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.”

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has scheduled a series of public hearings in select cities beginning next month on proposed PFAS and 1,4-dioxane monitoring and minimization rules.

In all, six hearings have been set, three of which will focus on proposed rules for discharges of three per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances through wastewater 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.

A public comment period for each set of proposed rules will kick off on March 16 and continue until June 15.

Under the proposed PFAS rules, all major and minor industrial direct dischargers, and significant industrial users that discharge to publicly owned treatment works, would be required to monitor and implement “minimization activities required to eliminate or significantly reduce” discharges of PFOS, PFOA, and GenX within a period of anywhere between three and five years.

Discharge limits for those specific PFAS have yet to be determined.

PFAS exposure has been linked to a number of adverse health impacts to people, including thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage, and different types of cancers.

More than 3 million North Carolinians are estimated to drink tap water containing PFAS levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency health-based standard scheduled to go into effect in the coming years, according to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality.

Public hearings on the proposed rules for the three PFAS are scheduled as follows:

• April 7 at 6 p.m. in Ferguson Auditorium, AB-Tech Community College, 19 Tech Drive, Asheville.
• April 20 at 6 p.m. in the Archdale Building, ground floor hearing room, 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh. Public parking will be available after 5 p.m. at parking deck 64 across North Salisbury Street from the Archdale Building.
• April 23 at 6 p.m. in Wilmington City Hall at Skyline Center, first floor conference center, 929 North Front St., Wilmington. Parking is available in the south lot using the Brunswick Street entrance. Attendees requiring American with Disabilities Act access should park in the visitor lot.

Written comments 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.

Comments will be accepted on the proposed rule adoptions and associated regulatory impact analysis. The commission is also accepting comments on specific questions including:

• Whether it would be scientifically defensible and advisable to establish a screening threshold above the lowest reporting concentration for PFOS, PFOA and GenX that could serve as a trigger for ongoing monitoring and minimization requirements.
• Whether the applicability of the PFAS monitoring and minimization rule should be limited to industrial dischargers associated with a standard industry classification (SIC) or North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes known to be linked to PFAS use or discharge.

Hearings on proposed rules for monitoring and minimizing 1,4-dioxane, a federally deemed likely human carcinogen, in wastewater discharges into surface waters from certain facilities have been scheduled for the following dates:

• April 9 at 6 p.m. in the Catawba County St. Stephens Branch Library, 3225 Springs Road, Hickory.
• April 14 at 6 p.m. at Fayetteville Technology Community College, Tony Rand Student Center multipurpose room, 2220 Hull Road, Fayetteville.
• May 12 at 6 p.m. in the Percy H. Sears Applied Technologies Building Auditorium, Guilford Technical Community College, 1201 Bonner Drive, Jamestown.

Written comments on the proposed rules for 1,4-dixoane may be submitted via 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, N.C., 27699-1611.

The EMC will also be accepting specific comments on the proposed 1,4-dixoane minimization rules to include:

• Whether a screening threshold above the lowest reported concentration (currently 1 microgram per liter) for 1,4-dioxane would be appropriate as a trigger for ongoing monitoring and minimization planning.
• whether the applicability of the 1,4-dioxane monitoring and minimization rules should be expanded beyond the currently proposed scope of dischargers with certain standard industry classification or North American Industry Classification System codes to include all industrial dischargers.

Sign-in and speaker registration will begin at 5 p.m. at each of the hearings.

Based on attendance, speaking time may be limited to allow everyone an opportunity to be heard. The commission will accept written comments and copies of prepared remarks at each hearing.

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.

Gov. Josh Stein and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson made a visit Thursday to Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant in Wilmington to formally announce a $17.8 million grant from the state to support the replacement and capacity upgrade of the utility’s Southside Water Reclamation Facility.

The funds will be used to extend waterlines to connect more than 300 homes with contaminated wells to the utility’s supply of drinking water.

The governor’s office first announced Feb. 19 the nearly $18 million grant, which is coming out of more than $472 million for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure projects.

“The $472 million statewide investment through NCDEQ will help cities, towns and counties strengthen infrastructure to better withstand future storms, improve existing drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, reduce contamination by forever chemicals, and identify and replace lead pipes,” according to the press release.

A list of all the projects selected for funding is on the NCDEQ website.

“When families turn on the tap, they deserve to know that their water is clean and safe,” Stein said in an announcement. “This $17 million investment in Wilmington will protect more than 300 families from forever chemicals by connecting their homes to the public water supply. We’ve made historic commitments to upgrade water infrastructure across North Carolina because keeping North Carolinians healthy starts with reliable, resilient water systems.”

The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority will receive the funds through the Department of Environmental Quality’s Emerging Contaminants in Small or Disadvantaged Communities program, funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The $17.8 million funding to the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority brings DEQ’s total support for the Southside Replacement Project to $192.8 million.

“People who live in the Cape Fear River Basin are rightly concerned about high levels of forever chemicals like GenX and PFAS in their drinking water,” Wilson said. “The Department of Environmental Quality remains committed to doing everything we can to reduce exposure to these harmful chemicals so that families can trust that the water coming out of their tap is healthy and safe.”

In the parts of New Hanover County served by these waterline extension projects, more than 75% of sampled wells exceeded health-based drinking water standards for certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. PFAS is a group of thousands of human-made, persistent chemicals that have been used for decades to make heat, water, and stain-resistant products.

“Since CFPUA brought new filters online at our Sweeney Plant in 2022, we have been able to effectively remove GenX and other PFAS from our public drinking water,” utility Board Chairman Wesley P. Corder said. “We are very grateful for this support from Governor Stein’s Office and the Department of Environmental Quality, which will enable us to connect more families in our community to CFPUA’s clean, clearly better water.”

Since taking office, Stein has advanced more than $1.4 billion in water infrastructure projects to strengthen drinking water and wastewater systems and address PFAS and other contaminants.

Last week, the Governor traveled to Winston-Salem to join the 40th annual Emerging Issues Forum, where he discussed the importance of sustained investment in North Carolina’s water infrastructure.

Related: Population growth to impact water infrastructure: Forum

A preliminary study conducted by the North Carolina Division of Water Resources found PFAS in soil, wastewater and biosolid samples collected at sites across the state.

The study assessing concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in biosolids concludes that a majority of those substances entering wastewater treatment plants are discharged into waterways, “as compared with the amount entering the environment through land application biosolids,” according to a Department of Environmental Quality release.

Biosolids are the nutrient-rich organic material that remains after wastewater has been treated. The material is typically used as a fertilizer.

The study is the first that the division has conducted assessing PFAS concentrations in biosolids across the state.

Division staff began gathering samples in 2023 to evaluate PFAS concentrations in wastewater and biosolids from 37 municipal, industrial and domestic wastewater treatment facilities. Soil samples were also collected from 19 fields regulated under non-discharge permits.

Wastewater treatment facilities can receive PFAS, which are a group of man-made chemicals used to make a host of commercial, industrial and consumer products, from residential, commercial and industrial sources.

“The study represents a first step for DEQ to begin to understand PFAS concentrations in wastewater and biosolids in our state,” Julie Grzyb, the division’s deputy director, stated in a release. “The study was based on a small sample size and was limited in scope, but it underscores the importance of characterizing and controlling PFAS contamination at the source.”

The study did not assess how these chemicals in biosolids move in the environment.

DEQ estimates that 3.5 million North Carolinians drink tap water that contains PFAS levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency health-based standard scheduled that was to initially go into effect in 2029.

The Trump administration’s EPA announced last year that it would extend the deadline for public water treatment plants to come into compliance with the federally established limits for two legacy PFAS – PFOA and PFOS to 2031. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced plans to rescind regulations and reconsider regulatory determination for other PFAS, including GenX.

North Carolina does not have state regulatory requirements for PFAS in biosolids.

“The study will inform future study design and identify opportunities for further data collection and analysis,” the release states.

Proposed rules that would require industrial polluters to monitor and minimize their discharges of some chemical compounds into drinking water sources may soon go out for public comment.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission is scheduled to vote this week on whether to approve proceeding to public notice and hearing proposed monitoring and minimization rules for direct dischargers of three types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances into the state’s surface waters.

Under the proposed rule, all major and minor industrial direct dischargers, and significant industrial users that discharge to publicly owned treatment works, would be required to monitor and implement “minimization activities required to eliminate or significantly reduce” discharges of PFOS, PFOA, and GenX anywhere between three and five years, according to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality.

Discharge limits for those specific PFAS have yet to be determined.

PFAS exposure has been linked to a number of adverse health impacts to people, including thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage, and different types of cancers.

The commission will also consider whether to proceed to public notice and hearing proposed 1,4-dioxane monitoring and minimization rules, which would target industries likely to discharge the organic synthetic chemical the Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a likely human carcinogen.

Critics of the proposed rules argue the rules lack any real enforcement because they do not include discharge limits or penalties for industries that increase their discharges.

Various committees of the commission are scheduled to meet beginning at 9 a.m. Wednesday in the ground floor hearing room of the Archdale Building, 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh. Those meetings will also be livestreamed on WebEx.

The full commission is scheduled to meet at the same location 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. Thursday. The meeting will also be livestreamed.

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.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s Water Quality Committee may take action next week on proposed monitoring and minimization rules for three PFAS and 1,4-dioxane.

The proposed rules targeting the three per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, called PFOA, PFOS and GenX are on the committee’s Nov. 12 meeting agenda. The committee is also expected to take action on proposed rules for 1,4-dioxane.

The proposed rules are not on the agenda of the full commission, which is scheduled to meet on the following day. Commissioners will select a chair and vice-chair during the meeting.

The proposed rules would require industries that directly discharge compounds into surface water and all significant industrial users that discharge to publicly owned treatment works to monitor their releases of PFOA, PFOS, GenX, and 1,4-dioxane.

Meetings will be held in the ground floor hearing room of the Archdale Building, 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh.

The public may attend in-person, by computer, or by telephone.

The Nov. 12 committee meetings will begin at 9 a.m. and may be joined online at https://ncgov.webex.com/ncgov/j.php?MTID=m226fb96f0777719d55b063d1c572423b using meeting number/access code 2439 988 8950.

To join the full commission meeting at 9 a.m. Nov. 13 visit https://ncgov.webex.com/ncgov/j.php?MTID=m3a68c6333a6a2633b6526360bfae676b. Use meeting number/access code 2435 258 8225.

The password for both days is NCDEQ (62337 when dialing from a phone or video system.

To join by phone, dial +1-415-655-0003 US Toll.

Agendas and supporting documents are available on the commission’s website.

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.

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 Management Commission voted unanimously Thursday to send a rule outlining health-based standards for three per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances to the state Rules Review Commission.

The 15-member commission also wrapped up the rulemaking process to “clarify” the definition of wetlands, as directed by a summer 2023 session law. The draft language now heads to the Office of Administrative Hearings. Per the session law, the rule is exempt from the Rules Review Commission.

During the environmental commission’s meeting held in Raleigh and streamed virtually, members voted on the draft rule that specifically targets PFOA, PFOS, and GenX in groundwater, which supports about half of drinking water in North Carolina.

Under the rule that is now expected to go before the rules commission at its Oct. 30 meeting, permitted releases of PFAS to groundwater will be limited. The rule also establishes goals for cleaning contamination in groundwater and ensures residents whose drinking water exceeds contamination limits receive alternative water supplies.

Comments the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality received on the rule through a public comment period late last year overwhelmingly supported the rule, but, as Commissioner Dr. Jackie MacDonald Gibson noted Thursday, the public also raised concerns that the rule did not set standards for additional PFAS.

“It’s a very emotional issue,” Gibson said. “I went to the (public) hearing in Wilmington and people there, their families have been directly affected by PFAS exposure to the point that some people were afraid to have their kids drink water at school. I think a lot of people are going to be glad that we’re moving forward with this. They’re going to wish we were doing more.”

The environmental commission’s groundwater and waste management committee last year voted to omit five of the eight compounds DEQ staff originally presented to be included in the rule.

The committee chose to focus on PFOS and PFOA, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies as likely carcinogens, and GenX, a compound specific to Chemours.

Commissioner Tim Baumgartner, who chairs the groundwater and waste management committee, explained that the compounds that were omitted – PFBS, PFNA, PFHxS, PFBA and PFHxA – are being regulated at the practical quantitation limit, or PQL.

PQL is considered the base line in testing laboratories.

“It’s not that we’re not regulating PFAS. It is a matter of what the quantitative limit is for remediation, or what the target level is,” he said.

Commissioner Robin Smith said she regretted that the commission did not adopt health-based standards for all eight PFAS as initially presented by DEQ.

“It would have actually helped some land owners and some responsible parties who need to clean up groundwater by providing them with a health-based standard that is above the PQL,” Smith said. “I’m going to vote for these. I think this is a good rule, but to me, I can’t follow the reasoning of dropping the other five when, in fact those would have made the rules less stringent, but still would have maintained a health-based standard for those other five.”

Environmental Commission Chair JD Solomon responded, saying that instead of using a health-based equation, one that is subject to change, for the compounds that were omitted, the commission “defaulted to PQL.”

“Keep as much PFAS out of the water as possible,” he said. “So, while PFAS is being debated at the national level, and whatever level, we decided as a body to keep it as stringent as possible, even for cleanups.”

If approved by the rules commission next month, the rule would become effective Nov. 1.

A proposed draft rule requiring monitoring and development of PFAS minimization initiatives for dischargers into surface water will be on the commission’s water quality committee’s agenda in November.

Members of that committee voted 4-2 Wednesday to include the draft rule on their meeting scheduled Nov. 12. The proposed rule would require industries that directly discharge compounds into surface water and all significant industrial users that discharge to publicly owned treatment works to monitor their releases of PFOA, PFOS and GenX.

If the committee approves the rule, it will go to the full commission for consideration Nov. 13.

During staff comments, the commissioners were informed that DEQ is now requiring Chemours to expand the number of private wells eligible for PFAS contamination sampling to about 14,000 additional residences in New Hanover, Brunswick, Columbus and Pender counties.

Related: DEQ requires Chemours to expand PFAS well water testing

The expanded area was identified through additional data analysis conducted by the state and Chemours. Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County discharged PFAS, including GenX, for decades directly into the Cape Fear River, ground and air.

Wetlands definition rule

The General Assembly with a June 27, 2023, session law directed the commission to adopt a rule consistent with language in the statute that read “Wetlands classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by” federal regulations.

Sue Homewood with the Division of Water Resources explained Thursday to the commission that, “We had the session law in 2023, the EMC requested that we move forward with this rule amendment, even though we were implementing the rule and are implementing the session law already.”

Around the same time this session law was drafted and making its way through the state legislature, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of an Idaho couple, the Sacketts, who sued the Environmental Protection Agency for putting a stop on work to backfill what the federal agency argued was wetlands.

The Sackett v. EPA decision on May 25, 2023, changed the definition of “waters of the United States,” which are navigable waters protected under the Clean Water Act. The definition now excludes noncontiguous wetlands, or those not connected to navigable waters. The EPA aligned its definition with the court case effective Sept. 8, 2023.

When the North Carolina General Assembly put the 2023 session law through that summer, commissioners worked with staff on how best to proceed. The matter was on pause between April 2024 to January of this year, when the water quality committee approved the language to go to the full commission. Members approved in March the proposed text rule and moving ahead to public comment, which was open April 15 to June 30. A public hearing was held June 26.

Homewood said 134 written comments were submitted and 13 oral comments were presented at the hearing, which are in summarized in the hearing officer’s report.

Of all the comments, she continued, only one was in favor of the rule amendment.

“In general, the comments opposed to the rule amendment were concerned about loss of wetland protection in North Carolina,” Homewood said, such as what the rule means for flooding, resiliency and wildlife habitat.

The public also commented that the state is investing in mitigation and flood resiliency that these wetlands could help provide, and there were some comments stating that the General Assembly should not dictate a rule making body on how to implement rules.

The wetlands definition rule was approved with 10 voting for the rule and commissioners Smith, Gibson, Dr. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, Dr. Ann Chelminski and Dr. Ilona Jaspers voting against. In a separate vote, the hearing officer’s report passed 13-1, with Orme-Zavaleta voting against no and Gibson abstaining.

Homewood said the next step is to submit the rule to the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings, then to General Assembly, which would be the 2026 session. After that, it needs to be approved by the EPA, because this definition is part of the state’s water quality standards.

Karen Higgins with the water planning section said that the EPA has 60 days to approve, 90 days to disapprove, or nothing happens if they take longer. If the EPA disapproves of the standards change, the agency sends it back to the state.

Solomon said he had been asked what could be done about the rule and the bottom line is “our rules have got to be consistent with state laws. And so while this is a little unusual to say, they did their action, we have to clean up our rules now to make sure the definitions fit.”

He continued by pointing out that the rulemaking process “is more or less procedural” and there are concerns but the commission has to comply with the state laws.

Baumgartner reiterated that it was a statutory directive from the General Assembly and the commission is following the Administrative Procedures Act by making this rule change, which Commissioner Kevin Tweedy acknowledged, but said he’s hoping that the state can disconnect from the federal definition.

“North Carolina has unique resources that I think a lot of people, obviously, from the comments, agree it should be protected. I think we can do that protection in a smart way that that takes into account everybody’s concerns and issues with wetlands. But I think connecting it to the (federal definition) and keeping it that way is just not a good long-term policy,” Tweedy said.

Smith, a longtime attorney, called this “bad policy” and part of the reason is that nothing at the federal level is about which or whether these wetlands are important for ecological or other purposes.

“The only issue at the federal level is federal jurisdiction, and that’s driven by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, and it’s driven by the language of the Clean Water Act,” Smith said. “It’s a jurisdictional issue at the federal level. It has nothing to do with assessment of the value of these wetlands.”

Managing the wetlands is primarily a state responsibility, which is why “it’s a mistake to tie state decisions about the value and protection of wetlands to a federal jurisdictional issue,” Smith said.

Aside from bad policy, she said, it’s bad legislative practice, because there’s a section in the session law that causes the entire session law language to sunset as soon as this rule is adopted.

“What the legislature did not change,” Smith said, is the existing definition of waters of the state in a statute, which will continue to be in effect after the session law expires.

She reiterated a point Solomon made that the commission’s rules cannot be in conflict with state law. “But unfortunately, what the legislature has given us is a situation that will create a conflict with state law.”

Smith voted against approving the rule, saying that she understands “the realities of situation, but between the policy and the legislative process and the, in my view, misuse of the session law in this way, without clarifying a statute, makes this an easy vote against for me.”

This report has been updated to correct the area code in Chemours’ well sampling request phone number.

About 14,000 additional residences in the lower Cape Fear region have been added to the list of private drinking water wells eligible for PFAS contamination sampling.

N.C. Department of Environmental Quality announced Thursday that it is requiring Chemours to expand sampling eligibility to more areas of Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover and Pender counties.

“This expansion comes after Chemours and DEQ staff completed an extensive review of existing residential well data as part of the ongoing assessment work and continued actions taken in accordance with the 2019 consent order between DEQ, Cape Fear River Watch and Chemours,” according to a DEQ release. “Current information provided by Chemours indicates that only a portion of these residences may receive their water from wells and need to be sampled.”

Residents within the newly expanded sampling area whose primary drinking water source is a private well may request well sampling by calling Chemours at 910-678-1100 or by completing the company’s online form.

Those who call are asked to live their name, phone number, email and mailing address if prompted to leave a message. The return call may come from Parsons Environment and Infrastructure, which is the authorized third-party contractor conducting the well sampling.

Newly eligible residents who previously requested sampling will be contacted soon by the third-party contractor to arrange sampling.

DEQ’s Division of Waste Management is scheduled to host a virtual public meeting at 6 p.m. Oct. 7 to provide more details about expanded sampling and answer questions.

The webinar number is 2435 548 5932 and the password is chemours (24366878 when dialing from a phone or video system).

Residents may also join the meeting by phone at +1-415-655-0003 (US toll) or +1-904-900-2303 US toll (Jacksonville), access code 243 554 85932.

The state Environmental Management Commission is expected to vote during its September meeting on a legally mandated wetlands definition rule change and on groundwater quality standards for three industrial chemical substances discharged into the environment.

The commission’s committees are to scheduled to meet the afternoon of Sept. 10 and the full commission is to meet at 9 a.m. Sept. 11, both in the Archdale Building in Raleigh. The public may attend in person. To watch online, use this webinar link for the Sept. 10 committee meetings and this webinar link for the Sept. 11 full commission meeting. The password for both is NCDEQ.

The full commission is to consider adopting the revised definition of “wetlands,” which NCDEQ began applying when a 2023 law became effective on June 27, 2023. The law added to the definition the text, “Wetlands classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States,” to align the state with the federal definition that recognizes wetlands only as those that are connected to navigable waters.

The law dictated that the revision be immediately implemented and directed the commission to adopt a rule consistent with the revised definition. Division of Water Resources staff presented the proposed rule change in March and then proceeded to public comment and hearing. The proposed rules were published in the North Carolina Register and on the NCDEQ website on May 1, 2025, and a public hearing was held on June 26. The public comment period closed on June 30, according to agenda documents.

The three PFAS that the commission are to vote on for groundwater quality standards are PFOA, PFOS and GenX.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are long-lasting chemicals known to break down very slowly over time, and are used in a variety of industrial and commercial processes as well as consumers products, according to DEQ. Because of the widespread use and persistence in the environment, many PFAS are found in the blood of people and animals, at low levels in a variety of food products, and in the environment.

Committee meetings

The water allocation committee is to meet at 1 p.m. Sept. 10 to hear an update on the North Carolina Flood Resiliency Blueprint, which is part of a statewide flood mitigation planning process.

The groundwater and waste management committee will follow at 2:15 p.m. when they will hear a presentation on the PFAS treatment system reimbursement program.

The water quality committee at its 2:45 p.m. meeting Sept. 10 is to hear an update on PFOA, PFOS, and Gen X monitoring and minimization rules being drafted.

The committee approved a motion in November to “support the effort towards understanding the sources and levels of certain PFAS compounds in NC.”

Division of Water Resources staff were directed to develop a PFAS minimization initiative for industrial direct dischargers to surface water and all significant industrial users that discharge to publicly owned treatment works. Staff are to update the committee on their progress.

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.”

North Carolinians whose raw drinking water sources are contaminated with chemical compounds will have to wait at least another two months before proposed rules establishing monitoring requirements for dischargers go out for public comment.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s Water Quality Committee unanimously voted earlier this week to wait to present to the full commission draft rules for monitoring and minimizing discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and 1,4-dioxane into the state’s surface waters.

Committee members said Wednesday that while they had hoped to present the draft rules to the commission this month, the N.C. Office of State Budget and Management, or OSBM, needs more time to review and approve regulatory impact analyses of those proposed rules. A regulatory impact analysis, or RIA, is an evaluation of the potential costs and benefits associated with a proposed regulation.

“Only yesterday morning did the department receive comments from OSBM on PFAS and didn’t receive anything yet on 1,4,” Committee Chair Steve Keen said Wednesday afternoon. “Though this was launched to the public through the (Department of Environmental Quality) website two weeks ago, nothing from OSBM until yesterday.”

Committee Vice Chair Michael Ellison alluded to staffing issues at DEQ as one possible reason for the lag in the proposed rules being ready.

“We have heard that some of the economic analysis required for an RIA has been impeded because the department lack sufficient staff trained in economics and that there has been an economist on maternity leave, all of which is fine and wonderful, but this has been going on for over a year,” Ellison said.

Ellison suggested the department turn to universities in the state for help.

“We have had presentation after presentation about the near ubiquitous nature of PFAS in our surface waters statewide and we know they’re there, but we really don’t know all the places that they’re coming from other than Chemours, and we don’t know what tools are available,” he said. “And this draft rule was a step, a critical step, toward this committee, and ultimately the full commission, developing a rule to protect the health and safety and environment of North Carolina and I would hope that the department takes this continuation and makes good use of the time before our next meeting and can get the RIA approved.”

The draft rule for monitoring and minimalizing PFAS targets three chemical compounds: PFOS, PFOA, which are classified as likely carcinogens, and GenX, a compound specific to Chemours Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County.

The chemical manufacturing facility knowingly emitted GenX and a host of other PFAS into the environment, including the Cape Fear River, the ground and air for decades.

But it is hardly the only industrial polluter discharging such chemical compounds into the environment in North Carolina.

Hundreds of industries in the state pay wastewater treatment plants to take their industrial waste. Those treatment plants do not remove PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, which the Environmental Protection Agency also classifies as a likely carcinogen, before discharging their effluent into the environment, including waterways that are the raw drinking water sources for hundreds of thousands of residents.

Downstream drinking water utilities were notified one week ago that elevated levels of 1,4-dixoane had been discharged from the Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant into Hasketts Creek, which drains into the Deep River in the Cape Fear River Basin.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Fayetteville Public Works Commission and the city of Sandford were notified May 3 that the samples the plant collected April 25 from discharge detected a concentration of 826 parts per billion or ppb, according to a DEQ release. The state Division of Water Resources collected a sample that same day with results detecting a concentration of 730 ppb.

“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 release states.

There is growing public outcry among residents, local governments and water utilities downstream of industrial polluters calling for state regulations to stop discharges at the source.

Critics of the proposed rules argue they do not require industries to reduce their PFAS discharges.

During the Water Quality Committee meeting, Keen said the initial game plan was “to create a narrative” on how the state can identify dischargers, what those dischargers are doing, and how they’re doing it, “and minimize it, if not get rid of it.”

“But the foundation was to start by monitoring and minimizing it,” he said. “That was the motion by this committee and that’s where we began officially. We want to get the right numbers for all of the river basins. We want to know what those are. Now, how do we do it? We have to go through OSBM. We have to get the regulatory impact analysis that has the fiscal note and a lot of things tied to it that’s going to give us answers.”

DEQ’s Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers reiterated that staff was under a tight deadline get the rules drafted.

“We will continue to work and hope we can continue to work cooperatively with the committee in this process,” he said.

In comments made early in the full commission’s Thursday meeting, Chair JD Solomon explained to the board that the draft rules were not ready to be put to a vote to go out for public comment because of the RIA.

“Regardless of what did last year or what we’re doing this year, we have to get the cost benefit right,” he said. “I will say everybody did work on it. It is what it is and we just have to resolve to come back in July with the fiscal notes in place and have those debates and whatnot.”

The full commission’s next scheduled meeting is July 10. Committees meet one day prior to the commission.

In an update to the Groundwater and Waste Management Committee on Wednesday morning, DEQ Environmental Program Analyst Jared Wilson said that more than 9,000 homes are expected to be added to those eligible for private water well testing for PFAS.

Well testing has expanded into 10 counties in the vicinity and downstream of Chemours’ plant.

“To date we have not found the edge of contamination,” Wilson said.

State Division of Waste Management Director Michael Scott told committee members that decades of air emissions of PFAS from the Chemours plant infiltrated the ground and migrated to private drinking water wells more than 30 miles away.

“How many plumes do you have in North Carolina that are 35 miles wide?” Solomon asked.

“One,” Scott answered.

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.

The chemical manufacturing company that has publicly touted its products, business strategies and chemistries in ad campaigns aimed at polishing its image will further harm North Carolinians if it is successful in keeping thousands of pages of documents sealed in court, environmental organizations argue.

The Southern Environmental Law Center on Monday filed a court motion to intervene in a case brought against Chemours and its predecessor company DuPont, attorneys for which have asked the court to keep up to 21,000 pages of documents under seal.

Those documents, SELC argues in its motion, “will help communities understand the harm the facility has caused, and will continue to cause, to their own health, their property values, and even the lives of future generations.”

The motion 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 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

In February, attorneys for Chemours and DuPont requested the court keep from public view what they say are mostly internal communications between company employees about “non-public facts” that pertain, in part, to chemical production and is therefore “competitively sensitive.”

An attorney with Brooks Pierce Law Firm, which represents public utilities and local governments downstream of Chemours’ Bladen County plant, told Coastal Review last month that many of the documents in question are already on public record.

Brooks Pierce was expected on Monday to respond to the companies’ motion to keep the documents under seal. A lawyer with the firm did not respond to a request for comment by the time of this publication.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Lower Cape Fear Water & Sewer Authority and Wrightsville Beach in October 2017 sued the companies to recover costs and damages associated with Fayetteville Works’ plant’s discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, for decades into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water supply 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 human-made chemical compounds are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in people and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and developmental issues and increased risk of some cancers.

“After intentionally hiding their toxic PFAS pollution for decades, Chemours and DuPont now want to conceal essential information that directly affects the lives of half-a-million people,” SELC Senior Attorney Jean Zhuang said in a release Monday. “And Chemours has the audacity to try to hide thousands of pages of information as the company plans to expand its PFAS manufacturing operations. After defiling these communities’ drinking water, air, soil and food for years, Chemours has no right to hide information about its toxic pollution yet ask the public to trust that it won’t harm North Carolina families again.”

In 2022, five years after the public first learned that Chemours had been knowingly discharging PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River for decades, the company announced plans to expand its monomers and Nafion production facilities at the Fayetteville Works plant.

As part of a 2019 consent order with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours has taken steps to reduce its emissions of PFAS into the Cape Fear, the ground and the air. That agreement also deems the company responsible for overseeing the testing of 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.

But the brunt of costs associated with removing PFAS from raw water sources ultimately falls on the downstream public utilities that provide drinking water to thousands of customers in the region, including Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties.

“The fact that Chemours and DuPont are trying to hide from the public eye 20,000 pages of documents about their companies’ facility and its pollution is almost comically transparent, if it weren’t so dangerous and sinister; and this attempt, in and of itself, should be considered profound proof that this information needs to see the light of day, especially considering Chemours is actively seeking to expand PFAS production at the site,” Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said in an email.

Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said the public, “which has suffered the effects of this pollution, has a right to review documents that may shed more light on the scope and scale of contamination and the company’s response.”

