“The so-called monitoring and minimization rule establishes certain monitoring requirements, but the term minimization is misleading,” Fayetteville resident Madison Williams said. “The way the rule is promulgated is in a way that does not require polluters to reduce PFAS or 1,4-dioxane emissions into North Carolina drinking water supplies, and it imposes no consequences, even if those discharges increase. This in effect is a polluter written rule.”

Related: Public hearings set on proposed wastewater discharge rules

The commission is hosting separate public hearings, the first of which was held in Asheville last week, on a similar rule for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS; perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA; perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS; and GenX, a chemical specific to a manufacturing plant that sits near Cape Fear River in Bladen County.

Under the proposed rules, publicly owned treatment works that receive industrial wastewater, and their manufacturer customers, would be required to monitor for discharges of 1,4-dioxane, an industrial solvent, into rivers, creeks and streams.

Facilities would be required to conduct baseline monitoring every three months for one year. Based on those sampling results, dischargers may be required to conduct additional monitoring.

“If determined to need ongoing sampling the industrial direct discharger will be required to develop a minimization plan,” explained Bridget Shelton with the Division of Water Resources’ planning section. “A minimization plan is a strategy to reduce or eliminate pollutants at the source before they are discharged into the environment.”

Facilities that “meet certain criteria” may request exceptions from ongoing monitoring and minimization plan requirements, she said.

The proposed rules do not set specific discharge limits or penalties for violations.

That fact has drawn sharp criticism from residents, environmental groups and public drinking water providers who have been calling on the state to establish drinking water standards for PFAS and 1,4-dioxane and regulate direct dischargers of those chemicals.

“Over 1 million North Carolina residents consume water from the Cape Fear River, water that is contaminated with 1,4-dixoane, PFAS and other forever chemicals that will continue to proliferate without sufficient regulations at the federal and state levels,” said Jonelle Kimbrough, executive director of Fayetteville-based environmental nonprofit Sustainable Sandhills. “The proposed 1,4-dioxane minimization rules seem to be an attempt at regulation but, as written, they essentially do nothing to protect the natural resources or public health of our state and we need protection.”

Rob Clark, Cape Fear River Watch’s water quality programs manager, said the organization and its more than 1,000 members collectively opposed the proposed rules.

“These rules are completely inadequate when it comes to dealing with PFAS and 1,4-dioxane pollution in the Cape Fear River Basin,” he said. “The proposed minimization rules do not set enforceable limits on how much these toxic compounds can be discharged into our waterways. Instead, they rely on polluters to monitor their pollution and submit plans describing how they might reduce that over time. Do we really think that polluters are going to cut into their profits in order to do the right thing and stop discharging these chemicals into our waterways?”

Representatives of downstream public water suppliers said the proposed rules lack a clear objective to significantly decrease 1,4-dioxane levels in state surface waters.

Fayetteville Public Works Commission’s Environmental Programs Manager Rhonda Locklear pointed out that statewide monitoring has identified 1,4-dioxane primarily in the Cape Fear River Basin.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, “has sampled surface waters in 15 of North Carolina’s 17 river basins, confirming that most industrial 1,4-dioxane sources are in the Cape Fear River Basin, where 35% of these samples since 2017 were above non-detect thresholds, almost 10 times the rate in the Neuse River Basin, and nearly 200 times that of the Yadkin-Pee Dee River Basin,” she said. “The problem areas are well-defined, documented, and PWC expects DEQ to set meaningful regulations and reductions in the Cape Fear River Basin.”

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Deputy Executive Director Kevin Morris said that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which classifies 1,4-dioxane as a likely human carcinogen, warns that at even at concentrations of 0.35 parts per billion, long-term exposure to the chemical increases cancer risks to humans and may cause significant kidney and liver impacts.

“Downstream water systems continue to experience periodic spikes in 1,4-dioxane despite having no role in producing or discharging this chemical, which demonstrates the limitations of our current regulatory framework,” Morris said.

He highlighted how effluent from Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant has periodically tested for elevated levels of 1,4-dioxane, concentrations of which far exceeded levels associated with long-term health risks.

“These discharges flow into waterways like the Haw and Cape Fear rivers,” Morris said. “They’re relied upon by downstream drinking water systems, and they require additional monitoring, treatment, adjustments and customer communication. The downstream public ultimately bears the risk from and the cost of managing contamination that they had no part in creating. Voluntary reduction measures are insufficient to ensure consistent outcomes or to protect downstream communities. Utilities can manage only what arrives at their intake.”

As of Wednesday, DEQ had received more than 2,000 public comments and counting on the commission’s proposed rules for 1,4-dixoane and PFAS, according to Josh Kastrinksy, DEQ’s deputy communications director.

“The comments we’ve received in writing have by and large reflected the comments we’ve received in person,” he said.

Andrew Mlot, chair of the North Carolina Pretreatment Consortium Inc., a nonprofit that represents more than 180 pretreatment professionals in 64 state-approved pretreatment programs across North Carolina, was the only person Tuesday to speak in support of the proposed rules.

But that organization has “several specific concerns” with the rules as they are currently written, he said.

“The costs to treat 1,4-dioxane at the POTW (publicly owned treatment works) level is staggering. Capital costs alone range from $10 million to $1.3 billion, making source control the only practical path forward,” he said.

The proposed rules would require public treatment works in Greensboro, Burlington, Asheboro, High Point and Reidsville, which have been conducting monitoring and minimization activities going back to 2015, to start over, Mlot said.

“We ask for an explicit offramp for POTWs that have already completed successful programs. Replace any detection with a workable screening threshold. As currently written, any detection of 1,4-dioxane triggers ongoing monitoring requirements and a full minimization plan. NCPC members do not believe this is workable. We support an alternative screening threshold based on meaningful concentrations or loading levels,” he said.

DEQ is accepting written comments through June 15. Comments may be submitted by email to publiccomments@deq.nc.gov with the subject heading “1,4-dioxane minimization, or by mail to Bridget Shelton, DEQ-DWR Planning Section, 1611 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1611.

Microplastics and pharmaceuticals have made the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly published draft list of substances in public drinking water that warrant scientific scrutiny.

This marks a first for the EPA, which, along with U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced last week that microplastics and pharmaceuticals are two of four contaminant groups and dozens of chemicals included on the draft Sixth Contaminant Candidate List.

The April 2 announcement kick-started a 60-day public comment period.

The Trump administration hailed the additions to the list, also referred to as CCL 6, as “a landmark set of actions to safeguard the nation’s drinking water.”

“For too long, Americans have vocalized concerns about plastics and pharmaceuticals in their drinking water. That ends today,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated in a release. “By placing microplastics and pharmaceuticals on the Contaminant Candidate List for the first time ever, EPA is sending a clear message: we will follow the science, we will pursue answers, and we will hold ourselves to the highest standards to protect the health of every American family.”

The announcement comes as the Trump administration is actively pursuing rolling back drinking water standards for several per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, established under the previous administration.

PFAS, along with disinfection byproducts, once again made it onto a CCL, which singles out contaminants that are known or anticipated to be in public drinking water systems, but are not regulated under the Safe Water Drinking Act and may be considered for future regulatory action.

Also making it back on the list is 1,4-dioxane, an industrial solvent that, along with PFAS, is known to be in the drinking water sources for tens of thousands of North Carolinians, perhaps most notably in the Cape Fear Region.

Last year, the EPA announced that it would retain current National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for PFOA and PFOS but rescind regulations and reconsider regulatory determinations for other PFAS, including GenX.

GenX is specific to Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility that is situated near the banks of the Cape Fear River and more than 70 miles upstream of Wilmington. The Cape Fear River is the raw drinking water source for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians.

The federal agency also said it was extending deadlines for public water treatment plants to come into compliance with the federally established limits for those PFAS.

Since the late 1990s, the EPA has been required by law to publish every five years a list of contaminants that are either unregulated or not proposed for regulation.

CCLs are considered the initial step in a process to better understand, through scientific research, potential human health risks of contaminants in drinking water.

And, while clean drinking water advocates say this is a good first step, they urge the public to call for regulations to limit the levels of or altogether halt the discharge of contaminants into public drinking water sources.

“I think it’s important to recognize what chemicals are in our drinking water and to study the risks associated with that,” Hannah Nelson, a staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office said. “But simply adding chemicals to this list isn’t going to protect our communities. They’re on the list because we know they’re in drinking water, so now we need to take the next step to control the source of that pollution at the source and get it out of our drinking water. I North Carolina, because we know these pollutants are already there, I think we really should be focusing on how do we keep them out in the first place, because that’s how we truly protect our communities.”

Residents in the Cape Fear region, the local governments that represent them, the public water utilities that serve them, and environmental organizations are embroiled in an ongoing fight pushing for state regulations to put the onus on dischargers of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane to reduce the amounts of chemicals they release into drinking water sources.

On Tuesday, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission will host its first in a series of public hearings on proposed PFAS and 1,4-dioxane monitoring and minimization rules.

Three hearings will focus on proposed rules for discharges of PFOS, PFOA and GenX into North Carolina’s surface waters and three on proposed rules for monitoring and minimizing 1,4-dioxane in wastewater discharges from certain facilities into surface waters.

The proposed rules packages do not set specific discharge limits or penalties for discharge violations, which has become a sticking point for those who argue that the rules would do little in actually minimizing the amount of those contaminants in drinking water sources.

“We know our environmental rulemaking body is currently trying to pass rules on PFAS and 1,4-dioxane that don’t control chemicals at the source,” Nelson said. “Having drinking water standards would be a helpful too, but our real focus should be, how can we keep these out in the first place and how can we encourage our state and our federal leaders to protect the people from the pollution before it even reaches the point of coming out of our sink and pouring into our cups.”

Beyond Plastics, a Bennington College, Vermont-based organization dedicated to ending single-use plastic pollution, called for similar regulation for microplastics.

“The U.S. Environmental Agency has taken an important first step to regulate microplastics in drinking water,” Beyond Plastics President and former EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck stated in a release. “I applaud this decision by the EPA and urge the agency to move rapidly to not only regulate microplastics in drinking water but to also prevent microplastics from entering our water supplies.”

Cape Fear River Watch’s Water Quality Programs Manager Rob Clark agreed, saying that microplastics are ubiquitous – they’re in our environment and in our bodies.

“It’s a situation where it seems like we already have a lot of information on this,” he said. “What we need is ubiquitous monitoring across the country and we need regulation. The quicker that we get to setting a maximum contaminant level for microplastics, the quicker it’s not in our drinking water.”

In its April 2 release, the EPA noted that while human health benchmarks for pharmaceuticals are not regulations and not enforceable, “they are a vital resource, empowering local decision-makers to evaluate risks and protect their communities when pharmaceutical contamination is detected at concerning levels.”

The public comment period on draft CCL 6 will close June 5.

The EPA is expected to sign a final list by Nov. 17.

“I think public comment periods on action like this are really important because it’s a good time for folks to express concerns about the chemicals that are known to be present in their drinking water,” Nelson said. “Adding chemicals to the list is truly just an acknowledgement that they’re in the water. I don’t think we should read this list as a commitment to going above and beyond and advocating for folks. What we need to see is strong action to keep those chemicals out, whether it be from the federal administration or our state agencies.”

North Carolina’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool now includes enhanced flood mapping and risk information for five river basins in Eastern North Carolina.

The online tool designed to help local governments, agencies and nongovernmental partners develop, evaluate and prioritize resilience actions has been updated with new nonregulatory or “advisory” flood maps for the Cape Fear, Lumber, Neuse, Tar-Pamlico, and White Oak river basins.

The need for new maps and modeling efforts were identified in the draft blueprint, which was created by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality at the direction of the General Assembly.

The updates were made through extensive coordination with local leaders, other state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, university researchers and evaluating programs in other states like Texas and Louisiana for guidance, according to an NCDEQ release.

NCDEQ Secretary Reid Wilson, in the release, stated that research from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill found that more than 90,000 buildings in Eastern North Carolina flooded at least once from 1996 until 2020, and 43% of those buildings were outside the mapped Federal Emergency Management Agency floodplain. “The General Assembly’s investment in updated modeling and mapping means that North Carolinians in five river basins now have a more accurate picture of their actual flooding risk, Wilson said.”   

The improved mapping was done in partnership with the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program, one overseen by the North Carolina Emergency Management.

“NC Emergency Management is proud to provide flood mapping support to DEQ which will produce additional flood mapping products to build resilient communities across the state,” N.C. Emergency Management Director Will Ray stated. “As part of a multi-year advisory flood data web application development project, which began in 2022, the NCEM Floodplain Management Program was able to provide data and resources to assist in this project, once again showing the whole-of-community approach to disaster preparedness In North Carolina.” 

The mapping includes numerical models that simulate surface runoff and routing on a landscape, and are available for previously unmapped or undermapped basins too small to be included on regulatory maps and extend beyond what is normally included in traditional regulatory floodplain mapping.

The maps also include areas that flood despite being many miles from the nearest stream and allow communities to explore their future risk associated with projected growth patterns and the changing climate fueling more frequent and severe storms and sea level rise.

“These new maps, available through our Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool, mean that Eastern North Carolinians can make more informed decisions and better investments to build their resilience in the face of more frequent and severe flooding,” Flood Resiliency Blueprint Manager Stuart Brown said in a release.

River Basin Action Strategies for the five river basins are expected to be available this summer, and new maps for the French Broad River Basin available this fall, according to DEQ.

The city of Wilmington is hosting an open house on Wednesday to highlight proposed plans to replace a decades-old metal bulkhead along the downtown riverwalk on the Cape Fear River.

The open house is scheduled for 5:30-7 p.m. in the azalea room of the Skyline Center at 929 N. Front St.

City staff will be on hand to talk about the plan to replace a 59-year-old metal bulkhead near the former Coast Guard Cutter Diligence mooring with a modern “relieving platform.”

The replacement “will provide the same shoreline stabilization in a more environmentally friendly way,” according to a city release.

The city has proactively repaired or replaced large sections of the riverwalk, a project initiated in 1980 and fully completed in November 2017.

The metal bulkhead the city plans to replace has outlived its expected lifespan after sustaining decades of exposure to water, debris, and wave action, according to the city.

The city is applying for a federal Economic Development Administration grant to help fund the project and hopes to draw community support from residents, businesses, and organizations to sign a letter backing that application.

Parking at the Skyline Center is available at 33 Brunswick St.

Cape Fear River Watch’s seminar series on Saturday will feature the principal investigator of the GenX exposure study.

Dr. Jane Hoppin, a professor at North Carolina State University, will provide a summary of the study’s findings to-date and discuss future plans for the project.

The study began in 2017 after residents in Wilmington were informed through a newspaper report that an upstream chemical manufacturing plant had, for decades, been discharging per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including GenX, into their drinking water source, the Cape Fear River.

The study, which measures the blood levels of PFAS in Wilmington residents, has evolved into a long-term health project with more than 1,000 participants throughout the Cape Fear River Basin.

Cape Fear River Watch hosts its seminar series the first Saturday of each month.

The free event is being held at Cape Fear River Watch’s headquarters at 617 Surry St., Wilmington.

Those interested in attending are encouraged to arrive early to secure a seat. Complimentary pancakes and coffee will be served.

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management has objected to the proposed Wilmington Harbor project, concluding that a federal study of the plan is too scant on details and that, as presented, deepening and widening the channel would have “significant adverse impacts to coastal resources.”

The Army Corps of Engineers’ review lacks an evaluation of PFAS in the sediment in the lower Cape Fear River, fails to adequately assess cumulative flooding impacts or thoroughly detail areas where dredged material would be placed, and does not sufficiently account for potential effects on fisheries habitat, freshwater wetlands, shorelines, or state, historic and other properties along the river, the division concluded.

The draft environmental impact statement, or DEIS, the Corps released last September also falls short in analyzing the project’s economic benefits and evaluating “potential economic losses associated with environmental degradation,” Division of Coastal Management Director Tancred Miller wrote to the Corps’ Wilmington District in a 15-page letter dated Feb. 24.

A Corps spokesman, in a statement Wednesday, called the state’s objection “disappointing” and highlighted what the Corps describes as offering “numerous opportunities” to engage with the public and work with state and federal agencies.

The Corps “felt we had been working hand in hand with all our State and Federal partners and resource agencies since we began coordination regarding this project nearly 3.5 years ago,” Jed Cayton, a public affairs specialist with Wilmington District, said in an email. “Given all the integration and engagement throughout this process, the objection provided at this late stage in the process is disconcerting.”

The Corps and North Carolina State Ports Authority are reviewing the division’s letter “to determine how we will proceed,” Cayton said. “Since we are very early in this review, we cannot yet give a specific date for completion.”

The Corps may pause the project and work with the state to try and resolve the state’s concerns or initiate a formal dispute resolution process.

The division’s objection comes a little more than a month after the division granted the Corps’ request to pause its review of whether the proposed project was consistent with state coastal management program laws, regulations and policies.

Miller wrote that, during that pause, the division “detailed its concerns along with possible paths forward to address the information deficiencies.”

On Feb. 16, the Corps asked the division in an email to resume its review of the project, one that has been highly scrutinized for its potential effects to the environment, shorelines and historic and culturally significant areas along the shores of the lower Cape Fear River.

“Our objection was based on a combination of lack of sufficient information to determine the impacts from PFAS and flooding and anticipated significant adverse impacts to fisheries resources, wildlife habitat and cultural and historic resources,” Miller told the Coastal Resources Commission during its meeting Wednesday in Atlantic Beach.

In his letter, Miller wrote that the lack of information regarding per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances was “of particular concern.”

“The DEIS does not evaluate the potential for contaminant resuspension during dredging and the resulting fate and transport of these chemicals into nearby water bodies and land areas,” the letter states. “This is of particular concern since extensive scientific research has documented the presence and persistence of PFAS over the past decade within the [Cape Fear River Basin], including a growing body of research indicating significant negative ecological implications of PFAS in fish, birds, and reptiles.”

The proposal calls for extending the entrance of the federal navigation channel farther offshore, deepening the channel by 5 feet and widening portions of it from the mouth of the Cape Fear River more than 25 miles to the Wilmington port.

The ports authority says the project is needed to accommodate larger ships, which will attract more import and export business to the port, ease shipping congestion on the East Coast and keep the state’s ports competitive.

But opponents of the proposed project argue it will accelerate erosion and exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, disperse PFAS in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches, is not economically justified, and threatens historic and cultural resources along the river.

One such historic site is Orton, a privately owned property that spans some 14,000 acres off the lower Cape Fear River’s western bank in Brunswick County and that includes a former plantation.

Orton owner Louis Bacon has spent millions restoring an expansive rice field system and earthen dike that enslaved Africans built more than two centuries ago to protect the rice fields from the river.

In a statement to Coastal Review on Wednesday, Bacon said the Division of Coastal Management’s objection to the proposed harbor project, “is proof that facts and persistence matter.”

“My concern has always been simple: this project, as proposed, puts undue and unacceptable risk on important historical and ecological sites,” Bacon stated. “The corps has not provided the analysis or safeguards the law requires. At Orton, dredging so close to a 250-year-old earthen dike creates a very real risk of catastrophic failure according to two separate expert firms – collapsing and flooding 350 acres of freshwater rice fields and exceptional wetlands with Atlantic saltwater, thereby eradicating the legacy of enslaved African Americans who built these systems over centuries, a monument to their efforts that I have spent years restoring.

“My objection is rooted in the fact that the project cannot be considered ‘consistent’ with North Carolina’s coastal protections if it causes this much damage,” he continued. “Large infrastructure decisions must be grounded in rigorous scientific evaluations, transparent disclosure, and enforceable protections, because these valuable resources cannot be rebuilt once lost.”

Several towns in Brunswick and New Hanover counties have adopted resolutions urging state and federal agencies to protect a series of islands within the lower Cape Fear River that support 30% of the state’s coastal shorebird population. Those towns have also asked for the creation of a comprehensive, long-term, and fully funded environmental and adaptive management plan to cover costs related to monitoring and mitigation to prevent and repair environmental harm.

Last month, the Wilmington City Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for state and federal decision makers to further review the proposed project.

In his letter, Miller noted that an overwhelming majority of the written comments the division received last year regarding the proposed project opposed it. And everyone who spoke at a public hearing the division hosted in downtown Wilmington last November opposed the project.

Kerri Allen, coastal management program director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, was one of the 72 people who expressed their concerns about the proposed project at that meeting.

“I’m encouraged to see DCM thoughtfully consider the many strong public comments submitted on this project,” Allen said in an email on Wednesday. “The level of engagement from coastal residents, local leaders, and partners shows how much people care, and it matters when that input is reflected in decisions. Our public trust waters belong to everyone, and transparent review like this helps lead to better, more resilient outcomes for our coast.”

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Ramona McGee echoed similar sentiments in a release Wednesday.

“This decision is welcome news for the people of Wilmington and beyond who cherish the lower Cape Fear River and its surrounding natural areas,” McGee stated. “This $1.3 billion project would put at risk the communities and wildlife that call this region home by exacerbating flooding, destroying habitat, and damaging wetlands. The Lower Cape Fear is already threatened by sea-level rise and industrial pollution – we shouldn’t be further damaging this special place with an unnecessary and costly project.”

This story has been updated to include a corrected description of land ownership. Information initially provided to Coastal Review had incorrectly identified the owner.

More people moved to North Carolina last year from different parts of the country than any other state in the nation.

North Carolina’s population grew by almost 150,000 people, trailing behind only Texas and Florida, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released last month.

As political leaders grapple with the demands that growth is placing on essential services like water and sewer, public safety and education, pressure is mounting on conservation groups to acquire, conserve and preserve land.

This month, more than 2,000 acres in coastal counties have been secured for permanent protection from development.

These newly protected areas are filled with natural landscape features that reduce flood risk, improve water quality, and provide habitat for plants and animals that are increasingly getting squeezed out by encroaching development.

In Brunswick County, one of the fastest growing in the state, North Carolina-based conservation nonprofit Unique Places to Save acquired land that serves as a corridor between two protected natural areas, bridging what amounts to nearly 10,000 acres of conserved landscape.

“We really want to be able to maintain large, connected natural areas for habitat for species and to maintain biodiversity of our natural areas,” Unique Places to Save Executive Director Christine Pickens told Coastal Review in a recent telephone interview. “And, particularly, in the southeast of North Carolina, we have some really cool endemic species and really wonderful habitats that you don’t find anywhere else.”

Within the 1,040-acre tract nestled between the towns of St. James and Boiling Spring Lakes are forested wetlands, Carolina bays, sandy pine and wet sandy pine savanna.

The tract, referred to as Boiling Springs Wilderness, specifically connects thousands of acres of privately conserved land including Orton with the North Carolina Boiling Spring Lakes Plant Conservation Preserve.

“When you connect these large areas, you’re connecting a mosaic across the landscape and there’s tiny variations of habitat availability,” Pickens explained. “What that does is allow species that use that area for habitat or refuge or migration to use those slight variations of habitat. When we experience extremes in weather, precipitation or drought or big storms, having just a little bit of wiggle room in terms of available habitat goes a long way to allowing species to be resilient to some of these extremes and some of these changes.”

Habitat that is free from being sliced up by ditches or roads is valuable to species that rely on that habitat, she said.

Take the red cockaded woodpecker, for example. These birds, which were reclassified in late 2024 from endangered to threatened, live in groups, or clusters, helping each other raise their young.

They depend on large, connected natural areas – typically anywhere from 125 to 200 acres – where living pine trees, preferably mature, longleaf pine forests, grow.

Boiling Springs Wilderness includes varying types of soils that support different sets of plants, trees, shrubs and forbs, more commonly referred to as herbs.

A good deal of pond pine and a “little bit” of young longleaf pine grace its landscape, Pickens said.

The headwaters of Orton Creek are within the project area, as are wetlands that blanket the Castle Hayne aquifer, a drinking water source for thousands of Brunswick County residents and tens of thousands in other coastal North Carolina areas.

“That’s a long-term way to protect water quality,” Pickens said. “The areas around streams act as buffers to absorb nutrients, runoff, excess components in surface water that soak in, and they get absorbed by the plants and the roots and the soils around streams. That prevents excess nutrients getting into waterways.”

Then there are the wetlands, which function like nature’s sponges, absorbing stormwater that might otherwise flood developed properties.

“Every chance we get to conserve wetlands is really important right now,” Pickens said.

That’s because state lawmakers decided to align North Carolina’s definition of wetlands with that of the federal government, which is in the process of changing the interpretation of waters of the United States that may omit protections for millions of acres of wetlands in the state.

“It may result in more wetlands being nonjurisdictional, therefore a lot more likely to be converted to uplands through ditching and draining. These conservation easements are perpetual. Once we protect it, that’s it,” Pickens said.

The Boiling Springs Wilderness project was funded through a $3.68 million North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant.

Unique Places to Save will own and manage the tract, while the state will hold the conservation easement. The Coastal Land Trust will steward that easement.

Last year, Unique Places to Save applied for another state Land and Water Fund grant to protect about 500 acres of predominately wetlands between the town of St. James and N.C. Highway 211.

“We’ve got a provisional award from the Land and Water Fund so if they have enough funding we may get funded this year for that effort,” Pickens said.

She touted efforts among other groups that work to conserve land throughout the state, including the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina Plant Conservation Program, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, and Cape Fear Arch to name a few.

Tyrrell County parcel transferred

Last week, national nonprofit The Conservation Fund finalized the transfer of ownership of about 1,550 acres of coastal wetlands and forestland in Tyrrell County to the Coastal Federation.

“This partnership reflects years of careful conservation planning and cooperation,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis stated in a release. “This acquisition protects important coastal wetlands that help filter water, support fish and wildlife habitat, and provide natural flood buffering in on the of the state’s most ecologically significant regions.”

Portions of the Tyrrell County property, which is valued at an estimated $1.7 million, are in the Land and Water Fund’s Stewardship Program, one designed to establish, monitor and enforce perpetual conservation agreements.

The property will be included as part of the Coastal Federation’s Land for a Healthy Coast program, which focuses on protecting estuaries, reducing polluted runoff, buffering floods, and boosting long-term coastal resilience.

“Some lands are simply too important to risk losing,” Coastal Federation founder and senior adviser Todd Miller said in the release. “When a property protects water quality, supports fisheries, and strengthens the natural defenses of the coast, we believe it’s our responsibility to step forward and ensure it is permanently conserved and well managed.”

A North Carolina court has ruled that the state’s lead environmental agency has the authority to set 1,4-dioxane discharge limits for public wastewater utilities.

The ruling reverses a 2024 administrative law judge’s determination that the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality did not follow the proper process when it established discharge limits for a handful of municipal wastewater treatment plants in the piedmont.

DEQ followed state Environmental Management Commission and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “protocols in creating the 1,4-dioxane limits and created the criteria for the purpose of protecting the health and wellbeing of North Carolinians,” Wake County Superior Court Judge A. Graham Shirley wrote in his Feb. 5 decision. “Compliance with regulations and a desire to maintain or improve public health cannot be said to be a ‘patently in bad faith’ decision.”

Shirley wrote that the agency “did not err” in considering 1,4-dioxane, a substance used primarily as a solvent in chemical manufacturing, as a carcinogen.

“Because 1,4-dioxane is a pollutant likely to cause cancer in humans, permit limits are necessary to protect North Carolinians’ drinking water and their health,” DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson stated in a release the agency published Thursday. “The court vindicates DEQ’s decision to impose limits to protect downstream communities from this harmful carcinogen.”

Discharges of the chemical substance into North Carolinians’ drinking water sources has gained attention in recent years, with downstream public water suppliers and communities calling for tighter regulations and that pollution be controlled at the source.

DEQ’s Division of Water Resources attempted to do that when, in August 2023, it issued Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit that capped its releases of 1,4-dixoane.

Asheboro sued, challenging the state’s authority to include a water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane in the permit and arguing the new limits created an excessive financial burden.

The cities of Greensboro and Reidsville joined the lawsuit. Both had been ordered to include limits in their draft NPDES permits after they received notices of violation for 1,4-dioxane discharges in November 2019.

Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant discharges into Cape Fear River basin, where some 900,000 North Carolinians receive their drinking water downstream of the plant.

Brunswick County, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority and Fayetteville Public Works Commission intervened in the case, asserting that upstream 1,4-dioxane dischargers placed an undue financial burden on them to sample drinking water sources for the chemical and try and reduce the level of consumption of it to their customers.

In a September 2024 ruling, then-Chief Administrative Law Judge Dr. Donald van der Vaart sided with the upstream municipalities and revoked the permit limits set by DEQ.

“The Superior Court was right to uphold DEQ’s ability to limit chemicals in our water, and my office will continue working with DEQ to make sure people have clean drinking water,” North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson stated in a release.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup said in a statement to Coastal Review Thursday afternoon that the utility is pleased with Shirley’s decision.