In its motion to intervene, the SELC lists several categories of documents Chemours and DuPont want to keep under seal, including research into toxicological data, communications about product safety and toxicity studies, environmental assessment and toxicology research, and a list of chemical compounds associated with the Bladen County plant.

“The companies’ own motion admits that the documents are littered with information on Chemours’ and DuPont’s PFAS pollution, sampling data, air and wastewater treatment options, toxicology and health impacts associated with PFAS, environmental and human health concerns, and the public’s exposure to their toxic chemicals,” the motion states. “These and other documents are necessary for the public to understand the impacts to their own health and property values and the potential for subsequent harm from the companies’ past, current, and future air, water, and soil pollution.”

The motion goes on to say that the public “has access to many of the categories of information in the companies’ documents – in large part because the companies have touted their PFAS chemistries, products, and business strategies in public forums as a means of broadcasting their goodwill.”

Late last month, Clean Cape Fear posted an online petition for members of the community to sign in support of unsealing the documents. As of Monday afternoon, more than 1,700 signatures had been collected.

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.

Second in a series

WILMINGTON – Without a state-set limit for 1,4-dioxane, a public utility that serves an estimated 200,000 people here will have to invest millions of dollars to remove the federally deemed “likely carcinogen” from its raw drinking water source.

The projected cost for Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, to make additional upgrades to its Sweeney Water Treatment Plant is in the area of $17- $24 million, authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup said.

Annual additional costs associated with treating the chemical being discharged into the Cape Fear River upstream of the city are between $1 million and $3 million.

Such costs could be avoided if upstream polluters would reduce the amount of 1,4-dioxane from their effluent by 60-65%, Waldroup said.

But prospects that industry will voluntarily reduce discharges of the chemical are slim.

And efforts to get the state’s rule makers – both the North Carolina General Assembly and the Environmental Management Commission – to set a water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane are not making much headway. The commission is charged with adopting rules to protect the state’s air and water resources.

CFPUA will continue advocating for solutions, Waldroup said to a crowd of about 100 people Saturday.

The World Water Day event, hosted by Clean Cape Fear in partnership with St. Andrews-Covenant Presbyterian Church’s women’s ministry team, highlighted ongoing problems downstream water users face from upstream polluters.

It’s an issue that spans the country, where an estimated 6-10% of 66,000 drinking water systems throughout the country must figure out how to treat certain chemical compounds from their raw water sources.

The Cape Fear River is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the Cape Fear Region, one rocked nearly eight years ago when the public was first informed Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility had been discharging PFAS into the river, air and ground for decades.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 14,000 of these chemical compounds, which are used to make a host of everyday consumer goods from food packaging to water-resistant gear.

PFAS exposure has been linked to a number of adverse health impacts to people, including thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage, and different types of cancers.

More than two years have passed since CFPUA completed a multi-million-dollar upgrade to its Sweeney plant, which included the addition of a filtration system to remove PFAS, including GenX, from its raw water source.

Today, the average CFPUA customer bill includes a $7.50 charge Waldroup referred to Saturday as the “Chemours correction surcharge,” one associated with the utility’s annual operation costs associated with the filtration system upgrade.

That upgrade entailed the installation of eight granular activated carbon filters.

The system effectively removes PFAS for which the EPA in the spring of 2024 made the move to set enforceable limits on nearly a half-dozen individual compounds in public water systems.

The cost the utility incurs each year to remove PFAS is about $4.3 million, Waldroup said. The utility’s legal fees have surpassed $10 million in its ongoing lawsuit against Chemours and parent company Dupont to pay for costs and damages related to the companies’ actions.

A trial is not expected until next year.

CFPUA monitors up to 70 types of PFAS, including GenX and other chemical compounds specific to Chemours. The utility is now looking at ultra-short chain PFAS, Waldroup said. Those are compounds with carbon chain lengths of 3 or fewer carbon atoms in sequence

The utility is able to treat “some” 1,4-dioxane from its raw water source, he said, but the activated carbon system does not remove the chemical.

He explained that there is a debate in the scientific community as to the appropriate exposure rate of 1,4-dioxane, specifically whether that rate is 35 parts per billion, or 0.35 ppb. The federal drinking water health advisory level is 0.35 ppb.

“The difference is a one in 10,000 cancer risk a 70-year lifetime exposure and a one in a million,” Waldroup said. “As the downstream water provider, we think one in a million is the right standard.”

Known polluters

In January, CFPUA and other water utilities, including Pender County Utilities, were notified by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality that a city-operated wastewater treatment plant in Randolph County discharged substantially high levels of 1,4-dixoane into a tributary of the Cape Fear River that month.

The notice came months after a state chief administrative law judge last September revoked 1,4-dioxane limits included in Asheboro’s discharge permit. DEQ appealed the judge’s decision and is awaiting a ruling.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, or SELC, on Wednesday notified Asheboro and its industrial customers, StarPet and Waste Management’s Great Oak Landfill, it plans to sue for failing to stop 1,4-dioxane from “flowing into the drinking water supplies for about 900,000 North Carolinians,” according to a release. The intended lawsuit is being filed on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly.

“Asheboro and cities like it have the ability and responsibility to stop this illegal 1,4-dioxane pollution before it contaminates people’s drinking water,” SELC senior attorney Jean Zhuang stated in the release. “Emboldened by its fight to dismantle North Carolinian’s drinking water protections, Asheboro’s 1,4-dioxane pollution has skyrocketed in recent months. Asheboro’s industries don’t want to pay to treat their own chemical pollution, so the city is protecting their profits over the health and safety of North Carolinians downstream and making their untreated, toxic industrial waste a costly problem for communities who get their drinking water downstream.”

Asheboro discharges upstream of the drinking water supply for Sanford, Fayetteville, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties, and municipalities that buy drinking water from Sanford, according to the release.

Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant is one of six known 1,4-dioxane upstream polluters, Waldroup said. Of those, the Alpek Polyester USA plant just upstream of Chemours is the highest source of 1,4-dixoane release into the Cape Fear River, he said.

In May, the Environmental Management Commission is expected to be presented with a draft rule to establish monitoring and minimization requirements of PFAS dischargers in the state. The proposed rule was written largely from input provided by a utility association, which has drawn backlash from one of its own members – CFPUA – and environmental groups.

Hannah Nelson, a Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney and speaker at Saturday’s event, called the proposed rule “offensive” to residents who live downstream of industry polluters.

“This rule was written by polluters and it shows,” she said. “There is no requirement under this draft rule for polluters to reduce PFAS pollution. Polluters will use this rule to hide behind it.”

The commission has instructed DEQ to put together a similar proposed rule for 1,4-dioxane, Nelson said.

That does not prevent DEQ from requiring industries include pretreatment programs in their discharge permits and placing the burden on the polluters, she said.

And the onus of establishing rules that hold the polluter, not water utilities and their customers, may fall even more on the state under the Trump administration, which recently announced plans to dismantle the EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

The EPA’s Research Triangle Park campus is home to labs that study PFAS contamination, air pollution and industrial emissions.

North Carolina also has a group of academic researchers within the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory’s PFAS Testing Network who specifically perform PFAS-related studies in the state. The General Assembly has appropriated tens of millions of dollars for the Collaboratory.

Dr. Jeffrey Enders, a senior research scholar and research assistant professor with North Carolina State University, shared last Saturday the results of a study he conducted on PFAS in sea foam collected along the state’s southern coastal shorelines.

A majority of the 10 foam samples he studied had been 10,000 – 10 million parts per trillion of total PFAS.

People are advised to avoid contact with sea foam on area beaches.

Next in the series: Polluter asks court to keep records under seal

Clean Cape Fear is hosting a World Water Day event to address continuing threats of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane pollution from upstream dischargers into the Cape Fear River.

The program is in partnership with the women’s ministry team at St. Andrews-Covenant Presbyterian Church and is being held at the church in Wilmington from 2-4 p.m. March 22. There is no cost to attend. Space is limited.

There will be a panel discussion from features speakers working to address upstream threats of the chemicals that are being discharged into the river, which is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the Cape Fear region.

Panelists for “Going Upstream: The Environmental State of our Waterways” include Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Ken Waldrop, senior research scholar and Research Assistant Professor Dr. Jeffrey Enders from North Carolina State University, and Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney Hannah M. Nelson.

Discussion will include federal per- and polyfluoroalkyl standards and possible changes to those under the Trump administration, an update on how the utility is addressing PFAS and 1,4-dioxane in Wilmington’s tap water, new research on PFAS in sea foam on local beaches, and a policy update on state regulations pertaining to upstream discharges.

Speakers will make short presentations before the panel opens a question-and-answer session with the audience.

For more details visit Clean Cape Fear’s Facebook page or the church’s website.

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.

North Carolina’s environmental regulatory agency wants your thoughts on whether the state should revise a rule to effectively adopt federal drinking water standards for a handful of PFAS.

The state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources Public Water Supply Section has proposed the state adopt and codify National Primary Drinking Water standards for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

PFAS are a group of thousands of man-made chemicals used widely in manufacturing. They are used to produce commercial and consumer goods such as food packaging, nonstick products, firefighting foams and water- and stain-repellent fabrics. 

Research is ongoing to understand the potential human health effects of PFAS, but studies indicate they can lead to weakened immune function, various types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and decreased liver and kidney function.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last April established maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, to limit six chemical compounds in drinking water supplied by public water systems.

The drinking water standards limit PFOA and PFOS to 4.0 parts per trillion, or PPT. A limit of 10 ppt were established for GenX, PFNA and PFHxS.

Federal regulation also limits mixtures of GenX, PFNA, PFHxS and PFBS.

Public water systems must meet the federal standards by 2029.

DEQ will accept public comments on the proposed rule change Dec. 16 – Feb. 14, 2025. Comments may be mailed to Jay Frick, Division of Water Resources, Public Water Supply Section, 1634 Mail Service Center 27699-1634.

Comments may also be emailed to jay.frick@deq.nc.gov.

The department will hold a public hearing at 1 p.m. Jan. 7 in the ground floor hearing room of the Archdale Building, 512 North Salisbury St., Raleigh.

The Commission for Public Health will make a decision on the proposed rule change after the comment period closes.

Read more about the rule’s regulatory impact analysis.

WILMINGTON – Wayne Lewis stood before state environmental regulatory officials Monday night and told the story about his wife.

He described how, on an evening in 2009 just before she went to bed, she started vomiting blood. He detailed how the couple was shocked by her medical diagnosis: sclerosis of the liver. He explained how the doctors who made that diagnosis at the University of North Carolina Medical Center in Chapel Hill could not determine how or why she got the disease.

“She never drank,” Lewis said, referring to alcoholic beverages. “The only thing she would drink was water, unsweetened tea, maybe a little Sprite. When we went out to eat it was unsweetened tea. She didn’t smoke. They ruled out Tylenol because she didn’t take Tylenol.”

She was tested a handful of times for hepatitis. The results always came back the same, negative.

“They said it was no reason for her to have that disease and that’s why I brought you my report from my water,” Lewis said.

Preliminary and final results indicate that his drinking water contained a total per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, concentration of 381.5 parts per trillion, more than 50 times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum contamination level for legacy compounds PFOA and PFOS, and nearly 40 times higher than limits established for a handful of other compounds, including GenX, which is manufactured upriver near Fayetteville.

Lewis was the first in a string of residents predominately from New Hanover and Brunswick counties who braved the evening chill Monday to speak during the state-held public hearing at Cape Fear Community College on proposed health standards for PFAS in groundwater. The hearing was the second of three held in recent days, the last of which was in Raleigh Tuesday night.

Most of those who spoke at the hearing in Wilmington shared sentiments of frustration with the state Environmental Management Commission for not adopting health standards sooner, for including only three substances — there are anywhere from 12,000 to upwards of 15,000 related compounds — of the eight for which the Department of Environmental Quality had proposed standards, and for what the commission’s critics call pandering to the very industries responsible for discharging the chemical compounds into the environment.

Looking back: Commission members balk on 5 proposed PFAS standards

Hearing officer Jacqueline Gibson, one of the 15 commission members, listened as residents from the lower Cape Fear region urged the commission to adopt health standards for PFAS as a class of chemicals, rather than as individual chemical compounds, for both groundwater and surface waters.

The Cape Fear region was rocked by news in 2017 that the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works facility, some 70 miles upstream of Wilmington, had for decades been discharging PFAS into the Cape Fear River, groundwater and air, contaminating drinking water sources for tens of thousands of residents.

Chemours is not the sole discharger of these chemical compounds — varied PFAS are used to produce everyday goods like food containers, waterproof clothing and stain-resistant carpets — into the region’s drinking water sources. Communities, private well owners and utilities throughout the state are struggling with PFAS contamination.

Earlier this fall, the commission, whose role is to adopt rules to protect, preserve and enhance the state’s water and air resources, voted to move forward with a proposed draft rule outlining health standards for PFOA, PFOS and GenX in groundwater.

The EPA classifies those first two compounds as likely carcinogens. Researchers are still trying to grasp the potential health effects of GenX, a compound specific to Chemours’ plant on the banks of the Cape Fear River.

The proposed rule omits the five other compounds that DEQ had sought to include in proposed groundwater limits.

“We’re worried about our health and we don’t want unnecessary groundwater exposure,” Brunswick County resident Joanne Levitan said. “It’s time to stop putting business interests ahead of people to protect the citizens of North Carolina from PFAS by enacting proposed groundwater standards and further by regulating all PFAS as a class.”

In October, DEQ Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers set interim maximum allowable concentrations for eight PFAS, including PFBS, PFNA, PFHxS, PFBA and PFHxA.

State groundwater rules grant any person the right to request the water resources director establish an interim maximum allowable concentration for a substance for which a groundwater standard has not been set. Rogers set the limits after an Alamance County couple made the request for him to do so.

Rogers will, within a year, recommend to the commission whether any of the interim maximum allowable concentration should be replaced or terminated.

Dr. Robert Parr, a retired emergency physician and Wilmington resident who spoke before the Environmental Management Commission Monday, listed the human health effects associated with PFAS, including various types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, weakened immune function and decreased liver and kidney function.

“It is well past the time that the EMC stopped fooling around and playing around with deadly chemicals, toxic pollutants that endanger public health and safety,” he said. “Now is the time for the EMC to fulfill its primary responsibility and defend present and future generations of North Carolinians from protecting, preserving and enhancing our state’s air and water quality resources.”

Brunswick County resident Jonathan Pattishall described the difficulties he’s had with getting answers on how he can get his private well tested for PFAS.

“I’m asking you to adopt rules governing PFAS as an entire class of chemicals,” he said. “This process is already difficult and confusing enough. Most people who are on private wells are not chemists or lawyers. They’re not government administrators. We don’t handle this kind of information. We need the EMC and the DEQ to help us out, to make it easier by drafting separate rules for all PFAS.”

The commission is expected to decide whether to approve the hearing officer’s report and final fiscal and regulatory impact analysis on the draft rule in May 2025. If approved, the rule would be presented to the state Rules Review Commission next summer.

If the rules commission approves the draft rule, it would become final in July, roughly five years after Lewis lost his wife in 2019.

She spent her final 10 days in an intensive care unit. She was 58.

After Gibson proclaimed the hearing adjourned, Lewis shouted from his seat, “Does it do any good? Or, are you just going to do what you want to do?”

Public comments on the proposed draft rule will be accepted through Dec. 31 by email to GWTriRevComments@deq.nc.gov or by mail to Bridget Shelton, NC DEQ Division of Water Resources, Planning Section 1611 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, N.C. 27699-1611.

Graduate students in good standing who attend one of the North Carolina’s colleges or universities can apply for a $10,000 grant to fund a one-year research project focusing on the state’s coastal and freshwater resources.

North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute and North Carolina Sea Grant are accepting proposals for the Mountains to Sea Graduate Research Fellowship until 5 p.m. Dec. 16. The full request for proposals is available online.

The institute works to address issues related to surface and groundwater resources, including quality and quantity. Sea Grant covers a range of topics including climate resilience, healthy ecosystems, education and workforce development, fisheries, and aquaculture.

Proposals should align with both organization’s strategic plans, coordinators said, and are encouraged to address one or more of the following focus areas:

• Emerging regulated and unregulated contaminants of concern.
• Microplastic pollution and marine debris.
• Aquatic invasive species.
• Harmful algal blooms and associated toxins.
• Climate impacts, including nuisance flooding.
• Erosion and sediment control.
• Surface and groundwater quality and/or quantity.
• Water treatment, including aquaculture effluent.
• Green stormwater infrastructure & nature-based solutions.
• Urban design and recreational management.
• Economics, planning and/or policy related to water resources management.
• Water education.

Water Resources Research Institute is a multi-campus center of the University of North Carolina system and is part of a national network of 54 institutes authorized by the Water Resources Research Act of 1964. The institute represents a federal and state partnership between the US Geological Survey and state land grant universities.

North Carolina Sea Grant, also a UNC system multi-campus program, is one of 33 programs within the National Sea Grant College Program, and represents a federal and state partnership between the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and coastal and great lakes states.

A GenX clinic to be held over the weekend in Wilmington is in need of workers.

North Carolina State University is seeking members of the community to serve as clinic guides, a job that pays $12 per hour. 

Guides will be responsible for walking the clinic’s participants between sampling stations, ensuring that the clinic is run properly. Prior training or certification is not required.

The clinic will be held at the New Hanover County Health and Human Services building, 1650 Greenfield St. at the following times:

• 2:30-6 p.m. Friday.
• 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturday.
• 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Sunday.

Those interested may contact hebaile2@ncsu.edu.

An in-person community meeting is scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Oct. 29 to go over the results of the 2023 exposure study. That meeting will be held at Cape Fear Community College, 502 N. Front St.

Researchers have been studying exposure and health outcomes of residents who live in the Cape Fear River basin from Pittsboro to Fayetteville to New Hanover and Brunswick counties, areas where drinking water sources have been contaminated for years by the chemical compound.

The study aims to track participants for a minimum of five years and up to 20 in an effort to learn more about how GenX and other per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, affect human health.

Tens of thousands of residents in the Cape Fear region have been exposed to PFAS in their drinking water sources for years. One of those substances, GenX, is specific to the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant, which sits on the banks of the Cape Fear River some 75 miles upstream of Wilmington.

The North Carolina Division of Water Resources is accepting public comments on a set of requested interim maximum allowable concentrations in groundwater for eight PFAS.

Division Director Richard Rogers intends to establish the interim maximum allowable concentrations, or IMACs, on Oct. 15. The action follows a request by Graham residents Jonathan and Stephanie Gordon, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality said Wednesday.

The couple’s July request specifically targets the following compounds:

• Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS)
• Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)
• Hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid HFPO-DA (GenX)
• Perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS)
• Perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA)
• Perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS)
• Perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA)
• Perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA)

State groundwater rules grant any person the right to request the water resources director establish an IMAC for a substance for which a groundwater standard has not been set.

In their July 17 request to Rogers, the Gordons wrote that at least a half-dozen drinking water wells in their Alamance County community tested for “extremely high levels of PFAS.”

“Discovering that we have toxic PFAS in our drinking water wells has been stressful and frightening, and the response from government has been disheartening. Issuing an IMAC will only be one step towards the relief we need, but it will at least give us greater clarity about the risk we face and the eventual obligations for unknown responsible parties to address the contamination they have visited upon us,” they wrote.

The IMACs would replace the practical quantitation limit, or PQL, as the standard for groundwaters that naturally contain 250 milligrams per liter or less of chloride and those naturally containing greater than 250 milligrams per liter of chloride.

Comments are being accepted through Oct. 4 and may be emailed to MACcomments@deq.nc.gov or by mail to: N.C. DEQ Division of Water Resources, Attn: Bridget Shelton, DWR Planning Section, 1611 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1611.

A public hearing is not required to establish IMACs.

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

Last week, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a suit brought by Chemours. The chemical company, which manufactures GenX (HFPO-DA), a class of a per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, at its Fayetteville Works facility, challenged the health advisory established by the agency in 2022 for GenX in groundwater.

Chemours claimed the EPA set the advisory level too low — at 10 parts per trillion — and relied on faulty research to establish it. However, the three-judge panel ruled that the advisory was not a federal regulation and, therefore, rejected Chemours’ argument the EPA acted unlawfully when issuing a health advisory about the exposure risks of GenX in drinking water.

“Through the years, our community has learned that when companies like Chemours are not actively hiding the science, they are usually attacking it,” said Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear. “This is a win for public health and every resident harmed by GenX exposures. The courts got it right this time.”

In April 2024, the EPA established maximum contaminant levels for six PFAS in drinking water, out of the thousands of PFAS manufactured in the U.S. 

The court’s ruling means a consent order, established in 2019 between Chemours, Cape Fear River Watch, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, will remain intact — at least for now. Chemours vows to mount more court challenges.  

Under the consent order, Chemours is required to carry out specific tasks, such as drinking water well testing, for people who live near the site, including in New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Columbus counties.

That includes extending testing to one-quarter mile beyond the closest well with PFAS levels above 10 parts per trillion and annually retesting any wells sampled. Additionally, Chemours is responsible for providing clean drinking water options, such as whole-house filtration systems, to those with wells contaminated with GenX compounds above 10 ppt.

For area homeowners like Wilmington resident and business owner Steve Schnitzler, whose well’s GenX level exceeded the health advisory standard when it was tested in August 2023, the court’s ruling means Chemours must keep providing safe drinking water to his home.

“I have four reverse osmosis systems in my house right now that Chemours paid for and will maintain for the next 20 years so that we can have clean drinking water,” he said.

‘Forever chemicals’

There are roughly 15,000 unique per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) in the environment, according to experts. Because of their persistence in the environment, PFAS are commonly referred to as “forever chemicals.” They are present in multiple products, including cosmetics and apparel, microwave popcorn wrappers, dental floss, firefighting turnout gear and some firefighting foams.

The chemicals are associated with such adverse health effects as increased cholesterol levels, kidney and testicular cancer, dangerously high blood pressure in pregnant women and decreased vaccine response in children.

The two most extensively produced and studied families of compounds, PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid), have been phased out in the U.S. Still, because they don’t break down quickly, they can keep accumulating in the environment and in the human body. GenX or HFPO-DA (hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid) was created as a replacement for PFOA.

PFAS Glossary

PFOA – Perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as C8, is produced and used as an industrial surfactant, which helps things not to stick to one another in chemical processes. It also is a raw material for other forms of PFAS. PFOA was widely manufactured but has largely been phased out of production. 

PFOS – Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid was a key ingredient in Scotchgard before being banned by the European Union and Canada. Several U.S. states have banned the chemical, derivatives of which were also used in cosmetics. The EPA announced in 2021 that it would regulate the presence of PFOS in drinking water.

GenX – is a derivative salt of hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA) and was manufactured by Chemours. It’s the substance initially found contaminating the Cape Fear River in 2017. GenX has been used widely in food wrappings, paints, cleaning products, nonstick coatings and some firefighting foams.  

A win for now?

Chemours plans to continue to press its case against the EPA’s position on forever chemicals and will next look to present arguments in a Washington, D.C., appeals court, according to Reuters. 

Looming in the background of the legal battle between Chemours and the EPA is the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The court ruled that federal agencies such as the EPA would no longer have the authority to use their expertise to interpret ambiguous laws. Instead, judges will assume responsibility for doing so.

The ruling affects the so-called Chevron Doctrine, which emerged from a 1984 Supreme Court case between Chevron Corp. and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The court ruled to defer to the experts at regulatory agencies when federal regulations were ambiguous, so long as the regulators provided a reasonable interpretation.

Could the Supreme Court’s ruling handicap regulators and tip the scales and favor corporations such as Chemours in future cases?

“The repeal of Chevron deference can cut both ways,” said Tom Fox, senior legislative counsel for the Oakland, California-based Center of Environmental Health. 

“After all, Chevron v. [Natural Resources Defense Counsel] in 1984 was a case brought by NRDC challenging the Reagan administration’s deregulatory actions under the Clean Air Act.” Fox said. “It could be argued that Loper Bright may make it easier to challenge deregulatory actions. It also could be argued that the court’s decision did not affect deference to agency scientific judgments. However, we have seen numerous examples of the Roberts court (and lower court judges) ignoring and/or cherry-picking facts, science and history.”

When asked what environmental groups and their supporters can do to prepare for a possible shifting legal landscape, Fox said to do their homework and stay vigilant.

“I would advise public interest organizations to be strategic in bringing cases in appropriate judicial districts,” he said. “In addition, the Loper Bright decision highlights the importance of science and community involvement in agency rulemakings.”

As a business owner, Schnitzler posed a question for those who place business interests above public health.

“This general ‘business can do no wrong, and we have to keep allowing [corporations] to do horrible things because otherwise we’ll stifle innovation and will stifle growth,’ at what cost?” he asked.

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The U.S. Court of Appeals this week dismissed a chemical company’s claim that the health advisory the Environmental Protection Agency issued in June 2022 for certain man-made chemicals found in drinking water was “unlawful and should be vacated.”

The 3rd Circuit three-judge panel in Philadelphia heard the argument Jan. 31 and filed its opinion Tuesday.

Chemours Co., which has a facility near Fayetteville, cited a section of the Safe Drinking Water Act that allows petitions for review of “any … final action of the Administrator under this chapter,” according to the ruling.

“Contending that the advisory was unlawful, the Chemours Company petitioned for review of EPA’s action. We will dismiss the petition for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because the health advisory is not a final agency action,” the judges found.

The EPA estimates that there are thousands of different per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, chemicals used in a range of products like home goods and in manufacturing. PFAS have been detected in surface water, groundwater, rainwater and drinking water. Exposure to some of these widely used, long-lasting synthetic chemicals may be toxic to humans.

“This decision supports the very important Safe Drinking Water Act health advisory program,” EPA press secretary Remmington Belford told Coastal Review Wednesday about the ruling.

The Center for Environmental Health, Cape Fear River Watch, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, North Carolina Black Alliance, Toxic Free North Carolina, Natural Resources Defense Council and five residents intervened a month after Chemours filed the petition for review in July 2022. Officials with the groups released an announcement Tuesday applauding the court’s decision.

“Through the years, our community has learned that when companies like Chemours are not actively hiding the science, they are usually attacking it. This is a win for public health and every resident harmed by GenX exposures. The courts got it right this time,” Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear said Tuesday in a release.

“We were hopeful and cautiously optimistic; however, we’ve also seen a shift in court rulings recently that have not been friendly to environmental protections and public health. Yesterday’s verdict was refreshing,” she said in an interview Wednesday.

“We believe this ruling is significant for private well owners in the region dealing with Chemours-specific PFAS contamination,” Donovan continued, adding that DEQ adopted the EPA’s GenX health advisory when it came out in 2022 and the ruling Tuesday means DEQ can keep moving forward and require Chemours to provide remedies to private well owners who have levels of GenX exceeding 10 parts per trillion. Historically it was 140 ppt.

“DEQ has made addressing PFAS a priority and will continue to rely on science-based, peer-reviewed health standards to protect human health in North Carolina while implementing the Maximum Contaminant Levels set by EPA and pursuing state-level surface water and groundwater standards for PFAS compounds, including GenX,” NCDEQ Deputy Communications Director Josh Kastrinsky said Wednesday.

“The Court strongly and unanimously rejected Chemours’s attempt to kill EPA’s scientific guidance on how communities can protect themselves from toxic GenX contamination in tap water,” said Sarah Tallman, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Everyone has a right to turn on their kitchen tap and have safe water, so we will continue to fight the chemical industry and others who try to block efforts to protect our health from toxic hazards.”

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said in the release that Chemours fought this health advisory level “for the same motivation behind all their actions: money. While the court did not acknowledge their smokescreen, we are grateful they rejected Chemours’ nefarious claim.”

Chemours said the ruling was merely a procedural loss.

“While we are disappointed with the Third Circuit’s dismissal of our appeal on procedural grounds, the decision means the U.S. EPA’s health advisory on HFPO-Dimer Acid (HFPO-DA) is not enforceable,” Chemours Representative Cassie Olszewski told Coastal Review Wednesday.

“Chemours has challenged — along with groups of drinking water providers and manufacturers — the EPA’s Maximum Contaminant Limits (MCL) for drinking water which utilize, in part, the same scientifically unsound analysis. We look forward to having the D.C. Circuit consider the merits of our arguments in connection with our pending challenge to the EPA’s MCL regulation,” Olszewski said.

Leading up to the judges’ decision

After news reports in June 2017 that several types of PFAS had been detected in the Cape Fear River, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality identified Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility as the source.

Cape Fear River watch sued both the Department of Environmental Quality and Chemours, resulting in a consent order that has allowed the company to continue operating since February 2019. Since then, both the EPA and DEQ say they have been taking steps to address PFAS.

“Drinking water health advisory levels are non-regulatory health-based values that are provided for informational purposes,” according to the EPA. “On June 15, 2022, the EPA published final drinking water health advisories (HAs) for perfluorobutane sulfonic acid and its potassium salt (PFBS) and hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA) and its ammonium salt (‘GenX chemicals’).”

The final health advisory values were based on the final EPA toxicity assessments published in 2021, the agency said.

Chemours uses HFPO-DA as a “patented polymerization aid in the manufacture of fluoropolymers,” the trade name for which is GenX, according to the company.

Chemours filed the petition for review in July 2022, saying the health advisory was arbitrary and capricious and that it was otherwise inconsistent with the law, because EPA incorporated grossly incorrect and overstated exposure assumptions―in essence, EPA used the wrong chemical when making its exposure assumptions, thereby resulting in a significantly less tolerant health advisory for HFPO Dimer Acid than is warranted by the data,” according to the petition.

The 3^rd Circuit found that Congress enacted the Safe Water Drinking Act to protect drinking water quality, and authorizes the EPA administrator to address contaminants in waters by taking various actions, such as putting a regulation in place or issue health advisories.

Once EPA officials have the final toxicity assessment, exposure factors and relative source contribution, the federal agency can then publish a health advisory “to inform decisionmakers of what it deems is a safe level of the contaminant in drinking water.”

In this instance, the EPA developed a health advisory. Advisories are not regulations, but “provide information’ about a safe level of a contaminant so that government officials and managers of public water systems can ‘determine whether actions are needed to address the presence of [the] contaminant in drinking water,’” the court found.

In August 2022, the nonprofit organizations and five residents intervened in the case.

The Center for Environmental Health represented Cape Fear River Basin community groups and individuals who have relied on the advisory to fight for health protective drinking water, Senior Legislative Counsel Tom Fox said in a release.

“The Third Circuit correctly found that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the GenX health advisory is not a final agency action. The court rejected Chemours’ attempts to convert the advisory into a reviewable action with examples of indirect consequences of the health advisory,” Fox said.

Donovan told Coastal Review Wednesday that Clean Cape Fear intervened because ‘We wanted the courts to see that the American people — especially those of us living in North Carolina, are hungry for strong enforceable protections the Biden/Harris EPA is implementing regarding PFAS. Chemours publicly claims GenX is safe but the best available science disagrees. We’re tired of Chemours attacking the EPA when it actually begins to do its job and serve the people.”

What’s next?

Chemours filed in June a similar petition for review in the Washington, D.C., circuit after the EPA issued in April the final National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for six PFAS, including perfluorobutane sulfonic acid and its potassium salt, or PFBS, and GenX chemicals, specifically, HFPO-DA.

“EPA expects that over many years the final rule will prevent PFAS exposure in drinking water for approximately 100 million people, prevent thousands of deaths, and reduce tens of thousands of serious PFAS-attributable illnesses,” the agency said in April. The drinking water regulation established legally enforceable levels for several PFAS.

Donovan noted Wednesday that Clean Cape Fear had learned Tuesday that the group was granted the ability to intervene in defense of EPA’s PFAS drinking water standards.

“Chemours, the American Chemistry Council and other groups sued the EPA earlier this year when the first-ever federal drinking water standards for PFAS were finalized. We joined forces with EarthJustice and other contaminated community groups across the nation to intervene in that lawsuit, as well,” she said.

Members of the commission charged with adopting rules to protect the state’s air and water resources voted this week to pursue health-based standards for only three PFAS prevalent in North Carolina drinking water sources.

The Environmental Management Commission’s groundwater and waste management committee Wednesday afternoon declined to recommend to the full commission all eight per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances included in proposed rules set forth by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ.

The commission’s water quality committee also voted Wednesday to defer a motion to send the surface water rule package on all eight PFAS to the commission for action in its full meeting on Thursday.

The decisions of both committees this week further delay the rulemaking process for the chemical compounds, two of which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified as likely carcinogens.

The earliest the full commission could take action on each committees’ recommendations is at its next meeting in September. The commission can either accept the groundwater committee’s recommendation or put a public notice of standards for all eight PFAS.

The committees’ votes this week frustrated proponents, residents, DEQ officials and some commissioners.

But others on the commission continue to defend their decisions, with those on the water quality committee arguing that they need more time to review revisions to a fiscal analysis associated with the proposed surface water standards.

Groundwater and waste management committee Chair Joe Reardon said that the members on Wednesday agreed to recommend groundwater health standards for the three PFAS because two – PFOA and PFOS – have been identified by the federal government as likely carcinogens. The third, GenX, which had been discharged into the Cape Fear River directly from Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility, was included he said, “because obviously the citizens of this state have struggled with (it).”

The committee agreed not to advance PFBS, PFNA, PFHxS, PFBA and PFHxA.

“The science is evolving in this dynamic and I believe the work of this committee was respectful and very pragmatic,” Reardon said.

Groundwater standards would be used to limit permitted releases of PFAS to groundwater, set the health threshold for providing alternative water supplies to residents whose drinking water exceeds contamination limits, and used to establish goals for cleaning contamination in groundwater.

Commissioner Marion Deerhake was one of two water quality committee members who voted Wednesday to recommend the commission take action on the proposed health-based standards for surface water. Fish consumption also is taken into consideration of surface water standards.

She cautioned fellow committee members during their meeting Wednesday against delaying a vote.

Commissioner and Water Allocation Committee Vice-Chair Robin Smith and Thursday during the full commission meeting that she was disappointed in the groundwater committee’s discussion and decision.

“I sat through the entire (groundwater) committee meeting and didn’t hear any substantive flaw identified in the calculation of those standards,” Smith said. “There was no contradiction of the bottom-line conclusion of the regulatory impact analysis. The adoption of all eight standards would impose no new cost on the state, or the citizens of the state, and, to the contrary, would actually reduce regulatory burden. If we can’t adopt standards in that set of circumstances it is hopeless to consider adopting standards in the much more common circumstance we’re going to be looking at in the surface water standards where there are going to be costs.”

DEQ Assistant Secretary Sushma Masemore asked water quality committee members at their meeting Wednesday to consider three points: whether or not the public accepts the science behind the health impacts of the eight compounds; the presence of the eight PFAS in drinking water sources in the state; and how the state wants to protect public health.

“We’re not saying thousands of PFAS out there, but these eight specific chemicals for which multiple federal agencies, credible academia, scientists and experts around the country and the world have put together in their consensus documentations and peer reviewed reports,” Masemore said. “We’ve shown in the many presentations, data, monitoring information, not only from us, but also third party, the permittees, that shows the presence of these PFAS at different levels. And we have articulated here, the best way to acknowledge the cost and the impact to the regulated community, because in the absence of that, the ratepayers, the everyday North Carolinian is going to have to pay for that to clean up that drinking water. They may have to pay for that through their health outcomes over a lifetime.”

The department estimates the tap water of some 3.4 million residents comes from systems that contain at least one compound exceeding new federal contamination limits on several PFAS.

More than 300 municipal and small water systems in North Carolina sampled in 2022 had PFAS detections above newly established federal maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs. Utilities that have drinking water contaminated with PFAS exceeding the MCLs have five years to integrate technology to bring them into compliance.

The costs associated with upgrading systems are by and large getting passed down to customers.

DEQ officials have been discussing proposed health standards with the commission since last November.

In April, the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce asked DEQ to postpone its pursuit of surface and groundwater standards for PFAS, arguing that further research is needed to understand the economic impacts of the proposed regulations.

Commission members continue to be accused of stalling the rulemaking process in order to protect industry.

During a virtual press conference hosted Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, speakers, including residents, business owners and elected officials in the lower Cape Fear region, reiterated those claims.

“The EMC’s mandate is to protect, preserve and enhance the state’s air and water resources and it’s time for them to fulfill this responsibility,” Wilmington City Councilwoman Salette Andrews said Tuesday. “I predict they will once again fail to act in the best interest of North Carolinians. The EMC should work for the people, not the Chamber of Commerce. The chamber has its own lobbyists and doesn’t need to commission in order to do their bidding.”

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent specifically called out newer commission members appointed last year by the Republican-controlled legislature, saying those members “have made it clear that they care more about the cost to heavy industry and the Chamber of Commerce’s values, which are also heavy industry.”

“They’re waiting for the Clean Water Act to be basically opened up by potentially a new EPA,” she said, referring to the November presidential election.

Cori Bell, a NRDC senior attorney for environmental health, said the commission has had months to ask questions of DEQ.

“There have been multiple opportunities to get more information and I don’t think that it’s a lack of information and DEC has also said publicly that it’s not a lack of information on the financial analysis here,” Bell said. “It’s really, I think, a result of chamber pressure and outside pressure.”

Commission Chair J.D. Solomon assured commission members at the close of their Thursday meeting that they’re going to “work this thing down the middle.”

“This is a long game,” he said. “We made some progress yesterday. We just have to find the balance.”

This week seven years ago, residents in the Cape Fear region learned that their drinking water supply was contaminated with GenX, a type of PFAS being released into the river by the Chemours facility, a DuPont spinoff near Fayetteville.

In the time since, the state has taken steps to manage per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also called emerging compounds, which have been linked to health effects in humans and animals.

To highlight these ongoing efforts, Gov. Roy Cooper’s office has proclaimed June 3-7 as PFAS Awareness Week.

“North Carolinians deserve clean water and we must be at the forefront of the fight to contain forever chemicals,” Cooper said Friday. “We are holding polluters accountable, researching solutions, and working hard to protect people’s health.”

PFAS is a group of human-made chemicals that has been used for decades in commercial and consumer products such as food packaging, water- and stain-repellent fabrics, nonstick products and firefighting foams, as well as industrial processes and manufacturing.

These pervasive compounds detected in household and industrial waste, air emissions and wastewater discharges are often called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment and can build up in humans and animals.

North Carolina’s departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services began investigating GenX, when Wilmington StarNews broke the story June 7, 2017, that N.C. State University researchers discovered the chemicals int he Cape Fear River basin. The state’s investigation identified the Chemours Fayetteville Works facility as the producer of GenX.

In 2019, the state, Chemours, and the nonprofit Cape Fear River Watch signed a consent order requiring Chemours to address PFAS sources and contamination at the facility to prevent further impacts to air, soil, groundwater and surface water.

NCDEQ ordered significant additional actions by Chemours to prevent PFAS pollution from entering the Cape Fear River in the Addendum to the Consent Order released in August 2020.

On Nov. 3, 2021, the state determined that Chemours was responsible for contamination of groundwater monitoring wells and water supply wells in New Hanover County and potentially Pender, Columbus, and Brunswick counties, and expanded the consent order to include these downstream communities.

On March 28, 2022, NCDEQ required Chemours expand the sampling and drinking water plan.

NCDEQ released its action strategy June 7, 2022, to address PFAS and on June 7, 2023, updated the plan to fund remediation efforts for eligible residents with PFAS contamination.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced in April the first-ever national limit on PFAS in drinking water.

“Based on all available data, more than 300 water systems in our state have PFAS levels that will exceed the new standards. That includes 42 municipal water systems serving nearly 3 million residents combined, as well as approximately 20% of small public water systems tested,” according to the state.

Cooper’s office notes in the press release that his 2024 budget proposal includes a $100 million fund to help communities clean their water from pollutants such as PFAS.

Related: Totals on PFAS-contaminated utilities ‘coming down daily’

In early May, NCDEQ requested the Environmental Management Commission begin rulemaking on PFAS groundwater and surface water standards, which would limit the amount of PFAS that companies can discharge. This commission adopts rules for “protection, preservation, and enhancement of the water and air resources of the State.”

Reducing discharges of PFAS into North Carolina’s state water supplies is the most cost-effective way to meet the new drinking water standards, according to the state.

“Despite these calls to begin regulating PFAS, the EMC has stalled efforts amid lobbying by the NC Chamber of Commerce, whose members include chemical companies,” the governor’s office said. “Republican legislators seized control of the EMC in 2023 through legislation it passed over the Governor’s veto that continues to be litigated in the courts. The EMC’s move to delay anti-pollution rules intended to protect drinking water from PFAS contamination mirrored lobbying from the NC Chamber on behalf of its members. Recent reporting shows that members of the EMC own stock in companies that belong to the Chamber and lobbied to oppose PFAS regulation.”

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it has set federally enforceable limits on nearly a half-dozen individual PFAS in public water systems.

The historic move also limits any combination of two or more of four per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and starts the countdown for thousands of public water suppliers throughout the country to monitor for those chemicals and report their findings to their customers.

An estimated 6 to 10% of 66,000 drinking water systems throughout the country have three years to comply. In North Carolina, a combined more than 300 municipal and small water systems sampled in 2022 had PFAS detections above the newly established maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, according to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Utilities that have drinking water contaminated with PFAS exceeding the MCLs will be given five years to integrate technology at their facilities to reduce the amounts of the chemical compounds flowing from their customers’ taps.

The EPA’s much-anticipated final rule was hailed as a first step by a host of North Carolina environmental and advocacy organizations that have been calling for federal and state regulators to ultimately clamp down on industries that release PFAS into the environment.

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 contaminators including industrial manufacturers, landfills and firefighting facilities.

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said in a statement that while the organization applauds the EPA’s decision, the federal government has for nearly 30 years known about the health hazards of PFAS.

“And even now, they refuse to regulate the corporations directly by requiring them to stop the pollution at the source, but instead put the burden on utilities to either filter this dangerous filth, or do the government’s job to pressure companies to stop discharging it. So, while we thank the EPA for this work, we implore them and our legislators and environmental regulators to recognize that decades of their entities’ negligence, and support of corporate greed, has caused the illnesses and deaths of thousands of Americans and the degradation to our ecosystems, including that of the Cape Fear River,” the statement reads.

The Cape Fear region has been ground zero for PFAS contamination in the state after researchers several years ago discovered a number of the chemical compounds in the river, a drinking water source for more than a half-million North Carolinians.

The revelation that the Chemours Co. Fayetteville Works facility, located more than 70 miles upstream of Wilmington, had been discharging PFAS into the river, air and ground for decades ignited a fury of lawsuits and state-supported investigative studies on everything from effective PFAS filtration methods and source detections to human health studies.

Chemours, which now operates under a consent order that resulted from a legal challenge by Cape Fear River Watch and DEQ has reduced the amount of PFAS it emits into the environment through various measures. These include the construction of a mile-long, underground barrier to keep PFAS-contaminated groundwater from seeping to the Cape Fear.

One of the EPA’s now regulated individual chemical compounds known commercially as GenX has been discharged specifically from the Chemours plant in Bladen County.

Shortly after the EPA in June 2022 revised the GenX health level advisory to 10 parts per trillion, Chemours sued, arguing the agency failed to use the best available science when making its determination.

The case was argued earlier this year in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Chemours’ headquarters. A decision has not been rendered in that case.

The new federal regulatory limit on GenX is 10 parts per trillion, or ppt.

Other maximum limits on individual PFAS include the following:

• Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, at 4 ppt.
• Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, at 4 ppt.
• Perfluorononoanoic acid, or PFNA, at 10 ppt.
• Perfluorohexane sulfonate, or PFHxS, at 10 ppt.

Any mixture of two or more of GenX, PFNA, PFHxS, and perfluorobutane sulfonate, or PFBS, may not exceed a hazard index of 1. The hazard index is made up of a sum of fractions used to calculate humans’ exposure to levels where health effects are not anticipated to occur.

PFOA and PFOS are two of the most widely studied PFAS.

Health studies on other PFAS, including GenX, are ongoing, though the number of compounds being studied pale in comparison to the number of PFAS identified in the EPA’s registry – 15,000.

Current studies suggest PFAS affect pregnant women and developing babies, immune systems, increase the risk of certain types of cancers, and may result in elevated cholesterol levels, which increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Government leaders in various states, including North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, on Wednesday lauded the EPA’s final rule.

Cooper thanked EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who headed DEQ before taking the helm at the federal agency, for “taking this action to protect drinking water in North Carolina and across the country.”

“We asked for this because we know science-based standards for PFAS and other compounds are desperately needed,” Cooper said in a release.

DEQ has sampled 50 municipal and county water systems and more than 530 small public water systems since 2022, according to the agency.

“DEQ has already worked with water systems to measure for PFAS in advance of this rule, so they are well prepared to utilize the funding available now to take action and protect the people of North Carolina,” DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser said in a release.

Biser was referring to funding through the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a bipartisan bill that President Joe Biden signed into law in late 2021. That measure set aside $9 billion to help communities upgrade drinking water systems with technologies that remove PFAS.

Currently though, there are no federal safeguards in place for private well owners.

DEQ has required Chemours to test thousands of private water wells in New Hanover, Brunswick, Columbus and Pender counties and identify residents who may be eligible for replacement drinking water at the cost of the company.

The agency more recently introduced a statewide program to aid residents whose well water is found to have PFAS at or above health advisory levels. The program targets PFAS contamination of private wells in areas where there is not a designated responsible part to provide alternative drinking water.

Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, said in a release she is grateful that the EPA “heard our pleas and kept its promise to the American people.”

“We will keep fighting until all exposures to PFAS end and the chemical companies responsible for business-related human rights abuses are held fully accountable,” she stated.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Jean Zhuang said the EPA’s new drinking water standards are “a welcome backstop” and called for federal, state and municipal leaders to stop PFAS pollution at the source.

“The Clean Water Act already provides the tools necessary for agencies to stop PFAS pollution through the permitting process before it gets into drinking water sources,” Zhaung said in a release. “If existing laws are enforced, as they should be, they will keep PFAS pollution out of our waterways and downstream drinking water.”   

N.C. Conservation Network Environmental Health Campaigns Manager Stephanie Schweikert expressed similar sentiments in a statement to the media.

“EPA’s historic and protective new drinking water standards for PFAS will go a long way toward protecting North Carolinians from the adverse health impacts of forever chemicals exposure – particularly when paired with existing federal investments available to upgrade water utilities,” she stated. “North Carolina leaders must now take steps to address industrial discharges and turn off the tape of PFAS pollution at the source.”

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.

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to add nine per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, including GenX, to its list of chemicals that should be treated as hazardous waste.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan signed the proposal Wednesday to modify the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA, to include the nine PFAS, their salts, and their structural isomers, according to a release.

PFAS are manmade chemical compounds that are resistant to heat, water and grease and used to make a host of consumer products, including stain-resistant carpet, carpet cleaning products, food packaging, furnishings, cosmetics, outdoor gear, clothing, adhesives and sealants, firefighting foam and nonstick cookware.

A number of these chemicals can be found in drinking water sources in the state, including the Cape Fear River.

The Cape Fear is the drinking water source for tens of thousands in the region. Residents in that area were made aware six years ago that the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant more than 70 miles upriver of Wilmington had been discharging PFAS into the river for decades.

The EPA has evaluated toxicity and epidemiology information on the nine PFAS and determined that the chemical compounds meet the criteria to be listed as RCRA hazardous constituents, or those that are subject to treatment, according to the release.

“This change would facilitate additional corrective action to address releases of these specific PFAS at RCRA hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities,” the release states. “It would not require the suite of cradle to grave management controls that are associated with a RCRA hazardous waste.”

Those PFAS include the following: 

• perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA.
• perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS.
• perfluorobutanesulfonic acid, or PFBS.
• perfluorononanoic acid, or PFNA.
• perfluorohexanesulfonic acid, or PFHxS.
• perfluorodecanoic acid, or PFDA.
• perfluorohexanoic acid, or PFHxA.
• perfluorobutanoic acid, or PFBA.
• hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid, or HFPO-DA, more commonly referred to as GenX.

GenX is specific to the Chemours plant in Bladen County.

GenX does not remain long – three days tops – in the human bloodstream, but its health effects continue to be studied.

In 2022, more than 1,000 residents in the Cape Fear River Basin, including Wilmington, Fayetteville and Pittsboro, volunteered to have their blood sampled.

Nearly every one of those who volunteered were found to have PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS and PFNA in their blood streams.

Those synthetic chemicals get into the Cape Fear River from several different sources, including textile and furniture manufacturers, sludge from wastewater treatment plants used as fertilizer, and firefighting foams used at airports.

Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group senior vice president for government affairs, applauded the move.

“Today’s announcement by the EPA will ensure that quick action can be taken to clean up PFAS and will send a powerful signal to industry to be good stewards of their PFAS wastes,” Faber said in a statement.

The EPA will open the proposed changes to the RCRA for public comment once it is published in the Federal Register.

It’s been more than six years since the first blood samples were collected from residents in the Cape Fear region participating in a study to measure their exposure to synthetic chemicals being discharged into their drinking water source.

That study, known as the GenX Exposure Study, has since then transitioned to one that will allow researchers to examine potential long-term health effects in hundreds of North Carolinians who for years unknowingly drank water containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

Today, a little more than 1,000 residents from a town in the state’s Piedmont and east to the southeastern coast of North Carolina are part of the health study examining how past exposure to PFAS may affect human health.

“We’ve been measuring cholesterol and thyroid and comprehensive metabolic panels and height and weight and (body mass index) and so we can now look at how things change over time,” said Jane Hoppin, principal investigator of the GenX Exposure Study and professor at North Carolina State University.

Blood samples were first collected from a few hundred residents in the Cape Fear region in late 2017, just months after the public was first made aware that the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for tens of thousands of people, had for decades been a dumping ground for a chemical manufacturing plant roughly 80 miles upstream of Wilmington.

GenX, one of more than 10,000 PFAS in existence today, is a chemical compound specific to the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant, which is under a court order to vastly reduce the amount of PFAS it discharges into the river, emits into the air and spills onto the ground.

About 500 residents in the lower Cape Fear region are taking part in the health study. Another 300 or so participants live in Fayetteville and a little more than 200 reside in Pittsboro, a town roughly 100 miles upstream of Chemours. Pittsboro’s drinking water source, the Haw River, has some of the highest levels of PFAS in the state, according research conducted through the North Carolina PFAS Testing Network.

What researchers call legacy PFAS — perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS — found in the Haw River have been traced to textile and furniture manufacturing operations.

“Having this wide range and different mixtures in different places is helpful in understanding” human health effects from exposure to PFAS, Hoppin said.

Results from a GenX Exposure Study published in 2022 showed a correlation between people found to have elevated levels of PFAS in their blood with higher total cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, the latter of which puts people at a higher risk of hardening of the arteries, heart disease, chest pain, heart attack and stroke.

That study included blood samples collected in November 2017 and again in May 2018 from nearly 350 Wilmington residents, including 55 children. Blood was analyzed to measure levels of PFOA and PFOS, fluoroethers such as GenX, and lipids.

GenX was ultimately not detected because the chemical has been found to last in blood for about three days.

Moving forward, Hoppin said, researchers overseeing the health study will collect new blood samples to look at various markers, including how PFAS may influence weight gain and changes in weight.

“We have people who are ages 6 to 90 and so we want to focus on health outcomes that impact all of us,” she said. “We’ve looked at response to COVID vaccines and, for example, there’s growing interest in how these chemicals may influence bone growth and developments.”

Ideally, those participating in the study will have their blood drawn, urine collected, weight and height measured and fill out health surveys every two to three years for the next 20 years, Hoppin said.

“It’s a very complex situation and even just trying to start to understand exposure, like why do the people on private drinking wells have similar levels of legacy PFAS as other communities that drink municipal water? How do we think about inhalation for the people who live around the plant? We’re trying to understand exposure and then move forward and have large enough sample sizes to really describe health outcomes. We want to be sure that we have sufficient statistical power to answer those questions.”

As research continues to unveil potential health impacts of PFAS in humans, public water systems including the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, have taken steps to reduce the amount of PFAS exposure in drinking water.

The Cape Fear authority and Brunswick County Public Utilities have spent millions to install treatment systems to remove PFAS from their raw water.

Nationwide, chemical manufacturers including 3M and DuPont have faced a barrage of lawsuits asking courts to hold such companies responsible for the release of PFAS into the environment.

Earlier this month, New Hanover County commissioners filed a lawsuit in that county’s superior court against more than a dozen makers and vendors of products made with PFAS.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to set limits on six PFAS in public water systems. The EPA would limit a combination of GenX and three other compounds — perfluoronanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS), and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS).

The agency also proposes to set maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, on PFOA and PFOS each at 4 parts per trillion.

EPA estimates that between 3,400 and more than 6,000 public water systems across the country contain at least one of these compounds that exceeds the proposed limits.

Researchers are working on how to improve environmental health literacy among medical clinicians to help doctors better understand how to use health studies like the GenX study to care for their patients.

Hoppin said the hope is that the samples currently being collected in this study will be used to further research PFAS exposure and potential health effects in people.

Results of the latest round of blood samples are expected to be shared with participants sometime this spring.

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board will hear during its in-person meeting scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday in Raleigh a toxicology summary for PFAS and updates on recent studies for the long-lasting chemicals.

The meeting is to take place in the Archdale Building’s ground floor hearing room at 512 N. Salisbury St. The public can sign up to comment at the meeting.

The draft agenda is available online as well as information on how to join by WebEx or by phone.

Department of Environmental Quality staff will present a synopsis of the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, toxicological summary shared during the Nov. 9 Environmental Management Commission meeting, and the status of the consent order toxicology studies and other known PFAS studies underway at other agencies.

Related: State on ‘aggressive’ timeline to meet PFAS water standards

Also during the meeting, DEQ Assistant Secretary Sushma Masemore will request the board’s assistance to prepare a legislative report that assesses human health risks of 1,4-Dioxane in drinking water as outlined in the state law, “An Act To Provide Further Regulatory Relief To The Citizens Of North Carolina.”

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board currently includes 13 experts who assist state departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services with recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, acting as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and helping the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be studied further. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reversed its approval for Chemours to import GenX into North Carolina.

The agency announced its decision today, prompting quick responses from both state officials and the company.

“It’s good that the EPA reversed this decision and I’m grateful for their quick response,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement. “We have been working for years in North Carolina to force the cleanup of forever chemicals to help ensure clean water, and companies like Chemours have made this effort more difficult.”

Chemours in a release this afternoon said it does not discharge GenX into the Cape Fear River through its recycling process at its Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County and that a “calculation error” had incorrectly identified the amount the company wants to import.

“Our reclamation and recycling process for [GenX] is circular and more environmentally friendly than manufacturing larger quantities of new compound,” the release states. “We identified and acknowledged a calculation error in the applications to the Dutch ILT that we proactively disclosed to US regulators. The amount being imported is in fact far below the levels approved by EPA in the original permit. We are working to correct the information and will continue to engage with authorities on the path forward.”

The EPA’s decision in October to sign off on Chemours importing as much as 4 million pounds of GenX from its plant in the Netherlands sparked outrage from state and local officials.

GenX is one of thousands of manmade chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and is specific to Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant.

Chemours is under a Consent Order with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the nonprofit Cape Fear River Watch to drastically reduce the amount of PFAS it discharges into the environment, including the Cape Fear River, which is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of people. The company is also being held responsible for PFAS contamination in private wells throughout the Cape Fear region, which includes at least eight counties.

The EPA made its decision to reverse course based on information provided by DEQ, according to a department release.

“We appreciate that the EPA heard the concerns shared by the Governor and the residents directly affected by PFAS contamination from Chemours,” NCDEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser said in a statement. “North Carolina is committed to reducing PFAS pollution and today’s reversal aligns with that goal.”

The company stated that it had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in emissions controls at its Fayetteville plant. “Chemours responsibly manufactures critical products that support national and Biden Administration priorities like American manufacturing of semiconductors and decarbonizing the energy sector. Our products and our actions promote a more sustainable future, and we will continue to deliver on our commitment to reduce our environmental footprint.”

In September, experts appointed to the United Nations sent letters to Chemours, Corteva and DuPont de Nemours criticizing their use of PFAS.

Those UN experts said the companies likely violated the human rights of residents in the Cape Fear region.

Letters were also sent to the governments of the Netherlands and the United States accusing regulators of failing to protect human health and the environment.

Native Americans in North Carolina face a disproportionately higher risk for preterm birth because of exposure to mixtures of toxic metals in their private drinking water wells, according to a recent study.

Women whose private wells have tested for higher levels of lead or cadmium, as opposed to those whose wells with lower levels of those metals, have an increased risk of giving birth prematurely, or before 37 weeks, the study found.

Researchers also found that people exposed to a mixture of lead, cadmium and chromium are at higher risk of preterm birth, said Dr. Lauren Eaves, research scientist and adjunct assistant professor with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Gillings School of Public Health and co-author of the study.

“We also found that the effect was strong among American Indian individuals, and I think it’s important to both highlight this but (to also) put it in the correct context that this isn’t any unique genetic susceptibility,” she said.

University researchers and others at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences combined 20 years of well water test records and more than 1 million birth certificates from 2003 to 2015 and found that 9.4%, or 124,000, were preterm.

North Carolina has the largest population — more than an estimated 2 million people — of people in the country who get their drinking water from private wells.

Unlike water provided by public systems, private well water is not protected by the Safe Water Drinking Act, which sets limits on the levels of certain contaminants in drinking water.

The effect of this, nationwide, equates to higher levels of metals, particularly arsenic and lead, in the bodies of people who rely on private well water as opposed to those on public water systems, Eaves said.

This places low-income and nonwhite families in rural areas at particular risk because they often lack the financial means to upgrade their wells with filtration systems or drill new wells.

According to information provided by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, private well owners are, in most cases, responsible for getting their water sampled.

PFAS contamination

Hundreds of private wells in the Cape Fear River Basin have either been tested or are waiting to be tested for GenX and other per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, contamination linked to Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County.

Under the terms of a consent order, Chemours is responsible for paying to either install filtration systems in homes with wells that test for high levels of those contaminants or tap fees for households where access to public water systems are available.

The state has also established a pilot program that provides some financial assistance to low-income households to buy treatment systems or pay for public water system connection fees in areas where PFAS contamination cannot be attributed to any one particular source polluter. The pilot program is only for private well water users in New Hanover, Pender, Columbus, Brunswick and Guilford counties.

The spotlight PFAS contamination in the Cape Fear region is shining on water quality issues within the state is likely to aid at least some Native Americans living in North Carolina, but not all.

Systemic environmental injustice

Eaves said that what is most likely happening in Indigenous communities is that they’re experiencing forms of environmental injustice, such as municipal underbounding.

Municipal underbounding occurs when cities and towns keep communities of color outside of municipal boundaries.

Research is limited on whether this type of environmental injustice is occurring in Native American communities in the state, Eaves said.

However, municipal underbounding is “very well documented” for Black communities in North Carolina, she said.

“So, we hypothesize that this might be also happening for American Indian communities and we’re currently working on trying to actually scope out the evidence for that,” she said.

The study does not identify which tribes in the state face the greatest risk for preterm birth.

“What we do know is that larger communities of American Indian folks in Robeson County, Scotland County, and these areas where there are huge environmental injustice problems for our Lumbee community, for our Cherokee community out in the west, but particularly in that southeast region — Lumbee, Coharie — face a lot of environmental injustices and this lack of resources around private well water is compounding that,” Eaves said. “I think there’s limited resources for folks to test and treat that water and I think that’s what that finding is really demonstrating is that we need to pay particular attention to more vulnerable communities.”

According to the 2020 U.S. Census, more than 130,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives live in North Carolina.