“CFPUA’s raw water intake is the last on the Cape Fear River. We rely on State regulators to set and enforce reasonable discharge standards upstream of our intake to protect our region’s raw water supply,” he explained. “While CFPUA’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant is able to treat drinking water for 1,4-dioxane, that treatment process carries an expense and our ability to treat this pollution has its limits. Reducing the amounts of 1,4-dioxane and other emerging contaminants being released upstream also reduces the financial burden on downstream customers and communities.”

Last October, Waldroup joined representatives of other public water utilities and residents in asking the EPA to uphold its earlier objection to the proposed NPDES permit excluding Asheboro’s discharge limit for 1,4-dioxane.

As of this report, the EPA had not made its final determination.

Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, said in an email that the Superior Court ruling, “is a win for public health and every downstream community threatened by Asheboro’s irresponsible leadership.”

“It’s a shame cities like Asheboro prefer squandering tax dollars defending industrial polluters rather than protecting the public’s drinking water supplies,” she said. “It’s also a devastating reminder that until North Carolina creates strong source control measures for toxic chemicals, we will always be one discharge away from the next preventable crisis.”

Earlier this year, the state Environmental Management Commission voted to push proposed monitoring and minimization rules for 1,4-dioxane and three per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, to the public this month.

Critics of the proposed rules argue they lack any real enforceability because they do not include water quality standards, specify what best management practices dischargers must follow, or how facilities must minimize their discharges.

The public comment period had yet to be announced as of this report.

In June of last year, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly against Asheboro and the city’s industrial customer StarPet Inc., to stop their discharges of 1,4-dioxane into the Cape Fear River basin.

“Asheboro, Greensboro, and Reidsville have spent years arguing for downstream communities to shoulder the health and monetary costs of the cities’ pollution,” Jean Zhuang, a senior attorney with the center’s Chapel Hill office, stated in a release. “The Wake County Superior Court saw through the cities’ arguments and restored a key tool that can be used to protect families, communities, and drinking water utilities downstream.”

According to that release, the cities have filed a motion to suspend the court’s decision and an appeal is pending.

The Army Corps of Engineers wants more time to mull over concerns that have been brought up on the proposed project to deepen and widen portions of the Wilmington Harbor channel.

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management announced late Tuesday afternoon it had granted the Corps’ request, indefinitely pausing the division’s review of whether the proposed project is consistent with state coastal management program laws, regulations and policies.

“The decision to pause allows time for the Corps to review and consider issues raised by DCM and the public before DCM completes its review,” according to a release. “A timeline has not been established for when the pause may be lifted.”

The pause follows a series of deadline extensions that have been made in recent weeks on the proposed project, one that is being highly scrutinized for its potential effects to the environment, shorelines and treasure of historic and culturally significant areas along the shores of the lower Cape Fear River.

The N.C. State Ports Authority says the project designed to accommodate larger ships would attract more import and export business to the port, ease shipping congestion on the East Coast, and keep the state’s ports competitive. The proposal calls for deepening the harbor channel by 5 feet and widening portions of it from the mouth of the Cape Fear River to the Wilmington port.

In late December, the division announced that the Corps’ Wilmington District was giving the division more time to complete its review of the federal determination, pushing its deadline from Jan. 5 to Jan. 19.

The Corps requested the pause on Jan. 16, just days after state fisheries and wildlife resources officials sent the division memorandums saying those agencies continue to have concerns about impacts to fish and wildlife resources within the proposed project area.

A Corps spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment by deadline for this report.

In its Jan. 14 memorandum to the Division of Coastal Management, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries reiterated its concerns about the proposed project’s effects on habitat essential to fish in the river, wetlands connected to the river, and the overall water quality in the river.

Deepening and widening the harbor as planned “will have significant adverse impacts to fisheries resources due to the permanent loss of state-designated nursery and anadromous fish spawning areas along the Cape Fear River estuary and its tributaries,” the memorandum states.

“There is also potential for significant adverse impacts to wetlands, (submerged aquatic vegetation), shellfish resources, and water column habitat due to insufficient mitigation plans and uncertain impacts associated with the proposed actions that are not adequately discussed,” in the federal letter report and draft environmental impact statement of the Wilmington Harbor 403 navigation project released in September. The figure 403 refers to the relevant section of the Water Resources Development Act.

N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission officials raised similar worries, stating in a Jan. 15 memorandum to DCM that while it had been involved throughout the project’s development process, “our agency still has concerns regarding impacts the proposal will have on wildlife resources in the project area.”

“These comments include concerns regarding the proposal’s direct impacts to wildlife habitats, whether impacts to these habitats have been adequately assessed, inadequacies of mitigation proposals, the need to consult appropriate agencies prior to moving forward with the proposal, and the subsequent impacts to wildlife and their habitats (particularly nesting waterbirds and shorelines) from larger and increased vessel use.”

A number of towns in Brunswick and New Hanover counties have adopted resolutions urging state and federal agencies to protect a series of islands within the lower Cape Fear River that support 30% of the state’s coastal shorebird population.

Those towns are also calling for the creation of a comprehensive, long-term, and fully funded environmental and adaptive management plan to cover costs related to monitoring and mitigation to prevent and repair environmental harm.

A Corps official earlier this month confirmed to Coastal Review that the agency was implementing a programmatic agreement with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, the General Services Administration, the state Ports Authority, “and possibly the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation” to review historic and culturally significant areas along the river that may be impacted by the proposed project.

The agreement must be signed before the agency finalizes project plans, which would occur after the Corps releases its final environmental impact statement.

The final environmental impact statement is expected to be released sometime this summer, according to a tentative timeline released by the Corps. It is unclear how the Corps’ request of the state to pause its review may affect that projected timeline.

Once the review process resumes, DCM must decide whether to concur with or object the Corps’ determination.

“If DCM objects, it can offer alternatives or conditions that, if agreed to by the Corps, would allow the project to proceed,” according to the division.

Construction on the proposed project would begin no earlier than 2030 and take about six years to complete, a schedule Corps officials have said is optimistic.

Note: This story has been updated to correct the misspelling of Louis Bacon’s first name.

Restoring land as close to how it was more than two centuries ago is by no means a cheap venture.

Just ask Louis Moore Bacon.

Since 2012, Bacon has invested more than $100 million in the property on which his ancestor, Roger Moore, founded Orton Plantation in 1725 off the lower Cape Fear River’s western bank in Brunswick County.

Nearly a third of that cost has gone toward restoring an expansive, historic rice field system and an earthen dike enslaved Africans built some 250 years ago to protect the fields they planted, grew, and harvested Carolina Gold rice from the river.

If the state green lights a proposed project to deepen and widen portions of the shipping channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Port of Wilmington, all of it – the dike, 350 acres of historic rice fields and hundreds of acres of freshwater wetlands – will face threat of “irreversible damage,” according to Bacon.

In a 22-page letter he submitted to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management late last year, Bacon detailed how the proposed Wilmington Harbor 403 navigation project “threatens the failure” of the earthen dike.

“The structural integrity of the dike is Orton’s number one concern,” Bacon wrote. “The Project poses a real and unacceptable risk of catastrophic failure of the dike system. Failure of the dike will result in a cascading series of events including saltwater intrusion into the historic rice fields, rendering them incapable of growing rice and destroying the freshwater ecological water system at the Orton Property. Failure of the dike would flood the rice fields and freshwater ponds with saltwater, erasing what stands today as a preserved monument to enslaved African Americans dating back centuries.”

He closed the Nov. 24, 2025, letter with an ardent request of the division: Object to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ determination that the proposed project aligns with the state’s coastal policies and rules.

The Corps, Bacon wrote, failed to analyze how the proposed project to deepen and widen the harbor channel might affect historic and cultural resources along the river.

His objections echo those of other individuals and groups voicing concerns about how the project the N.C. State Ports Authority says is needed to keep the Wilmington Port competitive might impact those sites along the river.

Deepening the river channel from 42 feet to 47 feet and widening it along areas throughout the river will allow larger vessels to travel to and from the port, attracting more business, according to the authority.

But opponents of the proposed project say that, in addition to threatening historic and cultural resources along the river, it will accelerate erosion and exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, disperse contaminants in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches, and is not economically justified.

Like Bacon, their hope is that the Division of Coastal Management rejects the Corps’ determination.

The determination

Two days before the New Year, NCDEQ announced that the Corps was giving the Division of Coastal Management more time to complete its review of the federal determination, pushing the division’s deadline from Jan. 5 to Jan. 19.

Division officials have until then to determine whether the proposed project is consistent with the state’s coastal rules, including those under the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA.

The division must decide whether to concur with Corps’ determination, concur with conditions, or object.

Related: Wilmington residents see no good in proposed harbor project

If the division decides the latter, that could shutter the proposed project altogether.

“An objection generally prevents the federal permit or approval from being issued unless DCM and the project proponent negotiate a resolution that would allow the project to go forward,” according to the division’s Dec. 30 release notifying the public about the extension.

The Corps “may be entitled to certain mediation/appeal privileges” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office for Coastal Management, which heads programs including the National Coastal Zone Management Program and Estuarine Research Reserves and works with coastal states, territories and partners to manage resources and address impacts from climate change.

The division has to render its decision months before the Corps wraps what it says will be a detailed examination to identify all historic and cultural properties within the project study area.

“To ensure historical and cultural sites are identified and evaluated properly, the Corps is executing a study specific Programmatic Agreement (PA) with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, the General Services Administration, the North Carolina State Ports Authority, and possibly the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation,” Jed Cayton, public affairs specialist with the Corps’ Wilmington District, said in an email responding to questions.

The programmatic agreement, he wrote, is a “commonly applied strategy to protect cultural and historical resources.”

“It facilitates more informed decision-making by allowing time for additional data collection and formal coordination efforts to extend beyond the feasibility study phase,” Cayton said.

The agreement, which is currently being reviewed, must be signed before the agency finalizes project plans, which would occur some time after the Corps releases its final environmental impact statement on the proposed project.

Under a tentative timeline the Corps has shared with the public, the federal agency is expected to release the final EIS sometime this summer.

Construction on the project would not begin until 2030 and take about six years to complete, a schedule Corps officials have said is optimistic.

‘Necessary analysis’

Today, the Orton property spans about 14,000 acres. More than 830 acres of that land, including 6,800 feet of restored and repaired earthen dike and coinciding system of canals, roads, dams, and ditches, around the rice fields is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In his letter to the division last year, Bacon argued that CAMA protects the historic resources on his land “from irreversible damage and it protects the Property’s significant ecological resources from adverse impacts.”

The draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, the Corps released last September, “does not disclose these obvious impacts,” Bacon wrote.

“There is no analysis in the Draft EIS about the effects of the Project on the Orton Property or the CAMA-protected resources at Orton. None. This analysis cannot be deferred. The Corps’ consistency determination must be supported by ‘comprehensive data and information.’”

“The Corps’ failure to undertake the necessary analysis is the simplest reason that Division should object to the consistency determination,” he continued.

His land is among nearly 30 historic sites and properties the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources’ State Historic Preservation Office lists as being within the proposed projects area of potential effects.

Last October, that office penned a letter to the Corps requesting the programmatic agreement, “so as to address effects on known and potentially National Register-eligible historic properties to be adversely affected by the proposed undertaking and the regularly scheduled maintenance dredging, spoil placement, and environmental mitigation measures following the proposed undertaking.”

While Corps studies of historic properties that may be affected by the proposed project “appear to have focused solely on the physical impacts of dredging the river-bottom, placement of dredged materials, and locations of mitigation measures, we believe from nearly two decades of observation and monitoring erosion at historic properties along the channel that we can expect other effects will result from the proposed project,” the letter states.

Dark Branch

Among the list of 28 sites and properties identified in that letter is Dark Branch, a community in unincorporated Brunswick County where land remains largely owned by the descendants of emancipated slaves.

Dark Branch, also known as Kendall Chapel, was founded in the early 1870s by a handful of formerly enslaved people, including Robert “Hooper” Clark, who’d been forced to work the rice fields of Orton, Lilliput, and Kendal plantations.

The land they purchased between those plantations became “a thriving hub of Black farming, entrepreneurship, and civil rights activism,” according to the Historic Wilmington Foundation.

Dr. Charles Chavis Jr., Clark’s fourth-great-grandson and executive director of the Dark Branch Descendants Association, explained in a telephone interview that there is a direct connection between the cultural resources that have been restored at Orton and those members of the Dark Branch community have taken upon themselves to preserve.

“Everything that Mr. Moore Bacon has sought to preserve is the work of our ancestors and those who were enslaved on the various plantations,” Chavis said. “For us, this is not only about protecting our cultural resources, but also about protecting our community.”

Chavis, an assistant professor at George Mason University and founding director of the university’s John Mitchell Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race, started the association about three years ago to preserve the community’s history.

There are about 20 historical structures in Dark Branch, including homes, a store, and sharecropping and slave cabins.

Some of those structures, as well as the community cemetery, one Chavis calls one of Dark Branch’s most sacred sites, are under threat of riverine flooding.

“We just can’t afford for it to get worse and we’re working with local organizations to try and get resources around historic resource preservation,” he said. “We’re concerned that any potential harm or more work done to the river is going to make our job as an organization harder to protect the cultural resources that we have. Based on the assessments and our conversations with those we’ve consulted with, it’s not going to get better. It’s going to get worse.”

Dark Branch is a member of the National Park Service’s Reconstruction Era National Historic Network.

According to the Division of State Historic Sites, the Dark Branch Community Historic District was added to the National Historic Preservation Study List in 2024.

Sites that make that list are good potential candidates for the National Register.

The association continues to pursue a nomination for the National Register of Historic Places.

The Dark Branch community lies within the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which encompasses 12,000 square miles of coastal area that runs up the southern Atlantic Coast from St. John’s County, Florida, to Pender County.

The corridor links places of historic significance to the Gullah Geechee, West Africans torn from their native land and enslaved on plantations along the southern Atlantic Coast, and tells stories of their lives on the plantations and in the coastal plains after abolition.

Efforts are underway to build the North Carolina Gullah Geechee Greenway Blueway Heritage Trail that will run from Navassa to Southport.

Last summer, the North Carolina General Assembly authorized the trail’s construction.

Veronica Carter, chairwoman of the heritage trail and member of the Leland Town Council, also raised concerns about how the proposed project might affect land within the trail. Carter is also board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“Deepening the Cape Fear River will negatively impact our culturally significant, state-established North Carolina Gullah Geechee Blueway portion of our trail by increasing saltwater intrusion, worsening erosion, and degrading water quality, thereby threatening sensitive habitats,” she wrote Col. Brad Morgan, the Corps’ Wilmington District commander.

The Corps acknowledges that “more surveys are needed to determine the presence of additional historic and cultural properties within the study area,” Cayton said by email. “We have already included conservative cost estimates for this work, based on known resources identified within Wilmington Harbor and experiences at other similar projects, to ensure these resources are properly managed and respected.”

Proposed rules that would require hundreds of industrial manufacturers and public sewer plants across the state to test the wastewater they discharge into rivers, creeks and streams for three types of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane will go out for public comment next month.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission last Thursday voted to push proposed monitoring and minimization rules for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances PFOA, PFOS and GenX, and for 1,4-dixoane, an industrial solvent, to the public in February.

Commission Chair JD Solomon indicated that more than one public hearing will be scheduled during the comment period, which is to be held through April. As of publication, neither specific dates for the comment period, nor dates and locations for hearings, had been announced.

Solomon told fellow commissioners he anticipates the state will receive thousands of comments on the proposed rules packages, which do not set specific discharge limits or penalties for violations.

Those omissions from the proposed rules were the basis of lengthy, at times contentious, discussion among members of the commission.

A majority of commissioners ultimately rejected Commissioner Robin Smith’s motion to inject federally enforceable limits on a half-dozen individual chemical compounds and a mixture of those compounds into the proposed rules package for PFAS.

Amending the rules to include the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforceable levels of PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS and GenX, Solomon said, would substantially change the proposed rule, triggering the need for a new regulatory impact analysis to examine projected costs associated with the rule.

PFAS are a mixture of chemicals used in a host of consumer products from nonstick cookware and food packaging to stain-resistant carpets, water-repellant attire, and makeup.

These chemicals have been found in a number of drinking water sources in North Carolina through discharges from industrial manufacturers, landfills, firefighting facilities and publicly owned treatment works, or POTWs, that accept industry effluent.

Ongoing research into human health effects of PFAS, of which there are upwards of 15,000 related compounds, continues. Some of the more well-studied substances, including PFOA and PFOS, have been linked to health issues including weakened immune response, liver damage, increased cholesterol, high blood pressure, lower infant birth weights, and higher risks of certain cancers.

The Trump administration’s EPA announced last year that it would retain current National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for PFOA and PFOS and extend deadlines for public water treatment plants to come into compliance with the federally established limits for those PFAS.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced plans to rescind regulations and reconsider regulatory determinations for the other PFAS, including GenX.

Solomon said the commission will start talking about legally enforceable limits, also known as numeric standards, for PFAS at its March meeting.

“That is the intention and that will continue to be the intention,” he said, later adding, “Everybody on this panel wants a numeric standard. The question is more, what level are those numeric standards and for what compounds. That’s what we’re going to talk about when we get to the numeric standard part.”

The Environmental Management Commission voted 10-3 to move the proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules package to public comment and hearing.

60-day deadline

Under the proposed rules, industrial manufacturers and publicly owned treatment works, which officials call POTWs, will be contacted by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources and given 60 days to conduct baseline sampling for the three PFAS from the time the rules become effective.

Testing would be done quarterly for one year, with results reported to the division. Division officials would then determine whether ongoing sampling is needed based on practical quantitation limits, which are considered the base line in testing laboratories.

The division would decide whether a business or POTW has to develop a minimization plan, one that would take about 2.5 years to be implemented.

When asked how minimization would be measured, Division of Water Resources Deputy Director Julie Grzyb said, “There is nothing in the rule that defines a set level or set goal in the particular case. So, there is some left up to who is reviewing it.”

Minimization, she said, is determined by a number of things, including training and education equipment and seeing whether one product could be substituted for another.

“However, usually we have a water quality standard that we are shooting to meet and that defines the minimization much more clearly. I’ll leave it at that,” Grzyb said.

The proposed rule also does not specify what best management practices a facility must follow or how that facility must reach minimization.

Smith, who voted against moving the proposed rule to public comment, warned the rule may not pass the Rules Review Commission because, among other things, it lacks such standards.

“I think that one of the concerns is this could be an ongoing perpetual monitoring machine that doesn’t result in significant reductions,” she said, adding that a rule should not be sent out for public comment that “has basic drafting problems and gaps in essential decisions.”

“I cannot vote for this motion to be sent to public notice and comment the rule as it currently stands because I think there are too many issues that need to be resolved,” Smith said.

Commissioner Michael Ellison, who seconded the motion to move the rules to public comment, argued that the rules “help us as a state, statewide, reduce our uncertainty as to where the problems are and how bad they are while science continues to advance, while EPA continues whatever research they’re going to do and whatever standards they’re going to promulgate.”

After the vote to move the proposed rules on PFAS to public comment, the commission also agreed to ask for comments on whether industrial businesses and sewage plants should report to the division all 40 PFAS they are required to test for under federal requirements.

Smith made similar arguments against the proposed 1,4-dioxane monitoring and minimization rule that the commission voted 7-6 to move to public comment.

She said that while the proposed rule pertaining to 1,4-dioxane is a “pretty good monitoring rule,” it is “not a good minimization rule.”

“What I don’t want to do is create an impression out there that we have a serious minimization program if we don’t have any teeth in it. I think we need to be honest with the public about what this rule does. I’m not for something that calls itself a minimization rule that doesn’t have any enforceable attachment to it,” she said.

Early in what turned out to be a more than two-hour discussion leading up to their vote on the proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules, Solomon reminded commissioners that the votes they cast Thursday would not be their final, saying that getting the rules out for public comment is an incremental step in a process aimed at ultimately reducing PFAS discharges.

Cape Fear River Watch is kicking off its First Saturday Seminar series for the New Year with a discussion about the potential impacts of a Piedmont town’s request to permanently pull millions of gallons of water a day from the Cape Fear River.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup will discuss how Fuquay-Varina’s request to transfer 6.17 million gallons per day from the Cape Fear River Basin to the Neuse River Basin could impact the region, and how local leaders are responding.

An update on major CFPUA projects, including the Southside Water Reclamation Facility, will also be provided.

The event will begin at 8 a.m. Jan. 3 with a pancake breakfast, following by the presentation at 9 a.m. at 617 Surry St., Wilmington.

Those interested in attending the seminar are encouraged to arrive early as seating is limited.

Cape Fear River Watch will have postcards available at the seminar for anyone who is interested in writing comments about Fuquay-Varina’s proposal.

The organization will send those postcards to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, which is accepting public comments on the proposal through April 1.

Comments may be submitted to Maya Holcomb, Division of Water Resources, 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC, 27604, or by email to maya.holcomb@deq.nc.gov.

New Hanover County commissioners have approved the purchase of more than 28 acres along the Cape Fear River’s western bank across from downtown Wilmington.

Commissioners on Monday afternoon unanimously agreed to the $2.24 million land deal, one that includes two undeveloped tracts that will remain preserved once under county ownership.

The purchase signals the county’s commitment to protect land along the western bank, which has in the past several years been eyed by developers who have come to the county with proposals to build a hotel and spa and a luxury high-rise condominium complex.

All that remains before the purchase is finalized are the results of soil and groundwater samples taken on one of the properties where an oil storage facility was operated for roughly a decade until the mid- to late 1990s.

Soil found to have been contaminated by fuel leaks in an area of the 17.13-acre tract west of U.S. 421 was excavated more than a decade ago and stacked on the property, where it is being remediated onsite in bioreactors. A 2007 environmental study of the site concluded that contamination was not flowing into the river.

The county expects to receive the results of the latest soil and groundwater samples no later than next week. County staff have indicated they do not expect the results to give them cause for concern.

“We have heard the public tell us repeatedly how important preservation is in our community,” Commission Vice-Chair Dane Scalise said Monday. “This is another example of us doing it.”

He pointed out that County Manager Chris Coudriet recently emailed commissioners saying that, if they moved forward with the purchase, the county will have acquired more than 100 acres for preservation within the past seven months.

“We have heard the community over and over again tell us that they want preservation and particularly in that area and we are committed to doing that,” Commission Chair LeAnn Pierce said. “That is something that we’ve pivoted on and we have decided that that is what we want to do is preserve open space and green space and mitigate some of the building that’s going on in New Hanover County. And this is the only way we can do it is by buying that property when it becomes available to us.”

The latest purchase also includes an 11.42-acre riverfront tract just north of Point Peter, an undeveloped area that was a few years ago the subject of a highly controversial proposed development.

Look back: New Hanover Board denies new zoning district

Point Peter is a plot at the confluence of the Cape Fear and Northeast Cape Fear rivers along an area already feeling the effects of sea level rise.

Environmental, historical and cultural preservation groups, and community members banded together in opposing a request by developers to rezone roughly 8 acres so that they could move forward with plans to build a complex of three high-rise condominiums overlooking the river and adjacent downtown Wilmington.

Commissioners ultimately denied the rezoning request in late 2021 and pursued revising an amendment to the county’s 2016 comprehensive land use plan to create a new conservation “placetype” specifically for the western bank at the confluence of the rivers. “Placetype” is a planning term used to describe the mix of compatible uses within an area.

The riverfront tract at 1450 Point Harbor Road that the county intends to buy includes a little more than six acres within the Cape Fear River waterline.

The plot was once used as a railroad terminal yard. The land has not been identified as having known environmental conditions by any regulatory agency, according to county staff.

The tract across the highway at 1209 N. U.S. 421, is adjacent to the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office’s target shooting range. This property would prevent encroachment to the shooting range and provide river access for the sheriff office’s marine unit.

Funding to buy the tracts will be pulled from reserves from the county’s revenue stabilization fund, which will be replenished through annual reimbursements of $266,130 from the county’s general fund for the next 10 years.

The purchase is expected to be complete by Dec. 31.

A Navassa-based chemical processing company has pleaded guilty to discharging pollutants into the Cape Fear River.

American Distillation Inc., or ADI, owner Andrew J. Simmons Jr., also pleaded guilty to failing to pay federal taxes, according to to the Office of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

ADI is guilty of knowingly discharging tert-Butyl alcohol, a highly flammable, colorless, oily liquid, and other pollutants into the Cape Fear River, according to a release published Monday.

The company, which was incorporated in 1992 to make and sell industrial-grade ethyl alcohol, regularly accepts large quantities of tert-Butyl, or TBOH, from its customers, according to information presented in court.

“During distillation, ADI created and stored byproducts in an approximately 250,000-gallon storage tank (known as Tank 14), which regularly stored liquid wastewater that included TBOH, isopropyl alcohol, and acetone mixed with water,” the release states.

From late 2019 through 2024, the company began accepting more TBOH and other chemicals from its customers than it could legally and properly dispose of under the terms of its federally issued permit.

In January, Barry Darnell White, ADI’s former production manager, pleaded guilty to purposely releasing approximately 2,500 gallons of liquid wastewater from Tank 14 five to six times per year between 2020 and 2024.

White discharged the pollutants “by connecting a hose that drained into a nearby pipe” that ran directly to the river, according to a release.

“ADI released TBOH byproduct from Tank 14 into the Cape Fear River to ensure maximum profits without ceasing operations,” the release states. “ADI management had informed some employees that if operations came to a halt, the company would suffer serious financial harm, potentially including dissolution.”

“This was not an accident, and it was not a paperwork violation,” U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle stated in the release. “ADI deliberately decided to dump harmful chemicals into a North Carolina river to increase profits. When corporations choose pollution over safety, we will hold them criminally accountable and enforce the law without hesitation.”

ADI’s “multi-year illegal discharges of industrial waste poses a serious threat to the River’s water quality and is harmful to ecosystems,” Chuck Carfagno, special agent in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal enforcement program in North Carolina, said in the release. “Today’s guilty plea demonstrates that the EPA and its partner agencies are committed to protecting the environment and pursuing those who threaten our natural resources.”

Donald “Trey” Eakins, special agent in charge at the Charlotte Field Office, IRS Criminal Investigations, stated that Simmons “willfully engaged in a long pattern of violations of the internal revenue laws.”

“Tax evasion is not a victimless crime, it affects every American by stealing resources vital to fund schools, maintain public infrastructure, and enhance social welfare,” he said in a release.

A Piedmont town’s request to permanently pull millions of gallons of water a day from the Cape Fear River would raise the risk of water shortages during periods of drought, undercut utilities’ ability to keep up with growing demand, and result in higher levels of contamination in the raw drinking water source for downstream communities, opponents of the plan say.

Of the dozen people who spoke Tuesday night during a public hearing in Raleigh, none supported Fuquay-Varina’s call for transferring 6.17 million gallons per day from the Cape Fear River Basin to the Neuse River Basin to meet that town’s projected water demands.

Similar opposition was expressed during a hearing held in Fayetteville last week by the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission and the state Division of Water Resources. A third hearing was scheduled to be held Thursday in Pittsboro.

Both elected officials and heads of public utilities in the lower Cape Fear region on Tuesday continued pressing the commission and division to host a public hearing in that area.

“None of the hearings for the Fuquay-Varina request are being held in the lower Cape Fear region, even though our communities will feel the downstream impacts,” said New Hanover County Commissioner Rob Zapple. “Residents in the city of Wilmington and the counties of New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender would have to spend four to five hours on the road just to attend the public hearing. Most residents simply cannot do that. Holding a hearing in the lower Cape Fear region in Wilmington would reduce frustration, encourage public trust, and allow our communities to be hearing in a constructive manner.”

As of Wednesday, more than 20 counties, municipalities, environmental organizations, businesses and drinking water providers have adopted resolutions opposing Fuquay-Varina’s request for an interbasin transfer certificate, or IBT.

Officials in Fuquay-Varina, which is about 30 miles south of Raleigh, project that the amount of water the town currently buys from the capital city, and Harnett and Johnston counties will fall short of demand by 2030.

Under the proposed preferred alternative identified in a draft environmental impact statement for the IBT, the town would source its entire water supply from a water treatment plant in Sanford, which is in the Cape Fear River Basin.

Once water pulled from the Cape Fear River is used by residents and businesses within the town, the treated wastewater would be discharged into the Neuse River Basin. This would permanently subtract more than 6 million gallons each day from the river flow that currently sources more than 500,000 residents with drinking water.

“We have absolutely no problem with Fuquay-Varina wanting to continue with their development,” Zapple said. “But if you take the water, just return it. That’s all. That’s the way the system works. And, if it costs more, well maybe that’s the price of doing business. We need our development down in the lower Cape Fear region as well and we can’t afford to lose 6.17 million gallons a day.”

The Cape Fear River is Brunswick County’s “primary and only reliable water source,” said Christopher Giesting, Brunswick County Public Utilities deputy director of water operations.

The utility supplies drinking water to 19 municipalities and serves more than 350,000 residents and seasonal visitors.

Giesting said that Brunswick County has invested more than $183 million to expand its Northwest Water Treatment Plant and upgrade to a reverse osmosis system designed to remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, discharged into the river by upstream polluters.

“These investments were made with the expectation that the full safe yield of the Cape Fear River at the intake would remain available,” he said. “Any IBT that removes water without returning it means that safe yield volume is reduced, ultimately making these major infrastructure investments unable to function as planned and designed. Our county alone has more than 50,000 planned housing units already built, under construction, or in the works. Without reliable access to the full safe yield of the Cape Fear, we cannot meet future water demands for these communities.”

The IBT proposal also threatens water quality, Giesting continued, because the requested daily transfer would lessen the amount of water available to dilute contaminants, including PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, discharged by upstream polluters.

The Lower Cape Fear Water and Sewer Authority, which provides wholesale regional raw water to treatment facilities that serve more than 550,000 customers in a five-county area, has sourced from the Cape Fear River more than half a century.

Authority Executive Director Tim Holloman said the river is already being substantially used as a water resource in the region.

“For a river that’s already maxed, we just ask that that be considered. If the IBT is granted, that (water) be returned to the Cape Fear River Basin because the need is not going to go away. It’s only going to increase over time,” he said.

Fayetteville Public Works Commission Chief Executive Officer and General Manager Timothy Bryant said that the commission would be forced to spend millions more each year to ensure safe drinking water to its more than 250,000 customers.

“I would argue very strenuously that no one with any legitimacy can claim that removing over 6 million gallons of water per day isn’t a foreseeable detrimental effect on the river basin and the 900,000 downstream residents of North Carolina who depend on this water every day,” he said. “To be clear, growth in Fuquay-Varina should not come at the expense of other communities. There are multiple reasonable alternative options presented that are not only consistent with the intent and letter of North Carolina law, but also squarely place the cost burden on Fuquay-Varina and not the customers downstream of it.”

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Ken Waldroup asked that the Environmental Management Commission look into what he said are “critical technical shortcomings” associated with models presented by the town.

The commission will make the final determination on whether to grant Fuquay-Varina’s request.

If approved, the IBT would occur after 2031, according to the draft impact statement.

No announcement had been made at the time of this publication as to whether a public hearing will be held in the lower Cape Fear region.

A district court judge has ruled that Chemours and its predecessor company cannot conceal thousands of pages of documents from the public.

The manufacturing giant failed to provide sufficient evidence the documents include commercially sensitive information that, if released, could competitively undermine the companies, Judge James Dever III concluded in his Dec. 3 ruling.

Information the companies requested to keep under seal are among 25,000 pages of documents lawyers representing public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina as part of lawsuit those entities brought against the companies in October 2017.

Related: EPA seeks reporting rollback as new study finds hidden PFAS

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority, and Wrightsville Beach aim to recover costs and damages associated with the Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River. The river is a drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents.

PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 chemicals used in everyday consumer products including food containers, stain-resistant carpet and water-repellant gear. These human-made chemical compounds are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in humans and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and development issues and increased risk of some cancers.

Last February, attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont filed a motion requesting that the court keep thousands of pages of those documents under seal, arguing information in those documents contain internal communications about chemical production that, if made public, could give a leg up to their competitors.

Dever denied that request. He also rejected a second motion by the companies’ attorneys seeking to keep from the public an April 2018 report of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency detailing its inspection the Fayetteville Works facility.

“Defendants’ second motion to seal fails for the same reason as defendant’s first motion to seal. Defendants provide insufficient evidence to demonstrate that sealing the [Toxic Substance Act Compliance Monitoring Inspection] report serves a compelling interest which outweighs the public’s right of access,” Dever wrote in his 13-page ruling.

A document’s “status as confidential or commercially sensitive alone does not justify its sealing,” he continued.

“We thank the Court for its wise ruling in denying the motion to seal,” Cammie Bellamy, CFPUA public information officer, said in an email responding to a request for comment. “CFPUA will oppose every attempt by Chemours to delay, obfuscate, and deny the public its right to access the facts of this case. The documents that Chemours and its codefendants wanted to hide from the public include records of its decades of wrongdoing. The people of Southeastern North Carolina deserve better. CFPUA continues to work to hold Chemours accountable for its decades of polluting of the Cape Fear River – the source water for 500,000 North Carolinians.”

Dever also denied requests submitted to the court last April by environmental and community organizations, and the NAACP New Hanover County Branch, to intervene in the case and object to the companies’ motion to keep the documents sealed, ruling those motions are moot.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a motion to intervene in the case on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network.

“We think that this is absolutely the right outcome,” Jean Zhuang, a senior attorney with the center’s Chapel Hill office, said in a telephone interview Friday morning. “In this case, the companies have concealed decades of pollution in southeastern North Carolina and harmed drinking water from the Cape Fear River for 500,000 people.”

The release of the documents comes at a crucial time, she said, because Chemours wants to expand its production of vinyl ethers, which are a class of compounds used to create a variety of products used in a range of technologies from semiconductor chips to aviation components.

The company’s permit application for that expansion is under review by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

“Chemours is expecting the public to just trust them while they are planning a massive expansion of their facility,” Zhuang said. “After all these decades of harm they have caused on North Carolina communities, secrecy is not an option anymore.”

Tests commissioned by the SELC and Cape Fear River Watch showed that Chemours is releasing “extremely high levels” of ultra-short chain PFAS, which are highly mobile and difficult to remove from raw drinking water, into the Cape Fear River.

The results of those tests, released last October, confirmed earlier test results published by CFPUA, which has spent tens of millions of dollars upgrading its Sweeney Water Treatment Plant in downtown Wilmington to filtrate PFAS from reaching its customers’ taps.

CFPUA officials, along with those from other downstream facilities, are calling on the state to enforce polluters to treat chemicals at the source and set enforceable limits in discharge permits.

Anne Harvey David, chief counsel for environmental justice for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which asked to intervene in the case on behalf of the NAACP New Hanover County Branch, said in a release, “An effort to conceal information that details with the health and safety of thousands of North Carolinians cannot go unchallenged. We are happy to see this decision in favor of protecting public access to these documents. Information and transparency around the extent of the pollution is fundamental for the health and safety of the impacted communities.”

NACCP New Hanover County Branch President LeRon Montgomery said last week’s ruling “is one win in a long battle for our community to live free from harmful contamination of our air and water,” according to the release.

“The importance of this decision goes far beyond who it will impact today,” he stated. “The pollution of the Cape Fear River will impact generations to come, but so will having access to this information.”

As of this publication, it was unclear when the documents would be made public or whether the companies’ attorneys would appeal the ruling.

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

Though the holiday season is here — with all the responsibilities it entails — some North Carolinians might consider adding one more thing to their to-do lists: weighing in on an EPA proposal that could reshape how the government collects information about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The agency is taking input during the public comment period, which is open now and closes on Dec. 29.

On Nov. 10, the EPA announced a proposal to loosen reporting requirements for businesses that make or use PFAS. Agency officials say the changes are intended to make the rules easier for companies to follow and to avoid duplicate or unnecessary paperwork, while still allowing EPA to collect key information about how PFAS are used and what risks they may pose.

Currently PFAS are regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act, a federal law that allows the EPA to require businesses to report, test, track or even ban chemicals that may threaten human health or the environment.

In October 2023, the Biden administration’s EPA finalized a one-time PFAS reporting rule under TSCA’s Section 8. The rule requires companies that manufactured or imported PFAS between 2011 and 2022 to disclose how the chemicals were used and provide available environmental or health data. Industry groups have pushed back, saying the rule is too costly and difficult for small businesses to navigate.

“This Biden-era rule would have imposed crushing regulatory burdens and nearly $1 billion in implementation costs on American businesses,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said when announcing the proposed changes. “Today’s proposal is grounded in common sense and the law, allowing us to collect the information we need to help combat PFAS contamination without placing ridiculous requirements on manufacturers, especially the small businesses that drive our country’s economy.”

But environmental advocates and clean water managers say the proposal would significantly weaken PFAS oversight.

“By EPA’s own estimate, the proposed rule would eliminate more than 97 percent of the information that would have otherwise been generated by the (current) rule,” said Stephanie Schweickert, NC Conservation Network’s director of Environmental Health Campaigns.

“With PFAS and Chemours in North Carolina, we really need more information about PFAS, not less. This (proposal) is very problematic for public health in North Carolina,” Schweickert said. 

Harder-to-detect PFAS raise new concerns

The proposal comes when North Carolina researchers are uncovering PFAS pollution that standard monitoring can’t detect — raising new questions about whether EPA already has blind spots.

Recent Duke University research uncovered a previously unrecognized source of contamination in the Haw River, a tributary of the Cape Fear River: tiny solid PFAS “precursor” particles in industrial wastewater from a Burlington textile manufacturer that entered the local sewer system. These nanoparticles don’t show up in standard PFAS tests, which typically look for dissolved chemicals. But during wastewater treatment processes, the particles break down into better-known PFAS compounds that can contaminate rivers, drinking water sources and agricultural sludge.

At peak discharge, researchers detected precursor-particle levels exceeding 12 million parts per trillion — millions of times higher than EPA’s enforceable drinking-water limits of 4-10 ppt for regulated PFAS. The findings highlight major blind spots in current monitoring and suggest that industries may be releasing far more PFAS (or PFAS precursors) than regulators currently can detect.

“We have some of the most sophisticated instruments in the world for PFAS analysis, and we couldn’t detect these until we dramatically changed our approach,” said lead researcher Lee Ferguson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke, in a release. “Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know, and there is a lesson to be learned about blind spots in our analyses when it comes to looking for new PFAS in the environment.”

In a follow-up email, Ferguson said the findings show why PFAS disclosure rules should be strengthened, not rolled back. “Our work highlights why it is important to increase, not decrease, PFAS waste discharge reporting requirements for industries.”

Downstream utilities feel the impact

A public utility that relies on the Cape Fear River, echoed Ferguson’s concerns.

The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which provides drinking water to more than 200,000 customers in New Hanover County and spent $43 million installing a granular activated carbon filtration system in 2022 to remove PFAS, said weakened reporting would make their job harder.

“We are concerned that these (proposed) exemptions could create additional uncertainty for utilities, such as CFPUA, that are located downstream from known PFAS polluters,” the agency said.

“Utilities rely upon detailed, accurate data from potential and known contamination sources to inform our treatment processes in order to protect the drinking water we provide our customers,” the statement continued. “Rolling back reporting requirements for PFAS manufacturers passes more of the burden of monitoring and testing source water on to utilities and our ratepayers.”

Advocates say the stakes extend beyond utilities.

“The EPA is carving out loopholes under the Toxic Substances Control Act that allow industry to avoid reporting its use of PFAS — current forever chemicals that pose serious risks to people’s health,” a Southern Environmental Law Center spokesperson said in an emailed statement to NC Health News. 

“These exemptions include PFAS produced as byproducts, the very issue at the heart of the Chemours crisis,” the SELC statement said. “For decades, Chemours discharged GenX as a byproduct before intentionally manufacturing it, yet the harm caused by byproduct PFAS is no different from that caused by intentionally produced PFAS. This reality devastated 500,000 North Carolinians who drank—and continue to drink—water contaminated by Chemours’ PFAS pollution, and it remains true for communities across the country today.”

Health risks tied to PFAS exposure

These gaps in monitoring matter because PFAS exposure has been associated with a growing list of health concerns. Often called “forever chemicals” because they break down slowly and accumulate in the body over time, PFAS have been linked to immune system suppression, developmental and reproductive harm, thyroid disruption, elevated cholesterol and certain cancers.

In North Carolina, the GenX Exposure Study has documented elevated PFAS levels in blood samples from people living near the Cape Fear River, along with health markers such as increased cholesterol and changes in liver enzymes that have been associated with PFAS exposure. Researchers say the findings underscore the risks for communities living downstream of industrial PFAS sources.

“Some PFAS are formed as byproducts of chemical manufacturing. These chemicals, even though they aren’t used to make new products, are released into air and water and have been found in the blood of people who rely on downstream drinking water,” said N.C. State University epidemiologist Jane Hoppin, when responding to questions about the new Duke research and the EPA’s proposal.

“In our research, PFMOAA was detected at the highest levels in blood samples collected more than a year before the contamination was publicly identified,” she said. “Other byproducts of PFAS — Nafion byproduct 2 and PFO5DoA — were found in nearly all Wilmington residents tested in 2017 and remain in people’s blood today. We need more, not less, information about chemical byproducts to ensure drinking water safety.”

“The mission of the EPA, in the beginning, was to protect the public and the environment,” said Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University who’s widely regarded as the father of the environmental justice movement. “Anytime you’re relaxing rules that would not only threaten the environment but also compromise public health — that’s the wrong way to go.”

The public comment period is open through Dec. 29. To submit a comment, go to: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/EPA-HQ-OPPT-2020-0549-0311.

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

To get a sense of just how severe Battery Island’s shoreline is changing, look no farther than its trees.

As waves lick away at the fringes of this little island in the middle of the Cape Fear River near Southport, trees rising off its shores are toppling.

“The mature trees that the birds nest in are being lost along the shore,” said Lindsay Addison, coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina.

Each tree that plops into the river is one fewer on an island that is globally significant for nesting white ibis and home to one of the largest wading bird colonies in North Carolina.

To Battery Island’s east rests Shellbed Island, a large marsh system edged by elevated banks of old oyster shells called shell rakes.

In good condition, these rakes do not flood at high tide or during storms, making them a crucial and rather niche nesting habitat for American oystercatchers.

“The Cape Fear River supports almost 30% of the state’s nesting American oystercatchers. And about half of the American oystercatchers that nest on the Cape Fear River nest in these types of habitats. So, it’s a very important habitat type for American oystercatchers and they are a state listed species,” Addison said.

Like Battery Island, waves have altered Shellbed Island’s edges, where the elevated shell rakes have been flattened out and pushed back into the marsh by coastal storms.

In an effort to protect the threatened bird habitat on these islands, Audubon and its partners, Sandbar Oyster Co. and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, have teamed up to design and install two pilot living shoreline projects and test their effectiveness at protecting the low-lying islands on the river.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is contributing $13,800 in cost share for the $51,500 projects. Of the Coastal Federation’s contribution, $5,250 has been set aside for Battery Island and $8,550 for the project at Shellbed Island.

Georgia Busch, a coastal specialist in the Coastal Federation’s Wrightsville Beach office, said these projects, “align with our mission for preservation of critical habitats in our coastal and estuary systems.”

“But, particularly in the lower Cape Fear River, there’s a need for some extra reinforcement of those habitats there. Historically, the birds have used this area for a long, long time and we just want to make sure that stays intact. These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said.

Battery Island’s shores have for years been battered by waves from large vessels that navigate the river to and from the Port of Wilmington, recreational boats that skim the waters around Southport, and the Bald Head Island ferry.

“What makes Battery Island special for the nesting birds is it’s relatively small, it’s far enough away from the mainland that it doesn’t have any mammalian predators on it, and so that allows this colony to have a lot of success,” Addison said.

There’s also little human disturbance on the island. The island, which is managed by Audubon, is closed to people March 1 to Sept. 15 each year.

A test section of about 70 linear feet of living shoreline will be installed along the roughly 100-acre island’s southwest corner, which has experienced some of the most severe erosion.

A reef constructed of Sandbar Oyster Co.’s Oyster Catcher reef building substrates, which are made with plant-fiber cloth, infused with different cement mixtures, and molded into different shapes to promote sediment accumulation and marsh growth.

The test project at Shellbed Island has been designed to prevent shell rakes from washing away.

Power hurricanes, including Florence in 2018 and Dorian in 2019, pushed the shell rakes back into the marsh and flattened them out. And the oyster reefs that at one time provided an abundance of oyster shell in the river are not as plentiful because of overfishing, pollution and habitat degradation.

“There’s still plenty of spat, larval oysters, in the water, but there isn’t a lot of substrate for them to settle on because oysters typically grow on other oysters,” Addison explained. “When you put in a living shoreline-type of material, or almost any hard substrate, you’ll get oysters recruiting onto it. What we would like to do is to help jumpstart some oyster populations in areas of these shell rakes.”

The project at Shellbed Island includes installing roughly 67 feet of living shoreline in front of the shell rakes and material behind the shell rakes, “so that when nature moves those loose shells around, it can build back up into a more sustainable nesting habitat where the oystercatchers are not losing so many of their nests to overwash,” Addison said.

Audubon has a received a grant for a separate project to place loose oyster shell directly on the existing rakes.

Busch explained the test projects are a first-of-their kind because they will be at isolated islands “where we’re really only looking at habitat and this will be really helpful for testing out the strength and feasibility of the Sandbar Oyster Company’s products and of living shorelines.”

“These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said. “We want to see how this product will work somewhere where we get a lot of wave energy. We’re going to find out.”

Addison said she has “high hopes” for the living shorelines in curbing erosion at the islands.

“If it turns out to look like it’s working well then we could seek larger pots of money and expand our permit to be able to do this at a larger scale,” she said.

Audubon is continuing to fundraise for the projects. Donations may be made by contacting Addison by email at lindsay.addison@audubon.org.

WILMINGTON — Deepening the Wilmington Harbor would disperse PFAS now mingling in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches, accelerate erosion, exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, and is not economically justified, area residents said during a state-hosted public hearing.

Many who spoke at the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s hearing in downtown Wilmington Monday night argued that the federal draft environmental statement released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers earlier this fall fails to fully examine potential impacts associated with the proposed project.

The draft study examines different alternatives for the North Carolina State Ports Authority’s aim to accommodate larger container ships at the Wilmington port.

The preferred alternative selected in the study calls for deepening the harbor from 42 to 47 feet, widening the channel in multiple areas, and extending the ocean entrance to the river. These changes would accommodate vessels that can carry 14,000 20-by-8-foot shipping containers, ports officials say.

But several of the nearly 20 people who spoke argued that the proposed project would not benefit the local economy, and its environmental harms would drastically overwhelm any associated economic benefits. About 70 people attended the hearing.

“This project is a poor economic decision given the massive cost compared to the miniscule benefits,” said Jessica Hardee, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The cost of deepening the harbor and the channel is projected to be over $1 billion. However, the only noted benefit of this project are cost savings to international shipping companies who use the port, not North Carolina or local communities. This project provides little benefit to the Wilmington area and North Carolinians while also threatening significant damage to the coastal region.”

One striking absence from the study is how churning up and moving per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in the sediment of the lower Cape Fear River might affect the environment, animals that rely on that environment, and human health, some speakers said.

“Even though we all know that there’s PFAS in the sediment of the river, the Corps says we can’t consider that because it’s not a regulated chemical,” said Wilmington resident and geologist Roger Shew.

But PFAS, or similar chemical compounds of which there are more than 14,000 used to make a host of consumer goods from food containers to stain-resistant clothing and carpet, will be regulated by the time the channel would be deepened in the early to mid-2030s, he said.

“And since 15 million of the 35 million cubic yards of dredge material will be used as beneficial placement in marshes on our area beaches, we should know the content of that sediment and potential impacts with sediment placement,” Shew said. “A core function of an (environmental impact statement) is consideration of potential harm. Therefore, they should and must include PFAS in the study.”

A study published late last month found concentrations of 56 PFAS in blood samples obtained from 119 Wilmington residents between 2010 and 2016.

Two chemical compounds – TFA and PFMOAA – were the dominant PFAS in the samples, “despite their likely short half-lives in the human body,” according to the study.

TFA, or trifluoroacetic acid, and PFMOAA, or perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid, are ultrashort-chain PFAS, which are the smallest type of PFAS and hardest to remove from drinking water sources.

The blood samples examined in the study were obtained before the public was made aware in 2017 that an upstream industrial facility had been discharging PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water sources for tens of thousands, since the 1980s.

“While current TFA and PFMOAA levels have likely decreased substantially from those in the historical blood serum samples evaluated here as a result of mandated discharge controls at the upstream fluorochemical manufacturer, this study, along with other recent studies, highlights the importance ultrashort-chain PFAS can play in determining the overall human PFAS burden,” the study states.

Wilmington resident Kaiti Sheehan said the fact that PFAS is not considered in the draft environmental impact statement, or DEIS, “is a slap in the face to residents who are paying for a $42 million granulated active-carbon filtration system and still facing the health consequences that have come from 40 years of contamination from our upstream bad actor.”

“I do genuinely hope that you will look and you will see how much the community has come out tonight in recognition that this is bad for Wilmington and this is bad for North Carolina,” she said.

Others raised concerns about how deepening the harbor to allow for larger ships to travel the 28 miles upriver to the port would increase erosion on the string of bird islands that pepper the lower Cape Fear River and the riverbanks themselves.

The Cape Fear River supports almost 30% of the state’s nesting American oystercatchers.

Audubon North Carolina’s Lindsay Addison, a coastal biologist, said she and her staff are on the Cape Fear River two to three days a week between March and August and at least once during each of the other months of the year.

“We have seen progressively the impacts of the larger and larger classes of ships coming up the river,” she said. “We saw larger, more severe wakes. The DEIS does not take this into account. The Corps, in its beneficial use plan, talks about maybe putting sediment on 2 miles of the shoreline.”

Birds nest on high-tide lines, Addison said. Waves created by a large ship’s wake push water “like a tsunami” over nests and sweep nests away.

“There is no model in the DEIS that accounts for this,” Addison said. “There is no data collection in the DEIS that accounts for this. In fact, there’s no new data collection in the DEIS. They’re relying on data that was already collected. They told us in the stakeholder meeting, flat out, that they’re not going to collected new data so impacts to the migratory birds in the DEIS are not taken into account.”

Officials with the Division of Coastal Management, which is under the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, announced Monday night that the public comment period on the draft study has been extended from Dec. 5 to Dec. 20.

Written comments may be mailed to Federal Consistency Coordinator, 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City, NC  28557, or emailed to Federalconsistencycomments@deq.nc.gov with “Federal Consistency: USACE Wilmington Harbor 403 Navigation Project” in the subject line.

More information on the proposed project is on the Corps’ website.

Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant has once again discharged elevated levels of 1,4-dioxane into a creek that drains into a river within the Cape Fear River Basin, according to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

The plant detected a concentration of 651 parts per billion, or ppb, of the chemical compound, one the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has categorized as a likely human carcinogen, in a sample it collected Nov. 7 from Hasketts Creek, according to a DEQ release.

Hasketts Creek drains into the Deep River, which converges with the Haw River to form the Cape Fear River.

Using the EPA’s toxicity calculations for lifetime exposure, DEQ “has determined that the average monthly concentration of 1,4-dixoane in the Asheboro discharge safe for downstream water supplies is 22 ppb or less,” the release states.

The department’s Division of Water Resources took additional sampling and is waiting to confirm results. Division officials have notified downstream drinking water utilities, which provide drinking water to some 900,000 North Carolinians.

Earlier this year, downstream water utilities were notified that sampling results by the state and Asheboro revealed 1,4-dixoane levels were more than 10 times higher than the average established as safe for downstream water supplies.

DEQ’s announcement Friday comes a little more than three weeks after the EPA hosted a public hearing in Asheboro regarding the agency’s objection to the city’s proposed permit that excludes an effluent discharge limit for 1,4-dioxane.

All but one person who spoke at that hearing urged the EPA to uphold its objection to the proposed National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit issued by the division.

DEQ issued an NPDES permit to the plant in August 2023 that included effluent discharge limits for 1,4-dioxane.

The city sued and, in September 2024, the North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings struck the limits from the permit.

DEQ’s appeal of that ruling is pending in Wake County Superior Court.

“Monitoring is ongoing at wastewater treatment plants in the Cape Fear River Basin to track 1,4-dixoane,” according to the release. “Significant reductions have occurred at some wastewater treatment plants through a collaborative effort with the Environmental Management commission (EMC), DEQ and municipal operators. DEQ will continue to work with the EMC to seek additional ways to achieve reductions in 1,4-dioxane discharges.”

On Thursday, the EMC voted to push to a later date hearing proposed monitoring and minimization rules for 1,4-dixoane and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from industrial users and dischargers.

The commission is not scheduled to meet again this year.

Sampling data is posted on the division’s website.

The Wilmington City Council on Wednesday night unanimously adopted a resolution opposing Chemours’ proposed expansion of its Fayetteville Works plant.

The resolution asks the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “and other relevant regulatory bodies to deny any permits or approvals related to such expansion until Chemours has fully remediated existing contamination and demonstrated a sustained, transparent commitment to environmental and public health protections.”

The resolution also states that the council formally opposes the plant’s releases of ultra-short chain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into downstream drinking water intakes and asks DEQ to deny permits that would allow Chemours to continue to discharge those chemical compounds into the environment.

Chemours has applied for a permit to expand its production of vinyl ethers, a class of compounds used to create a variety of products used in a range of technologies from semiconductor chips to aviation components.

The planned expansion has drawn considerable blowback from communities downstream of the plant, which discharged PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River, groundwater, and air unbeknownst to the public for decades.

PFAS specific to the Bladen County plant has been documented in the river, which is the drinking water source for some 500,000 North Carolinians, as well as in private drinking water wells.

“These discharges have resulted in significant public health concerns, environmental degradation, and economic burdens on local governments and residents who have had to invest in costly water treatment upgrades and health monitoring,” the resolution states.

The council, “calls on Chemours to engage in meaningful dialogue with affected communities, disclose all relevant environmental data, and prioritize the health and safety of North Carolinians over corporate expansion.”

I’m now in my 60th year of life. I started fishing before I was even old enough to have a memory of it.

I’ve been fly fishing since I was 10 years old. The math is pretty easy. During that time I’ve lived in North Carolina for 30 of those years, again, easy math. However, it never fails that since I’ve been here, people will say to me, “Flyfishing? Where do you do that ’round these parts?”

Inevitably it leads to awkward conversation and ends up with me trying to explain something that is not easily explained.

First off, all I’ll say, and trying to not sound braggadocious here, but I have caught 71 different species of fish with a fly and fly rod. I’m talking about the smallest thing you can think of up to and including the biggest things a person can catch in sight of land.

In this age you can fish anywhere you dream of, with the only limit being your pockets. I once knew a man in Beaufort who only fished in Montana, and I’ve fished with guys from Raleigh who only fished saltwater. Having said that, let’s talk only about the fish that are readily available along our coastal waters and within 30 minutes of my home in Carteret County. It’s quite a lot as you’ll see.

We’ll start close in and work our way out. There is a book that gives in-depth attention to this very subject called “Fly Fishing the Southeast Coast: A Complete Guide to Fishing Fresh and Salt Water,” if you’re inclined. For the sake of this article, I am going to assume a level of casting competency.

A type of fishing that gets overlooked by fly anglers around here is freshwater bass fishing in ponds. I covered this topic previously, but it’s worth looking at again as a strictly fly opportunity.

The No. 1 concern is access. But if anyone you know has a residential, golf course, any kind of freshwater body, it will have bass in it. The best time is a nice sunset and the best fishing is with a small popper.

Walk the shoreline, cast in an arc and be sure to negotiate any little pockets. It’s a bunch of fun, and while most bass you catch around here will be smaller due to the acid content of the soil, big ones also lurk.

If there is one fish that is readily available to fly fishing regardless of skill and access, I would say it’s the bluefish. They are aggressive, and almost any place that has access to the water will see bluefish coming in and out.

What I’m going to do is lay out a very specific plan to catch a bluefish on a fly from shore. First off, put a 250-grain sink line on your spare fly reel (you have a spare, right?), an 8-weight rod.

Get a stripping basket. Otherwise, you’ll spend more time untangling your line than anything else. Tie a piece of 30-pound fluorocarbon leader material to the end of your fly leader. Attach a Clouser Minnow fly in size 2 tied in chartreuse over white.

Drive to Fort Macon State Park about two hours into the falling tide. Fish on the southwest corner. You won’t need waders until late October. Cast into the current, which should be flowing from your left to right. Retrieve with an erratic action.

I don’t believe that you haven’t caught one already. But seriously, if all is as it should be, they should be there as often as not, and this will get them. Not normally big, but be ready. As a bonus this is also the best way to get a Spanish mackerel from shore, as well. If glass minnows are present, be prepared for anything.

I have not found the open surf to very amenable to fly fishing here for a lot of reasons. Believe me, I’ve tried. That’s not to say it can never be done, but it’s just more work than it’s worth for me. But keep your eyes open for calm days and close fish.