There are eight state-recognized tribes: Coharie, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which are also fully recognized by the federal government, Haliwa-Saponi, Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, which also has partial federal recognition, Meherrin, Sappony, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation and Waccamaw Siouan.

Representatives for the Coharie in Sampson County and the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina in Robeson County did not respond to questions and requests for comment.

In the United States, the rate of preterm births is highest for Black infants at 14.4%, followed by Native Americans and Alaska Natives at 11.8%, according to March of Dimes.

Preterm babies can suffer from a myriad of physical and mental impairments. The first-year average medical costs for premature babies in the U.S. was about four times greater than that of full-term babies in 2016.

That same year, the annual societal economic cost, including medical, educational and lost productivity, associated with preterm births was no less than $25.2 billion.

It can be incredibly stressful for communities experiencing higher rates of preterm births as members of that community seek answers to uncover why early births are occurring and how to protect not only pregnant women, but everyone in that community, Eaves said.

“And, I think it can be really distressing to know that there are contaminants in your water,” she said. “Everyone deserves clean water and so I think it can have a huge emotional effect on communities. I think that thinking about environmental health and exposures during pregnancy is under-researched and not considered as often as I think it should. I hope that as a state we continue to raise awareness around this and provide resources for pregnant folks to be able to protect themselves in the context of metals. We need to work to reduce these exposures that our communities are facing.”

Almost a third of drinking water systems sourced from rivers, streams and lakes in North Carolina will not meet proposed federal drinking water standards.

Those 1,500 water providers would have three years to come into compliance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulation expected to be finalized by year’s end.

Whatever treatment method those water providers use to meet the proposed federal rules, they’re facing substantial costs — costs that will most likely be passed down to customers.

North Carolina’s environmental regulators are forging a path to create state-enforceable rules on industries that release per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into the environment.

Last week, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission was presented a timeline of the state Department of Environmental Quality’s pursuit to reduce the amount of PFAS coming directly from polluters into surface and below-ground drinking water sources.

NCDEQ Assistant Secretary for Environment Sushma Masemore said regulators will provide the commission in March with a certified fiscal note, which is an estimate of the proposed regulations’ financial impact on the state budget, and ask the board to consider greenlighting the department to open a public comment period on proposed rules next summer.

It’s an “aggressive” timeline, she said during the commission’s meeting Nov. 9 in Raleigh, but one the department is working to meet.

Masemore emphasized that the state needs to protect its drinking water sources, and make sure the water that people drink is below the primary drinking water standards.

“We need to do what we must do,” she continued, to make sure surface water discharges and groundwater systems are as clean as possible. “We need to reduce the treatment costs burden of these drinking water systems by addressing those upstream discharges.”

As the EPA is looking at primary drinking water standards, it’s up to states to determine surface water standards by looking at upstream PFAS discharge sources, she said.

“As a result, the cost impact for those ratepayers will be reduced and so it is not a cost that’s borne by one group of people that are usually downstream of such sources, but that it is borne across all contributors,” Masemore said.

The EPA announced earlier this year its proposal to set limits on six PFAS in public water systems. The agency is expected to finalize limits on a combination of four chemical compounds: GenX, perfluorononanoic acid, or PFNA, perfluorohexane sulfonic acid, or PFHxS, and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS; and set maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, of 4 parts per trillion each of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, two of the most widely studied PFAS.

Under the proposed rules, public water providers would have to monitor for those PFAS and report the results of sampling to the public if any level of PFAS exceed the proposed regulatory standards.

Masemore explained that DEQ wants to go beyond what EPA is doing and address additional PFAS specifically found in drinking water sources in North Carolina and identified in DEQ’s PFAS Priority List.

North Carolina is joining other states that are developing their own regulations or addressing PFAS within their own programs because they either have manufacturing facilities that are large-scale contributors of PFAS in surface and ground waters, air and soil. PFAS do not occur naturally in the environment.

Those states are at the forefront of analyzing current and ongoing studies on the human health and environmental effects of various PFAS, of which there are thousands, Masemore said.

“As a result, those states are also proposing similar regulations that are in effect and many people are actually going back and readjusting those regulations because of the new science being brought to everyone’s attention,” she said.

DEQ is taking a two-pronged approach to addressing PFAS: stopping future PFAS contaminants known to have adverse human health effects from getting into the environment, and cleaning up sites the state knows exist today.

Public water supply systems provide drinking water to more than 9 million North Carolinians. There currently are 380 municipal drinking water systems in 97 of the state’s 100 counties.

NCDEQ has identified 50 drinking water systems that contain elevated levels of various PFAS. Testing of those systems in 2022 revealed that 43 of those systems had concentrations of PFAS above the EPA’s proposed limits.

About 1,500 or so drinking water systems that rely on groundwater sources in the state serve 500 or fewer residents. Of those, 17% contain PFAS above proposed federal limits.

Extensive private well water testing is ongoing throughout multiple counties affected by PFAS contamination.

Masemore said the state must not forget about private well water users. The department’s Division of Waste Management has developed a variety of programs to support sampling and testing private wells. The state has also initiated a pilot program to assist low-income residents in covering costs to install filtration systems for wells that contain elevated levels of PFAS.

When asked whether the state has received feedback from industries known to be discharging PFAS into the environment about the prospect of state regulatory standards, Masemore said the response has thus far been “cautious and worried.”

“But also many sources realize that this is part of their future. They’re going to have to address it either through the state or federal government,” she said.

Residents of the Cape Fear region and environmental advocates balked at the EPA’s recent decision to allow the company responsible for discharging PFAS into the Cape Fear River for decades to import GenX into the state.

As first reported in NC Newsline, the agency last month notified Chemours the company could resume exportations of up to more than 4 million pounds of the chemical from its plant in The Netherlands to its Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County to recycle or reuse the chemical.

But the EPA last week request the company pause imports, according to WRAL.

In a statement to the television station, an EPA spokesperson said that the agency “takes these concerns seriously and will review the notices that the company has provided to ensure the public remains safe.”

That statement came shortly after Gov. Roy Cooper sent a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan earlier this month urging the agency to reconsider and reverse its decision. Brunswick County commissioner Chairman Randy Thompson also wrote Regan, asking the agency to guarantee Chemours significantly reduces the amount of PFAS going into the Cape Fear River before allowing the company to allow more PFAS into the state.

Chemours has not imported shipments of GenX into the state this year and none are en route, according to the EPA.

In a statement to Coastal Review, a Chemours spokesperson last month explained that the plant recycles GenX to reuse it in manufacturing processes “for use in applications like semiconductor and electric vehicle production.”

“Reclaiming and recycling HFPO-DA (GenX) is an important circularity activity that helps reduce the need to manufacture larger volumes of new, virgin HFPO-DA,” the spokesperson stated.

Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan said in an interview last month with CRO that North Carolinians cannot trust a company that knowingly discharged PFAS into the environment for years, news that first came to light in June 2017 in a story published in the Wilmington Star News.

“This is what really bothers me for our community is that this is not a company that has a track record of proactively taking a precautionary stance with this dangerous chemical that they’re making and they want to shift the burden to us, which they have been, while they made record profits for decades,” she said. “I just don’t have patience anymore for this company and for the loopholes that are allowed to exist. We knew six years ago that the only way a company of this size was able to get away with doing what they did for so long was because they had successfully managed to break the system to create the loopholes that benefited them.”

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.”

After missing two deadlines, Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility notified state officials earlier this month that construction was complete on an underground barrier wall to stop contaminated groundwater from seeping into the Cape Fear River.

Chemours was instructed under a court-enforceable order to build the roughly mile-long barrier after the public was made aware in 2017 that the company had been discharging a number of human-made chemical compounds known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into the river for decades.

The Cape Fear River is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of people who live downstream of the plant nearly 80 miles from downtown Wilmington.

Under the terms of a 2019 consent order and subsequent 2020 addendum among Chemours, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours must reduce air emissions facility wide by 99.9%, cut PFAS emissions into the Cape Fear River by more than 90%, and sample private wells for PFAS and provide drinking water to residents whose wells are contaminated.

Chemours in early 2020 installed a thermal oxidizer to destroy PFAS from entering the air.

The company failed to meet a March 15 deadline to complete the barrier off the river bank at the plant site in Bladen County.

On March 1, Chemours alerted DEQ that the project would not be completed by that deadline due to mechanical and staffing issues. DEQ officials assigned a new deadline for May 31, but the company missed that deadline as well. The progress is noted in an email exchange later posted on NCDEQ’s website after the second deadline was set.

Dawn M. Hughes, plant manager for Fayetteville Works, notified DEQ in a June 11 email that construction of the barrier was completed.

“The team will continue additional project efforts including quality assurance checks over the next several weeks. This is a significant milestone as part of the overall project,” Hughes wrote.

A Chemours representative confirmed Friday in a follow-up request for comment that the company “has completed the construction of our barrier wall and groundwater capture and treatment project in Fayetteville, NC consistent with our Consent Order and Consent Order Addendum with NCDEQ and Cape Fear River Watch.”

The representative said the system is actively extracting and treating groundwater as well as capturing seep water and stormwater.

“Based on initial monitoring data, the treatment system is operating well and meeting current and future discharge limits,” the representative continued. “The underground barrier wall has been installed. Looking ahead, our team will focus on operation, maintenance, and monitoring of the system while we complete all ancillary work and reporting required by the project.”

Sharon Martin, DEQ deputy secretary for public affairs, confirmed in an email Friday afternoon that department officials were notified June 11 the barrier had been completed.

“The extraction wells and treatment system have been operational since February,” Martin said in the email. “The NPDES permit for the treatment system specifies the monitoring and reporting requirements. DEQ staff have and will continue to visit the site as necessary. DEQ is reviewing next steps.”

Martin did not specifically answer whether the company would be held accountable for missing the May 31 deadline.

The barrier extends some six stories deep to stop groundwater, which is being diverted to about 70 wells, conveyed to an onsite treatment facility and treated before it is discharged into the river.

Reprinted from NC Health News

State lawmakers discussed on June 14 this year’s regulatory reform bill and, despite a bevy of amendments and question marks about its effects on the environment and potential conflicts with the Clean Water Act, the bill received a favorable report and is moving on in the state Senate.

At first glance, House Bill 600 appears poised to weaken some hard-won protections dealing with water runoff and quality issues. In the coming days, representatives from the state’s environmental community will attempt to weigh-in on the proposed legislation.

One lawmaker who raised concerns during the discussion in the Senate Judiciary Committee is Natasha Marcus, D-Mecklenburg. Initially, Marcus directed her attention to language that, in part, would limit the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s ability to regulate how much chemical discharge that industry can dump into state waterways.

Some of the chemicals that lawmakers were fretting about include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, commonly called “forever chemicals” because of their persistence in the environment.

“Section seven, I think, relates to this committee’s work,” Marcus said. “It prohibits DEQ from limiting PFAS levels by law and other toxic chemicals, and I think that’s a big problem.”

Brooks Rainey Pearson, a lobbyist for the Southern Environmental Law Center, shares Marcus’ concern.

“(It) would disallow DEQ from writing permits for chemicals that don’t have numeric standards,” Rainey Pearson said. “This includes all of the PFAS chemicals (and) 1.4 dioxane … those would not be able to be limited in discharge permits.”

“And I don’t think anybody actually wants that,” Rainey Pearson said. “The legislative bodies should not want that. All of their constituents benefit from DEQ being able to limit harmful pollution in their drinking water.”

The not-too-distant past

Discussion of the Regulatory Reform Act of 2023 comes a week after NC Health News reported that Chemours, DuPont and Corteva announced a billion-dollar settlement fund to address pending lawsuits brought on behalf of several states, environmental advocacy groups and individuals.

The proposed bill’s discussion also follows a protest rally held in Fayetteville, near the Chemours Fayetteville Works Facility. The protest organized by North Carolina Stop GenX in Our Water took place June 10, the week of the six-year anniversary that Wilmington StarNews reported that GenX was detected in the Cape Fear River. 

The environmental advocacy group, along with other groups based in the Cape Fear River basin, has worked to spread awareness about PFAS and to hold Chemours accountable for polluting the Cape Fear River as well as fouling the air, soil and groundwater with particulate matter emitted from its Fayetteville Works facility.

Although all the health effects of PFAS are not yet known, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says they are believed to impact the immune system and may reduce antibody responses to vaccines.

Additionally, a 2021 study suggests a possible link between childhood exposure to PFAS and the development of hyperlipidemia and cardiovascular disease later in life.

Research on laboratory animals has found a link between PFAS and liver, kidney, testicular, pancreas and thyroid cancers. Studies also suggest that PFAS can cause high cholesterol, pregnancy problems and immune suppression.

A call to action

Given the state’s recent history with PFAS and other water quality issues, it’s understandable that some would have strong reactions to parts of House Bill 600.

“Forever chemicals like PFAS are a serious concern. I am disappointed but not necessarily surprised that the Republican supermajority would block NCDEQ’s ability to protect the public from these carcinogens and contaminants,” Marcus said in an email to NC Health News.

Cape Fear River Watch, a Wilmington-based environmental advocacy organization, issued a call to action hours after the Judiciary Committee meeting concluded.

A statement sent out to supporters reads: “Practically speaking, this amendment would mean that toxic chemicals without numeric standards (like PFAS, 1,4-dioxane, etc.) could not be limited in discharge permits — resulting in free-flowing toxic contamination.”

The organization said the provisions in the bill would be “in blatant violation of the Clean Water Act.”

“None of the permits that DEQ has issued on Chemours to this point would have been legal under this rule!!” the statement continued.

The group encourages supporters to add their names and comments to an electronic letter that Cape Fear River Watch is sending to lawmakers to express their opposition. 

A break for large hog farms?

Marcus and others also point to issues in another section of the bill that, they argue, would weaken DEQ’s ability to enforce federal and civil rights laws on the massive hog farms that dot the landscape throughout eastern North Carolina.

The proposed bill could have a chilling effect on efforts by environmental activists and rural communities of color. They have long fought for protection from uncovered hog lagoons and spray fields, which have contaminated the environment and affected the quality of life of those who live near the massive hog farming operations.

Critics argue section 12(b)(c) is at odds with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Specifically, an executive order signed by former president Bill Clinton, established in 1994, that directs “Federal agencies to incorporate achieving environmental justice into their mission.”

That order also requires that entities that receive federal funding “that affect human health or the environment do not directly, or through contractual or other arrangements, use criteria, methods, or practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Carteret, Craven and Pamlico, who presided over the proceedings, acknowledged that the bill has a way to go before it’s ready to be voted on. He said that he and other bill sponsors are working to make sure that environmental safeguards will not be lost.

“We are really tuned into PFAS (and) we’re still working with DEQ to make sure that they’re OK with (the bill). So we’re not through with it yet,” Sanderson said. He noted that the bill has to get through another committee before reaching the floor of the Senate for a vote. “Conference (committee) is probably where we’re going to make the final changes.”

Sanderson admitted that addressing stakeholders’ and lawmakers’ concerns when drafting or amending legislation is challenging.

“Sometimes we’re on the same page, sometimes we’re not,” he said. “We’re just trying to do what’s right for our own state. And I think with that intent, that purpose in mind, we’re not going to put something in before its time.”

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. Coastal Review partners with NC Health News to provide our readers with more news relevant to the North Carolina coast.

For a second time, the Fayetteville-based company found six years ago to be releasing toxins into the Cape Fear River has missed a state-imposed deadline to complete construction of a groundwater barrier.

Chemours Co. was given an extension until May 31 to complete a mile-long underground barrier wall project after it failed to finish the work by March 15 as initially required, but the DuPont spinoff company has again failed to meet the deadline.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is requiring the barrier wall remediation project to reduce per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in groundwater at the Chemours Fayetteville Works site.

A Chemours spokesperson told Coastal Review Thursday that the company expects the barrier wall to be complete this month.

The terms for the project to reduce PFAS loading from groundwater flow from under the site to the Cape Fear River and Willis Creek were set in the 2020 addendum to the February 2019 consent order among the company, NCDEQ and Cape Fear River Watch, which was represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center in the legal challenge that prompted state action.

The order and the addendum require Chemours to address PFAS sources and contamination at the facility to prevent further impacts to air, soil, groundwater and surface waters.

Among the many remediation steps, the addendum charges Chemours with the “complete installation of, and commence operation of, the Barrier Wall and Groundwater Extraction System” by March 15, 2023. 

In addition to the barrier, a groundwater extraction system was required to prevent groundwater moving around, above or under the barrier wall and to remove PFAS from extracted groundwater. That system is already in operation.

Fayetteville Works Plant Manager Dawn Hughes in a March 1, 2023, letter to NCDEQ wrote that while the groundwater extraction and treatment system “has been designed, approved, permitted, and installed and is being commissioned” the need for a “revised schedule” for completing the barrier wall was due to permitting taking longer than expected and pandemic-related supply chain issues.

NCDEQ officials “determined that the revised schedule, which requires project completion no later than May 31, 2023, is consistent with the Consent Order and Consent Order Addendum,” according to a March 2 letter responding to Chemours.

NCDEQ officials did not respond to a request for comment by deadline Thursday.

Southern Environmental Law Center Program Director Geoff Gisler said in response to a request for comment that the barrier “is an essential part of protecting people downstream of the Chemours Fayetteville Works facility. Chemours’ repeated failure to meet the deadline for finishing this critical project means that people in North Carolina who depend on the Cape Fear River will continue to be unnecessarily exposed to the company’s dangerous pollution. DEQ must hold Chemours responsible for its continued delay.”

The Chemours representative said Thursday that the company “continues to progress on the construction and implementation of our barrier wall and groundwater extraction and treatment project in Fayetteville.

“At present, the groundwater extraction and treatment system has been installed and is actively extracting and treating groundwater at a rate of approximately 500 gal/min. Based on initial monitoring data, the treatment system is operating well and meeting current and future discharge limits. Additionally, we have made significant progress on the construction of the barrier wall, and we expect it to be complete in June.”

Cape Fear River Watch Dana Sargent told Coastal Review that the delay was unacceptable.

“When are you going to finish this?” she said.

A Wilmington-based grassroots group Thursday filed a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Commission in an effort to ultimately stop an upstream manufacturing company from expanding operations.

Clean Cape Fear, in collaboration with the University of California Berkley Environmental Law Clinic, asks Marcos Orellana, U.N. special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, to remedy human rights violations related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in drinking water sources.

The group has asked Orellana for a statement “confirming violations of residents’ right to clean drinking water, protection from toxic chemicals, and a healthy environment; their right to information; and their right to an effective remedy,” according to the 36-page complaint.

“The pervasive toxification of human bodies and the ecosystem of the lower Cape Fear River watershed with PFAS that persist essentially forever lends particular urgency to controlling these toxics at their source,” the complaint states. “We urge the [special rapporteur] to use his full powers of investigation and exhortation to challenge government and corporate leaders to honor and protect North Carolinians’ basic human rights.”

The complaint also asks Orellana to make the following requests:

• North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, deny Chemours’ permit to expand some of its operations at its Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.
• Chemours and parent company DuPont reimburse water utilities upgrading their filtration systems to remove PFAS from drinking water.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry immediately fund and begin large-scale human epidemiological studies on specific PFAS exposures.
• EPA eliminate nonessential uses of PFAS.

“Clean Cape Fear demands, among other remedies, that corporate polluters be held accountable for water treatment and clean-up costs for all impacted residents, and that North Carolina regulators deny Chemours the permit it currently seeks to expand production of PFAS chemicals at its Fayetteville Works facility,” according to a release. “This is the first time that a U.S. group has put in a formal request to the United Nations to characterize a community’s pervasive PFAS contamination as a human rights violation under international law.”

Clean Cape Fear formed after the public in 2017 learned for the first time that Chemours had for decades been discharging PFAS into the Cape Fear River, the raw drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the region.

The company has since agreed in a consent order with Cape Fear River Watch and DEQ to reduce the amount of PFAS it emits into the air and river.

Chemours announced last year plans to expand its monomers and Nafion production facilities at the Fayetteville Works plant, a move met with fierce opposition by residents worried about the overwhelmingly unknown health effects of PFAS, which remain largely understudied.

“We live in one of the richest nations in the world, yet our basic human rights are being violated,” Clean Cape Fear Co-Founder Emily Donovan said in a statement. “We refuse to be a sacrifice zone. Residents here are sick and dying and we continue to lack equitable access to safe water in our region, or the necessary health studies to truly understand the impacts from our chronic PFAS exposures.”

Claudia Polsky, director of UC Berkley Environmental Law Clinic, said in a statement Clean Cape Fear’s complaint “provides a legal road map for restoring Cape Fear communities to health, and for preventing further PFAS harms in North Carolina and beyond.”

“The Cape Fear River toxic exposure crisis has its origins in weak U.S. chemical safety laws, the underenforcement of laws that do exist, and political leaders’ insufficient will to hold polluters to account,” she said.

A three-part documentary series that looks at how environmental pollution, climate change and aging infrastructure are gradually eroding the ability for more and more communities across the United States to have access to free and potable drinking water debuted this past weekend.

“Our America: Trouble on Tap” is produced by Tracy J. Wholf, coordinating producer of the climate unit at ABC News, and ABC Owned Television Stations Executive Producer Justin Allen. The series premiered Friday at ouramericaabc.com and Saturday on Hulu.

The first one-hour episode features PFAS contamination in the Lower Cape Fear region and includes advocacy groups Clean Cape Fear and Cape Fear River Watch, along with Fayetteville residents.

“We share our trauma and our fight surrounding this nearly six-year battle to hold Chemours accountable,” Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, said Friday in an email announcement.

Donovan was referring to the DuPont spinoff, Chemours Co., the Fayetteville chemical plant that discharged contaminants into the Cape Fear River for decades. Her group is also circulating an online petition calling on the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to oppose any of the company’s plans for expansion.

Though millions of people would qualify for drinking water protections under a nationwide proposal to limit certain chemical compounds in water sources, millions more would not, a new study concludes.

Nearly half of the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, found in drinking water samples collected across 16 states, including North Carolina, are not monitored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to the peer-reviewed study by Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit international environmental advocacy group.

In the community-led pilot study published in the Science of the Total Environment, commercial global laboratory Eurofins Regulatory Science Services tested for 70 PFAS. That’s 41 additional PFAS that are not covered by the EPA’s test methods.

Of 44 samples collected from both public water sources and private wells, 30 were contaminated with PFAS.

“Every single one of those samples had a PFAS that was not monitored by the EPA methods,” said Anna Reade, Natural Resources Defense Council senior scientist. 

Samples collected in North Carolina contained the highest levels of unmonitored PFAS.

The samples, taken in Ocean Isle Beach and Oak Island in Brunswick County, also contained the highest concentrations of PFAS, along with samples from Maine, Colorado and Texas.

Sixteen different types of PFAS were found in water collected in Ocean Isle Beach and 12 chemical compounds were in the water sample from Oak Island, Reade said.

Tap water tested from Brunswick County came from the county’s northwest treatment plant, which is sourced by the Cape Fear River.

For nearly 40 years, a chemical manufacturing plant nearly 80 miles upstream of Wilmington discharged PFAS directly into the river. The river is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents.

The company responsible, Chemours, is under a consent order to meet a host of compliances to reduce the amount of PFAS discharged from its Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.

A thermal oxidizer has been installed at the plant to capture more than 99% of PFAS from being emitted into the air. The company also plans to build an underground barrier wall on-site to stop PFAS, including GenX, a chemical compound specific to the Fayetteville Works plant, from traveling through the ground into the river.

The EPA is proposing to set limits on GenX and five other PFAS in public water systems. The agency’s proposal includes limiting the chemical compound in combination with three other PFAS: Perfluorononanoic acid, or PFNA, perfluorohexane sulfonic acid, or PFHxS, and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS.

The agency also is proposing to set maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, on perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, at 4 parts-per-trillion, or ppt.

Natural Resources Defense Council’s study found that out of the 30 drinking water samples that contained PFAS, 15 would exceed the EPA’s proposed contamination limits.

The proposed maximum contaminant levels are a big set forward, Reade said, one that, according to EPA estimates, would qualify between 70 and 90 million people for drinking water protections.

“But our study shows that there will be communities that will be left behind because, as industry adapts and changes to the regulatory environment, they’re going to use different PFAS that are unmonitored, unregulated and there’s no way that the science and regulatory community can keep up,” she said.

According to information provided in the study, there are around 14,000 PFAS. To expect the EPA to study each individual chemical, its potential associated health effects, and establish drinking water standards for each could not be done in several generations’ time, Reade said.

Under the EPA’s proposed rules, expected to be finalized later this year, public water providers would be required to monitor for the six PFAS and report the results of sampling to the public if levels exceed the regulatory standards. Water utilities found to have one or more of the chemicals above the proposed limits would have to reduce the levels to meet the proposed limits.

EPA officials say that the anticipated benefits of establishing maximum contaminant levels on the six chemical compounds would lead to reduced cases of kidney cancer, strokes and heart attacks, and developmental effects in children, including low birth weight.

Reade said that there will likely be co-benefits for customers of public water providers who would have to upgrade their systems to meet the maximum contaminant levels.

“It will probably treat for a lot of other types of PFAS,” she said. “It will probably treat for disinfection of byproducts and pharmaceuticals.”

But the worry is that unmonitored PFAS, particularly newer, smaller ultra-short-chain substances, will likely slip through drinking water treatment if they’re not accounted for, she said.

These types of chemicals were the most prevalent found in the Natural Resources Defense Council study.

“That was really surprising for a lot of our community members and, to be honest, a bit surprising for us because it is not a well-monitored-for PFAS and we don’t have any studies on the health effect of being exposed to it, which is always a very hard thing to report back to people who are being exposed to a chemical,” Reade said.

An ultra-short-chain substance called perfluoropropionic acid, or PFPrA, was predominantly found at the highest concentration in samples submitted for the study.

Ultra-short-chain PFAS may be harder to capture through filtration systems because they’re so small, Reade said. 

PFPrA was found in both samples from North Carolina.

“I think this (study) is just another data point highlighting the need to manage PFAS as a class,” Reade said. “North Carolina’s the prime example of why we need to do a class-based approach because we are not keeping up with the current exposure conditions for communities like yours.”

Clean Cape Fear stated in a release that residents of the Cape Fear region continue to be exposed to “dangerous daily doses” of PFAS, the potential health risks of which little are known.

“While the PFAS regulations proposed by EPA last month are a good start, we demand a whole-of-government approach to stop all PFAS exposures,” Clean Cape Fear Co-Founder Emily Donovan said in a release. “Our basic human rights are under attack. Communities like mine will no longer sit by as our children’s lives and our hopes for a healthy future are stolen by the greedy and irresponsible chemical industry.” 

The study includes samples also taken from Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon and South Carolina.

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit that would have forced Chemours to pay for health studies on dozens of chemical compounds manufactured at its Fayetteville plant.

Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II on Friday released his decision to dismiss the suit, ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted a petition to the organizations requesting testing on 54 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

The core question before Myers was whether the organizations filed under Section 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, a single petition for all 54 substances or individual petitions for each substance within a single document.

Myers ruled that the court lacked the authority to review the EPA’s decision to grant the petition.

The EPA initially denied the Oct. 14, 2020, request from the Center for Environmental Health, Clean Cape Fear, Cape Fear River Watch, Democracy Green, NC Black Alliance and Toxic Free NC to require Chemours fund comprehensive health and environmental effects testing on PFAS.

The organizations in March 2021 asked EPA to reconsider its decision and grant the petition. The EPA received letters of support for the petition request from 120 nonprofit groups, nearly 50 scientists, the city of Wilmington, New Hanover County and Cape Fear Public Utility Authority. Several members of the North Carolina congressional delegation also wrote EPA Administrator Michael Regan supporting the petition.

The agency overturned its decision in late December 2021 and granted a petition to study the PFAS largely as a category of substances.

The organizations said the petition was effectively a denial because it refused to require testing for 47 of the 54 PFAS.

The groups argue the 54 PFAS meet TSCA testing criteria because little to no information about their health effects currently exist and that people and wildlife in the Cape Fear watershed are at higher risk because they are exposed to a combination of these chemicals through drinking water and air.

The Cape Fear River, a raw drinking water sources for tens of thousands of people, has been contaminated for decades by PFAS discharged from Chemours Fayetteville Works plant nestled off the river’s bank in Bladen County.

Researchers continue to scratch the surface of potential health effects these chemical compounds may pose to people and the environment. Studies on some of the substances – there are more than 10,000 PFAS – indicate effects on immune systems and increased risks for everything from certain types of cancer to low birth weight to heart attack and stroke.

In his ruling, Myers wrote the EPA, “reasonably construed the Plaintiffs’ petition as a single petition asking EPA to initiate proceedings to test 54 PFAS. EPA granted the petition to test those 54 substances as a category — PFAS — and has initiated testing on that category of substances.

“EPA has initiated proceedings to determine the rules and orders it will issue to test PFAS. The Plaintiffs cannot dictate the testing program, rules, or orders EPA must issue,” the judge ruled. “As such, their petition was granted, and EPA has initiated proceedings for the category of substances requested in the petition. Section 21 of the TSCA does not empower this court to review EPA’s grant of a petition. This court lacks jurisdiction.”

Clean Cape Fear released a statement after the ruling was released last week, saying that the dismissal “has created a dangerous precedent for future EPA administrations to publicly grant citizen TSCA petitions while internally failing to do the work requested. We are considering an appeal to this disappointing decision that serves no one but the chemical companies who continue to hold hostage our regulatory institutions at the expense of our health and wellbeing.”

On Monday, Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan in a telephone interview said the EPA could have let the case play out in the courts rather than ask for a dismissal.

“That is really upsetting,” she said. “We haven’t been able to sit together and talk through this. One of the things we are considering is an appeal. I don’t know the time frame. It would have to be something that we decide on quickly.”

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said she would “definitely like” for the organizations to appeal because there needs to be an epidemiological study in the Cape Fear region.