Lights under docks are another great opportunity for the fly angler. As you cruise down the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, from time to time you will see lights off the ends of docks. If a light points into the water, it’s worth looking at for fishing opportunities. This is classic night fishing. I’m talking not even heading toward the water until 9 p.m.

The fish we are talking about will vary. Speckled trout are always the preferred targets, particularly some really big ones. In fact, if catching a trout over 5 pounds on fly is one of your goals, this would be the way to go. However, some other guests may be interested.

Toward the Neuse River there may be big striped bass, I’ve caught them up to 10 pounds. As you go south toward the Cape Fear, more ladyfish will be available. Red drum will always be around. If you hit on a school of bigger fish, be prepared to bust fly rods and lose fly lines. A school of 30-inchers cleaned us out a few years back.

The same small Clouser Minnow works wonders. Stick with the 8-weight and a 20-pound tippet helps get away from pilings. Position your boat with the anchor almost as far as your longest cast. If you get to close, you’ll mess it up.

Be quiet too. I’ve had homeowners turn off the lights. Uncool.

Cast a little upstream. Strikes will be quick and often show as big boils under the surface. If you can see the fish popping under the lights, that’s a good sign.

Enjoy the moon, and the view of the planets can be spectacular. The sounds that emanate from the water come vibrating through your hull. Often, dolphins will swim through. It’s a great way to fish, and while sometimes things just aren’t happening, it’s as good a way to spend an evening as I can imagine, and a surefire way to catch fish on fly around these parts.

I have not even mentioned the world-famous false albacore run in the fall or the extremely popular tailing redfish action around the full moons. There is plenty of literature about those, some of it written by yours truly, even in these very pages. There’s plenty to do.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is currently working on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Port of Wilmington’s plan to deepen the Cape Fear River, with the stated goal of accommodating larger cargo ships. As a retired Corps of Engineers senior project engineer, I feel it’s crucial to raise some serious concerns about this initiative.

The North Carolina State Ports Authority has significantly overlooked other viable alternatives, besides incremental deepening, and failed to assess the extensive infrastructure damage that increased freight traffic could inflict on our roads and bridges. This is particularly evident in major new projects like the replacement of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge and Wilmington’s Rail Realignment Project. Both are billion-dollar investments intended to accommodate the large volume of new truck and rail freight movement. One only need to look at the definition of the secondary effects as defined by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These secondary effects clearly relate to the need to expand the port’s freight-handling capacity.

Deepening the river will only worsen flooding, affecting areas around the downtown Wilmington waterfront and the historically significant North Carolina Battleship site. It will also lead to a substantial loss of vital wetlands and floodplains due to increasing saltwater intrusion, a value the Ports Authority conveniently understates in its Section 203 report required under the Clean Water Act.

From 1980 to 2017, DuPont, and now Chemours, released vast quantities of hazardous PFAS compounds, polluting nearly 100 miles of the Cape Fear River, including the proposed dredging prisms defined in the port’s set of alternatives. This legacy of contamination must be a central part of the EIS evaluation, as it directly challenges the claimed benefits of the project. Additionally, the reverse osmosis water treatment plant in Brunswick County, which aims to remove PFAS from drinking water, will release highly concentrated PFAS-contaminated wastewater 3 miles upstream of the port. This will further complicate the environmental challenges posed by the proposed dredging project, as well as future dredging operations and maintenance requirements, which once again go unaddressed in the port’s Section 203 report.

Why is this a critical oversight? PFAS clings to or settles into fine sediments like silt and clay found in the soil in and around the dredge-soil prism proposed to be dredged. It’s only logical that when these contaminated sediments are dredged, a safe disposal management plan would be an essential requirement for both federal and state regulators. When PFAS is detected in the dredged sediment, our regulators need to determine whether the material is suitable for placement or disposal, especially regarding upland sites or beach renourishment projects.

The Corps’ “Beneficial Use” strategy aims to repurpose the dredged material as a resource. However, this faces significant hurdles within the scope of this proposed project, as regulators decide how to prevent PFAS from being released back into the environment. The Eagles Island disposal area, which predates NEPA and was built on a previously healthy wetland and floodplain, is not an appropriate site for disposing of contaminated dredged soil because it lacks a liner. Furthermore, researchers in North Carolina and across the globe continue to investigate the damage that PFAS is causing to aquatic ecosystems as it transfers from sediment back into the water column during dredging and placement operations.

Without the Corps thoroughly addressing PFAS contamination, there is zero chance of ensuring the health and well-being of those who rely on the river’s resources in the future. This is particularly important when considering deepening options for the beneficial uses of these contaminated sediments. PFAS contamination adds another layer of complexity that will require extensive testing and could significantly impact project costs and feasibility.

There is no question that this proposed dredging project will certainly disturb sediments, releasing PFAS and other contaminants back into the water, which poses risks to aquatic life and human health.

Key issues include the following:

• Contamination — Dedging stirs PFAS, disrupts water quality.
• Aquatic risks — PFAS can bioaccumulate in marine organisms.
• Health concerns — Contaminated fish and drinking water pose human health risks.
• Regulatory challenges — Lack of consistent state or federal guidelines will create confusion for any of the deepening alternatives proposed under the port’s Section 203 study.

To enable the federal and state governments to properly manage PFAS risks related to deepening or maintenance dredging within the navigation channel, increased testing, ongoing research, development of standards, and best management practices are essential.

PFAS contamination is impacting rivers and harbors across our country. Michigan’s Department of Environment now mandates PFAS testing for sediments in harbor dredging, which is causing project delays, such as in Grand Haven, due to unclear safety standards. The Corps warns that this could reduce dredging operations from 24 to only three to five harbors annually due to rising costs — up to 200% higher with resampling — and the lack of precise guidance.

Given these critical issues, taxpayers should be alarmed by a proposed port project that fails to account for its environmental and infrastructural costs. Suppose we don’t consider the long-term implications of the port’s proposed alterations to our river. In that case, we might find ourselves stuck with unsustainable financial and environmental costs, while the economic benefits remain questionable at best.

It is our river, yet it has been treated as a stepchild compared to other, less critical economic priorities. Standard economic models often overlook the real financial value of natural resources and ecological systems like those on the lower Cape Fear River. Since nature’s “goods and services,” such as clean air, fresh water, and fully functioning floodplains and wetlands, are often considered free, they are becoming overused and undervalued. As I’ve tried to explain here, the degradation of our environment directly affects our citizens, taxpayers, and the species that depend on healthy ecosystems.

As the Corps prepares its EIS, it is essential to find more sustainable alternatives than digging us into a deeper hole that we can’t escape.  If not for us, then how about our kids, grandchildren, and their grandchildren?

If you have an opinion or concerns about this project, please submit your comments to:

By Email: WilmingtonHarbor403@usace.army.mil, or by mail to  ATTN: Wilmington Harbor 403, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC 28403, or by comment cards at the public meetings.

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Note: This piece was updated Nov. 3 to correct an erroneous statistic regarding Chemours’ proposed expansion.

One of the state’s most egregious corporate polluters has evaded public accountability for years. Now, the company is seeking to expand its output of toxic chemicals in eastern North Carolina. 

Since the mid 1970s the Chemours chemical manufacturing facility in Fayetteville has been spewing toxic PFAS into the air and water, contaminating the air and drinking water, food and bodies of water of a half-million people in the southeast region. The public was unaware of this until 2017, when researchers at NC State University detected high levels of the chemical GenX in the river’s drinking water. The revelation was so egregious community group Clean Cape Fear engaged the U.N. Human Rights Council to find Chemours and its parent company DuPont had committed business-related human rights abuses and called for accountability. Exposure to PFAS is known to cause certain types of cancers, immune system suppression, and developmental issues. But even after the news broke about this public health crisis in 2017, Chemours continued to produce PFAS and poisoning the Cape Fear River region. 

Beyond polluting the Cape Fear River, which supplies drinking water to more than 500,000 people downstream of Chemours’ discharge pipes, Chemours’ airborne PFAS emissions have poisoned at least 7,000 private drinking water wells across ten counties. This is not just a historical issue – it’s an ongoing crisis. Eight years after learning about GenX in North Carolina’s tap water and state regulators still do not know the full scope of groundwater contamination to the region. 

Despite this legacy of harm across southeastern North Carolina, the company has recently applied to NC DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality) for an air permit to dramatically expand its Fayetteville chemical production operations and increase its PFAS production and waste. Chemours has demonstrated a pattern of corporate misconduct, concealing information about the dangers of its water and air pollution from regulators and the public for decades. The company has violated court orders to curb PFAS pollution. And, earlier this year, the state expanded its PFAS testing zone, ordering Chemours to test for PFAS in an additional 150,000 private wells in six counties – a sign of how far these toxic chemicals have spread across the state.  

This is not a company that can be trusted to expand its operations responsibly, and it is one local example of the  PFAS pollution crisis, which is now a nationwide problem. Thoughtful and common-sense federal solutions were recently put in place, but  are now being rescinded.  

In 2024, the Biden Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restricted six PFAS chemicals (GenX/HFPO-DA, PFBS, PFHxS PFNA, PFOA, and PFOS), under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which the agency estimated could benefit up to 105 million people nationwide. But the Trump administration is now in the process of trying to rescind some of those restrictions that would have helped reduce PFAS pollution in public tap water. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and its partners are opposing the EPA’s proposed rollbacks and have turned to the courts for protection.  

Until federal regulators issue clear guidance and protections for PFAS, it is up to state agencies to protect our health and natural resources. In North Carolina, that means DEQ must reject Chemours’ air permit application and do its job to protect North Carolinians from being further poisoned by this company’s toxic chemical pollution.

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

North Carolinians from cities, towns and communities throughout the Cape Fear River Basin urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to uphold its objection to a municipal wastewater treatment plant’s proposed permit that excludes an effluent discharge limit for 1,4-dioxane into their drinking water sources.

One after another, speakers at a public hearing the EPA hosted last Wednesday night asked the agency to force the state to reissue a permit that will limit discharges of the likely human carcinogen into surface waters that flow into tributaries of the Haw and Deep rivers, which converge to form the Cape Fear River.

Residents from Wilmington northwest to Fayetteville, Sanford, Pittsboro, Siler City, and Asheboro joined representatives of environmental organizations and downstream public water utilities at the hearing at Randolph Community College in Asheboro, the very city that fought to get 1,4-dioxane limits removed from its permit.

“Frankly I’m embarrassed that Asheboro is polluting the drinking water of as many as 900,000 people who live downstream from us,” longtime Asheboro resident Susie Scott said. “The solution, to me, seems simple. Our city should hold the companies producing this pollution to account and insist that they clean up their waste before we accept it into our treatment plant. People living downstream from us deserve safe drinking water.”

In August 2023, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources issued Asheboro a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit limiting the city water treatment plant’s release of 1,4-dioxane.

The city sued, challenging the state’s power to include a water quality standard for the clear, odorless chemical solvent used in manufacturing processes.

In September 2024, the Chief Administrative Law Judge for North Carolina at the time, Donald van der Vaart, ruled in the city’s favor and revoked permit limits of 1,4-dioxane.

In his ruling, van der Vaart said that DEQ officials did not follow the letter of the law written in state statutes when they calculated discharge limits and established an enforceable water quality standard for 1,4-dixoane. He also noted anticipated high costs associated with monitoring and treatment of the chemical compound.

DEQ’s appeal of that ruling is pending in Wake County Superior Court.

Costs to treat 1,4-dioxane will fall on the backs of downstream water utilities customers if the pollutant is not controlled at the source, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup said.

“The presence of 1,4-dioxane in our source water is just the latest example of how gaps in regulation can lead downstream communities exposed to risk,” he said. “1,4-dioxane is a synthetic, highly mobile compound that resists natural degradation and conventional water treatment. Once it enters our watershed, it is persistent and travels far downstream, all the way to our drinking water intakes. Removing 1,4-dioxane from our drinking water requires advanced and very costly treatment technologies. We’re talking millions of dollars in systems and additional millions in operations costs over a period of time.”

Waldroup said DEQ “took appropriate action” when it included 1,4-dioxane limits in Asheboro’s NPDES permit, but that the state Office of Administrative Hearings “inappropriately and inaccurately invalidated that move.”

“EPA is obligated to assume permitting authority if the state fails to comply with federal permits, and EPA must require the state of North Carolina to address this pollutant and protect 900,000 downstream users,” he said.

Public water utilities, including CFPUA, and businesses downstream of Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant were notified by DEQ last January that the plant had discharged substantially high concentrations of 1,4-dioxane into Hasketts Creek, which empties into the Deep River.

Misty Manning, Fayetteville Public Works Commission’s chief operations officer for water resources, recalled to EPA officials last week of the Jan. 24 sampling results reported by the state and Asheboro.

“Asheboro’s own sampling result from that day was 3,520 parts per billion. This is more than 10 times higher than EPA’s calculation of what Asheboro’s discharge should be to protect public health at 22 parts per billion. Without enforceable limits, the city of Asheboro’s pretreatment program has yet to be successful in limiting 1,4-dioxane discharges to levels that meet water quality goals for a pollutant with a reasonable potential to cause or contribute to an excursion above state water quality standards,” Manning said.

She was one of several speakers at the hearing to point out that other municipalities in the state have successfully reduced 1,4-dioxane discharges through industrial pretreatment processes without bearing economic hardship.

“And Asheboro has the responsibility to do likewise, using its permitted authority over their local industrial users,” Manning said. “Downstream communities should not bear the financial burden of treating and removing pollutants introduced by unchecked upstream discharges.”

Last June, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly against Asheboro and the city’s industrial customer StarPet Inc., to stop their discharges of 1,4-dioxane into the Cape Fear River basin.

“As part of its antiregulatory fight, Asheboro has raised the absurd argument that it should not be the one that has to pay to control the cancer-causing pollution that it dumps upstream of drinking water supplies,” SELC attorney Hannah Nelson said. “I want to be clear. Asheboro could stop this pollution today by requiring its industries to treat for 1,4-dioxane, but it has chosen not to. In making that choice, Asheboro forces us, the families, the drinking water utilities, the local businesses, the schools, all of those who live downstream of the city, choose us to have to pay for their pollution.”

Stephen Bell, an attorney with Cranfill Sumer law firm’s Wilmington office and outside counsel for Asheboro, said that the city he represents believes steps DEQ took in implementing the August 2023 permit “set dangerous precedent with far-reaching implications.”

“Asheboro is not asking for no water regulation. They’re asking for regulation in accordance with the state law. As it stands today, based upon the court’s ruling, there is no water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane. The courts, our environmental rulemaking agency, they’re currently addressing this issue of limits for 1,4-dioxane and the EPA should respect that state-level process,” he said.

Once everyone at the hearing who signed up to speak addressed EPA officials, a member of the audience asked when the agency expects to make a final determination on the permit. The EPA may reaffirm its objection to the permit, require that the state modify the permit, or withdraw its objection of the permit.

Paul Schwartz, associate regional counsel in the Water Law Office at EPA’s Atlanta region office, said there is no statutory or regulatory timeline in which the agency must decide.

“In terms of specifying a date, certain that it would be done by, I don’t think we can do that,” he said. “And it doesn’t make it any easier that we’re operating during a period of government shutdown. But I think we want to give it immediate attention and focus on it so it doesn’t drag on too long.”

If the EPA decides to reaffirm its objection or require the permit to be modified, DEQ will have 30 days to submit a revised draft permit to the agency. If DEQ does not do that, the EPA will become the permitting authority.

The EPA is accepting public comments through Oct. 31 via email to R4NPDESComments@epa.gov or by mail to US EPA, NPDES Permitting Section, Water Division, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA 30303-8960.

As you near Wilmington for your beach vacation, you take in the classic coastal Carolina scenery — tall longleaf pines, grassy marshes, and the wide Cape Fear River. But then something strange catches your eye: a forest of bare white tree trunks rising from the swamp like a field of bones. The eeriness of this ghost forest — a place where living woods have turned to watery graveyards — leaves you wondering, “What killed all the trees?”

The answer researchers with the University of North Carolina Wilmington found in the boneyard may surprise you.

For centuries, bald cypress trees thrived on the banks of the Cape Fear River and its tributaries. Bald cypress trees — ancient survivors — are not fragile. These giants can live for thousands of years, stretching to 120 feet tall and standing strong through hurricanes thanks to buttressed roots that prevent the tree from toppling in high winds. An hour away, cypress trees on the Black River are some of the oldest trees in the world with some in Three Sisters Swamp found to be aged at over 2,600 years using tree-ring dating in a 2019 study. But here along the Cape Fear River — like much of the East Coast — many of them are dying and leaving behind ghost forests.

The cost of ghosts

Ghost forests aren’t just spooky. They’re a warning sign. Remote sensing photos from a 2020 paper by Jessica Lynn Magolan and Joanne Nancie Halls show Smith Creek’s freshwater wetlands giving way to salt marsh. Old-growth freshwater swamps are engines of life. They shelter birds, fish and reptiles. They store vast amounts of carbon. Their roots absorb floodwaters, buffering nearby communities when hurricanes roar ashore.

Ghost forests, by contrast, provide little protection. They are markers of loss — loss of biodiversity, of resilience, of time.

And they’re spreading.

Digging into the past

On a warm morning standing in the mud near Smith Creek, graduate student researcher Kendra Devereux of the University of North Carolina Wilmington holds a cylinder of tree core to the light. Each ring tells a story of a year in the tree’s life: how much it grew, whether it was stressed, whether conditions were good or bad.

Devereux and her team are piecing together a mystery. Along with her research advisers, Dr. Monica Rother and Dr. Andrea Hawkes, and a team of other collaborators and students, she’s collected tree cores and sediment samples from two sites on Smith Creek, looking for clues hidden in growth rings and in the microscopic remains of creatures. Tiny, fossilized organisms buried in the layers of river mud act like timekeepers, revealing how salty the water was at different points in history. By studying them, the team can reconstruct how salty the water was when they lived.

And the evidence revealed in their report points to what may be a surprising culprit.

A river made deeper

The cypress deaths weren’t just caused by globally rising seas or regular tides. It appears that the trees were undone, in large part, by ongoing dredging.

Over the last century, the Cape Fear River was repeatedly deepened to allow bigger ships to reach Wilmington’s port. Each time the channel grew, for example, in 1912, 1930, 1946, 1950, 1970, and from 2000 until 2005, more ocean water pushed upstream, according to a 2011 UNCW study for the Army Corps of Engineers that monitored how deepening the Wilmington Harbor would affect tidal range. Combined with rising sea levels, that extra saltwater slowly crept farther upriver and into tributaries like Smith Creek. Even tiny increases in salt can stress or kill bald cypress trees. For people, it was invisible. For trees, it was deadly.

And the problem may only be exacerbated if the Wilmington Harbor channel is deepened from a depth of 42 feet to 47 feet.

Earlier this month, the Corps released a draft environmental study on the proposed multimillion project, which would permit larger ships to cruise from the mouth of the Cape Fear more than 20 miles up river to the North Carolina Port of Wilmington.

Salt: silent killer

Freshwater has almost no salt. Ocean water is about 3% salt, or about 35 parts per thousand. Bald cypress trees start struggling when there’s just a trace more salt than they’re used to. To put it in kitchen terms, just over a pinch per gallon is enough to start killing them. Older trees, despite their size, seem more vulnerable. Along the saltier stretch of Smith Creek, untold numbers of older trees have died, leaving only snags — the standing skeletons of once-living giants.

Upstream, where the water is fresher, cypresses are still thriving, with at least one more than 800 years old. But closer to the Cape Fear, trees that have managed to survive amidst the ghost forests show signs of years of stress, with observable ring patterns that coincide with the dates of major dredging projects. In the 1970s, cypress growth was suppressed in the area with high salt. By 2000, whole stretches of trees had died, leaving behind today’s ghost forest.

A warning rising with the tide

As Wilmington faces sea level rise and continued dredging, Rother, Devereux and the other authors found, the salty tide will keep pushing inland. That means more ghost forests, fewer living cypress trees, and greater risk of flooding for the people who call this coast home.

The white skeletons along Smith Creek are more than strange landmarks. They are warnings etched into the landscape, reminders of how human choices and a changing climate can reshape even the hardiest of forests. As Rother explains, “Climate change and sea-level rise will form more ghost forests across the Atlantic and Gulf coasts,” leaving communities with less natural protection from flooding. And with continuing dredging of the Cape Fear River bottom, hurricane-prone Wilmington could face even greater risks.

Next time you cross that bridge, look again. The ghost forest isn’t just haunting the swamp, it’s a warning carved into bone-white silence.

Chemours’ air permit application to expand production at its Fayetteville Works plant excludes emissions data that should be disclosed to the public, environmental lawyers say.

The company “improperly withheld vital emission data from the public” in its Aug. 14 application to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality, according to a letter Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys sent the department last month.

“We urge the Department to require Chemours to re-submit its application with disclosed emissions data,” the Sept. 19 letter states. “North Carolina law clearly states that emission data cannot be kept secret.”

Jess Loizeaux, Chemours’ communications leader, refuted that claim, writing in an email responding to a request for comment, “our permit application fully disclosed the projected emissions associated with the expansion.”

“Certain details included in the application submitted to DAQ – such as production capacity, operating hours, and emissions factors – were redacted from the public version because they are considered confidential business information and, if made public, could harm our competitive position,” Loizeaux said. “Protecting confidential business information is standard practice and does not affect transparency regarding environmental impacts.”

Attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont made a similar argument earlier this year when they filed a court motion to keep under seal thousands of pages of documents they say include “non-public facts” that largely pertain to chemical production.

Lawyers representing public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant submitted 25,000 pages of documents to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina as part of lawsuit those entities brought against the companies in October 2017.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority, and Wrightsville Beach aim to recover costs and damages associated with the Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River. The river is a drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the region.

The court had not rendered a decision on Chemours’ request as of this story’s publication.

In 2020, Chemours submitted an application to renew its Title V permit, which applies to major source of air emissions, for its Fayetteville Works plant to the state Division of Air Quality.

Two years later, the company applied for a separate permit to expand its production of vinyl ethers and IXM.

Chemours revised and resubmitted that permit application to expand only its production of vinyl ethers last August. Vinyl ethers are a class of compounds used to create a variety of products used in a range of technologies from semiconductor chips to aviation components.

Vinyl ethers are used to create a wide variety of products, including polymers for adhesives, coatings, and plastics

The expansion would pertain to the plant’s two existing vinyl ethers production units, Loizeaux said.

“As outlined in the revised permit application, additional abatement technology will be installed alongside each expansion and is projected to decrease the site’s overall fluorinated emissions by approximately 15%, despite an increase in production,” she said. “A timeline for the expansions has not yet been set.”

Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys argue in their Sept. 19 letter to DEQ that Chemours is violating provisions within the state law that outlines protection and disclosure rules for confidential information.

The application, “blacks out emission rates from stack testing, uncontrolled emission factors, hours of operation, maximum hours of operation, historic production, and post-modification production capacity. The information is necessary to verify and fully understand the emissions and authorized emissions at the facility and cannot be withheld from the public,” according to the letter.

The letter goes on to state that Chemours previously disclosed similar information in previous submissions to DEQ.

“Chemours’ about-face from its past submissions further confirms that this information cannot be treated as confidential,” the letter states.

Last April, the SELC, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, asked DEQ to deny Chemours’ request to expand production at its Bladen County plant, arguing that the company’s air permit application was riddled with flaws.

As part of 2019 consent order with DEQ and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours installed a thermal oxidizer to capture and destroy PFAS from emitting into the air. The order also requires the company to test tens of thousands of private drinking water wells for PFAS contamination throughout the region.

In a 20-page letter to DEQ, SELC attorneys argue Chemours questioned the efficacy of thermal destruction technology on PFAS.

“Investigating Chemours’ thermal oxidizer specifically, [the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] determined that, due to a lack of data, ‘removal processes for products of incomplete combustion or of destruction of potential compounds not studied … are still unclear.’ In other words, it is possible that the company’s thermal oxidizer does not fully destroy many PFAS. Some may break down into other harmful chemicals, and others may not be destroyed at all,” the letter states.

DEQ Interim Deputy Communications Director Shawn Taylor said in an email earlier this month that while air quality officials deem the latest version of Chemours’ application administratively complete, “the Division may require additional information from the applicant to conduct its technical review.”

“The Division plans to schedule a full public engagement process, including a public comment period and public hearings, to be announced at a later date,” he said.

The Environmental Protection Agency is hosting a public hearing next month on a proposed permit for a municipal wastewater treatment facility that discharges 1,4-dioxane into the drinking water supplies for about 1 million North Carolinians.

Oral or written comments about the federal agency’s specific objection to Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant’s proposed National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit will be accepted at the hearing scheduled from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. Oct. 22.

The hearing follows the EPA’s response to a ruling last year by former Chief Administrative Law Judge Donald van der Vaart that N.C. Department of Environmental Quality officials did not follow state law when they calculated discharge limits and established an enforceable water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane.

That chemical, one that cannot be removed through conventional water treatment methods, is deemed by the EPA as a likely human carcinogen.

The state has appealed the ruling.

The Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant has been discharging high levels of 1,4-dioxane upstream of the drinking water supply for several cities and counites, including Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties.

The hearing will be hosted both virtually and in-person at the JB and Claire Davis Corporate Training Center at Randolph Community College, 413 Industrial Park Ave., Asheboro. Doors open at 5 p.m.

Those who plan to attend in-person are encouraged to arrive early and preregister at least 72 hours before the hearing.

Virtual attendees may register online. Instructions are available on how to submit written comments during or after the hearing up until the close of the period for receiving comments. Those who attend virtually will not be able to present oral comments during the hearing.

The hearing will kick off with brief presentations by EPA officials and a neutral process facilitator. Oral comments will be limited to three minutes per person.

The agency does not guarantee that everyone who wishes to speak will get the opportunity to at the hearing, but will accept written comments from anyone who does not.

Written comments will be accepted through Oct. 31 and may be emailed to R4NPDESComments@epa.gov or mailed to US EPA, NPDES Permitting Section, Water Division, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA 30303-8960.

The North Carolina NPDES permit number is NC0026123.

Brunswick County has rescinded its lawsuit against the contractor it hired to expand and upgrade the county’s Northwest Water Treatment Plant with a system capable of removing forever chemicals from drinking water.

The county announced Thursday that it had withdrawn its lawsuit on Aug. 25 against Oscar Renda Construction and surety Zurich American Insurance Co. and Federal Insurance Co., noting in a release “the County reserves the right to refile a lawsuit in the future.”

The release did not include an explanation behind the county’s decision, one made a month after the county terminated its contract with the Oscar Renda and filed the suit citing breach of contract and repeated construction delays.

“The surety will be on-site over the coming weeks to identify the remaining project tasks as part of the new schedule development,” according to the release. “The surety has also hired a management group to provide additional oversight of the project.”

An update to the project schedule is expected to be provided to the county “in the next few weeks, which will be shared with the community as soon as possible.”

The original $167.3 million cost of the project is not expected to change, and there are no plans to increase water rates because of the project delays, according to the county.

The plant is being installed with a low-pressure reverse osmosis, or RO, system capable of removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and 1,4-dioxane, all of which are chemicals that are being discharged by upstream industrial polluters into the Cape Fear River, a major drinking water source in the region.

Work also includes expanding the amount of water the plant can treat by an additional 12 million gallons per day. When the project is finished, the plant will have the capacity to treat more than 36 million gallons of water per day using RO.

County officials note that the county reserves the right to deduct liquidated damages because of the contractor’s delays.

“The delays do not mean that all work has stopped at the project site, but rather that key project milestones have not been met and that the overall project completion date has continued to move into the future,” the release states. “Brunswick County will continue to take all actions necessary to protect the best interests of our residents who have waited far too long for a solution to removing PFAS from our drinking water.”

Brunswick County has filed a lawsuit against the contractor the county hired to upgrade and expand its Northwest Water Treatment Plant.

The county on July 25 terminated its contract with Oscar Renda Contracting and filed suit, citing breach of contract and repeated delays on the expansion, which is to include a reverse osmosis, or RO, system capable of removing PFAS and 1,4-dioxane.

The Brunswick County Board of Commissioners on July 21 amended a contract with CDM Smith Inc. for about $1 million to continue overseeing the site while county officials search for a new contractor, Port City Daily reported.

The lawsuit follows an announcement the county made in mid-June informing residents that the initial anticipated completion of the more than $122 million project was being pushed because the contractor had repeatedly failed to meet its performance milestones.

The RO system is designed to remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and 1,4-dioxane from the plant’s water source, the Cape Fear River. Such manmade, chemical compound pollutants have for years been discharged into the river by upstream industries and municipal wastewater treatment plants.

The project also includes doubling the water treatment plant’s capacity from 24 million gallons per day to 48 million gallons per day.

Brunswick County is seeking damages that include covering costs associated with hiring a new contractor and remediating insufficient work on site, legal fees associated with the lawsuit, and liquidates damages to the tune of $5,500 a day going back to June 30, according to Port City Daily.

County spokesperson Amber Merklinger told the newspaper in a statement that the county was “actively exploring the best legal methods to find a new construction contractor to continue the project as quickly and realistically as possible.”

“Brunswick County is committed to making sure the expansion and reverse osmosis project at the Northwest Water Treatment Plant is completed exactly as planned and designed,” Merklinger stated. “This action was necessary to protect the best interests of our residents who have waited far too long for a solution to removing PFAS from our drinking water.”

The long-awaited reverse osmosis system designed to remove PFAS from Brunswick County Public Utilities’ drinking water supply will not be operational in the time frame originally announced.

County officials announced that, because the project contractor has repeatedly failed to meet its performance milestones, expanded capacity and the reverse osmosis, or RO, treatment system at the Northwest Water Treatment Plant will not be up and running by the start of summer, which officially begins Friday.

“We recognize that this is not the news that people wanted to hear, but it is an important and very much needed step to getting this project over the finish line,” Brunswick County Manager Steve Stone said in a news release. “This is the largest project in Brunswick County’s history, and we have to make sure it is done right. Our community has waited too long already to get a solution to removing PFAS from our water supply, and we felt this was the best step to getting our RO treatment system online as soon as possible.”

The upgraded treatment system will remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, including GenX, and 1,4-dioxane from the plant’s water source, the Cape Fear River.

The plant’s capacity is being doubled from 24 million gallons per day to 48 million gallons per day.

Work is continuing at the project site, but the completion date of that work “has continued to move into the future,” according to the release.

The county has directed the contractor and the surety to “ensure prompt completion of the work” and requested that the surety “take over the work and complete the performance” of the contract.

“Through this process, County staff, professional consultants and surety representatives will evaluate the remaining tasks in the project, develop a new completion schedule, and identify contractors as needed to finish the final tasks to ensure completion of the overall project as timely and effectively as possible,” according to the release.

The county does not have an estimated date of when it will receive a new project schedule, but anticipated receiving one “during the summer.” That schedule will be published as soon as it is available and the county will provide an update on the estimated completion of the remaining project milestones.

The delay is not expected to impact the original project cost of $167.3 million. The county plans to deduct an estimated $3.5 million in liquidated damages from that cost because of the delays. That amount may change “based on present or future factors,” according to the release.

The county does not plan to increase customer rates because of the delays.

Armed now with a petition of 10,000 signatures, a group fighting a proposed development in a forest that holds the last large expanse of old-growth trees in New Hanover County plans to host a rally June 21.

The Save Sledge Forest rally will include live music and food trucks. The rally is scheduled for 4-5 p.m. at Innes Park, 102 N. 3rd St., Wilmington.

An after-party will be held at Waterline Brewing Co., 721 Surry St.

Sledge Forest rises from the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River and sprawls thousands of acres across northern New Hanover County. It is part of the river floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.

Some of the forest’s inhabitants include cypress and loblolly pine trees hundreds of years old and considered a “rare old-growth occurrence,” according to a biological survey published in May 2003 by the Natural Heritage Program of North Carolina, which identified the forest as a significant natural area.

Last year, a Charlotte-based development company submitted proposed plans to build thousands of single-family houses, a golf course, trails and a horse farm on about 1,000 acres of the 4,000-acre site. Much of the remaining 3,000 or so acres includes protected wetlands.

In case of inclement weather June 21, a rain date has been scheduled the following day from 1:30-3 p.m.

Reprinted from our longtime collaborator, North Carolina Health News, to complement our ongoing series on federal budget and staff cuts and the dismantling of programs and services affecting life and lives here on the North Carolina coast.

People who have been struggling to clean up decades of industrial pollution in the lower Cape Fear River basin are expressing their dismay and anger at a federal delay announced Wednesday on a crackdown on so-called forever chemicals that have fouled their drinking water.  

That day, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to extend the timeline for water utilities to reduce the maximum safe levels for human consumption for a select group of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances known as PFAS.

In 2024, under the Biden Administration, the EPA finalized the first-ever enforceable standards for six PFAS compounds: PFOA, PFOS, HFPO-DA (GenX), PFBS, PFNA and PFHxS. At that time, water utilities had until 2029 to comply with the new standards. 

A year later, the Trump Administration’s newly appointed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency would uphold standards set for PFOA and PFOS — legacy PFAS that persist in the environment despite no longer being manufactured. But Zeldin also announced he would rescind and re-evaluate rules for the other four, including GenX. 

GenX is the common name for the substance produced at the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant; it was discharged into the river’s water for decades until researchers revealed their presence in 2017. 

Additionally, the new federal timeline gives utilities until 2031 to comply with the standards, extending the original 2029 deadline.

“We are on a path to uphold the agency’s nationwide standards to protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their water,” Zeldin said in a news release. “At the same time, we will work to provide common-sense flexibility in the form of additional time for compliance.”

While Zeldin’s statement appeared aimed at reassuring the public that the EPA is taking control of the situation, to critics, it sounded like a betrayal — signaling, in their view, a retreat from more robust protections from substances that have become known as “forever chemicals” because of their persistence in the environment.

‘Not forward-thinking’

“Overall, PFOA and PFOS are chemicals of the past, though they are still present in drinking water sources. So removing them will get a lot of others,” said N.C. State University epidemiologist Jane Hoppin in an email. “But the other four are chemicals of the future, particularly GenX, so removing these rules would not be forward-looking.”

In 2017, Hoppin headed a team of researchers and launched the GenX Exposure Study, which revealed that most of the people from the Cape Fear River Basin who participated in the research have PFAS in their blood.

There are thousands of unique PFAS in the environment, according to experts. They’re present in multiple products to help make them slippery and resistant to oils, water and solvents, including some cosmetics and apparel, microwave popcorn wrappers, dental floss, firefighting gear and some firefighting foams.

PFAS exposure is associated with a range of adverse health effects, such as increased cholesterol levels, kidney and testicular cancer, pre-eclampsia in pregnant women and decreased vaccine response in children, among other conditions.

“The EPA is caving to chemical industry lobbyists and pressure by the water utilities, and in doing so, it’s sentencing millions of Americans to drink contaminated water for years to come,” said Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook in a statement.

Cook’s organization has worked throughout the country to document environmental problems.

“The cost of PFAS pollution will fall on ordinary people, who will pay in the form of polluted water and more sickness, more suffering and more deaths from PFAS-related diseases,” he said. 

Kelly Moser, senior attorney and leader of the Water Program at the Southern Environmental Law Center, echoed this sentiment. “When this administration talks about deregulation, this is what they mean — allowing toxic chemicals in drinking water at the request of polluters,” she said in a release.

Living with PFAS

It has been a tumultuous eight years for thousands of North Carolinians living in the Cape Fear River Basin since the presence of  the forever chemicals was first announced in 2017. Among those affected are residents whose drinking water wells are contaminated, likely because of PFAS that were incinerated at the Fayetteville Works plant and drifted far and wide in emissions from the factory. 

Despite a 2019 consent order — established among Chemours, Cape Fear River Watch and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality — aimed at assisting residents with PFAS-contaminated wells, living with PFAS is a daunting challenge.

Jamie White, administrator of the Facebook group “Grays Creek Residents United Against PFAS in our Wells and Rivers,” which works to raise awareness about PFAS contamination, expressed the group’s frustration after the EPA’s latest announcement.

“Well, it shocked us all, first off — and when I say all I speak for the group,” White said during a call with NC Health News. “Number one, we have worked for eight years to get the limits lowered, to bring awareness to everybody, because our wells are contaminated.”

“(The EPA) extended the public water facilities another two years (before) having to have the chemicals cleaned out of their water systems — another two years of contaminating the public,” she said.

Jane Jacobs (EagleHeart), a tribal leader of the Tuscarora Nation, an Indigenous community with many members in the Cape Fear River Basin, criticized the lack of action to protect vulnerable communities.

“My children, my grandchildren, need to be protected from all of the poison, not some of the poison,” Jacobs said. “If somebody was pointing a gun at my kid right now, am I going to protect him from one bullet or all of the bullets?”

Jacobs also highlighted the disproportionate impact on her community. 

“Being a bipoc community, we face a lot more environmental hardships than most people do,” she stated. “We have to drink the tap water. We don’t have money for filters, so for the people in my community, this affects us 10 times worse because we don’t have the money to protect ourselves.”

Looking ahead

While many expressed disappointment over the EPA’s decision, the environmental community remains hopeful that more stringent rules could eventually prevail at the state level — though it may take time. 

One significant obstacle is the Environmental Management Commission, which is responsible for developing regulations to safeguard, preserve and improve the state’s air and water resources. Since 2022, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has been working with the commission to establish regulations for PFAS and 1,4 dioxane — a cancer-causing pollutant that’s also been found to be widely discharged by industrial companies and ultimately flow into the Cape Fear River.

However, a series of delays have stalled progress, preventing the process from advancing to the public comment period — the next step toward establishing maximum contaminant levels for PFAS at the state level.

The most recent Environmental Management Commission meeting, on May 7, ended in another delay after the Office of State Budget and Management raised concerns about the proposal’s fiscal analysis.

Possible remedies

Despite the setbacks, several people at the meeting expressed relief, including Haw Riverkeeper Emily Sutton.

“There’s not actually any checks or enforcement to make sure that the plans that are drafted are effective, and so this (plan) doesn’t do anything for our downstream community members,” Sutton said. 

She also criticized the fiscal analysis requested by the Office of State Budget and Management.

“The fiscal analysis that they’ve asked for also is flawed. It doesn’t include information about the financial impacts for downstream communities who are bearing the burden of this pollution. (The fiscal analysis) is looking at how much this is going to cost polluting industries. That’s not our concern. Our concern is the health of our community members.”

Southern Environmental Law Center’s Moser agrees that the commission’s proposal falls short of the outcome environmental groups demand. 

“The EMC is siding with polluters and considering adopting rules that were written by polluters,” Moser said. “That could allow industrial facilities to release PFAs indefinitely into North Carolina’s drinking water sources and even increase the toxic water pollution that they are putting into our waterways.”

Sutton and Moser and their colleagues are closely monitoring Senate Bill S666 — the Water Safety Act — proposed by North Carolina Senate Majority Leader Michael Lee, R-New Hanover. If passed, the bill would deliver the state-level regulatory action environmentalists are pushing for.

“ (The proposed bill) directs the EMC to set regulatory limits on PFAs, and that is what our hope is,” Sutton said. “We don’t trust that this commission will hold polluters accountable, and unfortunately, the Department of Environmental Quality has to abide by what they are directed by the EMC.”

Moser pointed out that a potential remedy exists to address the water pollution problem: “It’s more important than ever that states like North Carolina, EPA and wastewater treatment plants use their current authority under the Clean Water Act to require that industry stops their pollution at the source before discharging it into our waterways.” 

The Environmental Management Commission is scheduled to meet again in July, while the EPA is expected to update federal PFAS standards by late 2025, with finalization anticipated by spring 2026. Amid these ongoing challenges, Jacobs offered a rallying cry to fellow environmentalists: “We just need to keep pushing. We need to keep fighting.”

More than 1 million cubic yards of sand will be injected onto ocean shores on Oak Island in conjunction with routine maintenance dredging of the Wilmington Harbor.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District announced Monday it has awarded an $18.6 million contract to Norfolk Dredging Co. of Chesapeake, Virginia, to clean out an estimated 1.3 million cubic yards of sand from the Wilmington Harbor Inner Ocean Bar.

The beach-compatible material will be placed on the beaches of the town of Oak Island and Caswell Beach some time during the environmental window, which runs from mid-November through April 30, according to a Corps’ release.

“This dredging project will ensure safe and efficient passage for commercial vessels while also providing the valuable benefit of beach nourishment for Oak Island,” the release states. “Maintenance dredging is a necessary process to remove accumulated sediment from the Inner Ocean Bar, ensuring the harbor maintains its authorized depth. The USACE Wilmington District remains dedicated to its mission of maintaining the nation’s waterways and supporting the economic vitality of the region through projects like this.”

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent, notably known as a leader in the region’s fight against “forever chemicals,” announced she is leaving her post next week.

“To my colleagues and community members in ‘PFAS land’ – I am not giving up and I’ll be in touch,” Sargent said in an email Wednesday night announcing her upcoming departure.

Sargent’s last day as the nonprofit environmental organization’s executive director is May 23. She is taking on a new role as N.C. Audubon’s director of community building beginning May 27.

“Cape Fear River Watch remains steady and strong, and a transition is in-the-works, guided by your trusted CFRW leadership, and I’ll be here to help,” Sargent said. “The decision did not come easily or hastily for me. This is bittersweet as heck.”

During her role as executive director, Sargent became a prominent voice against the releases of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, by industries into the environment, including the Cape Fear River. She has recounted the story of her brother, who died in December 2019 following a battle with brain cancer.

Sargent has publicly questioned whether his exposure to PFAS for decades as a Chicago firefighter and former U.S. Marine caused his cancer.

Sargent explained in her email that her role with Audubon “will allow me the privilege of focusing most of my time on the aspect of environmental protection that my time with CFRW has taught me is the most meaningful to me – working with the community.”

“While working myself ragged does come with a badge of honor to some extent, I have come to realize that I want more time for peace with loved ones in this short life of ours.  I am hoping this shift brings that peace, while still fulfilling me through a new purpose in protecting our environment – for the birds!,” she said.

Sargent joined the organization’s advocacy committee some 12 years ago and, in 2019, was named its executive director.

“I will remain in town and will remain faithfully involved and supportive of CFRW,” she said. “I’ll see y’all around!”

Cape Fear River Watch is inviting the region to use the power of the pen to express their passion for clean water to state rulemakers.

The organization’s “Postcards Against PFAS” is set from 5:30-8 p.m. Tuesday at Waterline Brewing, 721 Surry St., Wilmington.

Those who attend will have the opportunity to write postcards and emails to the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission, or EMC, and Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover.

The EMC’s water quality committee is to consider at its meeting in Raleigh on Wednesday whether to send to the full commission a proposed rule to establish monitoring and minimization requirements for dischargers of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The full commission, whose role is to protect, preserve and enhance the state’s water and air resources, is scheduled to meet the following day.

Related: Committee to consider draft plans for 3 PFAS, 1,4-dioxane

Three PFAS – PFOA, PFOS and GenX – are anticipated to be included in the draft rule. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that more than 12,000 PFAS, which are chemical compounds used in the manufacturing of a host of consumer goods, exist.

A draft rule presented to the EMC’s Water Quality Committee last March was largely crafted from input provided by the North Carolina Water Quality Association, whose members are from public water, sewer and stormwater utilities.

There are hundreds of industries in North Carolina that pay wastewater treatment plants to take their industrial waste. Those treatments plants do not remove PFAS.

Cape Fear River Watch is asking participants at next week’s event to urge Lee to muster his fellow legislators to pass three PFAS-related bills that call for reductions in PFAS discharges, studies associated with PFAS contamination, and prohibiting firefighting foams containing PFAS for firefighter training or testing. Those include House bill’s 569 and 570, and Senate bill 666.

An area branch of the NAACP has joined the fight to keep Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont from shielding thousands of pages of documents from the public eye.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice on Tuesday filed a motion on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People New Hanover County Branch objecting to the chemical manufacturers’ attempt to keep the documents under court seal.

“The people of New Hanover County have been kept in the dark for too long,” NAACP New Hanover County Branch President LeRon T. Montgomery said in a release. “We have a right to know what dangers have been allowed into our water and our lives. Our fight is about protecting our community’s health today and for generations to come, and that starts with transparency.” 

The motion comes on the heels of one filed earlier this month by the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is also seeking to intervene in the case brought against Chemours and DuPont as those companies aim to keep documents under seal. That motion has was filed on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and the Environmental Justice Community Action Network.

Related: Groups move for disclosure of Chemours’ sealed documents

It’s a case that goes back to October 2017, when Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority and Wrightsville Beach sued to companies to recover costs and damages associated with Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into the Cape Fear River.

For decades, the plant discharged a host of the chemical compounds into Cape Fear River, which is the drinking water supply for tens of thousands of residents in the region.

That includes all 430 members of the NAACP New Hanover County Branch, according to a release.

“Our communities have a right to see the information that Chemours and DuPont want to keep hidden,” Anne Harvey, chief counsel for environmental justice at the coalition, said in the release. “For too long, families in Wilmington and New Hanover County have carried the burden of corporate pollution without knowing the full truth. We’re fighting to make sure they get the information they need and deserve.” 

In February, attorneys for Chemours and DuPont requested the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina keep from public view what they argue are mostly internal communications between company employees discussing chemical production that is “competitively sensitive.”

In its motion to intervene, New Hanover NAACP argues that the documents in question are protected by the first amendment, stating, in part, “There is no question that there has been widespread PFAS contamination of the Cape Fear River Basin. Ongoing testing continues to find an expanding field of affected drinking supply wells, but the full scope of the contamination is as yet unknown. At the very least, the public has a right to know what the Companies know about the harm their communities are suffering.”

“The public has a right to the information to enable them to make informed decisions about their homes, drinking water use, and health care,” the motion continues. “That information is particularly essential in light of the Companies’ plans to expand operations at the Fayetteville Works facility.”

Cape Fear River Watch was recently awarded a state award for the organization’s advocacy to stop chemicals from being discharged into the river and litter cleanup efforts.

The Wilmington-based nonprofit received the education and leadership award from the North Carolina Source Water Collaborative, a partnership of volunteers from nonprofit organizations, universities, state, local and federal agencies, professional associations, and regional councils of government.

Jessica Janc, High Country Program director, also won an education award for collaborative educational programs.

The annual Source Water Protection Awards program recognizes individuals and organizations that protect public drinking water sources. Awards were announced last month during the Water Resources Research Institute’s annual conference.

Cape Fear River Watch works to educate the public and advocates against discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into the Cape Fear River, the raw drinking water source for tens of thousands of North Carolinians.

The Source Water Collaborative develops and assists in creating strategies that preserve raw drinking water sources including rivers, lakes, streams and aquifers and land that protects and recharges those sources.

Third in a series

A chemical manufacturer that discharged pollutants directly into the Cape Fear River for decades has asked a judge to keep thousands of documents out of the public eye.

Attorneys for Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont requested the court keep under seal mostly internal communications between company employees about “non-public facts” that largely pertain to chemical production, according to the motion filed Feb. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

“The court has recognized that this exact type of information is competitively sensitive because, in the hands of a competitor, it could be used to disadvantage Defendants,” Chemours’ attorneys argue.

Their appeal to the court aims to shield from the public between 5,000 and 10,000 pages of documents the plaintiffs’ lawyers submitted in their case against the companies, according to an attorney representing public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant.

“We do not believe there is a good basis for the vast majority, if not all, of those documents to be under seal,” said attorney Bill Cary of Brooks Pierce Law Firm.

The firm represents Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority, and Wrightsville Beach, which sued the companies in October 2017.

The lawsuit aims to recover costs and damages associated with the Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the region.

PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 chemicals used in everyday consumer products including food containers, stain-resistant carpet and water-repellant gear. These man-made chemical compounds are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in humans and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and developmental issues and increased risk of some cancers.

Included in the 25,000 pages Brooks Pierce has submitted to the court is a history of dealings Chemours’ West Virginia-based Washington Works Facility has had with PFAS, Cary said.

“Many of the documents that they have identified as wanting to be sealed are already on the public record, which means that there is no reason to seal them,” he said. “They’re already public knowledge. They are either part of the (Environmental Protection Agency) public record or they have been exhibits in other files.”

The Washington Works’ plant historically used synthetic compounds perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, commonly referred to as C8, and GenX, in its manufacturing processes. The plant produces resin used to make the semiconductors that power cellular phones, computers and other electronic systems.

For decades, the plant’s owners knowingly discharged C8 into the Ohio River, the drinking water supply for an estimated 5 million people. High levels of the chemical were found in public drinking water supplies and private drinking water wells downstream of the facility, prompting government intervention and a slew of lawsuits.

Earlier this year, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, a statewide nonprofit, filed a federal lawsuit seeking a temporary court order for Chemours’ Washington Works facility to reduce its discharges of GenX into the Ohio River. The lawsuit alleges the company is exceeding its permitted discharge limits.

As part of a 2019 consent order with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours has spent millions taking steps to reduce its emissions of PFAS into the Cape Fear, the ground and the air. The consent agreement also charges the company with testing thousands of private water wells in the region and providing a means of uncontaminated drinking water to households with private wells that contain elevated levels of PFAS.

The brunt of costs associated with removing PFAS from raw water sources has fallen on downstream drinking water suppliers, including Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA. The utility has spent millions in upgrades to filtrate PFAS out of the drinking water it provides to customers in the Wilmington area. The average customer bill includes a $7.50 charge associated with the utility’s filtration system.

A CFPUA spokesperson referred questions to Cary.

An upgrade and expansion of Brunswick County’s Northwest Water Treatment Plant totaling more than $120 million is expected to go online late this spring. The project includes the installation of an advanced low-pressure reverse-osmosis treatment system to remove compounds including PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, the latter of which is a likely carcinogen that is also being discharged into the Cape Fear River by upstream polluters.

“The health of the Cape Fear River is of importance to everybody in the watershed and they should be informed about it,” Cary said.

Emily Donovon, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, said in a telephone interview earlier this week Chemours and DuPont had spent decades “hiding” its discharges of PFAS into the Cape Fear River at the expense of residents living downstream of the Fayetteville Works plant.

“We’re not just talking about monetary expenses,” she said. “We’re not talking about utility costs. We’re talking about the fact that people are dying. People have died. People died not knowing if what that company did and that facility did caused their illness to accelerate or cause them to get sick in the first place. We deserve to know everything that this company did. Out of basic human decency, we deserve to be able to see those files and we deserve to be able to know exactly what was going on. History needs to know this.”

Clean Cape Fear on Thursday afternoon posted an online petition for members of the community to sign in support of unsealing the documents.

Cary described information in the documents the companies want to remain sealed as “embarrassing” internal documents that include communications among Chemours employees.

“Or I would be embarrassed if I was Chemours,” he said.

An attorney with Miami-based Shook, Hardy and Bacon, LLP, the law firm representing The Chemours Co. FC, E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Co., and The Chemours Co., did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

In their request to keep documents sealed, the attorneys argue Brooks Pierce violated electronic filing rules, writing, in part, that the plaintiff’s “indiscriminate inclusion of large swathes of immaterial documents” place “an undue burden on Defendants in responding and preparing this motion.”

Chemours’ attorneys go on to write that it would be impractical to redact the “enormous volume” of documents Brooks Pierce included in its Jan. 17 motion for summary judgment, or a request of the court to rule for one party against another party without a full trial.

Brooks Pierce has until April 14 to respond to the motion.

“We will respond to the motion that day,” Cary said.

In 2023, CFPUA filed a separate lawsuit in Delaware’s Court of Chancery to stop DuPont, Chemours and their related spinoff companies from financial restructuring, a move that would allow the companies to avoid liability for damages resulting from PFAS contamination. The case has been stayed pending the outcome of the 2017 lawsuit.

There’s a chance Sunday to support a nonprofit organization’s effort to protect the Cape Fear River while filling your belly with oysters.

Cape Fear River Watch is hosting “Sip & Shuck for Cape Fear River Watch” pop-up beer and oyster roast from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. Sunday, March 9, at The Alley, 1605 Queen St., Wilmington.

Tickets are $40 and include a baker’s dozen of oysters, two beers donated by The Alley in the Cargo District and provided by Waterline Brewing Co., also in Wilmington, and live music by The Noseeums. Tickets are limited. Register online.

The 1,000 oysters being served at the pop-up were raised and donated by the shellfish hatchery at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Marine Science.

Cape Fear River Watch was founded in 1993 and has a mission “to protect and improve the water quality of the Cape Fear River Basin for all people through education, advocacy and action.”

​As the hours passed, day turning into night, prospects looked bleak for a research vessel carrying scientists and students hoping to get past the mouth of the Cape Fear River to deeper waters offshore.

The R/V Cape Hatteras had essentially been stuck at the mouth of the river for about 24 hours after leaving the morning of Feb. 10 from its mooring at Cape Fear Community College in downtown Wilmington, thanks to an abrupt change in the weather.

“I won’t lie, I did not think we would make it offshore, which feels like a waste with this large vessel to just be stuck at a spot we could sample fairly easily on smaller boats,” said Dr. Bradley Tolar, an assistant professor with the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

February tends to be a month when the weather serves up less-than-ideal working conditions offshore.

Cold temperatures, whipping winds and rain proved that to be the case during the first several hours of the maiden trip of the TEAL-SHIPS project, a groundbreaking expedition to study shore-to-sea habitats.

TEAL-SHIPS, an acronym for this mouthful: Transect Expedition to Assess Land-to-Sea Habitats via Interdisciplinary Process Studies, will allow researchers the opportunity to get an understanding of the biological, chemical and physical changes in habitats from the mouth of the Cape Fear River to the Gulf Stream’s warm waters.

This particular area of North Carolina’s coast has largely remained understudied since the 1990s. And those previous studies of the area between the 1970s and 1990s focused primarily on nearshore ecosystems.

Now, through a series of cruises (no, not the kind where mai tais are served on the pool deck), researchers of different coastal marine science disciplines hope to build a baseline in understanding how changes in the Gulf Stream flow affect the ocean’s food chain and critical habitats between the coastline and Atlantic continental shelf.

Tolar is spearheading the venture, one that was able to come to fruition through a $1.5 million General Assembly-funded grant through the University of North Carolina System Research Opportunities Initiative, a program that focuses on several research areas including marine and coastal science.

TEALS-SHIPS includes principal investigators from UNCW, the UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and East Carolina University.

Over the course of the next two years, researchers and some of their students will embark on an expedition about every three months, setting course to a series of stations mapped from the river’s mouth to the Gulf Stream. By going out every three months, researchers aim to capture any potential changes in each season of the year.

“Even though this is only giving us two years, the goal is to write grants to continue sampling further, maybe not to this level or this frequency, but just to have a better understanding of how the coast and offshore are connected,” Tolar said.

The Gulf Stream is a powerful current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, curves around the Florida peninsula, up the Eastern Seaboard and extends toward Europe where it warms western European countries.

“But for our coastline, we know that it transports nutrients, it transports species up to our coast,” Tolar said.

The Gulf Stream oscillates and there is some thought that rising sea temperatures might actually weaken the current over time.

“We don’t really know what those consequences might be to what it transports up to our coast,” Tolar said. “If it’s transporting nutrients that feed our coastal habitats, which we care about a lot with our state’s blue economy, if it weakens or oscillates farther offshore rather than coming inshore, we would want to know.”

During each cruise, physical oceanographers will collect fine-scale water samples to get a sense of how the Gulf Stream current is moving and any changes in that movement over the course of a year.

Two, 20-minute-long fish trawls will capture as much fish as possible at each of the project’s six major stations, each of which include vastly different types of habitat. Researchers will count all of the species captured during the trawl sweeps, collect 10 of each species, and measure 30 of every species.

“This allows them to get a sense of the diversity of fish, the abundance of fish, and then their variability and size to see basically how fish communities change as we go offshore,” Tolar said.

Dr. Christian Briseño-Avena, a UNCW assistant professor of biological oceanography, plankton ecologist, and another principal investigator on the project, will collect zooplankton and larger phytoplankton to study how those organisms change over time.

“Eventually we’d like to know more about how the zooplankton, or the plankton in general, are changing or not changing for this region over longer periods of time,” he said.

Copepods “change a lot in this region,” he said. But samples of the tiny crustaceans collected from this region are sparse.

Briseño-Avena said he is learning as he goes on each expedition, targeting smaller plankton, fish larvae and zooplankton scooped up from the seafloor to the surface in “bongo nets,” aptly named because they are shaped similar to the open bottomed hand drum.

During TEAL-SHIPS maiden cruise earlier this month, he was met with some surprises when the bongo nets surfaced back aboard the R/V Cape Hatteras, a 135-foot oceangoing research vessel used as a hands-on training tool for marine technology students at Cape Fear Community College.

He wasn’t expecting to see in the winter what turned out to be a large amount of ichthyoplankton, which are the eggs and tiny larvae of fish.

His students have already begun the tedious task of extracting and identifying the different groups and species of plankton he collected. The plankton will be preserved in ethanol and used to build a library-like catalogue of samples that will be available to future coastal marine scientists.