“Health studies are necessary,” she said. “This is one of the biggest questions we get. What is this stuff doing to us? There’s no way to answer it. We have to fight it. There’s nothing else we can do but fight it. I really wish the EPA would turn around and go, you know what, let’s stop this. For me, we’re wasting our time and our money on lawyers as is the EPA to fight for something that I think the EPA at its core knows is the right thing to do.”

A drinking water provider that sources raw water from the Cape Fear River filed a lawsuit last week to prevent the companies responsible for contaminating the river with “forever chemicals” from financial restructuring to avoid liability.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority filed the suit, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority v. EIDP Inc., et al. Friday in Delaware’s Court of Chancery, the authority announced Wednesday.

The defendant, EIDP, Inc., or DuPont, is a corporation under Delaware laws registered to do business in North Carolina.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority filed Friday a lawsuit seeking to prevent the financial restructuring of the companies to shield them from liability for damage resulting from PFAS contamination at the Fayetteville Works chemical plant.

The restructuring would shield DuPont, Chemours Co. and related companies from liability for damage resulting from per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, contamination at the Fayetteville Works chemical plant, which is upstream of the raw water intake for the public utility, according to the lawsuit.

PFAS are called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment and can last thousands of years.

In 2013 DuPont faced increasing legal liabilities for contamination related to its PFAS manufacturing at other locations and “began consideration of restructuring transactions … to avoid responsibility for the widespread environmental harm that DuPont’s PFAS contamination had caused and shield billions of dollars in assets from these substantial liabilities,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit includes a timeline of restructuring activities including DuPont developing Chemours, DuPont’s merger with the Dow Chemical Co., and the creation of Corteva Inc., which holds DuPont as a subsidiary.

Defendants request in the lawsuit that the court entitle the authority to satisfy its damage claims “to the extent necessary” from the defendants without regard to restructuring activities, as well as prevent further restructuring, transfers or similar actions related to assets previously owned by Chemours or DuPont.

Chemours, a subsidiary of DuPont, had been discharging PFAS from its Fayetteville Works facility into the Cape Fear River since 1980. The chemical manufacturing plant discharges into the river upstream from intakes providing raw water to downstream drinking water utilities serving hundreds of thousands of people, including the authority’s customers.

In late 2016, researchers published results of tests showing high levels of PFAS in the Cape Fear River downstream of the Fayetteville Works site. Chemours representatives announced in 2017 the PFAS discharge, according to background information provided by the authority.

The authority’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant sources raw water from the Cape Fear River and provides about 80% of the drinking water provided to its more than 200,000 customers.

The Sweeney plant underwent extensive upgrades completed in 2012, costing more than $65 million. Because the authority was unaware of the contamination, the facility was not designed to remove PFAS.

Since then, the authority has added treatment technology, including the $43 million granular activated carbon filters. The new filters came online in October 2022 and have been removing Chemours’ PFAS during treatment to levels at or near nondetection in finished drinking water, according to the lawsuit.

The authority filed a separate federal lawsuit in 2017 to recover costs and damages related to Chemours’ and Dupont’s PFAS releases from their chemical plant.

The lawsuit filed Friday states that the authority’s damages include $64.2 million in costs incurred or committed to through June 30 and $174.4 million in known future costs. The damage calculations are expected to increase as more information becomes known regarding PFAS impacts.

Resolution of that lawsuit likely is several years away, and it is not possible to predict what that might entail, including any monetary award, authority officials said.

The authority is a public entity that is funded by ratepayers and operates without any profit. Customers would be the beneficiaries of any award received from the lawsuit.

A Chemours representative, in response to a request for comment, said Wednesday that because this pertains to a legal matter, they have no additional information to share at this time.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that between 3,400 to more than 6,000 public water systems across the country contain at least one toxic chemical compound that exceeds newly announced proposed limits in drinking water.

“Safe drinking water is fundamental to healthy people and thriving communities. We all rely on water from the moment that we wake up to make a cup of coffee to when we brush our teeth at night. Every person should have access to clean and safe drinking,” said Jennifer McLain, director of the EPA’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water.

In what has been called an unprecedented move, the agency last week announced a plan to set limits on six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in public water systems.

Under the proposed rules, public water providers would have to monitor for those PFAS and report the results of sampling to the public if any level of PFAS exceed the proposed regulatory standards.

Water utilities found to have one or more of the chemicals above the proposed limits would have to reduce the levels of PFAS, a requirement that EPA officials acknowledged in a public webinar last week will equate to substantial costs, but one that would spare the expense to human health.

“We understand that reducing PFAS in drinking water will likely require investments in water infrastructure and we recognize that that could be a concern for many,” McLain said during the March 16 online meeting. “At the federal level, we’ve been making unprecedented investments in infrastructure and, specifically, for emerging compounds.”

Billions of dollars are available through the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a bipartisan bill that President Joe Biden signed into law Nov. 21, 2021.

McLain said $9 billion is available to help communities upgrade drinking water systems with technologies that remove PFAS.

Public water systems would have three years to comply with the new regulation after it is finalized.

Water bills of Cape Fear Public Utility Authority customers have increased as a result of a multi-million-dollar filtration system upgrade at the authority’s Sweeney plant in downtown Wilmington.

The authority last year installed a granular activated carbon, or GAC, system designed to filter out on average 90% of PFAS from its raw water source, the Cape Fear River. Brunswick County Public Utilities is also spending millions in upgrades to install a low-pressure reverse-osmosis system to remove PFAS.

Nearly six years have passed since the news broke that the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works plant had for decades discharged PFAS directly into the river, the drinking water source for more than a quarter-million people.

Among the chemical compounds released into the river, ground and air from the plant some 75 miles upriver from Wilmington, is GenX, the common name for hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, or HFPO-DA.

GenX is one of four chemical compounds the EPA is proposing to limit in combination with perfluoronanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS), and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS).

Alex Lan of the EPA’s Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water and technical lead for the rulemaking effort explained that the agency is looking at the combined toxicity of those four chemical compounds through something called a hazard index.

The hazard index is made up of a sum of fractions used to calculate humans’ exposure to levels where health effects are not anticipated to occur.

“To assist in the calculation of these values, the agency is developing a calculator tool to easily determine your hazard index results,” Lan said.

Nationally, the anticipated benefits to establishing contamination limits on PFAS would lead to reduced cases of kidney cancer, strokes and heart attacks, and developmental effects in children, including low birth weight.

The EPA proposes to set maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, on perfluooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, two of the most widely studied PFAS.

The agency proposed to set MCLs for each of those PFAS at 4 parts-per-trillion, or ppt.

Current scientific and available evidence shows PFAS affect pregnant women and developing babies, immune systems, increase the risk of certain types of cancers, and may result in elevated cholesterol levels, which increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.

“The science is clear,” McLain said. “Long-term exposure to certain PFAS is linked to significant health risks. If finalized this new rule will significantly result in less PFAS in drinking water across the United States.”

The EPA last year set a final health advisory for GenX at 10 ppt and PFBS at 2,000 ppt.

PFBS has not been found in significant concentrations in samples collected in North Carolina, but high levels of GenX have been found in the Cape Fear River.

Chemours, a spinoff of DuPont, is pushing back on the EPA’s GenX health advisory. The company has sued the agency, arguing that the EPA failed to use the best available science when making its determination.

Last week’s webinar was the first of two the EPA is hosting.

A March 29 webinar will be held to directly address water utilities and water professionals, Lan said.

An online public hearing will be held May 4. You must register by April 28 to make a comment during the public hearing.

A 60-day public comment period will open after the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register.

The proposed regulation is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday proposed limits for a half-dozen chemical compounds, including GenX, in drinking water.

The list of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS), perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS) and hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, or HFPO-DA, commonly known as GenX.

The proposed maximum contaminant levels for PFOA and PFOS is 4 parts per trillion, or ppt, which is the current limit of detection for these chemicals. The EPA would establish what it calls a hazard index to address combined levels of the other four chemical compounds.

These are the first federal proposed drinking water limits for PFAS.

The announcement comes months after the EPA set a final health advisory for GenX at 10 ppt and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS, at 2,000 ppt.

While PFBS has not been found in significant concentrations in samples in North Carolina, high levels of GenX have been found in the Cape Fear River, a drinking water source for tens of thousands of people.

GenX is one of many compounds Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County discharged into the river, the air and ground for decades.

Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group senior vice president for government affairs, called the EPA’s proposals “historic progress.”

“More than 200 million Americans could have PFAS in their tap water,” Faber said in a news release. “Americans have been drinking contaminated water for decades. This proposal is a critical step toward getting these toxic poisons out of our water. The EPA’s proposed limits also serve as a stark reminder of just how toxic these chemicals are to human health at very low levels.”

The EPA is hosting this month two webinars, the first on Thursday and the second March 29, about the proposed National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for the six PFAS.

To register visit the following links:

• 2-3 p.m. March 16 webinar registration: General Overview of Proposed PFAS NPDWR.
• 2-3 p.m. March 29 webinar registration: Technical Overview of Proposed PFAS NPDWR

Recordings of and materials presented during the webinars will be available to the public after the meetings. Questions about the webinars may be directed to PFASNPDWR@epa.gov. 

The agency will also host a public hearing on May 4. Registration to attend that virtual meeting. Anyone wishing to make a comment at that meeting must register by April 28. To register visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/proposed-pfas-npdwr-public-hearing-tickets-549335536377

Once the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, a public comment period will open. Public comments may be made at www.regulations.gov under Docket ID: EPA-HQ-OW-2022-0114.

The proposed regulation is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.

Once the rule is finalized, public water utilities will have three years to comply with the new regulation.

In anticipation of the proposed regulation, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, has been working with public water utilities to identify, reduce and remediate PFAS contaminants, according to an agency news release.

Last June, DEQ released an Action Strategy for PFAS.

“North Carolina has been leading efforts to address forever chemicals in our drinking water and today’s EPA announcement provides additional federal support and a roadmap for the public water systems in our state,” DEQ Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser said in the release. “Having clear direction on national drinking water standards supports DEQ’s work with public water systems to protect the people of North Carolina.”

ROCKY POINT – Nearly 1,000 households that rely on private drinking wells downstream of Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant qualify for in-home filtration systems or a public water utility connection.

Almost 900 wells that have been tested so far in Brunswick, Columbus, Pender and New Hanover counties had at least one type of per- and polyfluoroalkyl, of PFAS, at or above the federal government’s lifetime health advisory for a single compound or combined levels of multiple compounds.

These numbers are likely to rise as testing continues on private wells in the lower Cape Fear region, an area whose residents were rocked nearly six years ago by news that Chemours, a DuPont spinoff, had for decades been discharging chemical compounds from its plant in Bladen County into the river, air and ground.

In Pender County, 2,200 properties are eligible for testing, according to Michael Scott, director of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Waste Management.

“This isn’t a small amount,” he said.

Scott addressed Tuesday night the more than 100 people that were gathered in a high school auditorium in Rocky Point, an unincorporated area of Pender County, to hear the latest updates on well testing in that county.

During the informational meeting hosted by the state’s environmental agency, residents were given the opportunity to ask a panel of state officials questions, including Scott.

Questions and comments broached in the question-and-answer portion of the meeting shed light on the complexities residents with private drinking water wells face.

Some wanted to know why their requests to get their wells tested by Parsons Environment and Infrastructure, the company contracted by Chemours to conduct sampling, have been declined.

One resident asked why wells that irrigate gardens and are the drinking supply for farm animals are not eligible for testing.

Others pointed out that their wells tested for PFAS, but not above the health advisory, while neighbors’ wells tested higher for at least one chemical compound, making them eligible to receive either in-home filtration systems or the option to tap into a public water utility.

Sharon Mathis said samples from her well contained 6.9 parts per trillion, or ppt, of GenX, a compound specific to the Chemours facility dozens of miles up the Cape Fear River.

That’s below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory for GenX at 10 ppt, which means Mathis does not qualify for alternate drinking water.

“Why would I even want to drink it?” she said. “It’s there. That guideline still doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Under the terms of a 2019 consent order with DEQ and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours has to cover the costs of installing a whole-house granular activated carbon filtration system in residences with private drinking wells found to contain more than 10 ppt of GenX.

Households with wells that exceed that amount also have the option to tap into a public water line if the home is close enough to a public utility pipe.

Testing is limited to 12 compounds. Wells that test for an individual compound above 10 ppt and those with any combination of the 12 compounds registering above 70 ppt are eligible to receive up to three under-the-sink reverse osmosis filters.

Chemours must pay for the initial installation of the filtration systems and maintain the systems for the next 20 years.

These offerings to residences with PFAS-tainted wells are a far cry from a cut-and-dry resolution.

Some who’ve qualify for reverse osmosis, or RO, filters prefer to take on the out-of-pocket cost and pay the difference to upgrade to whole-house granular activated carbon, or GAC, filtration systems.

That’s not an option under the consent order.

Residents who qualify and elect to tap into Pender County Utilities, which oversees that county’s six water and sewer districts, have been told they’ll have to wait months, even years before they can access the public water supply.

The continuing clogged global and national supply chains have drastically slowed shipments of everything from brass fittings to smart meters used to connect homes to public utilities.

A county official attending Tuesday’s meeting explained to the crowd that he placed an order for meters in May 2022. He received those meters last month. Normally, he would receive an order within 30 days.

“The supply chain issue is really worse than anybody realizes,” he said. “It is compounded with Pender County, Brunswick County, Onslow County, your counties that are seeing growth.”

Some questioned why residents with the option to connect to Pender’s water lines would even want to since in some cases chemical compounds in municipal utilities are higher than those found in private drinking wells.

Scott reminded the crowd that no one is forced to tap into municipal water.

“I would say the utilities never took in this water knowing the compounds were in it,” he said.

Much remains unknown about the effects of PFAS to human health, but studies, including those conducted by researchers at some of North Carolina’s universities, indicate high levels of PFAS have impacts on thyroid and immune system functions, some growth and development in children and increased risk in some cancers, including testicular and kidney.

Under court order, Chemours has taken steps to reduce the amount of PFAS it’s Fayetteville plant releases into the environment. More than 99% of PFAS is now prevented from being emitted into the air and water discharged from the plant is being captured, stored and shipped to a hazardous waste site in Texas.

A more than a mile long, 70-foot-deep wall is currently being built on the plant site to stop PFAS in the groundwater from flowing into the Cape Fear River. Water stopped at the wall will be filtered into a groundwater extraction system and treated before it is discharged.

Julie Grzyb, deputy director of the state’s Division of Water Resources, said that, until the barrier wall is completed and all the wells behind it are pumping, residents will continue to have PFAS in their water.

Grzyb said the wall is estimated to be completed by April.

“They’re drilling,” she said. “They’re hitting a lot of clay. Some days they’re going faster than expected. Some days they’re going slower than expected.”

The state will continue testing the Cape Fear River at different sites downstream of the plant to determine the effectiveness of the wall, she said.

The results of those tests will be made available to the public, one that appears to have little faith in a company that knowingly discharged dozens upon dozens of compounds into the river for more than 30 years.

Residents in the Cape Fear Region are predominately gobsmacked at the company’s intentions to expand the Fayetteville plant, growth company officials say will not result in an increase in PFAS.

Chemours is in the process of seeking permits for the proposed expansion.

Shortly after the EPA announced last June its health advisory for GenX, Chemours sued, arguing the agency failed to use best available science when making its determination.

Last year, a federal appeals court judge allowed several North Carolina environmental and health groups to intervene in that lawsuit.

Some of those same groups, including Cape Fear River Watch, are suing the EPA for failing to require Chemours to conduct critical health studies on 54 compounds discharged from the Fayetteville plant. Last month, a federal judge heard arguments in the EPA’s case to dismiss that lawsuit. A decision has not been made.

A federal appeals court judge earlier this week allowed several North Carolina environmental and health groups to intervene in Chemours’ lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Judge Arianna Freeman with the 3^rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the organizations and handful of advocates showed “a sufficient interest in the litigation” brought on by the chemical company, which sued the EPA last year after the federal agency established a health advisory for GenX.

Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility for decades discharged GenX and a host of other per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into the Cape Fear River, air and ground.

The court ruled that the groups’ interest may not be “adequately represented by the existing parties to the litigation.”

Those groups and advocates include Cape Fear River Watch, Center for Environmental Health, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, Natural Resources Defense Council, North Carolina Black Alliance, Toxic Free North Carolina, Dr. Kyle Horton, Lacey Brown, Harper Peterson, Michael Waters and Debra Stewart.

The EPA announced a final health advisory last June for the chemical compound at 10 parts per trillion.

GenX was created to replace perfluorooctanoic acid, which was voluntarily phased out of production more than 10 years ago in the U.S.

According to the EPA’s toxicity assessment, health studies of animals that ingested GenX show health effects in the kidneys, blood, immune system, liver and developing fetuses.

Chemours, which sued the federal agency shortly after setting the health advisory, argues the the agency failed to use the best available science when making its determination. The company also says that GenX does not pose human health or environmental risks “when used for its intended purpose.”

The groups will be allowed to file a single brief.

Some of the same groups intervening in the lawsuit are also in a legal fight with the EPA.

In January 2022, Center for Environmental Health, Cape Fear River Watch, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, NC Black Alliance and Toxic Free NC, reactivated a lawsuit against the EPA they’d previously filed the prior year.

The groups are seeking EPA-required health studies in communities affected by the contaminants discharged from the Fayetteville plant. They say the agency failed to grant their petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act seeking to require Chemours to conduct critical health studies on 54 compounds.

The case is scheduled to be heard in district court 10 a.m. Tuesday at 1003 S. 17th St.

Cape Fear River Watch announced Thursday that it will hold a press conference and rally after the court hearing scheduled for in Wilmington at 2 p.m. at the Hotel Ballast at 301 N. Water St. or, in case of rain, at the Cape Fear River Watch office at 617 Surry St.

Note: This story originally published Jan. 19 has been updated and republished to reflect the changed meeting date and location.

The state Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8. The meeting location has been moved from the Archdale Ground Floor Hearing room on Salisbury Street in Raleigh to the First Floor Training Room in DEQ’s Green Square building to allow for improved remote access. 

The public is invited to attend the meeting in-person or online via WebEx. Use password NCDEQ.

The agenda will be posted on the website closer to the meeting date.

There will be an in-person public comment period with the opportunity to sign up upon arrival at the meeting.

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board currently includes 13 experts in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering, and other related fields. Their expertise assists the state departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services by recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, acting as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and helping the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be studied further, according to the state. 

To learn more about the board and hear recordings of past meetings, visit https://deq.nc.gov/about/boards-and-commissions/secretaries-science-advisory-board.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality will hold a community information meeting at the end of February to present updates on private well sampling underway for PFAS contamination in Columbus, New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties.

Speaker sign-up will be available upon arrival at the meeting that begins at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 28, at Heide Trask Senior High School Auditorium in Rocky Point.

DEQ staff will also answer questions from the public about the private well sampling and alternate water supplies.

At DEQ’s direction, Chemours is sampling for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or 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.

To have your well sampled, call Chemours at 910-678-1100. Messages to this phone number are monitored 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Chemours should respond within 24 to 48 hours starting on the next business day. If you don’t currently qualify for well testing, you may qualify in the future. Chemours is required to keep your contact information and notify you if testing expands to your area, DEQ officials said.

Additional well sampling information for residents, including criteria for eligible wells and other resources, are available on the DEQ website.

Construction is to begin Monday on a small portion of an underground barrier wall designed to stop contaminated groundwater from getting into the Cape Fear River from Chemours Fayetteville Works facility.

Chemours is building a test panel to gauge the overall project, including the company’s construction equipment and building materials that will be used, according to a company news release.

It will take about one week to build.

The barrier wall will stretch more than a mile long and six stories deep off the riverbank. Groundwater will be diverted to about 70 wells, conveyed to an onsite treatment facility and treated before it is discharged into the river.

The facility, which is more than 70 miles upstream of Wilmington, for decades discharged synthetic compounds called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into the river.

Chemicals from Chemours, a spinoff of DuPont, are also released into the air and ground.

Research is ongoing about potential human health effects of these chemicals, including PFAS unique to the facility in Fayetteville.

Under a court-enforceable consent order with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours began a couple of years ago putting measures in place to cut down on the amount of PFAS its Fayetteville plant released into the environment.

Chemours has installed a thermal oxidizer to capture and destroy more than 99% of PFAS from emitting into the air. The company has to cut PFAS emissions into the river by more than 90% and provide drinking water to residents whose wells are contaminated.

Residents who live near the facility may hear construction noise predominately during daylight hours. The company will share additional information about the construction schedule as it becomes available, the release states.

WILMINGTON – Many people living in the Cape Fear River basin who volunteered to take part in the most recent GenX exposure study had higher levels of four highly fluorinated compounds in their blood than the average American.

While GenX was not found in the blood samples of 1,020 residents in Wilmington, Fayetteville and Pittsboro, three per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, unique to the Chemours Fayetteville Works facility were in the blood of almost everyone who participated in the 2020-2021 study.

The results of this latest GenX exposure study were discussed Wednesday evening during a public meeting hosted by Cape Fear River Watch in Cape Fear Community College’s Union Station.

Researchers with the North Carolina State University Center for Human Health and the Environment were quick to point out that while GenX was not found in blood samples, that does not mean people were not exposed to the chemical compound. That merely suggests GenX does not last in the blood for a long time.

PFAS found in blood samples from Wilmington-area residents were the same as those found in samples taken from residents who participated in the initial 2017-18 study.

Nearly everyone who participated in the study had perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, perfluorohexanesulfonic acid, or PFHxS, and perfluoronanoic acid, or PFNA.

Those synthetic chemicals get into the Cape Fear River from several different sources, including textile and furniture manufacturers, sludge from wastewater treatment plants used as fertilizer, and firefighting foams used at airports, according to researchers who conducted the study.

Chemical compounds unique to Chemours – Nafion byproduct 2, and perfluoroalkyl ether carboxylic acids PFO4DA and PFO5DoA – were found in the blood of almost everyone from the Wilmington-area region who participated in the first GenX exposure study in 2017-18.

Nadine Kotlarz, a research scholar at N.C. State, said Nafion byproduct 2 was found in 422 out of 514 Wilmington-area residents who participated in the 2020-21 study.

Blood samples of 433 of those residents also contained PFO5DoA.

Kotlarz explained that researchers went back and reanalyzed the original blood samples collected in the 2017-18 study after new commercial testing standards were established. The results revealed the people found to have PFO5DoA in their blood had higher concentrations than originally detected.

“To date there’s little known about the toxicity of this PFAS,” Kotlarz said.

Jamie DeWitt, a professor at East Carolina University, studies the immunotoxicological and developmental immunotoxicological effects of PFAS.

Next month, she and her team will redo a study of the effects of PFO5DoA in lab mice after discovering in a first go-round of testing that mice dosed at the highest level, 50 milligrams per kilograms of weight, simply could not handle that much in their systems.

“In mice this compound appears to be quite toxic,” DeWitt said Wednesday. “We don’t know if it will affect people in the same way. From my perspective, it’s a problem if it’s a problem in mice we need to study whether it’s also a problem in people.”

Potential health effects of an overwhelming majority of PFAS – there are upwards of 10,000 individual PFAS – have not been studied.

Health studies on legacy PFAS, such as PFOS, PFOA and PFHxS, show those chemicals can decrease antibody response to vaccines; lead to dyslipidemia, or elevated cholesterol, which can lead to cardiovascular disease; decrease infant and fetal growth; and increase the risk of kidney cancer.

Commercial production of PFAS began in the 1940s. They are resistant to heat, water and grease and they are used in a host of consumer products, including carpets, carpet cleaning products, food packaging, furnishings, cosmetics, outdoor gear, clothing, adhesives and sealants, firefighting foam and nonstick cookware.

During a question-and-answer session Wednesday, Jane Hoppin, principal investigator of the GenX exposure study and professor at N.C. State, said there is no good way individuals can reduce all of the ways humans are exposed to PFAS.

“There’s many PFAS in our everyday lives,” she said.

The most effective way to reduce exposure is by removing PFAS from manufacturing.

Chemours Fayetteville Works facility, some 75 miles upstream of the Cape Fear River from Wilmington, uses GenX as a replacement for PFOA for manufacturing fluoropolymers such as Teflon. PFOA was voluntarily phased out of production more than 10 years ago in the U.S.

In 2017, a then-freelance journalist in Wilmington broke the news that Chemours had been discharging PFAS into the Cape Fear since 1980.

Since then, Chemours has been required, as part of a 2019 consent order with the state and Cape Fear River Watch, to drastically reduce its emissions of PFAS into the river, the ground and the air.

Chemours, a DuPont spinoff, has plans to build a massive underground retaining wall to stop the flow of PFAS in ground water at the plant from entering the river.

As part of the consent agreement, Chemours has been testing private water wells, including those in the lower Cape Fear region, for contamination. The company must provide a means of uncontaminated drinking water to households with private wells that contain higher levels of PFAS.

Six North Carolina community and environmental justice groups, including Cape Fear River Watch, are suing the Environmental Protection Agency to require Chemours to pay for health studies on 54 PFAS.

States now have direction from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on using the clean water permitting program to protect against per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

A memorandum announced Tuesday from EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox is to align wastewater and stormwater pollutant discharge permits and pretreatment program implementation activities with the goals in EPA’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap released October 2021, officials said.

“EPA is following through on its commitment to empower states and communities across the nation to address known or suspected discharges of PFAS,” Fox said in a statement. “Today’s action builds upon successful and innovative efforts already used by several states to safeguard communities by using our Clean Water Act permitting program to identify and reduce sources of PFAS pollution before they enter our waters.”

The EPA will work with state-authorized permitting authorities to leverage the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program to restrict the discharge of PFAS at their sources, Fox explains in the memo. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program was established by the Clean Water Act to help address water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants to waters of the United States.

EPA officials note that several states have had success with its state-administered National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program to identify and reduce sources of PFAS including Michigan, which is partnering with municipal wastewater treatment facilities to develop monitoring approaches to help identify upstream sources of PFAS. North Carolina has used the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program to develop facility-specific, technology-based effluent limits for known industrial dischargers of PFAS.

In addition to reducing PFAS discharges, the program is to enable EPA and the states to obtain comprehensive information on the sources and quantities of PFAS discharges, which can be used to inform appropriate next steps to limit the discharges of PFAS, Fox writes.

The memo builds on the EPA’s April memo to its regions by expanding the audience to states, and includes new recommendations related to biosolids, permit limits and coordination across relevant state agencies, officials said.

The memo provides recommendations to National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit writers and pretreatment coordinators on monitoring provisions, analytical methods, the use of pollution prevention and best management practices. These provisions were included to help reduce PFAS pollution in surface waters as the EPA works to promote effluent guidelines, finalize multi-laboratory validated analytical methods and publish water quality criteria that address PFAS compounds, officials continued.

“This EPA guidance is a pivotal moment in the fight against toxic PFAS pollution for communities nationwide, and makes clear that states must act now using existing law to protect people and their drinking water,” said Geoff Gisler, senior attorney and leader of the Clean Water Program at the Southern Environmental Law Center who leads litigation to stop PFAS pollution, in a statement. “Our work in North Carolina against Chemours is proof that PFAS polluters can be held accountable under current law. Families and communities nearby and downstream should not continue to be exposed to toxic PFAS.”

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, filed lawsuits in 2018, after learning in 2017 about the PFAS contamination from Chemours Fayetteville Works facility detected in the Cape Fear River. The river is the drinking water for about 350,000 people in the Wilmington area.

The law center negotiated a consent order with the state and Chemours requiring the company to stop PFAS pollution from its Fayetteville Works Facility, provide clean drinking water to residents with contaminated drinking water wells, and ensure the Cape Fear River is safe for downstream communities.

Stopping PFAS pollution at its source will prevent more people suffering more harmful exposure and make polluters bear the burden and cost of the pollution, not communities nearby and downstream, according to the law center.

The public is invited to attend either in-person or online the state Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board meeting set for 10 a.m. Monday in the Archdale ground-floor hearing room in Raleigh.

During the meeting, the board is to give feedback on using existing recommendations on PFMOAA. The perfluoro-2-methoxyaacetic acid was recently the most prevalent emerging per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance, or PFAS, detected in the Cape Fear River, according to research from East Carolina University.

Also at the meeting, board members are to give comments to the Department of Environmental Quality on the environmental Protection Agency’s PFOA and PFOS bioaccumulation factors included in the draft aquatic life criteria, and their potential use for North Carolina.

PFOA and PFOS are in the PFAS chemical group. The EPA bases aquatic life criteria on how much of a chemical can be present in surface water before it is likely to harm plant and animal life, according to the EPA website.

During the afternoon portion of the meeting, Frannie Nilsen, DEQ environmental toxicologist, is to give two presentations: information on the water and fish summer collection effort’s status, recent data analysis and next steps, and on the consent order toxicity studies status.

The consent order signed in February 2019 is between DEQ, Cape Fear River Watch and Chemours, requiring the company to address PFAS sources and contamination at its Fayetteville Works facility to prevent further impacts to air, soil, groundwater and surface waters. The order directed the toxicity studies on human health and aquatic life, according to DEQ.

To listen via WebEx, the public can use the link to join. The meeting number is 2434 831 9441 and the password is vcYF4NDJP26. The public may also listen by phone by calling 1-415-655-0003 and use access code 2434 831 9441.

There will be an in-person public comment period with opportunity to sign up upon arrival at the meeting.

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board is made up of 13 experts in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering, and other related fields who provide guidance to the state departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services. These experts recommend, review and evaluation contaminants, act as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and help agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be studied further, according to the state.

RALEIGH — The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality announced Monday that it had reached a settlement with Chemours in the company’s appeal of its discharge permit requirements.

The agreement ends litigation without changing the discharge permit issued to Chemours for the treatment of contaminated groundwater to significantly reduce per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, entering the Cape Fear River from its Fayetteville Works facility.  

DEQ and the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority reached an agreement with Chemours to end the litigation over the permit DEQ issued Sept. 15. Chemours filed a petition in October challenging the permit. The authority intervened to support the permit.