He and Tolar agree the expedition was a success, despite the weather challenges that cut the initial trip by a half day and covered four of the six stations. The ship traveled just under 75 miles offshore, making it to the Gulf Stream where the water temperatures were 30 degrees warmer than those near shore.

“At least we confirmed if we were able to do as much as we did in our 18-hour weather window we’ll be fine for our future expeditions,” Tolar said. “We’ll have no problem getting all the way out there. We learned that we could do it and we learned how to be more efficient about it.”

UNCW’s Center for Marine Science is in the process of acquiring its own, larger research vessel. The 73-foot vessel is expected to be complete in the spring of 2026. TEAL-SHIPS project principal investigators hope to use the new vessel during their final two expeditions covered by the current grant.

Tolar hopes to tap additional funding sources for the program to collect samples beyond two years.

“If we’re able to get more funding in the future we can compare the changes year-to-year,” he said. “Even if not, we have a really nice study that shows this is what’s happening here off the coast of Wilmington and that can connect how other folks along the East Coast are measuring their samples.”

WILMINGTON — A study of possible environmental impacts associated with the proposed Wilmington harbor-deepening project is expected to be released in the fall.

The draft environmental impact study examines different alternatives for the North Carolina State Ports Authority’s plan to make room for larger container ships to get to and from the Wilmington port.

The study’s projected release was the latest update U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District officials shared at a public meeting Thursday night.

Fewer than 10 people turned out for the meeting, which follows a series of meetings the Corps hosted last year that touched on topics ranging from how material dredged from the channel might be used to how the project might affect cultural resources along the Cape Fear River.

The ports authority wants to deepen the harbor from 42 to 47 feet, widen the channel in multiple areas and extend the ocean entrance to the river.

Authority officials say the changes are needed to accommodate larger container ships coming from Asia, which would keep the Wilmington port competitive with other East Coast ports.

The changes would accommodate large vessels that can carry 14,000, 20-by-8-foot shipping containers that have been traveling through the Panama Canal since its expansion in 2016.

But a host of concerns have been raised about the proposed project, with environmental experts and advocates arguing that deepening the channel could exacerbate saltwater intrusion through to the Northeast Cape Fear River and adjoining creeks, eradicate fish habitat, harm cultural resources, and disproportionately affect minority communities along the river.

The environmental study is exploring three possible alternatives, including dredging to a depth of 47 feet, which the ports authority prefers, dredging to a depth of 46 feet, or maintaining the current depth and width of the channel.

Once the draft study is published, the Corps will open a 45-day public comment period as part of the required process in creating the final document.

A city-operated wastewater treatment plant in Randolph County discharged substantially high levels of 1,4-dioxane last month into a tributary of the Cape Fear River, the drinking water supply for about 1 million North Carolinians.

Several downstream businesses and water utilities, including Cape Fear Public Utility Authority in Wilmington and Pender County Utilities, were recently notified that the state “grab samples” collected Jan. 24 at Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant returned a final concentration of 2,200 parts per billion, or ppb.

The plants own grab sample, which was collected the same day, detected a concentration of 3,520 ppb, according to North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources, or DWR. Grab samples are taken at a single point in time.

The federal drinking water health advisory level is 0.35 ppb for 1,4-dioxane, which the Environmental Protection Agency categorizes as a likely human carcinogen.

“After the initial analysis of the samples, DWR completed quality assurance and control measures to validate the results,” a DEQ release states. “DEQ, using EPA toxicity calculations for lifetime exposure, has determined that the average monthly 1,4-dioxane concentration protective of downstream water supplies is about 22 ppb for the Asheboro discharge.”

The chemical compound is used primarily as a solvent in chemical manufacturing.

DWR’s Jan. 28 notice to downstream drinking water utilities and businesses comes just months after a state chief administrative law judge last September revoked 1,4-dixoane limits included in Asheboro’s discharge permit.

DEQ appealed Judge and Office of Administrative Hearings Director Donald van der Vaart’s decision in Wake County Superior Court. The court has not yet ruled on the appeal.

As it awaits a ruling, DEQ is on a timetable set by the EPA to reissue Asheboro’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit and restrict how much 1,4-dioxane it’s wastewater treatment plant may discharge into surface waters.

The federal agency gave the department a 90-day window to submit a proposed revised permit.

DEQ or “any interested person” may request a public hearing on the EPA’s objection to the permit within those 90 days.

If that request is not made and DEQ does not meet the deadline, “exclusive authority to issue the permit passes to the EPA” in accordance with the code of federal regulations, according to the letter.

It is unclear whether the EPA under President Donald Trump will move forward with that mandate.

Trump’s executive order that freezes new regulations prompted the Office of Management and Budget to withdraw a federal rule that would require per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, manufacturers to monitor and reduce discharges into surface waters under the Clean Water Act.

The elevated levels of 1,4-dioxane recorded last month were found in discharge from the treatment plant to Hasketts Creek, which empties into the Deep River within the Cape Fear River Basin.

“DEQ continues to sample at municipal wastewater treatment plants and in surface waters across the Cape Fear River Basin to identify 1,4-dioxane sources,” Laura Oleniacz, DWR public information officer, said in an email. “In addition, DEQ continues to assist municipalities to minimize or reduce 1,4-dioxane coming from industrial wastewater. DEQ is also exploring other avenues for protecting drinking water.”

The agency “agrees with EPA that limits are necessary to protect North Carolinians,” she said.

There have been “significant reductions” at some wastewater treatment plants in what DEQ says has been a collaborative effort between the agency, Environmental Management Commission and municipal operators.

Residents, local governments and water utilities in the Cape Fear Region have been pushing for tighter limits of 1,4-dixoane and PFAS releases from upstream dischargers.

Proponents for such limits argue that the dischargers should bear the brunt of responsibility in keeping these synthetic compounds out of drinking water sources.

“The primary means to achieve health-based levels is to reduce and minimize the release of the contaminant at the sources,” DEQ stated in a Feb. 7 release. “Industrial best management practices and treatment technologies exist to achieve these outcomes that protect North Carolinians’ drinking water sources.”

Last November, the Cape Fear utility’s executive director petitioned DWR Director Richard Rogers and Environmental Management Commission Chair J.D. Solomon to begin emergency rulemaking to limit 1,4-dioxane discharges upstream.

The petition was returned to the utility later that same month with Rogers stating it lacked appropriate text for a proposed emergency rule.

The utility has not taken further action on the matter.

In an email responding to questions Wednesday, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Director of Communications Vaughn Hagerty said utility staff had “been monitoring the situation since we received notification” from DEQ regarding the elevated 1,4-dioxane discharge levels from the Asheboro plant.

The utility’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant treats raw water from the Cape Fear River.

“Treatment technologies at Sweeney, specifically ozonation and biological filtration, are very effective at removing 1,4-dixoane,” Hagerty said.

Additional information about Sweeney’s treatment of 1,4-dioxane and other compounds is available online.

DWR’s Cape Fear River Basin 1,4-dioxance wastewater discharge data is available online.

Work began this week to add 4 acres to an existing oyster and recreational fishing reef in the lower Cape Fear River near the banks of Carolina Beach State Park.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation and the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries are partnering on the project to expand the division’s 1-acre Artificial Reef AR-491, which was installed when the inshore reef site was established eight years ago.

Over the next few weeks, the division will use high-pressure water hoses attached to shallow-draft barges to deploy 2,100 tons of recycled, crushed concrete into the project area. The concrete chunks that are no bigger than a baseball will create a reef base of varying heights and be no thicker than 12 inches.

“The Cape Fear River used to be lined with extensive reefs, but it has experienced a severe decline in oyster population over the last several decades due to pollution, overfishing, deepening of the river, disease, sedimentation, and loss of habitat. The river still has a high volume of floating oyster larvae, and this artificial reef will serve as a base for them to attach to,” according to the release.

In addition to completing the artificial reef site, the project includes restoring 10 acres of wetlands in the park, installing 2,000 feet of living shorelines, and incorporating oyster reef sills and salt marsh habitat along the park’s river boundary, the nonprofit organization announced Wednesday.

“This reef site is somewhat unique in its proximity to shore, making it readily accessible to shore-based anglers or kayakers,” Jordan Byrum, Enhancement Project Manager for the division, said in a statement. “The materials placed at the site in 2017 have withstood several hurricanes and continue to support oyster populations and provide fishing opportunities during high tide. We expect this site will remain productive for anglers visiting Carolina Beach State Park.”

Officials are advising that visitors take caution near the marina where construction materials are stockpiled and moved to the barge with heavy machinery. Access to some boat slips will be limited during the project.

The reef is part the Oyster Pathway, a component of the Coastal Federation’s Lower Cape Fear River Blueprint, which has the goal to improve the river and surrounding watershed’s overall health and water quality.

“The completion of this reef is an important step in the implementation of the Cape Fear River Oyster Pathway,” Ted Wilgis, a coastal scientist with the nonprofit, said in a release.

The Oyster Pathway is to eventually extend downriver to Bald Head Island, connecting the remaining natural reefs with reefs constructed by Audubon North Carolina, University of North Carolina Wilmington and the Bald Head Island Conservancy.

The Division of Marine Fisheries Artificial Reef Program has been operating since the 1970s and has a total of 71 permitted artificial reefs and oyster sanctuaries within the state.

The Coastal Federation, Carolina Beach State Park and the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation have been working together since 2015 on projects in the park and along the shores of the lower Cape Fear River.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District will be providing an update this month about the conditionally authorized project to deepen the Wilmington harbor.

The public engagements scheduled for Feb. 13 in Wilmington will be similar to one the Corps of Engineers hosted last summer, when the public got an opportunity to meet staff and discuss the North Carolina Ports Authority’s proposal to deepen the harbor from 42 feet to 47 feet. The plan also calls for widening the channel in multiple areas and extending the ocean entrance to the Cape Fear River.

The changes are needed to keep the Wilmington port, which is more than 25 miles upriver from the Atlantic Ocean, competitive with other East Coast ports by making room for larger container ships coming from Asia, ports authority officials say.

The changes would accommodate large vessels that can carry 14,000, 20-by-8-foot shipping containers that have been traveling through the Panama Canal since its expansion in 2016.

A public comment period on the project closed last July.

Residents of New Hanover and Brunswick counties and environmental groups have raised several concerns about the project’s potential impacts to fish habitat, cultural resources, minority communities along the river, and saltwater intrusion through to the Northeast Cape Fear River.

Once a draft environmental impact statement on the proposed project is released, the Corps will open a 45-day public comment period on that study.

The public review and comment period is expected to open late this year, with a final environmental impact statement projected to be released fall 2026.

The meeting will be held 7-8 p.m. Feb. 13 at the Boys and Girls Club of Southeastern North Carolina – Brigade Campus, 2759 Vance St., Wilmington.

Additional information about the project may be found online.

A reverse osmosis system designed to remove PFAS from Brunswick County Public Utilities’ drinking water supply is projected to be operational by late spring.

Construction at the Northwest Water Treatment Plant, which includes the integration of an advanced low-pressure reverse osmosis system is 85% complete, according to the county website.

The plant’s capacity is also being double from 24 million gallons per day to 48 million gallons per day. The expanded capacity is expected to become available in early spring.

The upgraded treatment system will remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, including GenX, and 1,4-dioxane from the plant’s water source, the Cape Fear River.

Brunswick County Public Utilities customers have been waiting years for the new treatment system to come online after news broke in 2017 that Chemours Chemical Co.’s Fayetteville Works Plant had been discharging PFAS into the river for decades.

Low-pressure reverse osmosis is “considered the most advanced and effective method” to treat and remove PFAS, according to the website.

The county is financing the more than $122 million project, but hopes to recoup at least some of those funds from Chemours.

The utility has joined others in the region in a lawsuit against DuPont and Chemours, charging they are “responsible for the millions of dollars” the county is spending to install the new treatment system. The lawsuit is ongoing.

A former production manager at a chemical processing company in Navassa pleaded guilty earlier this week to knowingly discharging pollutants into the Cape Fear River.

Barry Darnell White, 63, purposely discharged tens of thousands of gallons of tert-butyl alcohol, or BTOH, and other pollutants directly into the river when he was employed by American Distillation Inc., according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office release.

“Rather than dispose of hazardous pollutants legally, this Navassa industrial site hooked a hose to a quarter-million-gallon waste tank, brazenly discharging over 50,000 gallons of pollutants into the Cape Fear River over a four-year period,” U.S. Attorney Michael F. Easley, Jr. said in a release. “We won’t let corporate polluters cut corners for cash while the rest of us bear the costs. Not in North Carolina, not on the Cape Fear River, and certainly not in Navassa, where descendants of the Gullah-Geeche people have faced more than their share of environmental calamities. We’ll fight to protect our resources and our communities – until justice rolls on like a river.”

American Distillation Inc. has not been charged or admitted wrongdoing, according to the release.

The chemical processing company has been operating off the bank of the Cape Fear River in Navassa since the early 1990s. Operations include blending and marketing industrial grade ethyl alcohol and providing services such as distillation, dehydration, reaction, carbon treating, and blending various chemicals and products from partners across the country.

ADI accepts large quantities of tert-butyl alcohol, a highly flammable, colorless oily liquid with a sharp alcohol odor, from its customer base then distills the alcohol into a usable product for its customers.

As production manager, White oversaw the movement of chemicals from tank to tank and tanker trucks in and out of ADI’s facilities. He supervised a number of employees and reported directly to ADI’s corporate management, according to the release.

Under its federally issued permit, ADI was required to properly dispose of the alcohol byproduct. But beginning in late 2019 through to early 2024, the company accepted more of that and other chemicals from its customers “than it could legally and safely process and remove,” according to the release.

“To ensure operations did not come to a halt and realize maximum profit, ADI released TBOH byproduct from Tank 14 causing it to flow into the Cape Fear River,” the release states. “ADI management had informed some of its employees that if operations came to a halt, the company would suffer serious financial harm, potentially including dissolution.”

Between 2020 and 2024, White connected a hose to a Tank 14 and released about 2,500 gallons of liquid wastewater that flowed into a pipe and drained to an outfall directly to the Cape Fear anywhere from five to six times each, according to the release.

“Our natural resources must be protected from those who blatantly disregard environmental laws by illegally discharging industrial waste into US waters,” Leslie Carroll, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal enforcement program in North Carolina stated in the release. “The defendant in this case discharged wastewater containing Tert-Butyl Alcohol and other chemicals into the Cape Fear River on multiple occasions since at least 2020. Today’s guilty plea demonstrates that EPA and its partners are committed to protecting our natural resources and the communities that rely upon them.”

A day of paddling on the Cape Fear River is being organized to support Hurricane Helene relief efforts in the western part of the state.

Cape Fear River Watch and Kayak for Carolina have announced that 100% of donations and registration fees for the Nov. 16 event will go to two groups, Helene Rebuild Collaborative, organized by fellow paddling industry folks to the west, and MountainTrue, dedicated to clean waters, resilient forests, and healthy communities through their MountainStrong Recovery and Resilience Fund.

Both causes are boots-on-the-ground collaborative efforts to help lay the groundwork for recovery and rebuilding.

Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette will lead a roughly 4-mile paddle along the Cape Fear River at 11 a.m. with a brief stop at Shark’s Tooth Island.

The put-in will be the Riverlights kayak launch and take-out will be at the River Road Park kayak launch.

The Cape Fear River Watch paddle will run as usual, except your paddle donations will be added to Kayak Carolina’s efforts.

You do not have to attend the paddle to donate.

If you’re interested in a different paddle, Kayak Carolina will be guiding other paddles throughout the day as well. They are offering a 9-mile, 4-mile and 3-mile paddle, which all leave at various times from various locations.

WILMINGTON – The dates may have changed, but the host of concerns raised over the past few years have not as the North Carolina State Ports Authority’s plan to deepen and widen Wilmington Harbor is cast back into the public spotlight.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District hosted Thursday its first public meeting since publishing a notice of intent that the agency is preparing an environmental study of the ports authority’s proposal to make room for larger container ships to get to and from the Wilmington port.

The Corps’ notice kickstarts the process in which the public can provide comments, be they questions, suggestions or concerns, on the proposed project.

“We wanted to get this feedback before we invested a lot in our analysis,” said Bret Walters, Wilmington District Planning and Environmental Branch chief. “This is the opportunity to weigh-in very early in the process.”

Walters was among several Army Corps officials on hand at the meeting last week in Sunset Park Elementary School in Wilmington to answer questions and discuss the project with members of the public.

The Corps hosted a series of virtual meetings the first week of this month, each day focusing on specific topics ranging from how material dredged from the channel might be used to how the project might affect cultural resources along the river.

Five years have passed since the ports authority announced its proposal to deepen the harbor from 42 feet to 47 feet, widen the channel in multiple areas, and extend the ocean entrance to the Cape Fear River.

The ports authority maintains that the changes are needed to keep the Wilmington port, which is more than 25 miles upriver from the Atlantic Ocean, competitive with other East Coast ports by making room for larger container ships coming from Asia.

The changes would accommodate large vessels that can carry 14,000, 20-by-8-foot shipping containers that have been traveling through the Panama Canal since its expansion in 2016.

A plethora of concerns have been discussed about the proposed project over the past few years.

Environmental experts and advocates argue that deepening the channel could exacerbate saltwater intrusion through to the Northeast Cape Fear River and adjoining creeks, eradicate fish habitat, harm cultural resources, and disproportionately affect minority communities along the river.

During the virtual meetings held earlier this month, members of the public again posed those concerns to Army Corps officials, offering a new line of questioning about how disturbing the sediment in a river contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, could further affect its quality.

Carolina Beach resident Anne Terry called the proposed project “very frightening.”

“The fish habitat would be ruined,” she said. “There’ll be erosion. Economically it just isn’t going to make any sense. And, it’s never going to be deep enough. I just don’t run into anybody that thinks this makes sense.”

But the ports authority predicts more cargo will be shipped to the Wilmington port, regardless of the size of the vessels transporting that cargo.

“That cargo is going to come here anyway,” Walter said in one of the virtual meetings hosted at the beginning of June.

That means, if the channel is not deepened, there will be a rise in the frequency of ships traveling to and from the port.

In 2019, then-Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works R.D. James rejected the ports authority’s initial draft study, saying it needed significant revisions before he would pass along his recommendation to Congress for approval.

James approved an updated study the following year, and the proposed project was later conditionally authorized by Congress.

If the Corps’ recommends the conditionally authorized plan to dredge to 47 feet, then that plan will not have to go back to Congress for approval.

Other alternatives to be studied include either no action, which means the current depth and width of the channel would not be changed, or dredging to a depth of 46 feet.

If the Corps recommends an alternative aside from the conditionally authorized plan, then that recommendation will have to go to Congress for approval.

It would be several years before dredging would begin after — or if — the Corps recommends the project.

The public has through July 22 to submit comments to the Corps, which has provided a list of considerations people consider in their comments, including suggestions related to the evaluation of impacts to resources, concerns for themselves and their communities, resources that should be evaluated in the draft environmental impact statement, potential project opportunities, suggestions to alternatives being evaluated in the study, data, studies or reports that would support the analysis in the study, and any information missing in the study.

Once a draft environmental impact statement is released, the Corps will open a 45-day public comment period on that study. The public review and comment period is expected to open in late 2025.

A final environmental impact statement is projected to be released fall 2026.

Public comments may be submitted via any one of the following ways:

• Online.
• Email WilmingtonHarbor403@usace.army.mil.
• Mail to: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington Harbor 403, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC  28403.

The bright green scum coating areas of the Cape Fear River’s surface caught everyone by surprise.

Until that summer in 2009, no one had seen Microcystis blooms in the river, which for decades leading up to that point had been monitored for algae.

“The community members, researchers, the water utilities, this was a really strange system to have these types of cyanobacterial blooms,” in the Cape Fear, said Madi Polera, a doctoral candidate at North Carolina State University. “Many historic blooms are typically associated with some kind of nearby, still-moving water, like another lake or reservoir, and the blooms appear immediately downstream.”

Even more baffling was the fact that the blooms abruptly stopped appearing in the river in 2012 — and they haven’t appeared since.

The presence of blooms set off a flurry of investigations. Water utilities studied what types of toxins the blooms may have been emitting into the drinking water supply and how to best remove those toxins from the raw water source. Wildlife officials wanted to know how the blooms might affect fisheries, particularly the anadromous fish swimming upstream to spawn.

Two years after the blooms disappeared, researchers in 2014 initiated a forensic-like investigation to rule out any possible explanation of how the algae got into the river, how to prepare for a reoccurrence of the blooms, and seek out ways to prevent the blooms from sprouting up on the river’s surface again.

Polera, one of the authors of the study that was published in March, explained that the investigation was not one where researchers tried to prove anything.

The study “was just what is the most likely, the most plausible aspects that we could not rule out,” Polera told Coastal Review via telephone earlier this week.

Microcystis algae blooms are made from a recipe largely of nitrogen and phosphorous. The cyanobacteria thrives in waters like lakes and ponds, blooming during warm summer months before hunkering down into the sediment, where it lies dormant in the winter.

Microcystis blooms produce a few different types of toxins, primarily microcystin. Microcystin can affect the liver and is considered a possible human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency. If ingested, microcystin and the other toxins can cause digestive issues and may cause flu-like symptoms in both humans and animals.

Dogs are especially sensitive to microcystin.

The blooms in the Cape Fear River were localized primarily upstream of Lock and Dam No. 1, an area where conditions are ripe for algae growth because of the lake-like effect the dam has on the water. The dam is near Riegelwood, a community roughly 30 miles upstream of Wilmington and near the drinking water source intake for thousands in the region.

“What we really tried to do was look at everything that we know about the biology of Microcystis and what can contribute to it and kind of go down the list to rule out any possible explanation,” Polera said. “We started with the conditions in the river and we asked what is special about these four summers and at this location that may have changed to now support these blooms that we’ve never seen before.”

Were the summers between 2009 and 2012 particularly hot? Was there an unusual amount of nutrients in the river? Did the turbidity change in a way that would favor Microcystis blooms?

Polera first turned to monitoring data collected between the early 1990s through the 2000s. It was determined that there was nothing particularly unique about those summers or that location.

Researchers then turned way upstream to Jordan Lake where waters, they knew, had harbored other cyanobacteria in the past. Could a chance in the lake have created conditions that allowed Microcystis to incubate there and send it down river?

No. Researchers determined that the blooms that appeared that far downstream could not have possibly gotten there from the lake.

“We’ve never seen blooms at any other areas of the river that have the same type of lake-like characteristics that Lock and Dam 1 does. There were no blooms behind Buckhorn Dam, no blooms behind Lock and Dam 3 and there were occasional surges out of Jordan Lake when they got really big rains that we didn’t see blooms immediately following that,” Polera said.

Next, researchers focused a little closer to Lock and Dam No. 1, turning their attention to major industrial dischargers.

They were able to rule out wastewater treatment plants in Fayetteville and Elizabethtown.

But they could not eliminate Smithfield Foods’ plant in Tar Heel, a tiny town in Bladen County that’s home to the largest pork-processing facility in the country.

After confirming the presence of Microcystis in samples of discharge from the plant, researchers combed through monitoring reports to look at whether there was a correlation between when the facility discharged into the river and when the blooms appeared.

Next, researchers compared the Microcystis found in the plant’s discharge to that found downstream near the dam.

“Yes, there’s chlorophyll in there. Yes, there’s Microcystis. Yes, there’s enough nutrients. Yes, they were discharging during the times. Yes, they were discharging enough based on our calculations and modeling that what was coming out of the discharge was enough to seed the population that we saw downstream. I just can’t find anything in their data and in our sampling to say, no, this wasn’t possible,” Polera said.

One simple way to prevent the possibility of future blooms, she said, is for regulatory agencies to require industries that may have chlorophyll a, which allows algae to use sunlight to convert molecules into organic compounds, to monitor for that particular type of chlorophyll.

The EPA is currently proposing revisions to wastewater discharge standards for meat and poultry products facilities. The revisions would require facilities to reduce the amounts of nutrients and other pollutants they discharge by using “affordable and available wastewater treatment technologies.”

“I think the good news is we have been watching now for over 10 years,” Polera said. “We’ve been prepped and ready to go if it ever does happen again. The water utilities are very prepared, if it does happen, to make sure that nothing gets into the drinking water and they can do that very effectively. As far as the risk goes, the water utilities and researchers that are really keeping an eye on the conditions of the river have it covered. My hope is that with all that preparation and additional monitoring, I would be surprised if we see it again.”

A manufacturing plant in Duplin County would have to monitor, but not limit, chemical compounds it discharges from its wastewater treatment system into the Northeast Cape Fear River under the terms of a draft permit being reviewed by state and federal agencies.

Automotive textile and technology manufacturer Lear Corp.’s draft National Pollutant Discharge Eliminations System, or NPDES, permit renewal includes a special condition that the company monitor for per- and polyfluoroalkyl, or PFAS, emitted from its treated industrial wastewater into the river quarterly.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources also would require the company to monitor its outtake of 1,4-dioxane, which is primarily used in as a solvent in manufacturing.

The state’s proposal to let the company monitor, and not curb, man-made chemicals the plant discharges is a slap in the face of residents already living in and downstream of an area where water quality is affected by a heavy concentration of large hog and poultry operations, opponents say.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to the water resources division’s water quality permitting section chief on March 5, one month after the draft permit was received by the agency, notifying the state it was invoking a 60-day extension to review the permit.

“The EPA will complete the review of this permit as expeditiously as possible prior to the end of the 90-day period on May 6, 2024,” the letter from EPA Region 4’s Water Quality Branch Acting Manager Christopher Thomas states.

DEQ had received by early March more than 400 emails calling for the state to require Lears cap the amount of PFAS it releases into the river, Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said.

The state agency has since pushed back its public comment period deadline on the draft permit to March 28.

Lear declined to answer specific questions about its draft permit application, instead offering an emailed statement, saying in part that the company is working with DEQ on a permit renewal “that adheres strictly to state regulatory guidelines and standards governing the use and disposal of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).”

“We conduct rigorous monitoring of our wastewater discharge to ensure compliance with the NCDEQ regulatory requirements and have reformulated the majority of our products to eliminate the use of PFAS,” the statement continues. “We are working to transition our remaining products to a PFAS-free solution as soon as reasonably practical. We are committed to continuing to work with NCDEQ and to take appropriate environmental stewardship actions. Our highest priorities are the health and safety of people, local communities, and the environment.”

The state issued Lear’s current permit in 2018, about a year after news broke that the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for tens of thousands of people, had been the dumping site of a host of PFAS emitted from the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works facility for decades.

Under a 2019 consent order, the company had to add to its Bladen County plant various controllers, including a thermal oxidizer to trap PFAS from being released into the air and an underground retainer wall to prevent PFAS-contaminated groundwater from getting into the river.

There are well over 10,000 different PFAS being used in the manufacturing of a wide-range of consumer goods. PFAS are used in the making of everything from stain-resistant carpets and waterproof gear to nonstick cookware and disposable food containers.

Potential health effects from exposure to PFAS include changes in cholesterol, low birth weight in newborns, changes in human immune response, increased risk of high blood pressure in pregnant women and increased risk of certain cancers such as kidney and testicular cancer.

The technology Chemours is using to reduce the amount of PFAS it discharges to near non-detectable levels prove that other manufacturers can and should do the same, Sargent said.

“The DEQ is required to enforce these on these other industrial polluters and they’re not,” she said. “This is a federal law. This is the Clean Water Act. DEQ has the full authority to regulate this facility and limit their PFAS dischargers. It’s pretty clear from where we sit it’s obviously ridiculous that DEQ would be allowing any known PFAS dischargers to continue to discharge after all we’ve learned over the last seven years. They should be sticking to their mission, protecting human health and the environment.”

Under the draft permit, Lear would be required to implement the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines on PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, which the agency has classified as a likely human carcinogen.

The EPA’s final rule in a proposal to set limits on six PFAS is expected to be released any day now. The proposed rule limits the maximum allowable amount of a combination of four chemical compounds, including GenX, a PFAS specific to Chemours’ plant in Bladen County.

EPA also proposes to set maximum contaminant levels on what have been two of the most used PFAS compounds – perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS – at 4 parts per trillion.

Public comments may be emailed with the subject line “Lear Corp.” to publiccomments@deq.nc.gov.

Once the public comment period ends, Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers will decide whether to hold a public hearing. A hearing would be held following a 30-day public notice.

Southeastern North Carolina organizations are coming together to promote connecting and celebrating area waterways while addressing pollution in the region with Cape Fear Creek Week.

The effort taking place Monday through Sunday includes programs led by the North Carolina Cooperative Extension and New Hanover County Arboretum, Wilmington’s Heal our Waterways, Cape Fear River Watch, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, New Hanover Soil and Water Conservation District, Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, town of Leland and North Carolina Coastal Federation.