DEQ said the agreement does not change the final permit conditions and includes measures by which Chemours will proceed toward compliance with the final PFAS permit limits. Those limits take effect six months after discharge from the treatment system begins. In the agreement, Chemours agrees to take specific steps and provide monthly reports on its progress during the six-month optimization period. Chemours also agrees to dismiss its petition for a contested case hearing on the permit.

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, NPDES, permit for the treatment system is part of the larger barrier wall remediation project to substantially reduce PFAS entering the Cape Fear River and impacting downstream communities, DEQ said.

The agency said that contaminated groundwater from the facility site currently flows untreated directly into the Cape Fear River.

The required measures will reduce the largest source of PFAS at the Chemours facility that contaminates the river and reaches downstream water intakes, officials said. The system must be operational by March 15, 2023, under the terms of the consent order under which the company operates.

The water utility serving the Wilmington area may intervene in Chemours’ appeal of its discharge permit, a judge ruled Thursday.

Meanwhile, the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, filed a motion Thursday to also intervene in the appeal.

Administrative Law Judge Donald van der Vaart granted the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s motion filed Oct. 27 to intervene in Chemours’ appeal of a discharge permit that the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality issued Sept. 15. The permit is associated with the company’s Fayetteville Works groundwater remediation system and requires Chemours to reduce the amount of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or  PFAS, the company may allow to reach the Cape Fear River.

“We filed this motion to have a seat at the table so we can advocate for our community for enforcement of the permit as written. The more PFAS Chemours sends to the river, the more it costs us – and our customers – to remove the PFAS from treated drinking water,” said CFPUA Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup in a statement. “We also took this step on behalf of our customers, who so far have borne the costs associated with treating drinking water for Chemours’ PFAS.”

New motion to intervene

The state permit issued in September is for a groundwater treatment system required by the consent order reached by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch with DEQ and Chemours. The group said it requires Chemours to clean up the PFAS pollution in groundwater and protect downstream communities that rely on the Cape Fear River for drinking water.

“In issuing this permit, the Department of Environmental Quality listened to the public, followed the law, and set limits that will keep dangerous PFAS out of the Cape Fear River,” said Geoff Gisler, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Cape Fear River Watch seeks to join the state in defending this permit that its members rely on to clean up the river.”

Cape Fear River Watch had pushed for the more protective limits. 

“We are disappointed that Chemours has decided to challenge this permit, threatening to increase the PFAS pollution in our community,” said Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent. “We can’t sit idly by while our health and safety are again threatened by Chemours so we hope that we will be allowed to be involved in this case.”

Chemours declined to comment for this report.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Division of Air Quality has received an application for a permit modification from Chemours for the Fayetteville Works facility, state officials said Thursday.

The application for the “Vinyl Ethers Expansion and Hydrolysis Line” is at https://deq.nc.gov/media/32001/open.

Division staff plan to schedule a full public engagement process, and are to announce the public comment period and public hearings.

Related: ‘Absolute gall’: Chemours’ expansion plan angers residents

“DEQ remains focused on the immediate need to address the PFAS contamination from Chemours and its impacts to North Carolinians throughout the Cape Fear River basin. DEQ will continue its ongoing efforts to reduce or eliminate environmental impacts from the facility’s ongoing operations and the residual contamination at the site,” officials said Thursday.

Drinking water sources, both public and private, have been directly impacted by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in air emissions and wastewater discharges from Chemours. 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, officials said.

“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,” they said.

Comments about Chemours can be sent to comments.chemours@ncdenr.gov.

Researchers for a recent study found that 57,412 sites nationwide, including 1,452 in North Carolina, are presumed to be contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

The PFAS Project Lab research team published in mid-October its findings, “Presumptive Contamination: A New Approach to PFAS Contamination Based on Likely Sources,” in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The team concluded that PFAS contamination should be presumed at certain industrial facilities, sites related to PFAS-containing waste, and locations where fluorinated firefighting foams have been used.

The PFAS Project Lab, based at Northeastern University in Boston, studies social, scientific and political factors related to PFAS and researches contamination through collaboration with impacted communities, researchers and nonprofits. The lab is supported by the National Science Foundation, The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and Whitman College.

Researchers explain in the paper that because data on the scale, scope and severity of PFAS releases and the resulting contamination nationwide are uneven and incomplete, the team developed what they call the “presumptive contamination approach” to determine possible sources of contamination.  

To do this, the team used previous research that identifies suspected industrial PFAS dischargers, state-based studies that use PFAS testing data to identify suspected categories of contamination, self-reported PFAS release data from industrial users, and numerous studies on specific PFAS-contaminated sites to compile the single map to find probable contamination. The map includes sites that are often sources of contamination, but where testing has not confirmed the presence of PFAS, according to the study.

Of the 57,412 sites presumed to be contaminated with PFAS in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., 9,145 are industrial facilities, 4,255 are wastewater treatment plants, 3,493 are current or former military sites, and 519 are major airports. The report adds that proximity to contamination is consistently related to higher PFAS levels in drinking water, and consuming contaminated water is associated with higher PFAS blood levels.

“While it sounds scary that there are over 57,000 presumptive contamination sites, this is almost certainly a large underestimation,” Dr. Phil Brown, director of Northeastern University’s Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute and coauthor on the paper, said in a statement. “The scope of PFAS contamination is immense, and communities impacted by this contamination deserve swift regulatory action that stops ongoing and future uses of PFAS while cleaning up already existing contamination.”

PFAS exposure has been associated with increase in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, decreased antibody response to vaccines in children, decreased fertility in women, increased risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension and/or pre-eclampsia, kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid disease, chronic kidney disease, elevated uric acid, hyperuricemia, and gout Liver damage, immune system disruption, and adverse developmental outcomes, including small decrease in birth weight and altered mammary gland development, according to the lab.

Related: Webinar, meetings set on PFAS blood test results

Dr. Linda Birnbaum, coauthor on the paper and scientist emeritus and former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, reiterated to Costal Review that “Contamination is everywhere — often in places we never suspected.”

She said in the release that “not only do we all have PFAS in our bodies, but we also know that PFAS affects almost every organ system. It is essential that we understand where PFAS are in our communities so that we can prevent exposures.”

Dr. Alissa Cordner, senior author on the paper and co-director of the PFAS Project Lab, said that they know PFAS testing is very sporadic, and there are many data gaps in identifying known sites of PFAS contamination.

“That’s why the ‘presumptive contamination’ model is a useful tool in the absence of existing high-quality data,” she said. 

Cordner explained to Coastal Review in a follow-up interview that because most of the country does not have extensive testing data on PFAS contamination sites, the researchers’ model — presumptive contamination approach — can help decision-makers prioritize locations for future testing and regulatory action. 

The research team used already-published scientific studies and government research programs that have identified specific types of locations that were sources of PFAS contamination. 

“For example, extensive testing at Department of Defense sites suggests that military bases are presumptive sites of PFAS contamination because of the use of fluorinated firefighting foams,” she said.

“We also gathered information about what types of industrial facilities are likely using and emitting PFAS. We found 11 high-quality studies or regulatory processes that targeted or identified specific types of industrial facilities, and we chose to include industry categories if they were identified on at least four of these lists,” Cordner said. 

“We then gathered all of the publicly available, high-quality, nationwide data we could on the different types of presumptive PFAS contamination sites, and we kept in only the data that was specific enough in terms of its geolocation data that we could use it to create a nationwide map. This left us with over 57,000 identified sites in the United States.”

The research team checked their model’s accuracy by comparing 500 known contamination sites from the PFAS Project Lab’s Contamination Site Tracker against the likely contamination sites identified with the presumptive contamination map. They found that 72% of known contamination sites were either included in the map of presumptive contamination sites or captured by the overall conceptual model, even if those sites couldn’t be mapped at the national scale, according to the report. Some suspected sources of contamination, such as airplane and railroad crash sites, hydraulic fracking sites, and sewage sludge land application sites were not included on the map because of a lack of available nationwide data.

With the development of the presumptive contamination concept, plus validating the model against known contamination sites, the paper states it “provides a rigorous advancement to previous academic and regulatory models and having a standardized methodology allows researchers, regulators, and other decision-makers at various geographic scales to identify presumptive PFAS contamination using publicly available data.”

Dr. Kimberly Garrett, post-doctoral researcher at Northeastern University and coauthor on the paper, said that because PFAS testing is expensive and resource intensive, “We have developed a standardized methodology that can help identify and prioritize locations for monitoring, regulation and remediation.”

In response to a request for comment on the study, a representative with the state Department of Health and Human Services said in an email that the department continues its work to understand the impact and effects of PFAS and other “forever chemicals” on the health of North Carolinians. 

“The article provides a valuable estimate of PFAS contamination in NC that can help NCDHHS, communities, and private well users be more aware of sites where people might have more exposure to PFAS,” according to representative.

“Private well users can utilize the map and community resources from the article, in conjunction with other NCDHHS private well guidance, to help decide whether they should test their wells for PFAS or other potential contaminants. To assist with these efforts, NCDHHS has developed several documents to help residents in impacted communities understand more about PFAS, see here: PFAS Factsheet,  GenX Factsheet,  PFAS Testing and Filtration, and PFAS Clinician Memo.”

The GenX Exposure Study team has planned a webinar and multiple in-person community meetings on recently released blood per and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, results.

The GenX Exposure Study is measuring GenX and other PFAS exposure in people living near the Cape Fear River Basin, the drinking water source for numerous North Carolina communities.

The question-and-answer webinar is set for 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 9 The link to join is https://ncsu.zoom.us/s/97702719298. 

The three in-person meetings scheduled will take place at Grays Creek Community Center, Hope Mills Wednesday, Nov. 2; Cedar Creek Baptist Church, Fayetteville, Nov. 10; and Dec. 7 at Cape Fear Community College, Wilmington. All meetings are to begin at 6 p.m. and are free to attend.

For those who missed the announcement on the 2020-2021 Blood PFAS Results Oct. 18, the webinar can be viewed online.

The GenX Exposure study began in November 2017 in response to the contamination of drinking water in Wilmington by GenX and other PFAS. The study team is made up of scientists, public health professionals, community organizations citizens, and students who are all working together to understand PFAS exposure in communities along the Cape Fear River Basin, according to the study’s website.

From 2017 to 2019, researchers focused on understanding PFAS exposure in Wilmington and Fayetteville areas by measuring PFAS in blood and water. Since 2020, the team has concentrated on how PFAS exposure influences human health. As a result, the study has grown to include over 1,000 people living in three regions of the Cape Fear River Basin. Learn more about the study’s development over time online.

Chemours has appealed the discharge permit the state issued its Fayetteville Works plant citing “late changes” have prompted concerns the company may not able to meet future limits by deadline.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources, or DWR, issued the final National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit Sept. 15 for a mile-long, underground barrier wall to be built just off the river bank of the Fayetteville plant.

The wall will reduce the amount of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, getting from the plant through groundwater and into the Cape Fear River. Once groundwater hits the wall the water will be diverted to pump stations then to an onsite wastewater treatment plant before being discharged into the river.

Chemours appealed the permit late Friday afternoon, according to company spokesperson Lisa Randall.

In a release, the company stated that it cannot agree to the terms of the permit “when we are uncertain if such commitments can be met or exceeded.”

“We continue to pursue ambitious timeliness to complete and start-up the system to reduce PFAS loading to the river. We are hopeful that we can work with NCDEQ to quickly resolve this matter to continue realizing the significant reductions we have been achieving,” according to the release.

Chemours is required to remove 99% of PFAS discharging into the river under the terms of a 2019 consent order between the company, the state and Cape Fear River Watch.

The company agreed to the terms of the order after the public was made aware in 2017 that the plant had been discharging PFAS into the Cape Fear, a drinking water sources for tens of thousands in the region, the air and ground since the 1980s.

That consent order also required Chemours to install a thermal oxidizer to capture no less than 99.99% of PFAS from being emitted into the air.

In a statement DEQ released Monday morning, the department reiterated that Chemours “is required to fulfill its obligations under the Consent Order.”

“DEQ expects Chemours to take all necessary steps to minimize its PFAS impacts to the environment,” the statement reads. “Pursuing litigation threatens to delay implementation beyond the Consent Order deadline of March 2023 and extend the ongoing contamination reaching the river and impacting downstream residents.”

Chemours’ appeal comes a little more than a month after the company announced plans to expand the plant’s productivity to support domestic production demand in the semiconductor, transportation, clean energy, consumer electronics and communications industries.

Related: ‘Absolute gall’: Chemours’ expansion plan angers residents

Company representatives last month hosted public informational sessions to share those plans. The company says the expansion will not increase the overall fluorinated organic compounds or greenhouse gases emitted from the site.

Updated to include comments from an advocacy organization

After the new granular activated carbon filters went online Tuesday at the Sweeney Water Treatment Plant, no per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including GenX, was detected in the treated drinking water, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority officials announced Tuesday.

The filters treat 100% of the water at the Sweeney Plant that is distributed to customers.

The authority said it will continue to monitor PFAS levels in untreated and treated water at the Sweeney Plant, which provides drinking water to about 80% of the authority’s customers, sourcing water from the Cape Fear River.

“Five years ago, we learned Chemours and DuPont had been releasing GenX and other PFAS into the Cape Fear River, the main source of our drinking water,” CFPUA Board Chair Jennifer Adams said in a statement. “Five years ago, we came together as one community to find the best way to effectively treat PFAS for our current and future customers. Today, I am proud to tell you the treatment solution is here and working right now.”

Six of the eight deep-bed granular activated carbon filters are currently online, with a combined water treatment capacity of 33 million gallons per day, which is ample for the authority to meet current customer water demand. The remaining two filters are ready for service if needed.

The new filters at Sweeney contain almost 3 million pounds of granular activated carbon and is believed to be the largest granular activated carbon public water treatment facility in North Carolina.

Following a 2018 pilot study to evaluate potential water treatment technologies to remove PFAS, deep-bed granular activated carbon filters were selected as the best solution for the Sweeney Plant. Construction on the Sweeney treatment enhancements project began in November 2019.

Crews began loading the eight deep-bed filters with granular activated carbon media in July. Over the past several weeks, each filter has been carefully washed and rinsed and rigorously tested to ensure proper operation.

“This is the result of the combined efforts of our community, my fellow board members, our customers, the staff here at CFPUA, our City and County leadership, our elected representatives in the North Carolina General Assembly, and, of course, the consultants and contractors and their crews who worked on this project and are working now to wrap up the finishing touches,” Adams said.

North Carolina Stop GenX in our Water President Beth Markesino said the announcement that no PFAS compounds currently being detected in treated water is “an immense victory for New Hanover residents.”

“Reducing our exposure through our drinking water is a huge step in reducing PFAS in our bodies. Our neighbors upstream, Chemours, continue to pollute our water, resulting in fines by (the state Department of Environmental Quality), leaving us to not really on them to control their discharges,” she said. “We applaud CFPUA, a utility company, not a regulatory agency, for building the GAC filter to remediate the chemicals Chemours has put into our environment. It is unfortunate, however, that their ratepayers will initially have to pay for Chemours responsibility.”

Dr. Jane Hoppin is to give a presentation on the results of a recently published GenX study during the state Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board meeting Monday.

The meeting is at 10 a.m. in the Archdale Ground Floor Hearing room in Raleigh. The public is invited to attend the meeting in-person or online.

Hoppin is a professor of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University and the principal investigator of a GenX exposure study.

The board is also expected to hear recommendations regarding the use of the existing literature on perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid, or PFMOAA, and a presentation to solicit feedback regarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, bioaccumulation factors included in the proposed draft aquatic life criteria, or standards for how much of a chemical can be present in surface water before it is likely to harm plant and animal life, and the state’s potential use of these criteria.

The full agenda is available on the website.

Participants can join using WebEx at https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/j.php?MTID=mdac16965d51a4d2212387359a5777acc. The meeting number us 2436 222 1701 and the password is NCDEQ. To listen by phone, call 415-655-0003 and use access code. 243 622 21701

The meeting is to include an in-person public comment period with opportunity to sign up upon arrival at the meeting.

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board currently includes 13 professionals in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering and other related fields. They advise the state departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services by recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, acting as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and helping the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be studied further. 

To learn more about the board and hear recordings of past meetings, please visit: https://deq.nc.gov/about/boards-and-commissions/secretaries-science-advisory-board.

LELAND – Inside, employees of the Fayetteville-based chemical plant that discharged contaminants into the Cape Fear River for decades touted the company as an environmental steward, community supporter and that their products are critical to the country’s security and the future of clean energy.

Outside, dozens of protestors listened Wednesday as, one-by-one, people took turns speaking into a microphone and expressing their anger and frustration, their remarks met by cheers and applause like a church congregation affirming its pastor’s preaching.

It was a juxtaposition of two meetings separated by an exterior wall of the Leland Cultural Arts Center where Chemours officials hosted an open house to discuss expansion plans to its Fayetteville Works plant more than 70 miles upstream.

Inside, plant officials offered assurances expanding operations will not increase emissions into the river, the air and/or the ground.

Outside, residents of the lower Cape Fear region collectively balked at the idea of the plant that discharged a host of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into their drinking water source expanding its manufacturing operations.

“The absolute gall of this company that has been contaminating our drinking water for more than 30 years to say that they’re good neighbors when they are anything but,” said New Hanover County resident Kayne Darrell. “Look at what they’re doing right now. All of these people who care about their community, we’re having to stand out here. Is that a good neighbor? I don’t think so.”

Attendees of the open house were admitted inside the building 10 people at a time by a Chemours security guard. Those carrying homemade protest signs had to leave them at the door.

Private guards and local law enforcement stood post outside and inside of the center’s performing arts space, where tables were set up as stations, each with its own subject matter expert or two.

After a group of attendees was allowed to file in, they had to wait behind a red velvet rope barrier as a plant employee gave the rundown of the setup.

A Chemours official explained that the open house was designed to allow a more intimate setting, one where people were free to ask questions after they heard from subject matter experts about the plant, the products manufactured at the plant, emissions reduction initiatives, expansion plans and how the plant will grow its manufacturing operations without increasing emissions.

That’s not how residents in attendance interpreted the open house. Waiting outside under a scorching sun in 90-degree heat was not their idea of a hospitable meeting, even with the offering of free snow cones and smoothies from a truck vendor paid for by Chemours.

“It just seems they wanted to manage everybody,” said area resident Ivy Croake shortly after the group she and her husband made their round through the open house. “It’s not a very satisfying thing.”

About 100 people filed through the two-hour open house. The company hosted a similar event the night before in Dublin, a small town a little more than 15 miles southeast of the Fayetteville plant. About 70 people attended the open house in the Bladen County town.

Chemours, a spinoff of DuPont, has more than 60 manufacturing labs and offices around the world. The company employs roughly 6,400 people worldwide and its customers are spread across 120 countries.

“We are a leader in environmental stewardship space so we want to continue to use responsible chemistry with responsible manufacturing in all that we do,” said Seth Bailey, a technology manager at Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility.

Bailey talked about the company’s 2018 “bold emissions goals” targeting greenhouse gas emissions reductions, its contributions to science and technology education programs at nearby schools through scholarships, and support of local volunteer fire departments.

“Leading by example, the (United Nations) developed sustainable development goals a number of years ago and we’re committed to having 50% of our revenue actually coming from products that contribute positively to those United Nations goals and we’re very proud of that,” he said. “We are setting a new standard for essential manufacturing in North Carolina. We’re raising the bar on environmental stewardship. We have already achieved significant reductions in air emissions. And we’re not finished. We’re continuing to advance that technology.”

Chemours installed a thermal oxidizer to capture and destroy PFAS from emitting into the air to meet the terms of a 2019 consent order with Cape Fear River Watch and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Under the terms of the court-enforceable order, Chemours must reduce air emissions facility-wide by 99.9%, cut PFAS emissions into the Cape Fear River by more than 90%, and sample private wells for PFAS and provide drinking water to residents whose wells are contaminated.

To prevent contaminated ground water on the plant site from getting into the river, Chemours plans to build a barrier wall stretching more than a mile long and six stories deep off the riverbank. Groundwater will be diverted to about 70 wells, conveyed to an onsite treatment facility and treated before it is discharged into the river.

“Any of our expansion plans will be based on the foundation of responsible manufacturing and as we have shared we just want to reiterate that we have achieved greater than 99% reduction in air emissions, greater than 97% reduction in water emissions and Chemours is the leader in deploying the best available technology to reduce emissions,” plant manager Dawn Hughes said to a group of media. “Those technologies will be important as we expand the facility.”

Chemours plans to expand its monomers and Nafion production facilities, processes the company has run for many years, according to Sean Uhl, sustainability director.

“So, these expansions aren’t building a new asset and new raw materials and products. These are expansions within the assets that we have. In each of those plants we’re touching about 10% of equipment that we have today.”

Plant officials would not disclose further details, saying those were a proprietary matter.

Uhl said there a number of internal recycle streams at the company’s plants and that the company is continuously researching technologies in abatement.

When asked the timeframe in which Chemours initiated plans to reduce its emissions, Uhl said, “I would say we were working on this technology before the consent order was even in place. To build something like what we are building takes years. Did the consent order work influence us? Certainly, it did as we went through there and we learned from that process and what was needed to incorporate that design.”

Chemours is in the process of obtaining a state Division of Air Quality permit with plans to submit a permit application next month. The state permit review process will include a 30-day public comment period.

“There’ll be no net increase in the volatile organic compounds from what is in our permit today,” said Christel Compton, environmental manager of the Fayetteville plant. “There will be no increase in fluorinated compounds either as a result of these.”

GenX, one of the chemical compounds emitted into the river, air and ground, will remain under the facility’s current annual limit of 23 pounds, or about two tablespoons a day, Compton said.

Related: Discharge permit requires Chemours remove 99.9% of PFAS

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not regulate fluorinated compounds as individual compounds.

DEQ, however, has set a requirement for GenX.

“Will they ask for other compounds to be included? We’ll find out in our next meeting,” Compton said, noting that company and state officials were meeting the following day.

In June, Chemours filed a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s review of the agency’s health advisory for GenX, arguing the agency failed to use best available science when making its determination.

The EPA announced earlier that month its final health advisory for GenX at 10 parts per trillion, or ppt.

The company argues the chemical compound does not post human health or environmental risks “when used for its intended purpose.”

But the EPA’s toxicity assessment of GenX in health studies of animals that ingested the compound show health effects in the kidneys, blood, immune system, live and developing fetuses.

On Wednesday, protestors loudly chanted “No more Chemours” as they held signs that read “A good neighbor doesn’t poison their neighbors drinking water,” “The only GREEN Chemours cares about is $ $ $ $,” “Kill-mours ‘We’re Already In You,’” and “Get your PFAS out of our BLOOD THEN talk to us about expansion.”

Young children, teens and young adults, and the elderly spoke passionately about their futures, their fears, and their health after years of ingesting PFAS.

In late June, a coalition of community and environmental justice groups filed a lawsuit against the EPA for not requiring Chemours to fund studies examining the effects of 54 PFAS the Fayetteville plant has released into the Cape Fear.

Emily Donovan is a co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, one of the six groups involved in the lawsuit.

“They should know exactly what their chemistry does to the human body and until they can answer that question they have not earned the right to expand around here,” she said.

A new peer-reviewed study found harmful levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in school uniforms labeled “stain resistant.”

Researchers purchased children’s products like school uniforms, bibs and hats, marketed as stain-resistant or waterproof to see if these items contain high levels of PFAS and can be a source of exposure to children and the ecosystem.

The researchers tested 72 products and found PFAS in all “stain-resistant” items, states the report, “Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in North American School Uniforms,” published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology.

“PFAS don’t belong in any clothing, but their use in school uniforms is particularly concerning,” Marta Venier, senior author and professor at Indiana University, said in a statement. “School uniforms are worn directly on the skin for up to eight hours per day by children, who are particularly vulnerable to harm.”

PFAS are man-made chemicals used for decades in industrial and consumer products such as firefighting foams, food-packaging materials and treated textiles. These chemicals are associated with a range of health harms, including compromised immunity, cancer, obesity and more severe COVID-19 outcomes.

“PFAS-treated goods such as clothing may be an important source of direct human exposure, especially for children, as well as a source of PFAS to the environment (and hence indirect human exposure),” the study states.

A tiny fraction of the more than 10,000 PFAS that exist have been tested for toxicity, and all PFAS are either persistent in the environment or break down into persistent PFAS. Some newer PFAS first claimed to be safe have been determined later to be harmful to human health, according to the Institute.

The treated uniforms are a source of PFAS contamination in the environment when they are worn, laundered, discarded or recycled.

Children can absorb PFAS in treated uniforms through skin contact or ingesting the chemicals if they eat with unwashed hands, hand-to-mouth behaviors, mouthing clothing, and through inhalation. They may face higher health risks from PFAS exposure than adults because of their lower body weight and due to the fact children are developing, the study continues.

Rebecca Fuoco, a spokesperson for the Green Science Policy Institute, told Coastal Review that the research team isn’t releasing the brand names that were tested. The Green Science Policy Institute is an independent, nongovernmental organization of scientists and policy experts who develop and communicate peer-reviewed research about chemicals of concern.

“However, the takeaway is that uniform pieces from any brand that are labeled as ‘stain-resistant’ are likely to have PFAS,” she said.

In the 2017-18 school year, 20% of public schools in the United States required students to wear uniforms, according to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. That year, 23% of primary schools, 18% of middle schools and 10% of high schools required uniforms. Schools that require uniforms were more predominant in cities than in suburban areas, towns and rural areas. At least 76% of the students in city schools that require uniforms were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

Fuoco said that parents who want to move away from PFAS-contaminated clothing should check if any of their children’s uniform pieces are advertised as “stain resistant.” 

“If so, they should ask school administrators to update their uniform policies and specify PFAS-free uniform options from manufacturers. For already-purchased uniforms, there is some evidence to suggest that multiple washes can reduce PFAS concentrations. For this reason, hand-me-down and used uniforms are a better option than newly purchased stain-resistant uniforms,” she said.

Reaction to the findings

Dr. Jamie DeWitt, an associate professor in the department of pharmacology and toxicology of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, studies environmental contaminants and the role they play in affecting health, including PFAS.

She told Coastal Review that this study on stain-resistant uniforms demonstrates that PFAS are detectable in many types of clothing worn by children and raises the question of whether PFAS are essential in creating these types of consumer products.

“For example, bibs are worn to protect clothing from spills and it is expected that bibs will become stained and dirty. Is stain resistance an essential function of a bib requiring the use of PFAS?,” she asked. “Similarly, hats worn by infants, toddlers and children likely do not require stain or water repellency, such as water repellency that might be required for those performing in extreme environments, so again, is stain or water repellence an essential use of PFAS for these materials? Most likely not.”

She acknowledged that school uniforms are more challenging to address from a stain-resistance standpoint.

“First, they are worn all day everyday by children who use them, so dermal contact exposure concerns are greater. We don’t yet know the total contribution of PFAS from clothing to the overall burden of exposure, but it likely exists through dermal contact and inhalation of dusts from the clothing,” Dewitt said. “Second, there may be requirements for the cleanliness of school uniforms and some families may not have a budget for high numbers of school uniforms, washers and dryers in the house, or a budget for frequent trips to a laundromat. For these families, stain resistance may be an essential function of school uniforms,” but is PFAS essential?

PFAS has long been a concern for Clean Cape Fear, which formed in June 2017 after learning Chemours, formerly DuPont, dumped large quantities of PFAS into the Cape Fear River, a drinking water source for millions in the Wilmington area.

The grassroots community action group has been working since to restore and protect air, soil, water and food supply from PFAS contamination, as well as spotlight deficiencies in government regulations that adversely impact our right to these basic needs, according to the website.

“We should be using the precautionary principle when we don’t have verifiable data,” co-founder Emily Donovan said, regarding the school uniforms having PFAS, “When no one can come to a parent and tell a parent that they can prove with 100% certainty that PFAS in that uniform will not harm the child, you cannot say that it is safe. You have to be able to prove it. That burden should fall on the chemical industry and not the concerned parents.”

Another point she raised that isn’t often discussed is how products, like these uniforms, are getting made. “We’re not talking about the textile manufacturing process and the communities that are suffering around them for that use. So, it’s more than just the child getting harmed. There’s also the risk of the communities that have that manufacturing in their backyards, and what is being done to protect those communities,” she said.

“I think we have a right to be concerned, especially when you put it in the context of another study that was published recently,” she said.

Donovan explained that the recent study found that cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease among American children under the age of 15 years and “chemical exposure is believed to be the driving force.”

She was speaking about the report, “Paediatric Cancer and the Environment: A 50-year Perspective,” Professor Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College, published in June.

While the report doesn’t call out PFAS specifically, the big picture is that all of these chemicals are persistent and bioaccumulative, which PFAS are, and they’re causing some serious health harm. “It’s time that we start taking this a little more seriously.”

The state Department of Health and Human Services has developed several documents to help residents in impacted communities understand more about PFAS, including PFAS Factsheet,  GenX Factsheet,  PFAS Testing and Filtration, and PFAS Clinician Memo, Summer Tonizzo with the Office of Communications told Coastal Review.

She said that the department continues its work to “understand the impact and effects of PFAS and other ‘forever chemicals’ on the health of North Carolinians. We regularly review new environmental data about PFAS exposures to better understand potential public health implications and recommend actions to reduce exposure and protect public health.”

About the report

Fuoco told Coastal Review that the researchers decided to pursue this study because they were concerned about the potential exposure of PFAS in children’s products and PFAS in these products entering the environment.

“The team knew from the literature that outdoor and adult activewear clothing labeled ‘water-resistant’ and ‘stain-resistant’ could contain PFAS. That prompted them to look at school uniforms labeled ‘stain-resistant’,” she said.

Of the 72 products tested for this study, 34 were purchased in the United States in March 2021 and 38 from the Canadian market in November 2020 and February 2021. 