In its second year for Cape Fear, the campaign is part of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Creek Week Network education outreach partnership.

The Deep and Haw rivers converge in Chatham County to form the 200-mile-long Cape Fear River named after the offshore shoals that stretch for miles into the Atlantic Ocean from the river’s mouth. The river ends as a 35-mile-long estuary, which is home to dozens of aquatic species and flows directly into the ocean, according to NCDEQ.

Anna Reh-Gingerich, Wilmington’s watershed coordinator and Creek Week co-coordinator, told Coastal Review that Cape Fear Creek Week is a “wonderful opportunity” to connect with the unique creeks, rivers, marshes and more of the region.

“The City of Wilmington’s Heal Our Waterways Program, for example, offers resources and learning opportunities for how residents and businesses can take steps to protect waterways, like Bradley Creek and Hewletts Creek in Wilmington,” Reh-Gingerich said. “Participating in events like Cape Fear Creek Week gives us a chance to spread awareness about such programs, while also celebrating the waterways they aim to protect. Without the vital cultural, environmental, and economic resources our waterways provide us, the Cape Fear Region would not be what it is today.”

Amy Mead, interim Cooperative Extension director for Brunswick County and Creek Week co-coordinator, said that the educational campaign gives the community a chance to celebrate and learn about the streams and waterways that make the region “such a special place to live.”

“Residents and policymakers alike can learn ways to protect our local water quality through volunteer opportunities, educational talks, and stormwater tours throughout New Hanover and Brunswick Counties,” Mead said. “Water is not only essential for life, but it is also the foundation upon which our community thrives,” adding that through stewardship and education, the Cooperative Extension and its partners “work to protect our precious water resources for generations to come.”

The New Hanover Soil and Water Conservation District is scheduled to kick off the week with a Walking Tour of Wade Park at 3:30 p.m. Monday. The hourlong, family-focused walk at the 17-acre park with Program Coordinator Jessica Stitt will focus on water quality and why it is important for the species living in the wetland. Visit the website to register or for more information.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation is hosting DREAMS Rain Garden Maintenance at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the DREAMS Center for Art Education, which supports each year more than 600 youth in Wilmington. The stormwater retrofits and native plants in the rain garden help to capture, absorb and filter polluted stormwater runoff from entering into Burnt Mill Creek. Volunteers can expect activities like weeding, mulching, and clearing debris in the gardens, including the “Secret Garden” unveiled last year in collaboration with the Coastal Landscapes Initiative. Volunteers can register online. 

Coastal Federation Education Coordinator Bonnie Mitchell said that as an organization dedicated to safeguarding clean and clear coastal waters, the Coastal Federation works hard to alleviate the detrimental effects of polluted stormwater runoff. The nonprofit organization publishes Coastal Review.

“Cape Fear Creek Week serves as an invaluable platform for uniting our community in awareness of these impacts and showcasing the nature-based strategies implemented to combat stormwater runoff,” Mitchell explained.

She added that as part of the week’s festivities, the Coastal Federation is hosting the volunteer event aimed at maintaining existing stormwater reduction projects and nurturing native plants crucial for absorbing and filtering runoff.

“We hope that our volunteer event along with all the great events happening this week will inspire individuals to adopt stormwater reduction techniques within their homes and businesses, thus contributing to the preservation of our creeks and the coastal ecosystems they empty into,” Mitchell said.

Learn about birds in the area and a newly adopted conservation plan during a Walking Tour of Pages Creek 1 p.m. Wednesday. New Hanover County Soil and Water Conservation District Director Dru Harrison and its program director Stitt will lead the tour. Meet at 1215 Middle Sound Loop Road in Wilmington. Visit the website for information and to register.

“Our creeks, rivers and other waterways are so important here in New Hanover County for many reasons. From fishing to tourism to recreation, they are a piece of what makes our community so unique,” Harrison said in a statement. “Learning about their impact and how to protect them is a vital part of Cape Fear Creek Week and we look forward to our residents getting engaged and joining us in the efforts to preserve our waterways.”

The town of Leland and Cape Fear River Watch are coordinating Storm Drain Marking service activity at 10 a.m. Wednesday. The project includes permanently gluing stainless steel markings on storm drains and distributing door hangers explaining the importance of keeping stormwater free of pollution. Project is for all ages, but those under 16 must be accompanied by a registered adult. Marissa Blackburn, environmental education manager at Cape Fear River Watch, is leading the event. Register online.

Alliance for Cape Fear Trees Executive Director Dan Camacho is leading a presentation on “The Power of Trees” at 2 p.m. Thursday and the many benefits, including the protection and enhancement of creeks and waterways. Camacho will speak for about 45 minutes at the Arboretum. Register online.

Camacho said in an interview that the alliance “obviously values trees, but of course, that concern extends to the environment and our creeks and waterways. Healthy creeks and waterways require a healthy tree canopy. In terms of flood management and stormwater pollution, the leaves of trees capture rain before it ever hits the ground (and allows it to evaporate) and the roots of trees retain and filter water and prevent soil and pollutants from reaching our waterways.”

The Stormwater Infrastructure Walking Tour of Clear Run Branch is at 10 a.m. Friday, March 22. Stormwater engineers Amber Ellis with N.C. State University’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and Fred Royal with the city of Wilmington will give a detailed look at retrofit stormwater control measures and a whole system refit including flood plain restoration of Clear Run Branch in Wilmington. Hosted by the city, Heal our Waterways and N.C. Cooperative Extension. Register online.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust is leading an educational Brunswick Nature Park Hike at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 23, with a focus on Town Creek, saltwater intrusion, and human impacts on area waterways. Water and snacks will be provided. Register online for more information and parking details.

Cooperative Extension Agent Elizabeth Stratton, who heads up 4-H Youth Development, is leading with Cape Fear River Watch the Kerr Ave. Cleanup & Business Outreach Saturday, March 23. Cape Fear River Watch and New Hanover County 4-H are working together to clean up Kerr Avenue to protect nearby streams. For more information on how to join the event, visit the 4-H website or contact Stratton at ekstratt@ncsu.edu.

“Time spent outdoors and in natural spaces as a young person has a significant impact on their connection to nature as well as their physical and mental well-being as they get older,” Stratton told Coastal Review.

“It is important to leave a legacy of clean natural spaces for the upcoming generation and encourage them to be active members of their community which starts as a young person in events like this,” Stratton continued. “Youth are the future. By providing opportunities for them to participate in environmental stewardship now, there is a greater possibility that they will continue that throughout their life, contributing to our thriving community.”

A detailed schedule of events is listed on the Brunswick County Cooperative Extension’s website.

Environmental groups this week have filed a petition asking that the state be required to make industries with discharge permits install equipment that will keep pollution out of rivers and streams.

The Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf Cape Fear River Watch, MountainTrue, and Yadkin Riverkeeper has petitioned the N.C. Environmental Management Commission to rule that the state Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, to mandate industrial permittees install available technologies in order to stop pollution at the source.

“DEQ’s inconsistent application of the law leaves communities in North Carolina vulnerable to harmful industrial water pollution,” SELC Senior Attorney Patrick Hunter said in a release. “The Environmental Management Commission has an important opportunity to confirm DEQ’s longstanding legal obligation to consistently apply the protections of the Clean Water Act to communities across the state. Consistent application of the law will better protect North Carolinians from harmful pollutants like toxic PFAS, or forever chemicals, and 1,4-dioxane.”

Industries that discharge pollutants are required under the Clean Water Act to obtain a permit. Permits have to include existing technologies that can reduce and omit pollutants from entering the environment.

The groups filing the petition argue that DEQ “bypasses” that technology-based requirement “in the majority of permits it issues for industries that discharge pollution directly into local waterways.”

“Our rivers and streams are not dumping grounds and we expect industrial dischargers to minimize the amount of pollution they put into streams that are used for swimming, fishing, and drinking water across the state,” Gray Jernigan, general counsel for MountainTrue, said in the release. “Today, we’re asking DEQ to consistently apply technology-based requirements under the Clean Water Act to protect downstream communities and fish that people rely on for sustenance.”

DEQ has applied technology-based controls in permits for Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County and Colonial Pipeline, the latter of which led to an 86% reduction in the amount of benzene Colonial may discharge into waterways, according to the release.

Chemours, under a Consent Order with DEQ and Cape Fear River Watch, has installed an underground barrier wall to keep per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from seeping from the plant through groundwater and into the Cape Fear River.

Emerging compounds including PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified as a probable carcinogen, have been found at various levels throughout the Cape Fear River. The river is a drinking water source for tens of thousands of North Carolinians.

“Proper application of technology-based controls has led to significant water quality protections in our community,” Yadkin Riverkeeper Edgard Miller said. “We commend DEQ for applying technology-based controls in the Colonial Pipeline permit and we hope that a ruling by the Environmental Management Commission will ensure those protections are extended across North Carolina for all its residents.”

The commission has been asked to require DEQ to evaluate current pollution control technologies for all industrial facilities in the state and set limits based on technologies that are available at the time permits are issued.

“Our petition asks DEQ to apply the same laws it applied at Chemours to other industrial dischargers within the Cape Fear watershed and across the state,” Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette said. “Technologies are available that can dramatically reduce industrial water pollution. Communities in North Carolina are depending on DEQ to issue permits that require industries to use those technologies to better protect water quality and communities.”

Guest commentary

The Cape Fear River is a historic and important body of water in North Carolina, flowing through the communities of Wilmington, Leland, Belville all the way to Southport and beyond. This river is our primary source of drinking water. For centuries, eons for that matter, it has been home to valuable wetlands and floodplains, diverse wildlife, and fish, and more recently a history steeped in our unique heritage and culture. Unfortunately, due to development and population growth, many of these historically important and scarce resources are rapidly being lost or adversely altered forever.

On my occasional trips to and from Wilmington along the U.S. route 74/76/17 causeway to the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, I have often wondered what the Ghost Tree stands on Eagles Island would say to us about this history they have seen. These trees were once part of a healthy and flourishing 1,700-year-old cedar forest ecosystem that spread throughout the region … but is now dead or dying.  

I wonder what stories could these trees tell us if they could speak? Would they warn us about the loss of our valuable wetlands and floodplains, rapid sea level rise, degraded water quality, and the future impacts of flooding in and around our lowlands? Would they speak on their opposition to the past and future development in our floodplains, the plowing under of our culture and history, or the future damage to our Lower Cape Fear ecosystem?

Somehow I feel that long ago when these trees were healthy they were witness to horrific tragedies of the enslaved West Africans, the Gullah Geechee, who toiled and died in the hot sun to grow Carolina Gold … the rice that helped to make plantation owners wealthy and Wilmington one of the richest seaports along the Atlantic Coast in the 1700s and 1800s. Were these trees witnesses who silently watched those who were enslaved, struggle for their freedom, and be robbed of their right to define their own identity?

For me, these trees serve as an ever-present reminder of our past, as they stand quietly along the banks of our river. They have witnessed hundreds of years of history that have unfolded since long before our area was developed. In our present rush to find economic prosperity, they are also a constant reminder of the dramatic alterations we have caused to our ecosystems. Changes made with the belief that humans could out engineer mother nature.

While it is true that the ghost trees hold a certain enigmatic charm to some of us, it is also true that they are a powerful reminder of the human and environmental cost that the river has borne. They serve as a testament and a bellwether, if you will, not only to the human violence of our past but a forewarning of future natural calamities coming to our shores.

I believe that at the intersection of preserving and protecting our environment and cultural history resides the universal language for all of us to tell our stories; it is the ultimate storyteller on a personal and public level. It truly defines who we are as individuals and as a community. It is the hallowed ground of what defines our society’s fundamental values and can serve as the “tree stump” upon which we can sit and tell this story to our children, grandchildren, and generations beyond.

We should be encouraged by the great and tireless work currently underway by many of our citizens and nonprofits, like the Beatty brothers of Navassa, to preserve, protect and celebrate the history and culture of our area. The stories of the enslaved Gullah Geechee are certainly ones of hardship and tragedy and yet it is the message of their resilience and determination that deserves far more than just a passing reference in our history books.

We have much to celebrate here in our area of eastern North Carolina: the dedicated efforts of the Cape Fear River Watch, the Southern Environmental Law Center and a host of dedicated volunteers who keep watch over our environment; the Coastal Land Trust and others restoring Reaves Chapel in Navassa; the annual Rice Festival in Leland; the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission; the Cameron Art Museum; and the Eagles Island Nature Park Task Force to name but just a few … each committed to preserving, protecting, and celebrating our collective history and offering great platforms for all of us to get to know the importance of our connection to the Lower Cape Fear River. I hope that future generations see and act upon the message of the ghost trees. We need to listen and heed their warning. 

Finally, let me summarize by sharing a poem that I have been working on for a very long time.

Ghost Trees of the Cape Fear River

As I gaze out o’er the Cape Fear River,
Where ghost trees seem to have eyes.
Enchanted sights from a haunted giver,
Spirits of old come alive.

Hear the whispers through the trees,
Of stories told within their rings.
Silted waters brown meandering,
Within this ancient course it brings.

Rice harvested in the heat of day,
Trees – their stories tell.
Relentless work, no time to play,
Ironic transition from heaven to hell.

Songs of fields, songs from souls,
Fade with twilight, just memories now.
As Cape Fear ghosts roam the shoals,
Like kindred spirits that never bow.

Watered with blood, watered with sweat,
Here is where gold was grown.  
With ancient hands cold and wet,  
Shadows dim of those unknown,

Darken sky, an evening’s chill,
As the veil of dusk descends.
Night brings fear and mystery,
Ghost trees’ presence lends.

Murmured messages of the old,
For all the moons they have seen.
Miseries’ waters that flooded their souls,
Speaks truth to what has been.

Silhouettes take root along the shore,
Revealing this, a solemn sight.
A languorous vision of ghosts before,
Frail branches of the night.

Listen to the whispers of ghost trees,
For they know this story well.
Through the ebb and flow of time,
They stand as the last farewell.

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

A community information meeting on Lower Cape Fear River private well sampling will be at 6 p.m. Oct. 11 in Wilmington.

The state Department of Environmental Quality is hosting the meeting at Roland-Grise Middle School in Wilmington.

The staff is to share updates on private well sampling underway for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, contamination in New Hanover, Brunswick, Columbus and Pender counties. Staff will also be available to answer questions.

Chemours has been directed by the state to sample for PFAS contamination in eligible private drinking water wells downstream of the Fayetteville Works facility. Chemours is required to provide alternate water supplies to residents whose wells exceed specific action levels, DEQ officials said.

To have your well sampled, call Chemours at 910-678-1100.

Officials said that messages to the Chemours call line are monitored 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Chemours is to respond within 24 to 48 hours starting on the next business day. Chemours is also sending letters to well owners and residents requesting information about primary drinking water sources and offering sampling.

Additional well sampling information for residents is available on the DEQ website.

The Bladen County-based chemical company known for releasing toxins into the Cape Fear River is looking to increase its manufacturing capacity, but opponents say that instead of expanding, the plant should be shut down.

Chemours Co., a Dupont spin-off, announced its expansion plans Tuesday, citing a critical economic demand for its products. The company says the expansion at its Fayetteville Works plant will not increase the overall fluorinated organic compounds or greenhouse gases emitted from the site.

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent laced into the proposal and the company’s “Chemours Neighbors” marketing campaign.

“Chemours claims they’re good neighbors; we think the neighborly thing to do after contaminating the drinking water for 510,000 and counting would be to shut the plant down; instead, they have the audacity, or more accurately, the depravity, to try to make even more money off of poisoning us,” Sargent told Coastal Review in an email Wednesday.

The company has scheduled two information sessions later this month to give the public a chance to hear the company’s expansion plans and its strategy to control emissions.

The first session is set for 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 20, in the Bladen Community College Auditorium in Dublin, and the second is to take place from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 21, at the Leland Cultural Arts Center, 1212 Magnolia Village Way, Leland.

“The upcoming information sessions will provide the opportunity for us to meet with community members, discuss our plans, gather input, and create greater understanding of how this investment will positively impact the local economy and North Carolina’s manufacturing industry,” Dawn Hughes, Fayetteville Works plant manager, said in a statement. “This state is already attracting a significant number of businesses in the industries we support, and Chemours’ Fayetteville Works products are critical to their supply chains. We’re proud of the role we play in supporting national priorities and creating jobs in North Carolina, and we’re eager to explain the plans for our future with our neighbors.”

Shawn Taylor, public information officer with NCDEQ’s Division of Air Quality, told Coastal Review Thursday that Chemours had not submitted an application related to the announced expansion plan.

Sargent said Cape Fear River Watch representatives will attend the public meetings. Anyone interested in joining can sign up online.

Special report: GenX: Five Years Later

In its announcement, Chemours stated that the Fayetteville facility “produces materials critical to economic growth in industries across North Carolina and the United States,” connecting its work to recent acts from the Biden administration.

The company said the expansion is to support an increase in domestic production in the semiconductor, transportation, clean energy, consumer electronics and communications industries.

The company cited the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors, or CHIPS, and Science Act of 2022, signed in early August, and the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

Semiconductors, or chips, are tiny electronic devices that power everything from light switches to smartphones to fighter jets, and are an integral part of developing technologies, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

“The recent signing of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 into law seeks to boost domestic research and production of semiconductors as a means of improving the U.S. supply chain and national security,” the company said, adding that Chemours is the only U.S. producer of Perfluoroalkoxy alkane, or PFA, a fluoropolymer used in the semiconductor manufacturing process and the Fayetteville site is part of the PFA supply chain.

The Fayetteville site is the only location for specialized ionomer membranes used in water electrolysis to produce renewable hydrogen to power industry and transportation with no carbon emissions. “Boosting scalable domestic production of clean energy from sources like green hydrogen is central to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022,” Chemours said.

Taylor, on behalf of DEQ, said that the state remains focused on the immediate need to address PFAS contamination from Chemours and its impacts to North Carolinians throughout the Cape Fear River basin as well as the continuing efforts to reduce or eliminate environmental impacts from the facility’s ongoing operations.

“DEQ’s priority is protecting our communities and the drinking water sources North Carolinians rely on,” he said. “Chemours must meet all of its obligations to clean up the PFAS contamination impacting thousands of residents in at least eight counties and provide them with alternate water. DEQ will continue to hold Chemours accountable for the cleanup and for preventing future impacts to North Carolinians. DEQ will continue to use all available authority, including the Consent Order, ongoing actions by the EPA, and advances in the science and understanding of PFAS to do so.”

New Hanover commissioners want to know more about the land along the Cape Fear River’s west bank across from downtown Wilmington before determining any future rezoning of the property.

The board of commissioners last week instructed county staff to launch technical studies, including a hydrological study, so that they may better understand the types of development that may and may not be suitable on the land stretching between the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge and Isabel Holmes Bridge, and Eagles Island between the memorial bridge and the Thomas Rhodes Bridge on U.S. 421.

“Certainly that would bring some clarity to a number of these properties here,” Commissioner Rob Zapple said. “If we know there are going to be challenges up front, we really need to know what those challenges are. I’m definitely in favor of having more of these technical studies done so we really do understand the dynamic nature,” of the land.

Commissioners met Thursday for a second time this year to discuss the west bank’s future.

The meeting ended shortly after New Hanover County Manager Chris Coudriet informed board members they needed to address a request they tabled earlier this year to create a new zoning district and rezone an area known as Point Peter within that district.

Coudriet said the board will be presented again with KFJ Development Group’s request “likely with a recommendation to deny” in order for the county to further study the land.

KFJ Development Group is eyeing a little more than 8.5 acres for Battleship Point, a mixed-use development that would include a trio of 240 feet tall condominiums on Peter Point, a peninsula at the confluence of the Northeast Cape Fear and Cape Fear rivers.

Commissioners tabled the request in January, opting instead to look at the overall future development of the river bank, land projected to be significantly impacted by sea level rise.

KFJ took its request across the river to Leland, asking that town to annex the land and rezone it. The developers later withdrew that request.

Battleship Point is one of two major development proposals on the west bank.

A 6-acre plot on Eagles Island is the proposed site for a multi-story hotel and spa.

Much of the west bank, including Point Peter, is zoned industrial. Eagles Island is currently zoned commercial.

Chapel Hill-based conservation group Unique Places to Save is trying to raise $16 million by year’s end to buy 83 acres between the battleship and U.S. 17 on Eagles Island.

Diamondback Development LLC, which owns the land, recently entered into a purchase contract with the conservation group.

The nonprofit has indicated that if it raises the funds and purchases the land, the group will work with other local partners to improve the site for outdoor recreation, education and the conservation of natural resources.

Jay Shott, co-owner of Diamondback Development, told Coastal Review last month his group would “give conservation a chance” because of an outpouring of support to conserve the property.

Unique Places to Save Executive Director Clark Harris declined to disclose the amount of private, online donations the organization had so far received, saying in an email Friday that their focus is “getting initial momentum” from the $12 million grant the group applied for with the North Carolina Land and Water Fund.

“We received our initial scoring this week and believe it puts us in a competitive position for funding. We will be targeting larger private donors in parallel in the coming weeks, leading up to the decision period for the grant in late September.”

Online donations are being accepted at https://saveeaglesisland.org.

In April, commissioners held a workshop to discuss the land’s exposure to flooding, safety concerns, potential economic impacts and how stormwater runoff from the proposed developments might affect surrounding properties, including the National Historic Landmark USS North Carolina.

New Hanover County Planning Director Rebekah Roth presented commissioners last week with five different land use options within the area of the west bank the county will study. Those uses range from conservation, which would have the lowest impact on the land and likely the most restrictive, to urban scale mixed use, an option that would likely come with the highest price tag because it would require flood prevention and mitigation.

Moving forward, commissioners may consider refining the county’s vision for the western bank, create overlay zoning districts to put additional standards and mitigation measures in place, and, if mixed-use development is to be allowed on the land, update riverfront zoning to align with a comprehensive land use plan, Roth said.

Commissioners indicated studies of the properties should look at the future flooding potential of the land, risks of extending water and sewer lines to properties on the west bank that are likely to be impacted by sea level rise, and potential issues with emergency vehicles and residents being able to access the properties.

Roth said she believed the land within the county’s area of study is owned by at least seven different property owners, not including the battleship.

Roth said a more detailed assessment of flood vulnerability and a hydraulic assessment of the properties needs to be conducted before the county looks at traffic impacts.

Commissioner Deb Hayes said there is much that needs to be learned about the land before decisions about its future are made.

“I really feel strongly about those studies,” she said. “I think that will help inform us in order for us to really craft the best land use for that area.”

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust has purchased 265 acres along more than a mile of the Cape Fear River in Bladen County. 

The organization, which serves 31 counties in the coastal plain, said Wednesday that it would transfer the property in East Arcadia, just north of Riegelwood, to the state for management by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission as part of the Whitehall Plantation Game Lands. 

The Coastal Land Trust said the property features mature floodplain forest, upland hardwood ravines and diverse wildlife.

“It is an area rich in wildlife that provides nesting habitat for wading birds like the Great Egret and federally threatened Wood Stork; waterfowl like Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser; as well as bottomland hardwood dependent songbirds such as Prothonotary Warbler and Swainson’s Warbler,” said Janice Allen, director of land protection with the Coastal Land Trust, in a statement. “Rare bats like Rafinesque’s big-eared bat and Southeastern bat utilize the large trees in the swamp for roosting, and common mammals like the raccoon, black bear, white-tailed deer, bobcat, and river otter also make the swamp their home.”

Allen noted that the backwaters and sloughs of the floodplain also serve as nursery areas for a multitude of fish species including anadromous fish, such as striped bass, American and hickory shad, “and possibly the federally threatened Atlantic sturgeon.”

Funding was provided through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ducks Unlimited, Fred and Alice Stanback, North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grant program, International Paper, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the North Carolina Native Plant Society’s Alice Zawadzki Land Conservation Fund. 

The protected forest includes a portion of Steep Run Swamp that the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program has identified as “ecologically significant,” based on the age and condition of the bottomland hardwood and cypress-gum forest as well as the known nesting colony of wood storks.

The wood stork is North America’s only native stork and a relative newcomer to North Carolina, officials said. The species has expanded its nesting range northward over the past two decades. N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission biologists discovered North Carolina’s first wood stork colony in 2005 while conducting aerial surveys for bald eagle nests. 

Wood Stork numbers are increasing in coastal North Carolina with more than 350 nests tallied in 2019 and more than 690 nests in 2021, said Wildlife Commission biologist Carmen Johnson.

“The species nests in hardwood trees, especially cypress, surrounded by shallow water where they can find fishes, invertebrates, and amphibians to eat and feed their chicks. The storks have found ideal habitat in the mill ponds and swamps of southeastern North Carolina. By protecting the Steep Run Swamp the Coastal Land Trust is helping to ensure that these birds continue to flourish in our state,” Johnson said.

The swallow-tailed kite is also known to nest in Steep Run Swamp. Wildlife Commission biologist John Carpenter first spotted a nest in 2011 from a plane flying low along the Cape Fear.

“This was an exciting find as it is the first documented Swallow-tailed Kite nest in the state,” Carpenter said in a statement.

“We are thrilled to have conserved this portion of Steep Run Swamp along the Cape Fear River,” said Allen. “It is a wild and wonderful place that supports a great diversity of birds and other wildlife, and provides a myriad of other human benefits as the upland and wetland forests on this property help store carbon critical for climate resiliency, moderate floodwaters, and filter the water.”

The Coastal Land Trust said the latest acquisition adds to the 34,000 acres already protected in the Cape Fear basin and to the nearly 85,000 acres along the North Carolina coast.

Officials with the Department of Environmental Quality are working on a new plan to ensure that North Carolina waters are used and maintained in a sustainable manner and looking for stakeholder input.

The Division of Water Resources Basin Planning Branch, working with the nonprofit Cape Fear River Assembly, has created a survey to help guide efforts to develop a Cape Fear River Basin water resources management plan.

Basin plans provide guidance to support decisions for permitting and nutrient management strategies, watershed resource planning and implementation of best management practices and water supply and demand decisions.

The plan does not impose new rules or regulations, rather it’s for planning purposes only and includes information on all pollution sources across the basin — point and nonpoint sources – with water quality analysis and in-depth evaluation of emerging compounds.

The 2022 basin plan will be the fourth document the division has developed for the Cape Fear River basin, but it’s been almost 20 years since the last plan.

The goals are to develop a plan that is relevant, informative and can be adapted as needed and includes community and stakeholder input, including the voices and priorities of underrepresented communities, communities of color and Indigenous communities.

Officials are gathering public input until Oct. 1 and expect to present a completed plan for Environmental Management Commission approval in December.

The survey is composed of two sections. The first section should only take a few minutes to complete. Section 2 is optional but allows for more detail on obstacles in protecting the region’s waters.

A community event to promote ways to reduce health risk from eating fish caught in the Cape Fear River is set for this weekend.

“Go Fish! Eating Safer from the Cape Fear River” is scheduled for 1 to 4 p.m. March 27 at New Hanover County Arboretum, 6206 Oleander Drive, Wilmington.

The event is part of Cape Fear River Fish Consumption Month and the Stop Check Enjoy! outreach campaign, which was created to help people avoid contaminants by choosing to eat safer types of fish. Cape Fear River Watch, Duke University Superfund Research Center, North Carolina State Cooperative Extension and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, as well as other community partners organized the event.

There will be community speakers and outreach activities, lawn games, activities for children, Poor Piggys BBQ and T’Geaux Boys food trucks, and no-cost COVID-19 vaccines.

Related: Fish study’s findings trigger consumption advisory update

While many fish from the river because it is culturally important and provides a low-cost source of protein, Cape Fear River is listed as an impaired waterway by the Environmental Protection Agency and fish from the river may contain chemical contaminants that can cause harm to the health of those who eat them, particularly children, according to the EPA.

“The purpose of the event and the month as a whole is to educate the public about ways to reduce the health risks from eating fish from the Cape Fear River by choosing safer fish species and the preparation methods that reduce the amount of contaminants,” organizers said.

Simultaneous translation will be provided for Spanish speakers. Parking is on-site but limited, organizers ask attendees consider carpooling or using public transportation.

Contact contact Chiara Klein with Duke Superfund Research Center at 845-544-5535 or chiara.klein@duke.edu for more details.

Public health and environmental justice groups in Eastern North Carolina are calling for a judicial review of a recent federal report that the groups say understates the cancer risk to consumers from a compound found in household cleaning products that contaminates drinking water supplies across the region and beyond.

The groups, Advance Carolina, Cape Fear River Watch, Center for Environmental Health, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, Haw River Assembly and Toxic Free NC, say they are deeply concerned about widespread 1,4-dioxane contamination of the Cape Fear and Haw Rivers and other drinking water sources for hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents. They said drinking water supplies in the state have among the highest levels of 1,4-dioxane in the country.