Researchers chose products to test that were labeled waterproof, water-resistant, durable water-repellent, stain-proof, stain-resistant, easy care stain release, windproof, or wrinkle resistant, the study states. Items included school uniforms, weather-resistant outdoor wear such as rain suits, snowsuits, snowshoes and mittens, and miscellaneous children’s products such as bibs, hats, stroller covers, swimwear, sweatshirts, and baby shoes.

Total targeted PFAS levels in school uniforms were significantly higher than in other items such as bibs, hats, stroller covers, and swimsuits, but comparable to outdoor wear. Higher total targeted PFAS concentrations were found in school uniforms made of 100% cotton than synthetic blends. Perfluoroalkyl acids, or PFAAs, precursors were abundant in school uniforms, the report states.

A couple of studies released earlier this year had similar findings for water-resistant and stain-resistant products.

A paper published in January by Toxic-Free Future found toxic chemicals in most products labeled stain- or water-resistant, with 72% testing positive for PFAS. The report, “Toxic Convenience: The hidden costs of forever chemicals in stain- and water-resistant products,” notes that rain jackets, hiking pants, mattress pads, comforters, napkins, and tablecloths contain these chemicals.  

“Our testing finds continued, unnecessary use of the toxic chemicals known as PFAS in outdoor clothing and home furnishings like bedding and tablecloths,” said Erika Schreder, study author and science director for Toxic-Free Future, in a statement when the report was released. “When companies use PFAS to make products stain- or water-resistant, they are using chemicals that contaminate homes, drinking water, and breast milk with highly persistent chemicals that can cause cancer and harm the immune system.”

In May, “How Well Do Product Labels Indicate the Presence of PFASs in Consumer Items Used by Children and Adolescents?” was published in Environmental Science & Technology, which found “some children’s products advertised as water- or stain-resistant contain PFAS, even items labeled ‘green’ or ‘nontoxic’.”

Of the 93 items measured, 54 contained fluorine, an indicator of PFAS, and 18 of those had measurable levels of at least one PFAS. A total of 19 had precursor compounds “that can be transformed into highly stable perfluoroalkyl acids when oxidized in the environment or the human body,” according to a release. “PFAS and their precursors were only found in items specifically labeled with trademarks for water- or stain-resistance, or that used similar wording, such as ‘waterproof,’ “stainproof’ or ‘leak-proof.’ ‘Some of these products also had green certifications or claimed to be nontoxic.”

The researchers were not surprised by the results, the release continues, “because many certification processes don’t include a check for PFAS, or they have higher acceptable limits than the levels found in this study. Overall, products marketed toward young consumers as water- or stain-resistant could contain PFAS, which the researchers say represents a nonessential use of these substances.”

This post has been updated.

A draft discharge permit announced earlier this year for a treatment system to remove contaminants from groundwater on the Chemours Fayetteville Works site met opposition, but the final permit announced last week has been well-received, for the most part, by environmental advocates.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources issued the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit Thursday for a granular activated carbon, or GAC, filtration treatment system. The system is to treat groundwater, surface water and stormwater contaminated by perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances before it can reach the Cape Fear River, a drinking water source for hundreds of thousands in the Wilmington area. 

“This is an important step in addressing the largest ongoing source of #pfas contamination to the Cape Fear River,” Secretary Biser said Thursday on Twitter, adding that the state Department of Environmental Quality, “remains committed to holding polluters accountable and protecting water quality for all North Carolinians.”

PFAS are a large group of manufactured chemicals found in everyday products like nonstick cookware and carpeting. The Wilmington StarNews reported in June 2017 that the chemical was detected in the Cape Fear River by N.C. State University scientists. An investigation linked the chemicals to the Chemours facility in Fayetteville. Chemours has been prohibited since from discharging PFAS-contaminated process wastewater from its manufacturing operations into the river, but there is significant groundwater contamination, according to DEQ. 

During an initial period to adjust the performance of the system, the permit limits will be 120 parts per trillion, or ppt, for GenX, 100 ppt for perfluoro-2-methoxypropanoic acid, or PMPA, and 320 ppt for perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid, or PFMOAA. After the 180-day optimization period, the limits are to drop to less than 10 ppt for GenX, 10 ppt for PMPA and less than 20 ppt for PFMOAA. 

The limits represent an estimated removal efficiency of greater than 99.9%, officials said Thursday.

The treatment system is part of the greater barrier wall remediation project, outlined in the 2020 addendum to the 2019 consent order signed by Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours and DEQ. The consent order requires Chemours to stop GenX and other PFAS pollution, provide clean drinking water for those with contaminated wells, and ensure the Cape Fear River is safe for downstream communities. 

Cape Fear River Watch and Southern Environmental Law Center representatives said Friday that the permit as issued “sets the strongest limits on discharges of toxic PFAS pollution in the United States,” after the two groups and many residents urged the agency to strengthen the permit.

When the earlier draft permit was released March 25, the groups submitted comments in May and June to NCDEQ that pushed for the changes now reflected in the final permit.

“The massive remediation project is the largest of its kind to address PFA,” DEQ officials said Thursday. “Currently, the contaminated groundwater flows untreated directly into the Cape Fear River. This project is designed to reduce the largest ongoing source of PFAS contaminating the river and reaching downstream water intakes and must be operational by March 15, 2023.”

The remediation project involves a milelong underground barrier wall running parallel to the river and more than 70 extraction wells. The groundwater is to be pumped and treated to remove an estimated 99.9% of PFAS compounds before being released into the river. DEQ issued an approval letter for the barrier wall design with conditions for additional monitoring wells, sampling of extraction wells and management of contaminated groundwater during barrier wall construction.

The earlier draft permit released in March drew public response because it “would have authorized significantly more PFAS pollution from the groundwater treatment system — a treatment system required under the consent order negotiated by the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, with the Department of Environmental Quality, and Chemours,” the law center announced Friday.

The first public comment period was March 24 to May 2. DEQ on May 17 announced public meetings to be held in June and that the division would continue to accept comments until June 24. During that time, the division received 250 written comments supporting the draft permit, most apparently copied from one website with identical text, and 155 comments opposing the draft. During the two hearings, about 140 attended with 33 speaking against the proposed permit. 

State officials said Thursday that after considering public comments and further review of data and information contained in the permit record, the permit limits for the three indicator compounds had been “significantly reduced beyond the 99% removal required” in the consent order. 

“Enforcing existing law to require that the polluter, Chemours, nearly eliminate PFAS pollution from its discharge into a major drinking water source for over 300,000 North Carolinians is an important milestone in the fight to stop PFAS pollution,” said Geoff Gisler, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “DEQ listened to the community by issuing a permit that ensures Chemours will use the best available technology to nearly eliminate PFAS from its new treatment system, protecting the Cape Fear River and families downstream.”

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent told Coastal Review Friday that the tighter restrictions amounted to “a big win.”

She added that the organization was grateful that people made their voices heard by submitting hundreds of comments to DEQ. “DEQ heard their outrage and heartache,” and is enforcing the law in limiting Chemours’ PFAS discharge based on capabilities of available technology.

“This is a big one for us as we know we would never have gotten here without the consent order and we have been begging DEQ to enforce technology-based effluent limitations for quite some time,” she said. 

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Communications Director Vaughn Hagerty said Friday that authority staff is still looking at the final permit and related materials. 

“I can say that while we and the community we serve would prefer no PFAS from Chemours in the discharge governed by this permit, it does appear as though the discharge limits in the final permit are lower than what had been proposed in the draft permit released a few months ago. We’re grateful to our partners at DEQ for not only listening to our community’s concerns but reflecting those concerns in writing the final permit,” he said.

Sargent said that when her organization sued Chemours, the company was required to find ways to drastically reduce their discharge and through the granular activated carbon system installed at the old outfall, data has proven the technology can reduce discharge to near undetectable levels. At the levels DEQ is enforcing in the permit, Chemours must maintain the system to the utmost, essentially limiting PFAS discharge from the groundwater on site to near undetectable levels. 

The issue with DEQ’s earlier draft at 99% reduction was that it would have allowed Chemours to get away with not maintaining the granular activated carbon system, “spending as little money as possible and allowing discharge,” she added.

Clean Cape Fear officials also noted the permit announcement via a social media post Thursday. 

“We asked for zero PFAS–DEQ said at least 99.9%. While we are grateful for these protections–we believe if Chemours can capture 99.9% — then Chemours should be required to capture 100%,” according to the post. “Friendly reminder, the current high levels of PFAS we regularly see in our tap water are coming from severely toxic groundwater underneath the Chemours facility in Fayetteville. This new permit is part of the barrier wall project Chemours is required to install to limit their PFAS releases into our river.”

In addition to setting limits for the three indicator compounds, the permit includes weekly monitoring of the treatment system during barrier wall construction and an evaluation a year later to add any new information. The permit can also be reopened to add limitations based on new toxicity data, introduction of federal or state PFAS standards, and if another PFAS compound breaks through the treatment system more quickly than the three current indicator parameters, officials said.

A representative from Chemours said Friday that the company was in the process of reviewing the information. 

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.”

All eight of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s granular activated carbon filters under construction at the Sweeney Water Treatment Plant are now expected to be ready for use in removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances before the end of the year.

The authority announced the timeline Wednesday, noting that only half the number of filters is required to be ready for effective PFAS treatment. Under the latest construction estimate, that should occur before December, and customers in the Sweeney water system could begin receiving more thoroughly filtered drinking water as soon as early fall.

A representative from Black & Veatch, the contracted project manager for the filter project, presented the latest projection to the authority’s board of directors Wednesday, according to a press release from the authority. The project manager told the board that the construction schedule is subject to supply-chain and labor-shortage delays as seen elsewhere.

Granular activated carbon filters have been under construction since November 2019 as part of a $43 million plant expansion to provide more effective treatment for PFAS contamination such as Chemours’ compound known as GenX, the authority said.

Chemours is a DuPont spinoff with a manufacturing plant near the Cape Fear River in Bladen County.

Special report: GenX five years later

The authority noted that, based on its projected drinking water demands, only four of the eight filters are required be online to provide treatment to undetectable or nearly undetectable levels.

The existing system at the Sweeney plant uses biological filters that contain granular activated carbon filters but removes only about 35% of the PFAS in untreated water from the Cape Fear River.

The granular activated carbon filter media began arriving at the plant in late July. The authority said each filter will hold 320,000 pounds of media, or eight truckloads.

Officials said that once the media is installed in a filter, it must be “washed” and “rinsed” over a number of days to get it ready for effective use. The process is to take place in succession for each of the eight filters.

The Sweeney plant remains in operation during the work, producing about 80% of the drinking water the authority distributes to its customers.

A recent report offers health care guidance for physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals treating those with a history of elevated exposure to PFAS. 

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released the report last week. It also suggests ways the Center for Disease Control and Prevention can update its health recommendations for patients with PFAS exposure. 

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a class of chemicals with more than 12,000 different compounds found in thousands of products, such as carpeting, nonstick cookware, firefighting foams, fast-food wrappers and protective gear.

Used since the 1940s for its oil- and water-repellent properties, PFAS have a variety of distinct chemical properties and toxicities, some of which can become concentrated in the body or environment and stay there, while other PFAS can transform pretty quickly, the report states. “The PFAS that do transform, however, will become one or more other PFAS because the carbon–fluorine bond they contain does not break naturally,” which is why they’re described as “forever chemicals.”

The report found that there’s “sufficient evidence of an association” between PFAS exposure and a greater risk of decreased response to some vaccines, abnormally high cholesterol, decreased infant and fetal growth, and increased risk of kidney cancer. Additionally, there is suggestive evidence of an association for increased risk of breast cancer, liver enzyme alterations, increased risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension, increased risk of testicular cancer, thyroid disease and dysfunction, and increased risk of ulcerative colitis.

As a result of these connections between PFAS exposure and health risks, the report recommends that clinicians should offer PFAS testing to patients that are likely have a history of elevated exposure. The report also recommends that those patients with PFAS levels linked with an increased risk of adverse effects should receive regular screening and monitoring by their health care professionals. The report notes that establishing these recommendations came with challenges because there’s a great deal of uncertainty, such as what level of exposure comes with what type of health risks.

Dr. Jane Hoppin, a professor of biological sciences and the deputy director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment at North Carolina State University, is on the committee the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine appointed to develop the report. 

“I think this report actually provides guidance for people who have been exposed to PFAS. The recommendation is that people with more than 2 nanograms per millimeter total PFAS in their blood should receive some kind of medical follow-up and those people with more than 20 should receive more,“ Hoppin told Coastal Review Friday.

She said that about 9% of people exceed that 20 nanograms per milliliter value, and some parts of the United States probably have higher exposure.

“PFAS exposure is widespread throughout the U.S. and particular regions of the United States have higher exposures. What this report really does is, for the first time, provides medical recommendations for people who’ve been exposed to PFAS,” she said. 

When blood was monitored in the past, researchers have only been able to say the number of nanograms in a person’s blood. “But now, what this report does, not only does it say that if this is your number, this is what should be done, but also gives guidance for clinicians on how they should do that. So I think that’s a really important point here for North Carolina and the U.S. as a whole.”

Recommendations

Hoppin was referring to the levels of PFAS concentration found in patients.

Patients whose tests show a PFAS blood concentration below 2 nanograms per milliliter are not expected to have adverse health effects, according to the report. Patients with test results between 2 and 20 nanograms per milliliter could face the potential for adverse effects, especially in sensitive populations such as pregnant individuals. Patients with test results above 20 nanograms per millimeter may face a higher risk of adverse effects.

Patients who test between 2 and 20 nanograms per milliliter should prioritize screening for dyslipidemia, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and breast cancer based on age and other risk factors. 

Clinicians with patients who have more than 20 nanograms per milliliter should also test thyroid function and assess for signs of kidney cancer, testicular cancer and ulcerative colitis during all visits.

In addition to regular monitoring of patients, the study recommends that clinicians discuss with their patients ways to avoid PFAS exposure. There also should be improvements in environmental health education, particularly in communities where PFAS exposure is identified. 

Clinicians should also discuss infant feeding and steps that can be taken to lower sources of PFAS exposure, though the report notes that there is a critical need for more data to understand exposure among breastfed infants.

To get the word out to clinicians and the public, the report states that the CDC, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and public health departments should create educational materials on PFAS exposure, possible health effects, what can be learned from and the limits of testing, and the benefits and negatives of testing. 

Laboratories conducting PFAS testing should report the results to state public health authorities to improve exposure surveillance.

Study background

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released in 2019 “PFAS: An Overview of the Science and Guidance for Clinicians on Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances.” 

While this overview provided general information about PFAS health studies and suggested answers for example questions from patients, the guidance did not provide information for clinicians on when to test for PFAS, how to order the tests, how to interpret the results or follow up, according to the report. 

In response to the frustration voiced by some in PFAS-impacted communities that the clinical guidance lacked clear recommendations, the registry and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences approached the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to form an ad hoc committee to give advice on PFAS testing and clinical care for patients exposed to PFAS. 

The committee was asked to advise on principles for biological testing and clinical evaluation, given substantial scientific uncertainty about the health effects or the value of such measures in informing care; review the human health literature for the health effects of PFAS; and characterize human exposure pathways and develop principles for exposure reduction, the report states.

The committee also was asked to recommend options and considerations to guide decision making for PFAS testing in a patient’s blood or urine, PFAS concentrations that could inform clinical care of exposed patients, and appropriate patient follow-up and care specific to PFAS-associated health endpoints for those patients known or suspected to be exposed to PFAS.

The committee was not asked for community prevention guidance or advice on policies that would reduce PFAS exposure, the report notes.

Uncertainty 

There are 2,854 locations in the country, all 50 states and two territories, that have some PFAS contamination, but not all exceed the level in health advisories, and almost 100% of the country’s population is exposed to at least one PFAS. 

The report acknowledges that though there is uncertainty about the exact nature of risks from PFAS exposure, clinicians will still need to advise and make decisions with patients regarding their exposure. 

“While there is evidence of an association of PFAS with several health outcomes, the likelihood that a particular individual will have any specific adverse health outcome following exposure to PFAS cannot currently be determined with great specificity,” the report states. Adding, that while there are gaps in information about how individuals can reduce any potential risks related to PFAS exposure, many individuals and communities expect clinicians to address PFAS-associated risks as part of routine health care delivery.

“Ongoing and future research should eventually guide clinicians in predicting patient risk and provide an understanding of the benefits and harms of interventions designed to avoid adverse health outcomes,” the report continues.

“Our report shows that we are going to need robust and effective collaboration between local communities, states, and federal agencies in order to respond to the challenge of PFAS exposure,” said Ned Calonge, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Colorado, Denver, associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, and chair of the committee that wrote the report. “We need to continue to identify communities with elevated PFAS exposure, learn more about specific health impacts, make testing available to patients, and give clinicians more strategies for counseling patients and providing preventive medical care.” 

PFAS in North Carolina

Residents of Bladen, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties learned five years ago that their primary source of drinking water, the Cape Fear River, was contaminated with GenX and other emerging PFAS. The Wilmington StarNews first reported on June 7, 2017, that a group of North Carolina State University researchers had detected the forever chemicals in the river.

The following week, the state’s Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services began investigating. The Chemours facility in Fayetteville was identified as the company producing the GenX that was being discharged into the Cape Fear. Since then, the state and environmental groups have worked to clean up the Cape Fear River. 

A consent order was signed in February 2019 between NCDEQ, Cape Fear River Watch, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, and Chemours. The order requires Chemours to address PFAS sources and contamination at the facility to prevent further impacts to air, soil, groundwater and surface waters. In August 2020, NCDEQ made an addendum to the consent order, making Chemours take significant additional actions to prevent PFAS pollution from entering the Cape Fear River. A summary of actions over the last five years related to the Chemours investigation and consent order is on the NCDEQ website.

A representative from DHHS told Coastal Review that the state agency is still reviewing the report but work is underway to incorporate information from this report and other sources in an update of the state’s guidance to North Carolina health care providers. 

Expanded PFAS testing in blood and serum could potentially help identify areas that have increased exposures to PFAS chemicals, and provide residents with more information to help understand their exposures and how they could be impacting their health, DHHS officials said.

Community voices

The committee brought in public input, which they deemed “an important and credible source of evidence to inform guidance recommendations.”

As part of that effort, 41 community liaisons, including a handful from North Carolina,  were appointed to suggest speakers, topic and discussion questions for public meetings, as well as provided documents and other information.

Dr. Jamie DeWitt, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, was selected as a community liaison. She focuses on the effects of environmental contaminants on the adult and developing immune systems and is the principal investigator, co-principal investigator, and co-investigator of several funded studies on the immune effects of PFAS, particularly the novel and understudied. 

“The report does something that has been needed for a long time with respect to people who live in any community that can be contaminated with environmental chemicals,” DeWitt said Monday. “It really alerts healthcare providers that there are agents in the environment that can have an impact on people’s health, and they can look for tools to help them treat their patients better, and help to uncover potential health risks that their patients might experience as a result of their exposures.”

DeWitt mentioned that she teaches medical students and while students across the country learn about acute toxicology such as poisoning or snake bites, they don’t really learn about how environmental agents can lead to chronic diseases. DeWitt noted that the report addresses medical education and highlights ways that healthcare providers can better educate themselves to provide care for people who live in communities that are contaminated with PFAS.

The committee held several public comment sessions as well as included in the report the testimony of 30 people impacted by PFAS contamination, which “moved the committee’s work from an academic exercise to a personal reality.”

Clean water advocate Beth Markesino, founder of North Carolina Stop GenX in Our Water, is a community liaison who shared her story with the committee during a public comment session.

A Wilmington resident, Markesino, who participated in the first GenX study, has multiple endocrine issues associated with PFAS, including a thyroid tumor, an adrenal tumor, and placenta problems during her pregnancy that resulted in the death of her son. 

Her organization was awarded a grant to provide 120 filters for low-income residents in the Lower Cape Fear region and she lobbied against DuPont scientist Michael Dourson’s appointment to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“I started North Carolina Stop GenX In Our Water the day that we found out about our water contamination, so on June 7, 2017,” she said. “We started the organization as a way to inform our community about our water contamination.”

The group first began on Facebook, but after learning the urgency of the situation, the group became a nonprofit organization. 

“The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine had reached out to a bunch of not only North Carolina advocates, but also advocates throughout the United States wanting to know our opinions about PFAS and health and data,” she said. “Out of every other state, I want to say we got a very good representation of our water contamination and our views, which was really great. In the last five years, it might seem like we haven’t got a lot accomplished, but we really have and with this report coming out, this catapults us to a whole new level.”

She and her husband moved to the Wilmington area for the weather. As a marathon runner, she said she was drinking a lot of water. She became pregnant with her son in 2016, when she was in the best health of her life. 

“We had no clue about our water contamination in 2016. You know, none of us knew the health effects of PFAS or anything like that. And long story short. My pregnancy did not go very well. I already had a very healthy pregnancy with my daughter and my daughter’s 10. Now she’s an amazing sassy, little 10-year-old, but with my son Samuel, he did not develop his kidneys, bladder or bowels and I had placental problems,” she said. 

They found out around 20 weeks through the 24-week period that she had next to no amniotic fluid … “Just think about your worst nightmare. And that was it for me.” 

She ended up in Michigan to deliver their son at 24 weeks via cesarean because a natural birth would have caused health complications. “We did get to hold Samuel. We got to baptize him, and we got to bury him in our family plot in Detroit.” 

Six months after they buried their son and were grieving, “that’s when we found out about a Gen X contamination,” Markesino said. “As a pregnant mom, I never knew our water was contaminated. I never knew that drinking this water could possibly affect my pregnancy. Five years later, we know that PFAS and Gen X does affect pregnant women, it does transfer from the placenta to the fetus.”

Being a community liaison for the study made her feel like she could help other women that are pregnant be able to talk to their doctors about PFAS.

“We may not have known it five years ago, when I was going through all of that, but we know it now and through committees like this that I was a part of — many of us in the PFAS community have similar stories to mine and my son who have shared our stories and shared our concerns with this committee and even though we couldn’t fix the pain and agony — we shared our stories so that doctors can be educated and that they can now tell their patients about the science now that we know of the harm of these chemicals, so that nobody else has to go through what we went through.”

The state Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board will meet at 10 a.m. Monday, Aug. 1, online via WebEx.

In addition to updates from Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services staff, DEQ staff will present information regarding the EPA’s reference doses for PFOA, PFOS, GenX and PFBS, bioaccumulation factors and their
potential use, as well as the status of the consent order toxicity studies and this summer’s fish and water collection efforts. For details, see the agenda.

The public is invited to attend the meeting online or by phone at 1-415-655-0003, access code 2420 026 5211. Organizers ask those dialing in to mute their phone upon entering.

To speak during the meeting, register online by 5 p.m. Friday, July 29.

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board is made up of 13 experts in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering and other related fields that assist the state’s environmental and health and human services departments by recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, acting as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and helping the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be studied further.

The Chemours Company is suing the Environmental Protection Agency for its recent health advisory for GenX, one of the contaminants discharged for years into the Cape Fear River from the company’s plant in Fayetteville.

Chemours is challenging the EPA’s review of the agency’s health advisory for hexafluoropropylene oxide dime acid, or HFPO-DA (GenX), arguing the agency failed to use the best available science when making its determination.

“Nationally recognized toxicologists and other leading scientific experts across a range of disciplines have evaluated the EPA’s underlying analysis and concluded that it is fundamentally flawed,” according to a Chemours release. “EPA’s own peer reviewer called aspects of EPA’s toxicity assessment (which serves as the basis for the health advisory) ‘extreme’ and ‘excessive.’ The agency disregarded relevant data and incorporated grossly incorrect and overstated exposure assumptions in devising the health advisory. The EPA’s failure to use the best-available-science and follow its own standards are contrary to this administration’s commitment to scientific integrity, and we believe unlawful.”

The suit filed Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia specifically names EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who is also former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Chemours warned it might take legal action against the EPA after the agency’s assistant administrator for water, Radhika Fox, announced the final health advisory June 15.

Fox made the announcement at the third National PFAS Conference held in downtown Wilmington, a city and surrounding region thrust into the national spotlight five years ago when the news broke that Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility had for decades been discharging per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances into the Cape Fear River, air and ground.

Related: Health advisories for GenX, PFAS announced at conference

The EPA’s final health advisory for GenX is 10 parts per trillion, or ppt and, for perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS, at 2,000 ppt. PFBS has not been found in significant concentrations in samples in North Carolina, according to DEQ.

The agency also issued updated interim health advisories for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS.

GenX was created to replace PFOA, which was voluntarily phased out of production more than 10 years ago in the U.S.

Chemours states in its news release that HFPO-DA is not a commercial product and does not pose human health or environmental risks “when used for its intended purpose.”

Health studies of animals that ingested GenX show health effects in the kidneys, blood, immune system, liver and developing fetuses, according to the EPA’s toxicity assessment.

Chemours argues that the GenX toxicity assessment issued October 2021 was “materially different” from a draft assessment published in November 2018 and that the EPA did not provide public notice or allow for public comment on the new assessment.

“Upon review of the October 2021 Toxicity Assessment, Chemours and external experts identified numerous material scientific flaws, including its failure to incorporate available, highly relevant peer-reviewed studies and that it significantly overstates the potential for risk associated with HFPO-DA,” according to the release.

The EPA did not respond to an email request for comment Wednesday.

EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator Benita Best-Wong defended the GenX toxicity assessment in a letter to a law firm representing six North Carolina health and environmental groups, stating the assessment “was subject to two rigorous independent peer reviews by scientists who were screened for conflicts of interest in 2018 and 2021.”

Best-Wong went on to write that the agency asked the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences National Toxicology Program to conduct an independent review of the liver histopathology slides from two studies.

The agency published detailed responses to comments from both peer reviews and the assessment was put out for public review and comment for 60 days, she wrote.

That letter was in response to the groups’ call for the EPA to order Chemours to conduct health studies on 54 PFAS. Those groups, including Cape Fear River Watch, Center for Environmental Health, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, the NC Black Alliance and Toxic Free NC, filed a lawsuit against the EPA for failing to require Chemours to conduct the studies.

The EPA’s health advisory for GenX replaces the state’s 2018 provisional drinking water health goal of 140 ppt.

A consent order between DEQ, Cape Fear River Watch and Chemours requires the company to provide whole house filtration for households that rely on private water wells where GenX concentrations are above the health advisory.

“We expect Chemours to meet their obligations under the Consent Order and to the communities impacted by the PFAS contamination,” Sharon Martin, DEQ deputy secretary for public affairs, said in an email Wednesday.

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said in a telephone interview she was “shaken” by the lawsuit.

“This is going to be seriously infuriating for the community to hear this news and to still be looking at commercials and this nonsense saying (Chemours) are good neighbors,” she said. “I think Chemours needs to recognize that they can’t continue to claim that they’re good neighbors while suing the nation’s regulatory agency based on their assessment of the GenX toxicity level, which was done under strict calculations based on available science on the health impacts of GenX. The science is science.”

State environmental and health officials are to hold an in-person meeting this month in Fayetteville about the new drinking water health advisory the EPA set in June for GenX chemicals.

Related: Health advisories for GenX, PFAS announced at conference

The meeting starts at 6 p.m. July 26 in Crown Theatre in the Crown Complex at 1960 Coliseum Drive, Fayetteville. Registration begins at 5:30 p.m.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality representatives are expected to explain the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly released, lower health advisory for GenX impacts on private drinking water well sampling in Bladen, Cumberland, Robeson and Sampson counties.

Department of Health and Human Services officials are expected to give an overview about potential health effects and ways to reduce exposure and DEQ’s air, water and waste management divisions will provide additional updates.

In June 2017 state officials began investigating GenX in the Cape Fear River. The Chemours facility in Fayetteville was identified as the company that produces GenX for industrial processes.

GenX is the trade name for a man-made compound used in manufacturing nonstick coatings and for other purposes and is in a family of chemicals known as per- and poly- fluorinated alkyl substances, or PFAS. GenX is produced and emitted by only one company in the state, Chemours, formerly Dupont, which has been discharged into the Cape Fear River for more than 30 years. Only relatively recently have labs been able to measure the compound.

The EPA on June 15 set a final lifetime health advisory level for GenX of 10 parts per trillion (ppt), which replaced the state’s provisional drinking water health goal of 140 ppt developed by state health officials that was adopted in 2018. 

A consent order signed in February 2019 among DEQ, Cape Fear River Watch represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Chemours, requires the company to provide public water or whole-building filtration for any private drinking water well with a GenX concentration above a health advisory, which is now 10 ppt. 

DEQ directed Chemours in a June 15, 2022, letter to revise its Drinking Water Compliance Plan and Feasibility Study Report, and provide public water or whole-building filtration systems to any party with a private drinking water well contaminated by GenX chemicals in exceedance of 10 ppt as required by consent order.

Chemours must submit a plan for transitioning affected parties who have previously received reverse osmosis systems to public water or whole-building filtration systems where required by July 13.

DEQ estimates more than 1,700 additional private well users will now be eligible for whole-building filtration or connection to a public water supply.

Information for residents in Bladen, Cumberland, Robeson and Sampson counties can be found at: https://deq.nc.gov/news/key-issues/genx-investigation/genx-information-residents.

A coalition of North Carolina community and environmental justice groups are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for not requiring Chemours to fund studies examining the effects of chemical contaminants found in the Cape Fear River on human health.

The lawsuit, filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, pushes back on the EPA’s decision denying a petition that would require the company to pay for human health research on 54 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, its Fayetteville Works Facility has released into the environment for decades.

PFAS are man-made chemical compounds used in making of a host of consumer products including waterproof apparel, nonstick cookware, food containers, makeup and stain-resistant carpets.

In October 2020, the groups filed a petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, to force Chemours to fund a comprehensive research program on 54 PFAS the plant had emitted into the river, a raw drinking water source for more than 300,000 residents of the Cape Fear region, the air and soil.

The EPA last December said it was granting the petition, but “refused to require nearly all the health studies requested by the communities,” according to a news release.