The Oakland, California-based Center for Environmental Health and the six North Carolina groups have filed a petition seeking judicial review of what they call an “inadequate and negligent” risk evaluation of 1,4-dioxane by the Environmental Protection Agency. The groups filed the petition Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

“One in five North Carolinians get their drinking water from the Cape Fear River Basin. The watershed also has some of the highest levels of 1-4 dioxane in the entire country. 1-4 dioxane represents a clear and present danger to millions of residents of the Cape Fear Basin and we cannot afford to sit back and do nothing as industrial pollutants poison our loved ones,” said Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette of Cape Fear River Watch, in a statement.

The evaluation finalized Jan. 8 is based on the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the nation’s principal law for reducing the risks of unsafe chemicals.

“Trump’s EPA played eleventh hour politics with our health. They ignored the cancer risk we face everyday simply drinking contaminated water and caring for our families. If we can’t rely on our regulators to take health and environmental threats seriously, then why do they even exist? While we hope the incoming administration upholds its commitment to environmental justice, we also have to take this challenge to the U.S. Court of Appeals because the stakes are just too high,”  Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear said in a statement.

The groups note that 1,4-dioxane is in widely used household cleaning and personal care products. They said the EPA, which had initially refused to include these products in its evaluation but reversed course in late 2020, was influenced by lobbying from industry groups seeking EPA action under TSCA to block states from adopting their own regulation of 1,4-dioxane in consumer products.

“EPA obliged and rushed out a flawed and incomplete assessment finding that cleaning and personal products containing 1,4-dioxane do not present an unreasonable cancer risk to US consumers,” according to the Center for Environmental Health.

Industry groups, including the American Cleaning Institute and Household & Commercial Products Association, in December applauded the EPA’s determination that consumer products containing 1,4-dioxane do not present an unreasonable risk of injury to human health or the environment.

“Companies invest significant time and resources to formulate products responsibly, and we are pleased to see that the Agency agrees that the conditions of use they evaluated do not present an unreasonable risk,” said ACI Associate Vice President Kathleen Stanton and CPA Senior Vice President Dr. Steve Bennett in a statement released Dec. 14, 2020.

The groups said that 1,4-dioxane is a byproduct of the manufacturing process for cleaning products and detergents and not an intentionally added ingredient.

The environmental and public health groups said they intend to demonstrate that the EPA’s finding is “scientifically and legally unsupportable and greatly understates real-world exposure to 1,4-dioxane in consumer products.”

Environmental justice group Advance Carolina said minority and low-wealth communities face contaminated environments daily in their own backyards. Black Americans, specifically, face a 54% higher health burden than the overall population. In a statement, the group’s deputy director, La’Meshia Whittington called it a “horrifying reality” that communities can’t escape environmental poisoning from household cleaning products.

“We are in this fight against 1,4 Dioxane because it is the moral thing to do, and we know historically people-of-color have seen 95% of their claims against polluters denied by the EPA. Everyone deserves to feel safe in their own home, the right to a healthy environment and access to poison-free products,” Whittington said.

A new study detected high levels of toxic chemicals in water samples taken 2014-2016 from the Cape Fear River near Wilmington’s drinking water intake NC Policy Watch reported Wednesday.

Published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, the new analysis of samples taken in 2015 show that PFAS that contain an ether molecule were found at concentrations of at least as high as 130,000 parts per trillion, or ppt, in the samples. The samples were from Lock and Dam No. 1, near the drinking water intake for the city.

Researchers also retested samples taken in 2014 85 miles upstream, near the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works facility, where the contamination originated, at the Huske Lock and Dam. Total concentrations of ether compounds were 990,000 ppt.

State health and environmental officials recommend that water with levels of PFAS of any type above 70 ppt combined or above 10 ppt for a single compound, should not be consumed.

North Carolina State University and EPA researchers took the samplesbut recently retested the samples using advanced technology to more accurately measure the concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in water.

N.C. State professor Detlef Knappe, graduate students Chuhui Zhang, Zachary Hopkins and James McCord, and Mark Strynar of the EPA in Research Triangle Park make up the research team. The research was partially funded by the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory.

This story has been updated.

Water utilities in southeastern North Carolina stopped drawing from the Cape Fear River Wednesday in response to a spill of an unknown substance at the Chemours Fayetteville Works industrial site, but resumed normal operations later in the day after consistent tests results indicating no abnormalities in river water.

The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority in Wilmington and Brunswick County’s water utility announced Wednesday that the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality had notified them late Tuesday that the substance had entered the river as a result of the spill, which had been reported about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority said that during conference calls Tuesday and Wednesday, Fayetteville Works Plant Manager Brian Long told CFPUA staff that it is believed that about 30 gallons of a plasticizer called 3GO leaked from Kuraray Americas, an industrial tenant at the site. Long said the material contained no PFAS. Containment steps had been taken and the spill was no longer entering the river, according to the authority’s description of the calls.

Chemours said in a statement that its monitoring process discovered the non-PFAS substance had entered the site’s water treatment system, and company operators took immediate action to close the gates to the system outfall. Chemours also  Testing and data showed that the substance was not a compound related to the Chemours manufacturing operations. Chemours said it immediately notified the appropriate authorities of the discovery.  

DEQ said the spill was reported after DEQ staff discovered a sheen at an outfall Tuesday while conducting bi-weekly sampling. In addition to shutting down the sluice gate to the outfall to slow the flow, Chemours deployed absorbent booms.

Chemours is the permit holder for the outfall. Under the Consent Order established by DEQ, Chemours is not permitted to discharge any process water into the Cape Fear River.

Kuraray shut down its process that resulted in the spill and Chemours has been in contact with Kuraray site management to ensure that the issue is corrected before the company resumes operations. 

“Chemours is committed to being a leading steward of the environment and operating to the highest standards for safety and emission control.  We hold all site tenants and any contractors operating on our campus to the same high standard,” the company said in a statement.

The authority stopped withdrawing water from the Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority intake at Kings Bluff in Bladen County for about six hours, starting about 8 a.m. Wednesday and stopped withdrawing water from its own intake at Kings Bluff late Tuesday. The staff estimated that 8 a.m. would be the soonest the substances might reach the intake, which is about 55 miles from the outfall at Chemours’ Fayetteville Works. Samples taken at 8 a.m. and 9:20 a.m. showed no abnormalities, the authority said.

Brunswick County said the type and amount of the spilled substance did not represent a threat to the water system.

Brunswick County set up an information hotline, 910-253-2655.

News of the spill comes a day after the Cape Fear authority said it had asked DEQ for guidance after detecting elevated levels of 1,4-dioxane in raw water from the Cape Fear River for the fourth time this year.

The authority periodically tests raw water for 1,4-dioxane, which is used in industrial solvents and for several years has been detected in the Cape Fear and other North Carolina surface waters.

The latest test results showed concentrations of 1,4-dioxane of 6.3 parts per billion in untreated water on Sept. 9 and 1.3 ppb in treated water at Sweeney on Sept. 10.

Co-published with Carolina Public Press

RALEIGH — Senate and House budget proposals contrast sharply with the governor’s on how each deals with emerging contaminants.

In the years since the 2017 revelations about GenX in the Cape Fear River, legislators as a group are far more familiar with the challenges of understanding the health effects and, ultimately, regulating the growing class of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

But in policies and on the bottom line, plans by the House, Senate and governor are very different.

In Gov. Roy Cooper’s budget request this year, he asked for additional money for personnel and new equipment for emerging contaminant testing and monitoring programs. Cooper said the Department of Environmental Quality needs the additional staff in order to conduct in-house and mobile analysis of emerging contaminants. The department had to shift dozens of experts from other duties to deal with the GenX and emerging contaminant research and monitoring, he said.

The governor’s total ask was about $12.5 million for the next two years to cover equipment costs and 37 new staff positions.

The lynchpin for both the emerging contaminants programs and DEQ’s budget request overall is a $30 million upgrade and renovation at the department’s main laboratory complex on Reedy Creek Road in Raleigh, where most of DEQ’s air and water quality testing is conducted.

House budget writers greatly dialed back the governor’s request for more staffing, but they included the governor’s full request for the Reedy Creek labs.

The Senate did not. Its plan includes no additional funding and focuses solely on a provision extending the studies of a PFAS testing network set up through the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory at University North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Relying on the Collaboratory

The Collaboratory, which was set up via a Senate initiative in the 2016 budget, would get an additional $1 million to complete its work and file a report with the legislature’s Environmental Review Commission by Dec. 1, 2020. The main effort of the testing network has been to expand PFAS and emerging contaminant testing statewide to include all 191 public drinking water intakes and 149 water systems that use groundwater wells. Researchers say the plan is partly to establish a baseline of the extent of the compounds in areas, but they also expect to find areas with elevated levels of certain compounds.

At the initial hearing on the Senate’s budget plan in the Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, Sen. Andy Wells, R-Catawba, the committee chairman, said the decision was made to withhold funding until the Collaboratory presents its report.

“That is correct, there is no funding while we wait for this report from the Collaboratory,” Wells told Sen. Harper Peterson, D-New Hanover, after Peterson said he was surprised to see no additional funds for DEQ and the Department of Health and Human Services on emerging contaminants. Wells said the report comes first and it would be used to assist legislators to determine what to fund after that.

“I’m pretty shocked by the lack of interest and concern by the Senate in this budget recommendation,” Peterson said afterward. “I don’t think anybody denies we have an emerging contaminant crisis, not just in my district, in the lower Cape Fear River basin but throughout the state.”

He said that, in addition to the Collaboratory studies, work needed to continue at the departments. “We have a health issue. That is paramount. Public health comes first. We want to know what’s in the water.”

Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, an early advocate of tighter PFAS regulations said she was frustrated by the Senate’s decision, calling it “wrongheaded” and “a step backwards” in dealing with emerging contaminants.

“We learned last year that DEQ had pulled 31 people off of other roles to cover the PFAS issue, so we’ve got a funding gap right now,” she said. “The reality is that we’ve got PFAS contamination all over the state and I don’t know how we can ignore that and I don’t know how we cannot fund the regulatory agency protecting our water, how we can’t fund them adequately to do their job to enforce, monitor and let us know when we’ve got a contamination issue.”

She said she supports the Collaboratory’s work, but their research can’t be used in enforcement actions.

DEQ officials have said that if the Collaboratory finds PFAS hotspots or other indications of contamination, the department will still have to do its own analysis in order to craft an enforcement response.

DEQ spokesperson Sharon Martin said the lack of funding could have a big impact.

“The delay puts our ability to do this vital work on hold. DEQ’s priority is the health and safety of North Carolinians and we need additional resources to protect the people of our state from the threats posed by unregulated emerging compounds,” Martin said Thursday in an email response.

The move by the Senate to lean on the work of the Collaboratory is similar to a strategy it adopted in 2018, which allocated an initial $5 million to the Collaboratory for the research project after rejecting a request by the department for more funding.

The Senate’s strategy, put together by then-Sen. Michael Lee, a New Hanover County Republican, was criticized at the time for hampering DEQ’s PFAS response. The department initially asked for $8 million, but ultimately only received $1.5 million. Lee’s plan also included a limit on the type of high-resolution mass spectrometer that the department could purchase to do the analysis.

Peterson, who unseated Lee in an election that highlighted the legislature’s response to emerging contaminants, said the message in the budget to his constituents is that the state Senate doesn’t care about their health. He said that, in addition to PFAS, the Cape Fear River has high levels of 1,4 Dioxane, Bromide and other contaminants.

“This will come back to haunt the Senate,” he said. “They’ve got their priorities upside down.”

RALEIGH – More than two dozen operators of wastewater pretreatment programs in the Cape Fear River Basin will be required to test water flowing into their plants for synthetic contaminants for three months this summer.

Pretreatment facilities treat industrial or nonhousehold wastewater before it’s discharged to a municipal wastewater treatment plant. The state Department of Environmental Quality said the inflow sampling effort is part of an ongoing management strategy to address the presence of compounds similar to GenX in surface water and bio-solids.

DEQ’s Division of Water Resources notified 25 operators of pretreatment facilities, including the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, in Wilmington, the town of Burgaw and Brunswick and Columbus counties, requiring monitoring for 1,4 dioxane and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for three consecutive months starting in June.

CFPUA announced in March that it was working with regulators to understand why levels of 1,4-dioxane had recently spiked in water drawn from the Cape Fear River.

These compounds are not covered by federal water quality standards. The Environmental Protection Agency says data indicates elevated concentrations of 1,4 dioxane and PFAS in drinking water that originated from the Cape Fear River Basin. The division’s monitoring has confirmed the presence of these compounds in surface waters within the Cape Fear River Basin.

The samples to be collected are supposed to be representative of the typical wastewater flow to each facility, according to the letter sent to operators, which also provides information on finding labs certified to perform the analysis.

All sample results are to be submitted to the division’s Pretreatment, Emergency Response and Collection Systems, or PERCS, branch by Oct. 31.

Other than the investigative monitoring, operators are not required to take any steps unless the division notifies them to do so. But if influent samples exceed the human health surface water criteria for 1,4-dioxane for the stream classification, operators are to contact their division representative to discuss that facility’s allowable discharge concentration. And if influent levels exceed a facility’s allowable discharge concentration, operators are to take steps to begin reducing or eliminating 1,4-dioxane discharges to that facility.

Used as a solvent stabilizer, 1,4-dioxane is a clear liquid that mixes with water and used for a variety of industrial and manufacturing purposes. The compound is often produced as a by-product in making soaps, plastics and other consumer products.

PFAS are most often associated with nonstick coatings, plating operations, firefighting foams and stain- and water-resistant treatments for clothing, furniture and carpeting.

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

RALEIGH – In a bipartisan response to outrage over contaminated drinking water, members of the North Carolina House of Representatives voted unanimously Wednesday to give state environmental regulators more money to prevent pollution.

A proposed $1.3 million fund would not be a huge boost to the state’s $77 million share of the Department of Environmental Quality’s budget. It would, however, be a small reversal of a seven-year trend in the General Assembly to trim state environmental protection programs.

Will it become law? Not soon, if at all, apparently.

The Senate adjourned Wednesday before the high-profile House Bill 189 even cleared the House appropriations committee, frustrating House backers.

Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, issued a statement sent to reporters Wednesday evening signaling that he opposes the bill.

But hopes were higher earlier Wednesday afternoon when Rep. Ted Davis, R-New Hanover, led a successful effort to convince all House members present to invest more money in DEQ.

The money would buy an instrument that can detect unregulated chemicals in state waters. Additionally, the money would provide staff to both operate it and attack a sizable backlog of DEQ waste disposal permit applications.

While making the sell, Davis and others stressed that the funding was likely the first step of a more elaborate government response needed to detect the compound GenX and other chemicals of concern in the Cape Fear River basin and around the state.

“We are moving forward on something that we were able to get the stakeholders to agree on as much as possible,” said Davis, whose House Select Committee on North Carolina River Quality endorsed taking action after four meetings digging into GenX contamination beginning in September.

Latest Twist in the GenX Saga

Detection of GenX pollution in and near the Cape Fear River has expanded over seven months, starting with disclosure last summer that the hard-to-break-down chemical was tainting municipal drinking water supplies in Wilmington and neighboring Brunswick and Pender counties.

Since then the compound and related perfluorinated compounds have been detected in increasing numbers of household wells near where the chemicals have been released, a Chemours-owned chemical plant compound in Bladen County. Evidence is increasing, too, that some of the pollution may have been released into the air.

Decades ago, DuPont built and ran the chemical plant that now produces GenX. Chemours, a DuPont spinoff, took over in 2015. Chemours asserts that its waste poses no health risks.

The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating whether the company violated a consent agreement sharply restricting GenX’s release into water. After Chemours failed to disclose a leak, DEQ in November announced it would revoke the company’s permit allowing wastewater discharge into the Cape Fear.

Evidence of unwelcome chemical contamination, created by likely carcinogen 1,4 dioxane and other compounds, has been found elsewhere in North Carolina, too. House members supporting the DEQ funding said that more aggressive, long-term protections against water pollution are needed.

DEQ Secretary Michael Regan, appeared briefly before the House appropriations committee Wednesday to support the bill. He argued that preventing chemical pollution is good for business as well as the protection of natural resources.

“This is a much-needed first step in longer term conversation we need to have with this body pertaining to protecting our environment and our economy,” he said.

The House bill would allow DEQ to purchase a high-resolution mass spectrometer, which can detect very small amounts of chemicals in water. DEQ has depended on an EPA lab in Research Triangle Park, as well as testing paid for Chemours to measure GenX levels in water samples. But the EPA has its own projects and cannot continue to provide that service, Assistant Secretary Sheila Holman said Wednesday.

The bill would give Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration only a portion of the requested $2.5 million for funding to prevent water pollution. The General Assembly did not grant that request last summer. During Wednesday’s appropriations committee, Democratic House members failed to win approval of an amendment that would have funneled money to the state Department of Health and Human Services as well.

Rare Bipartisan Support

After the amendment failed, supporter Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, told fellow lawmakers she was disappointed. But she also stressed that she was grateful to Davis and other Republican leaders of the House river quality committee for digging into the GenX contamination problem so diligently and backing House Bill 189.

“I never sat in a committee that had such substantial discussions as we have had,” said Harrison, a leading advocate of expanding environmental regulation.

House Bill 189 includes other initiatives requiring no funding, some of which will occur whether the bill passes because DEQ has launched them, Holman said.

The bill would require the following:

• Department of Health and Human Services staff to consult with DEQ’s Science Advisory Board when developing health goals for contaminant exposure levels.
• DEQ staff to assess how well the agency runs a federally required permitting program that decides how much pollution industrial waste companies can discharge into streams, rivers and lakes.
• DEQ staff to review existing reporting and notice requirements related to discharging pollutants released into the environment.

Another measure would instruct the School of Government at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill to assess when water utilities have any legal liability for distributing contaminated drinking water.

Michael Brown, chairman of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority in Wilmington, said he supports the bill and appreciates the bipartisan action Wednesday in the House. But he said he sees no uncertainty about the liability issue.

“The liability here is clear. It is with the dischargers and what they are putting in the river,” said Brown, whose utility has filed just one of many lawsuits pending against Chemours and DuPont over the pollution.

Not Just A Lovefest

In written comments opposing the bill, Berger noted that Senate Republicans already appropriated money to improve water quality in the Cape Fear River in 2017 by funding research and utility projects intended to remove GenX from drinking water. The Senate is waiting on data that was expected in October to decide any next steps, he said.

“What the House passed today, unfortunately, does nothing to prevent GenX from going into the water supply,” Berger said in the statement sent to reporters.

“It leaves North Carolina taxpayers holding the bag for expenditures that should be paid for by the company responsible for the pollution, fails to give DEQ authority to do anything they can’t already do, and authorizes the purchase of expensive equipment that the state can already access for free,” he said.

Gov. Cooper saw it differently. He issued a statement Wednesday sharply criticizing the General Assembly, clumping together his frustration over its failure to pass environmental and educational bills he supports.

“Today, legislative Republicans walked out on students, teachers and families concerned about overcrowded classrooms and safe drinking water,” Cooper said in the written statement. “When legislators return home today, North Carolinians in their communities should demand they take action.”

Taylor Knopf, who covers rural and mental health news for North Carolina Health News, contributed to this report.

This story is provided courtesy of North Carolina Health News, an online news service covering health and environmental issues in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with North Carolina Health News to provide readers with more stories of interest on the coast. 

The 2,300-acre Owens’ easement is the latest parcel along the Northeast Cape Fear River that has been preserved by the N.C. Coastal Land Trust. Source: N.C. Coastal Land Trust

WILMINGTON – Two families have preserved more than 2,300 acres of forestland along the Northeast Cape Fear River in northern Pender County, the N.C. Coastal Land Trust announced yesterday.

The property had been a high priority for the land trust since 2002, noted Camilla Herlevich, its founder and executive director.  “Everyone understands that saving land along rivers, lakes and streams means cleaner water for all,” she said. “These particular lands are truly special.”

It was a nice Christmas gift then when the land trust completed purchase of the conservation easement on Dec. 23.

Stretching for five miles on the east side of the river just south of the Duplin County line, the property is marked by numerous high bluffs. Wedged between the river and the state’s Angola Bay Gamelands, the land’s forests have an incredible variety of trees, from longleaf pine and mixed loblolly pines. The pine forests give way to bottomland hardwood wetlands and small ponds as the topography changes.

“Even the appraiser called to tell us it was one of the most beautiful tracts of working forest that he had ever seen,” said Herlevich. 

She won’t say exactly how much the land trust paid for the easement, except to note that it was a six-figure price.  The property appraised at four times the purchase price, Herlevich said. Fred and Alice Stanback of Salisbury, the state’s leading conservation philanthropists, provided all the money for the purchase, she said.

The owners, the Owens and Williams families, joined together to preserve their connections to the land for future generations.  “We are pleased to have worked with the Coastal Land Trust, and proud that the streams, forests and riverfront will be preserved into the future,” said Steven Owens, representative of HVW Legacy Holdings, the family company that owns the property.

Even the appraiser thought the tract was a beautiful example of a working forest. Photo: N.C. Coastal Land Trust

Sometimes called the “East Branch,” the Northeast Cape Fear River flows 130 miles from just south of Mount Olive in Duplin County, past Albertson and Chinquapin in Pender County. It joins the main channel of the Cape Fear at Point Peter, just north of downtown Wilmington.

Palmetto and cypress grow along its banks. Alligators lurk in its waters and pileated woodpeckers nest in its trees. Researchers at the University of North Carolina Wilmington found that the river is home to at least 45 species of fish. Crappie fishing is especially popular along the river, with Prince George Creek, Long Creek, Morgan Creek and Island Creek known as particularly good fishing spots.

No wonder, then, that the Northeast Cape Fear has been a focus for the land trust since 1999, when the Thomas family donated a conservation easement of over 1,200 acres at its Five Eagle Partners Farm. Since then, the land trust has protected another 10 places on the river or its tributaries, primarily in Pender County. The latest purchase brings the total to more than 7,300 acres that the land trust has preserved along the river.

The land trust has the right idea, noted Mike Giles, a coastal advocate for the N.C. Coastal Federation who has been among the leaders in the fight to stop Titan America from building a cement plant along the river north of Wilmington.  “The land trust’s preservation efforts along the river provide an alternate vision of what the river can be, rather than the industrial wasteland envisioned by Titan,” he said.

New Hanover County officials should also take note, Giles said. They are currently working on a long-range, comprehensive plan and economic strategy for the county, he noted. “They could include utilizing those unique river resources in a positive way while promoting a growing and sustainable economy,” Giles said.

The Northeast Cape Fear River lumbers for about 130 miles through the state’s southeastern coastal plain before joining its larger sister, the Cape Fear, north of Wilmington.

CASTLE HAYNE — Andy Wood leads our two-person pilgrimage to see a 1,000-year-old cypress along the Northeast Cape Fear River. The mighty tree has lost her neighbors. One went down with Hurricane Fran in 1996. Hundreds more have dropped away from pollution and saltwater intrusion. It used to be a more robust-looking canopy. Ten years ago, it looked better than that,” Wood admits. “She’s one of the last of the big ones here.

Wood, director of the Coastal Plain Conservation Group, is armed with a dipping net and glass jars as he walks along the trail near Hampstead. The path is just a thin strip of land separating the swamp and the Northeast Cape Fear. The roadbed dates back to the 1800s when we might have travelled, not on our feet, but instead by horse and carriage.

The Northeast Cape Fear runs for about 130 miles through the southeast coastal plain of North Carolina, twisting and meandering along a path of least resistance. Not quite as big as its neighbor, the Cape Fear River, the Northeast Cape Fear is a true tributary. The river is amber-colored– dark due to the organic debris that settles at its bottom.

From top: Bald eagles, alligators and red-cockaded woodpeckers are some of the endangered or threatened species that live along the Northeast Cape Fear River.

Wood walks along the trail, pointing out several species that make this river special. We pass a manmade impoundment, which Wood notes the N.C. Wildlife Resource Commission staff manages with the aid of Castor canadensis – beavers.

We nearly miss a brown water snake sunbathing. Wood observes rake marks in the mud nearby and guesses a black bear was looking for its next meal. American holly, a treat for many of the area’s songbirds, abounds.

According to Wood, a conservationist, several species found in or around the Northeast Cape Fear are threatened or endangered. These include the bald eagle, the American alligator and the red-cockaded woodpecker.

Wood moved to Wilmington in the mid-1980s and worked as the education curator for the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher. Now, he teaches others in hopes of illustrating the connection between land and water. For example, the wetlands we hike along today are soaking up harmful pollutants and filtering water before releasing it back into the river.

“Like the liver and kidneys,” Wood said. “Or a giant sponge.”

His return to his first love – freshwater – was motivated by the time spent as a kid in swamps. “I was fortunate to grow up outdoors,” he said. “My friends wanted to play war, and I wanted to look for salamanders.”

Chances are, had they grown up together, Andy Wood and Charles “C.R.” Robbins would have been the best of friends. Robbins, the owner of Cape Fear River Adventures, remembers getting lost in surrounding swamps at just nine years old.

After working in the northwestern part of the United States as a wilderness area guide, he returned to this region. Today, on his guided river tours, Robbins also teaches about the Cape river basin. He discusses stricter fisheries management and pollution policies adopted on the Northwest river system.

He encourages boaters to exercise “take-in, take-out” practices. It is simple, really: Everything you bring onto the river should leave with you.

Yet by Wood and Robbins’s accounts, the Northeast Cape Fear resembles a war-torn soldier. In recent decades, the river has combated heavy pollution from hog farms and an oil spill from a metal recycling plant. The results are obvious, Robbins said.

“You can drive up I-40 where several drainages used to be. There were cypress tress growing, along with swamp gums and the pines. They were living areas,” Robbins said.

“I’ve watched them over the last ten or twelve years die away,” he said. “They deteriorated quicker than any areas of trees I’ve ever seen.”

This deterioration has been due, in large part, to the region’s heavy concentration of large poultry and swine farms. Pollution regulations are present, but policing is not.

“The waste ends up in the water table and in the runoff and in the creeks,” Robbins said, nodding toward the Northeast Cape Fear. “Everything drains into another creek and another creek and finally here.”

Now, the Northeast Cape Fear faces perhaps its biggest challenge: Titan America. The cement manufacturer has plans to build one of the largest cement plants in the country along the river’s banks in Castle Hayne, near Wilmington.

By Wood’s estimate, the destruction of more than a thousand acres of surrounding bottomland swamp would be only an initial consequence of the plant’s construction. Cement production would also emit harmful air pollutants, a risk to public health, and stress surface and ground water resources.

Together with the N.C. Coastal Federation, average citizens like Wood and Robbins have worked tirelessly to stop Titan for five long years. Their successes have been hard-won.

In 2010, the federation joined other organizations to successfully sue the state to force the cement company to conduct a required federal comprehensive review before it received any state permits. Because Titan had received public funding for their project, a review was required. Following the court’s ruling, Titan decided not to accept public funding, thereby evading any review. The court was forced to reverse its decision.

In November 2011, New Hanover County commissioners voted to require heavy industry like Titan America to apply for an additional special-use permit. The permit requires Titan to publically address potential adverse effects to public health and safety, as well as surrounding land values.

Naturalist Andy Wood worries what destroying wetlands for the proposed Titan Cement plant will do to the river.

The proposed Titan plant will occupy the site of an old cement plant.

More than 240 local doctors and health care providers have voiced their opinions on public health issues related to Titan’s proposed plant move-in. More than 15,000 citizen signatures opposing the Titan Cement project have been collected.

At any opportunity, Robbins says he will continue to plant more seeds, by educating others and getting the word out.

“I have signs up at my house. I talk to my neighbors,” Robbins said. “I show up in my ‘Stop Titan’ shirt.”

Wood’s advice for people is simple, too. “We have to lead by example,” he said. “We must recognize that what we do depends on the ecosystem services provided by the Northeast Cape Fear.”

The battered and bruised struggle that belongs to the Northeast Cape Fear is also a story of its own survival, despite everything. Robbins relays stories from older residents, who frequently witnessed the now-threatened sturgeon running into nets stretched across the river. Just last year, Robbins saw a six-foot sturgeon.

“I would like to see them come back here. It’s their natural way,” he said. “They want to get back.”

In a sense, people like Wood and Robbins all want to get back. To their childhoods. To the sturgeon. To the living cypress. It is the reason they support the work of the federation. It is the reason they continue to fight against Titan America.

“If it does happen, it’s going to change this area dramatically. Permanently,” Robbins said. “It’s not going to be something you can fix.”

“This is such a special place out here,” he said. “You can’t replace it.”