“Congress granted members of the public the right to hold EPA and polluters accountable in court if the Agency wrongly refuses to require testing under TSCA,” Bob Sussman, the groups’ attorney said in a statement. “But EPA’s lawyers are trying to block us from exercising this right through the fiction that EPA granted what we asked for. If this tactic succeeds, it will set a harmful precedent that will deny other communities meaningful access to the courts.”

Health studies on what are referred to as legacy chemical compounds such as perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctyl sulfonate, or PFOS, continue to uncover the impacts of those in adults, children, and unborn babies.

But there is little to no health data on these compounds, some of which, like GenX, one of the compounds created at Chemours, are being used as a replacement for PFOA and PFOS as those have been phased out of production.

Since the public was made aware in 2017 that Chemours had been discharging PFAS into the Cape Fear River for some 30 years, North Carolina researchers have been conducting health studies. Results of those studies have so far indicated impacts to the immune system, liver and kidneys.

The EPA earlier this month set final health advisories for GenX and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS. PFBS has not, to date, been found in significant concentrations in samples taken in North Carolina, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

EPA is also updating interim health advisories for PFOA and PFOS from 70 parts per trillion, or ppt, to 0.04 ppt for PFOA and 0.02 ppt for PFOS.

“We believe EPA’s new health advisory levels for several PFAS make it clear they know these chemicals are extremely dangerous. Our highly-exposed community needs to know just how dangerous and the polluter – not taxpayers – should pay for this work,” Cape Fear River Watch’s Dana Sargent said in the release.

Cape Fear River Watch is one of six groups who filed the TSCA petition and are involved in the lawsuit. The other groups are: Center for Environmental Health, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, North Carolina Black Alliance, and Toxic Free NC.

Jovita Lee, NC Black Alliance program director, said in a statement that communities of color need to be able to fight in court to keep from continuous exposure to chemicals that have not been tested in human health exposure studies.

“Black and Brown communities are already suffering from the crushing burden of cumulative impact in their respective communities, in addition to having to bear the impact of ingesting these forever chemicals,” she said.

Sanja Whittington of Democracy Green points out that a majority of Americans have PFAS in their blood.

“The CDC has found PFAS in the blood of 97% of Americans,” she said. “We petitioned EPA under TSCA because corporate accountability is a must to provide for testing of PFAS for the benefit of those impacted and remediation of harm caused by this invasive toxic element that irresponsible corporations have carelessly unleashed on the unsuspecting citizens of North Carolina. We are dismayed that EPA is trying to deny us access to the courts.”

The North Carolina Court of Appeals has denied Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s attempt to intervene in the state’s lawsuit against Chemours.

Judge Allegra Collins ruled Tuesday that the lower court did not abuse its discretion in its judgment that the utility’s third motion to intervene was untimely. Judges Richard Dietz and John Arrowood confirmed the ruling.

CFPUA first attempted to intervene in mid-October 2017, a little more than a month after the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality launched its legal fight against Chemours after the public was made aware the company had been discharging chemical compounds from its Fayetteville Works Facility into the Cape Fear River for decades.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances from the plant have contaminated ground water and emitted into the air.

CFPUA argued in 2017 that the state was not sufficiently representing the authority’s interests.

The utility withdrew the motion to intervene about a month later after the state agreed it would notify and accept comments on any proposed settlement with the chemical manufacturer.

The state, joined by Cape Fear River Watch, filed an amended complaint in April 2018 and, the following November, published a proposed Consent Order with Chemours that CFPUA said was flawed because it did not address downstream users who were not private well owners. The utility filed a second motion to intervene that December, then removed the motion the following January.

CFPUA filed its third and final motion to intervene Sept. 8, 2020, alleging a proposed addendum to the consent order failed to equally protect groundwater and surface water users.

CFPUA Executive Director Kennth Waldroup told the Wilmington StarNews, “We filed our complaint because the Consent Order between the State and Chemours lacked remedies for surface water users, so the interests of CFPUA customers had not been addressed. Since we initially filed our motion to intervene, (DEQ) Secretary Elizabeth Biser and the Department of Environmental Quality have begun to take steps to address our concerns.”

The consent order requires Chemours to reduce the amount of PFAS the company releases into the environment.

The company in late 2019 began operating a newly installed thermal oxidizer designed to destroy 99.99% of PFAS from being emitted into the air.

The consent order also requires the company to prevent about that same percentage of PFAS from entering the Cape Fear River.

The company has also been ordered to provide whole-house filtration systems or pay to have properties with private wells contaminated by PFAS hooked to public water systems.

WILMINGTON – New and updated federal drinking water health advisories have been issued for four chemical compounds, including GenX, a contaminant that for years has been discharged into the Cape Fear River.

Shortly after the announcement was made Wednesday morning at the third National PFAS Conference, the company responsible for releasing chemical contaminants into the river for decades pushed back on the new advisory for GenX, hinting it might fight the matter in court.

Radhika Fox, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s assistant administrator for water, told the more than 100 at the conference that the agency is setting final health advisories for GenX at 10 parts per trillion, or ppt, and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS, at 2,000 ppt.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality stated in a press release Wednesday that PFBS has, to date, not been found in significant concentrations in samples taken in the state.

EPA is also issuing updated interim health advisories for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS. The 2016 federal health advisories for PFOA and PFOS were set at 70 ppts.

“The updated advisory levels are based on new science including more than 400 recent studies which indicate that negative health effects may occur at extremely low levels, much lower than previously understood for both PFOA and PFOS. Based on that peer-reviewed science we are setting interim health advisory levels for PFOA at 0.04 parts per trillion and for PFOS 0.02 parts per trillion, so near zero,” Fox said, her statement followed by applause.

These synthetic compounds are a tiny fraction of the thousands of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that exist today.

The Cape Fear region has been cast in the national spotlight since the public was first made aware that the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works Facility had been discharging PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River, the raw drinking water source for more than a quarter-million people, for decades.

PFAS are also being released into the air and groundwater around the plant some 75 miles upriver from Wilmington.

“Our new interim health advisories are important milestones to help protect the public while EPA works to finalize our drinking water standards,” Fox said. “I hope you see that these four health advisories demonstrate EPA’s commitment to following the science to protect public health.”

A short time after Fox concluded her comments at the conference, Chemours released a statement saying that it supports government regulation, “based on the best available science” and that the EPA did not use that science to establish its health advisory on GenX.

“Nationally recognized toxicologists and other leading scientific experts across a range of disciplines have evaluated the EPA’s underlying analysis and concluded that it is fundamentally flawed,” the company stated. “The agency disregarded relevant data and issued a health advisory contrary to the agency’s own standards and this administration’s commitment to scientific integrity.”

The statement goes on to explain the company GenX, or hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid, HFPO-DA, is not a commercial product and that the company uses it and its ammonium in manufacturing processes for four fluoropolymers, which are used to produce semiconductors, cellular phones, hospital ventilators and other products.

“It is not broadly used like older generations of PFAS, such as PFOA,” according to Chemours. “HFPO-DA does not break down to form PFOA or any other PFAS in the environment.”

“We are already using state-of-the-art technologies at our sites to abate emissions and remediate historical releases. We are evaluating our next steps, including potential legal action, to address the EPA’s scientifically unsound action,” the company stated.

GenX was created to replace PFOA, which was voluntarily phased out of production more than 10 years ago in the U.S.

Health studies of animals that ingested GenX show health effects in the kidneys, blood, immune system, liver and developing fetuses, according to the EPA’s toxicity assessment.

Studies on PFBS show health effects in the thyroid, reproductive organs and tissues, kidneys and developing fetuses.

“We are moving with all haste in the development of a national drinking water standard for PFOA, PFOS and I will say that we are developing the options for this rulemaking to see if we can include other PFAS, not just those two,” Fox said.

DEQ and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services “are moving quickly to evaluate the state’s drinking water supplies based on these health advisories and determine appropriate next steps to assess and reduce exposure risks,” according to the DEQ news release.

The EPA’s health advisory for GenX will replace the state’s provisional drinking water health goal of 140 ppt developed in 2018.

Under a consent order among DEQ, Cape Fear River Watch and Chemours, the company is required to provide whole house filtration for households that rely on private water wells where GenX concentrations are above the health advisory.

DEQ estimates that more than 1,700 additional private well users will be eligible for whole house filtration or connection to a public water supply based on EPA’s new health advisory.

“DEQ is directing Chemours to proceed with the implementation of the health advisory and additional information will be provided to residents about their options and next steps as soon as possible,” according to the release.

North Carolina stands to receive additional federal funding to address PFAS in the state.

Fox also announced Wednesday that $1 billion in grant funding through President Joe Biden’s $108 billion bipartisan infrastructure law will help small and disadvantaged communities to address PFAS and other emerging contaminants. The funds will be the first installment in monies dedicated to addressing PFAS.

“Because of this investment for the first time ever we have $10 billion available to support cleanup, testing, monitoring for PFAS and other emerging contaminants,” Fox said to a group of reporters following a tour of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant.

DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser said the state anticipates receiving about $28 million a year.

“This additional billion for small and disadvantaged communities will be on top of that. That is great,” she said.

The state will need to continue working with federal partners to identify additional funds for addressing PFAS-related issues.

Fox and Biser were given a tour Wednesday of the $43 million addition currently under construction at the Sweeney plant in downtown Wilmington after Fox spoke at the PFAS National Conference.

The plant is being upgraded with the addition of a granular activated carbon, or GAC, system expected to filter out on average 90% of PFAS from its raw water source, the Cape Fear River.

Following the tour, Brunswick County Public Utilities Director John Nichols made a presentation to Fox and Biser about what that utility’s multi-million-dollar upgrade to a low-pressure reverse-osmosis system to remove PFAS.

Both utilities have had to pass down the costs of removing PFAS from drinking water to their water customers.

Proposed legislation would require companies responsible for releasing PFAS above health thresholds to pay costs public utilities incur to remove chemicals from their raw drinking water sources.

House Bill 1095 would authorize the Environmental Management Commission to adopt maximum contaminant levels for chemical compounds.

DEQ is in the process of establishing maximum contaminant levels for 10 to 15 compounds specific to North Carolina. The department will implement drinking water standards through its permitting program.

Fourth in a series.

WILMINGTON – When construction wraps at Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant this summer, almost 3 million pounds of carbon will be in place to remove chemical compounds contaminating water pumped from the Cape Fear River and to the homes of tens of thousands of the utility’s customers.

The addition of the granular activated carbon, or GAC, system is expected to filter out on average 90% of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from water sucked out of the river about 24 miles upstream from the plant at the Kings Bluff Raw Water Pump Station in Bladen County.

Sweeney’s existing filtration system, which includes 14 biological filters that contain GAC, removes about 35% of PFAS from raw, untreated Cape Fear River water, according to Carel Vandermeyden, the utility’s deputy executive director for treatment and engineering.

During a tour of the $43 million plant addition last month, Vandermeyden talked about the challenges the utility has faced since learning the water it’s been supplying to customers since it began operations in 2008 has been contaminated by chemical compounds discharged for decades from a manufacturing company upstream.

“We had already invested in our plant in the past. We already had the best technology here. We just didn’t have the PFAS removal.”

The Sweeney plant sits just off the river banks in downtown Wilmington on a sprawling piece of land dotted by an office building, parking lot, tanks that handle residuals left from the treatment process, and buildings that hold the plant operating room and existing filtration system.

A square-shaped grassy lot along the backside of a building where a series of large, color-coded pipes move water through the treatment process was practically the only space available for the brick and mortar expansion.

On a cool, mid-May day, construction workers bustled inside the space of concrete and pipe where the eight GAC filters are being installed.

Gravel from wheelbarrows was fed down a pipe running down a wall of one of eight large, square cement compartments. Hard-hat-clad workers in the bottom of the compartment evenly raked the gravel along a floor that consists of a perforated plastic underdrain system that collects the filtered water.

Water pumped into the GAC filters will enter at the top, then flow through 12.5 feet of carbon atop 14 inches of gravel. The filtered water will then be collected on the bottom in the underdrain system.

Each filter compartment will contain nearly 370,000 pounds of GAC capable of treating about 5.5 million gallons of water per day.

Vandermeyden said the plant will likely operate five or six GAC filters at a time. One will remain on standby and one will be the spare, used when carbon needs to be replaced in another filter.

“That’s going to be one of the more expensive and maintenance-intense aspects,” he said.

Each filter is expected to run between 250 to 300 days before the carbon in them needs to be replaced, a process that requires the old carbon be vacuumed out before a fresh batch is trucked in.

CFPUA has budgeted $3.7 million this coming fiscal year, which starts July 1, for carbon replacement. The process is expected to cost about $5 million a year in subsequent years.

GAC has been around since the early 1990s, a proven technology that’s been well researched, Vandermeyden said. 

CFPUA officials determined this filtration system was the better fit for the utility over reverse osmosis, or RO, a system the public utility in neighboring Brunswick County opted for to remove PFAS.

Brunswick County was in the midst of a multi-year, three-phase expansion of its Northwest Water Treatment Plant in response to growing demand and the population boom there when news first broke about PFAS contamination in the river.

In early 2018, the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners voted to install an advanced low-pressure reverse osmosis system in the last phase of the plant expansion project.

The county hired an engineering and consulting firm to conduct a pilot low-pressure RO testing program at the Northwest plant. Test results showed the system “reduced most PFAS to undetectable levels,” according to information on the county’s website.

Commissioners in May approved a more than $122 million contract for the construction of the plant expansion and RO upgrades.

Maysville, a small town about 70 miles north of Wilmington, received in late 2020 a little more than $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to install a new filtration system in the town’s well.

After state-conducted tests revealed PFAS from firefighting foam contaminated the well water, the town switched to Jones County for its drinking water.

Cutting it off at the source

Chemours is facing several lawsuits brought on by environmental groups, utilities, including CFPUA, and local governments in North Carolina.

Cumberland County became the latest to file suit in March, alleging Chemours and DuPont, which operated the Fayetteville plant between the 1970s and 2015, has been polluting the air, groundwater and surface water with “blatant disregard.”

As part of the 2019 Consent Order between the company, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours has to remove more than 99% of PFAS being released into the environment.

Chemours began operating in December 2019 a thermal oxidizer, which proved an average efficiency exceeding 99.999% in removing PFAS during a three-month testing period in early 2020.

But weekly samples CFPUA collects from the river still have Chemours-specific PFAS, Vandermeyden said.

The presence of GenX has greatly declined, but some compounds, specifically PFMOAA, one of the shortest short-chain PFAS, has increased, he said.

PFMOAA (perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid) is one of the most difficult to treat because it “doesn’t want to stick to anything,” Vandermeyden said.

“It is going to drive our costs. If there’s less PFAS in the river, which we’re hoping for, the lower our operating costs will be.”

Chemours regional communications lead Lisa Randall said in an email response that the company had since March 2020 been sampling the river twice a week downstream from the Fayetteville facility at Tar Heel Ferry Road bridge. The bridge spans the Cape Fear River in Bladen County.

“The data (Appendix B of the Cape Fear River PFAS Mass Loading Assessment – Fourth Quarter 2021 Report (Geosyntec, 2022)) shows the concentrations of PFMOAA downstream in the river have an overall decreasing trend since April 2021 and have shown a consistent decrease since October 2021,” Randall said.

Chemours is in the early stages of an onsite project designed to stop contaminated groundwater from flowing into the river.

The wall will span 70 feet deep and stretch more than a mile long along the Fayetteville Works Facility’s entire river shoreline.

“The remedy will intercept groundwater presently heading to the Cape Fear River using groundwater extraction wells,” Randall said in the email. “The extracted groundwater will be treated using ultrafiltration pre-treatment followed by PFAS removal by granular activated carbon (GAC). This is the same system design that is currently successfully removing PFAS at Chemours’ Outfall 003 treat system.”

It is expected to be complete in the first quarter of 2023 “pending receipt of approvals and permits from NCDEQ and other government agencies.”

Last month, Chemours began mailing letters to properties with private wells in New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Columbus counties in a process to determine which wells qualify for sampling under criteria laid out in the Interim Drinking Water Plan.

The company had planned to mail out about 60,000 letters by the end of May.

During her update to the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission last month, Sushma Masemore, DEQ assistant secretary for environment, explained that private wells with water exceeding 140 parts per trillion, the current state health goal, will be provided alternative drinking water options on Chemours’ dime.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected in the coming weeks to release a health advisory level for GenX.

“We’re expecting that level to be much lower than 140 based on the reference dose that they had released in the fall of last year,” Masemore told the commission, adding that state officials expect more private well owners to be brought into the Interim Drinking Water Plan if the threshold is lowered.

PFAS are largely unregulated and therefore do not have a minimum reference dose, or a determination of at what level the health effect is so negative consumption should be reduced, to establish a drinking water standard, a surface water standard or advisory level.

Last October, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, former NCDEQ secretary, released the PFAS Strategic Roadmap, an agency-wide approach designed to increase investments in research, leverage authorities to restrict the release of PFAS into the environment, and accelerate cleanup of PFAS contamination.

“Most recently the road map did announce enforceable drinking water limits for PFOA and PFAS,” Masemore said. “EPA plans to propose that in the fall of this year and finalize next year. We want to focus on PFAS that are found in North Carolina. EPA strategy is broad and large and they’re looking at a national approach. We in North Carolina will need to examine what is prevalent and what is of most importance in our state.”

Such a move could be valuable in a state whose population depends on surface water as its drinking water source.

“North Carolina has its fair share of problems when it comes to PFAS,” said Heather Stapleton, a Duke University environmental science professor and environmental chemist who studies peoples’ exposure to chemicals. 

Stapleton is part of a collaboratory of North Carolina-based university researchers formed in 2018 to study PFAS.

Based on the data they’ve gathered these past few years, researchers estimated that at least 10% of North Carolina’s population, about 1 million people, has elevated exposure to PFAS, she said.

“I think we’re very vulnerable in this state for this type of contamination largely because we have a heavy reliance on surface water as a drinking water source in North Carolina and we have a lot of manufacturing,” Stapleton said. “While it’s not clear what the exact source of PFAS are north of the Haw River, I know there are a lot of textile manufacturing facilities up in that area. I think we need to do what we can to really understand the source of these problems, the source of the PFAS contamination, to help inform other areas and other states that might also be vulnerable, but to prevent things like this from happening again in the future.”

Setting standards

At the end of her presentation to the commission, Masemore broached the possibility of the state establishing its own maximum contaminant level, or MCL, for chemical compounds.

“We have rarely established our own MCLs at a state level,” she said. “If we wait for EPA, the earliest MCL we will have is for PFA and PFAS, that’s spring or fall next year. So, there’s an opportunity for us as North Carolinians to decide, how much of this do we take on ourselves to be proactive?”

She said a handful of other states have set their own MCLs and therefore could serve as models for how North Carolina might go about doing the same.

A little more than three weeks after Masemore spoke to the commission, DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser announced the department’s plans to propose MCLs for PFAS specific to North Carolina.

“DEQ is committing to proposing standards for groundwater, surface water and drinking water for North Carolina’s priority PFAS compounds,” she said. “Science-based, enforceable standards are critically needed to reduce the PFAS pollution affecting North Carolinians around our state. Drinking water standards also create regulatory certainty for industry and public water systems, allowing them to design treatment methods that are protective of human health.”

The department will implement drinking water standards through its permitting program.

Biser said the department is moving forward expeditiously with establishing MCLs for compounds “we already have data for and we’re also working with our academic partners to identify the needs for toxicity assessments and reference doses for the other compounds that we don’t quite have yet,.”

DEQ is looking to initially prioritize 10 to 15 compounds specific to North Carolina, she said.

Gov. Roy Cooper and Biser set forth the DEQ Action Strategy for PFAS  at a press conference Tuesday on the riverfront in downtown Wilmington.

The strategy details steps the state will take to protect communities, protect drinking water and continue focusing on cleanup and remediation of PFAS contaminated ground, surface and drinking waters.

“We will continue to prioritize and address highest exposure risks, especially for our vulnerable and disadvantaged communities,” Biser said. “We will continue to update and evolve this strategy as we move forward and I expect all of you to hold us accountable as we do that. We want to ensure that in the future no community experiences what you have already been through.”

Cooper noted during Tuesday’s press conference that his budget proposal includes funding for DEQ to have an established team to analyze emerging science and provide technical assistance to aid in protecting drinking water sources.

He also touched on House Bill 1095, proposed legislation that would authorize the Environmental Management Commission to adopt MCLs. The bill also would require any company that releases PFAS above health thresholds to pay costs public utilities incur to remove chemicals from their raw drinking water sources.

“Those who made money off of polluting the water should be the ones to pay to clean it up,” Cooper said, his remark followed by applause.

“We’ve come a long way in the last few years in identifying these chemicals, stopping the polluters and charting a path forward, but there is still much work to do. The challenge for us is bigger than any one company or any one chemical. This is a state-wide and a national issue that demands our attention and our action.”

Third in a series.

Official efforts to communicate the health risks of certain man-made compounds in heavily contaminated communities are falling short, according to a recent analysis.

PFAS is a class of thousands of synthetic chemicals found practically everywhere, such as in firefighting foams, stain-resistant carpets and furniture, nonstick cookware, takeout containers and microwave popcorn bags.

While most humans have a detectable amount of PFAS in their bodies from multiple sources including food, food contact materials and indoor products, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are millions in the United States that have been subject to significant contamination, either through work exposure or drinking water.

For the report, “Official health communications are failing PFAS-contaminated communities,” published May 10 in Environmental Health, researchers reviewed information produced by local, state and national agencies, professional societies and nongovernmental organizations geared toward the public and healthcare providers on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

The analysis found that most official information does not evaluate the risks highly exposed communities face compared to the general population. Researchers also found that the official information doesn’t fully explain how strong scientific evidence is for certain health outcomes, though most or nearly all studies have found harm from PFAS exposure for immune, liver, reproductive, and cancer, such as kidney or testicular cancer, according to researchers. Researchers also found that the language used is often unqualified, misleading or unclear. Finally, there is a lack of material on how to reduce exposure and risk of harm.

The study concludes that immediate action needs to be taken to review and improve this messaging “intended to inform the public and health providers about the risks of PFAS exposure and guide community and medical decisions.”

Motivation for the study

Lead author Alan Ducatman, a physician and professor emeritus at West Virginia University, responded to Coastal Review by email, saying that during the first Northeastern University PFAS conference in Boston in 2018 is when he first heard a community leader express concern about how “public PFAS communications intended for clinicians or for the public were doing (unintended) harm.”

Once the concern was pointed out to him, he said it came from more directions. “It could be heard in lots of places, from different kinds of people.”

About three years ago, Ducatman said he began thinking about whether there was a useful way to consider the topic. “My first questions were what is in those public facing health communications? What message is said to clinicians specifically? How well do the communications align with the current scientific knowledge?”

The initial goal was to assess whether there was a problem, and if so, how to shed light on it, he continued. “Progress was slow at first. Clinician training is wonderful, but no one of us is as smart as all of us.”

He said that once he was joined by coauthors for the study, the pace of progress increased and led to the creation of the freely accessible online paper. Coauthors who joined him were Dr. Jamie DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University, health communicator Rebecca Fuoco and Jonas LaPier, who focused on research and data.

Fuoco, science communications officer at the Green Science Policy Institute, added that last year the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a series of online town hall meetings to discuss clinical guidance for PFAS exposure.

“Members of PFAS-contaminated communities voiced concerns that current government fact sheets and webpages unreasonably minimize PFAS health risks. Dismissive language in these materials can influence the attitudes of healthcare providers and policymakers and create more hurdles for affected communities to get the help they deserve,” Fuoco said.

DeWitt told Coastal Review that she became involved in the study because she had known Ducatman for some time and they serve as liaisons to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, PFAS clinical guidance committee.

“We also both interact with community members who express their frustration to us about health guidance,” she said, adding she also teaches medical students and know that they receive very little toxicological education.

Researchers on the results

Ducatman said that at first, he was disappointed with the results of the study.

“Surprise was a part of it, as the extent of the problem in public-facing communications was at least as great and maybe more than I had been led to expect from the expressed concern,” he said.

“Gradually, a few better health communications also became available. Those we found helpful during our review are prominently mentioned in the article,” Ducatman continued, suggesting these more useful documents be used as templates.

“They are the most important part of the article because It is much more useful to emphasize what is helpful. What remains a little surprising is that the vast majority have not yet improved that much, despite the gradual appearance of better examples to emulate,” Ducatman said.

One residual surprise, Ducatman added, is that the pace of improvement in state and federal public-facing documents remains slow, and the expressed science in so many documents greatly trails the advances in what we know about PFAS. “We naturally wonder how the most prominent problematic communications got to be the way they are. We may never know how they got that way. The key goal is to improve them.”

What stuck out most to DeWitt from the results has been emphasized in the commentary. “Uncertainty about risks tends toward language that minimizes risks. I think in other situations uncertainty leads to greater appreciation of risks.”

In North Carolina

The state has been investigating PFAS in the Cape Fear River since June 2017 and identified Chemours in Fayetteville as the company that produces the compound.

In the five years since the public got word of contaminants in the region’s drinking water, advocacy groups and state officials have responded in various ways. There have been missteps along the way.

DeWitt said North Carolina is like other states, “where I think officials try to balance fear of the risks of PFAS exposure on health with uncertainties. It’s a challenge to develop thoughtful messaging, and I think our officials did what they could given that they needed to get information out quickly after PFAS contamination became well known to the public.”

Fuoco noted that the state Department of Health and Human Services issued a letter to doctors in 2018 that discouraged blood testing for PFAS, even though the state had a wide region affected by drinking water contamination.

“Fortunately, this letter was taken offline in 2020 and replaced with an updated letter. The new letter has better messaging about blood testing, but still frames its discussion of health outcomes with language suggesting the science is preliminary or inconsistent across the board: ‘The potential for health effects from PFAS in humans is still being studied. Researchers are working to better understand how exposure to PFAS might affect people’s health. Although more research is needed, some studies of people have shown that certain PFAS may…,’” she said.

But how would busy clinicians come to know the “some studies” statement would actually be “most” or “nearly all” studies for outcomes like liver damage and reduced childhood vaccine response? Fuoco said that North Carolina residents in areas with high levels of contamination should feel empowered to advocate for themselves and their communities.

For example, they can share the accurate and helpful materials identified in the paper, such as from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Clinician FAQ and the clinician guidance on Silent Spring Institute’s PFAS-REACH Exchange website, with their doctors to make sure their concerns aren’t dismissed.

Benefits of the paper

For patients in high-exposure communities and the clinicians who serve them, Ducatman said he hopes the paper will empower them to do two things: “Avoid or at least recognize the worst problems in current agency documents, and, more importantly, identify useful sources they can access right now. We do provide a list. For health communicators, I hope the paper triggers reflection and honest conversations with agency leaders, leading to better official documents.”

He added its encouraging that federal agencies have asked the National Academies to convene a committee that will examine current guidance and make recommendations.

“An implication of the request is that there must be internal agency recognition that the usefulness of current communications is being questioned,” Ducatman said. “However, problems are also sufficiently evident that one wonders why obvious problematic parts are not already being removed.”

DeWitt said her hope is that the commentary will lead to better guidance for people who are worried about their health.

“I hope such guidance includes messages about what sorts of questions people could ask their physicians as well as questions that physicians could ask patients who live in PFAS-contaminated communities,” she said. “I also I hope that it leads to physicians talking more with one another to potentially discover additional associated health risks.”

Fuoco added that she hoped the study moves state and federal health officials to improve their public communications on PFAS.

“Our paper provides examples from some state agencies and nonprofit groups that are great models, so this shouldn’t be a huge undertaking,” Fuoco said. “Health communication is hard. Agencies need to walk a tightrope to convey accurate and actionable information without engendering undue fear. Often, they overcorrect and tip the balance toward understating the risks.”

Ducatman noted that the paper acknowledges that health communications are truly difficult.

“Public health agencies have ever-expanding jobs, multiple demands on resources and priorities, and shrinking funds in terms of constant dollars for most missions. The authors understand that. There is no goal to increase agency burdens at a time of too much mission and too little support,” he said. “The agencies should know that they have potential partners to help out. That is to say, it is an important problem, and public health agencies are generally good at finding allies who can help with important problems.”

He added that the quotations from different agency materials become criticisms only because they speak for themselves in ways that are problematic and have not helped affected communities, including exposed workers, whose needs are often ignored. The opportunity of recognizing the problems is that improvements are achievable, that there are good templates already available, and that both stakeholders and scientists can be engaged for support.

After the National Academies’ guidance on current federal communications comes out, “it is likely to be analytic and useful, but it is less likely to tell agencies exactly what to do. I hope agency leaders will look for ways to improve now,” he said. “A strong consideration is partnership with community leaders and scientists who can help.”

State, federal reactions

Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Press Secretary Tim Carroll told Coastal Review that the agency understands that for far too long, communities across the United States had suffered from exposure to PFAS pollution.

“That’s why EPA is taking action through our PFAS Strategic Roadmap – EPA’s bold, strategic, and whole-of-Agency approach to protect public health and the environment from the impact of these chemicals. The Roadmap sets timelines by which EPA plans to take specific actions and commits to bolder new policies to safeguard public health, protect the environment, and hold polluters accountable,” Carroll said in an email response.

“Addressing PFAS contamination is a critical part of EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. This important mission cannot be achieved without effectively communicating with communities, individuals, businesses, the media, and Tribal, state, and local partners about the known and potential health risks associated with these chemicals. When EPA communicates risk, it is the Agency’s goal to provide meaningful, understandable, and actionable information to many audiences. EPA looks forward to reviewing this new study to ensure the Agency continues to meet this goal,” Carroll continued.

“New scientific information increasingly highlights that negative health effects may occur at much lower levels of exposure to the PFAS chemicals PFOA and PFOS than previously understood. EPA is committed to science-based approaches to protect public health from exposure to these chemicals, including by quickly updating drinking water health advisories with new peer-reviewed approaches and expeditiously developing National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for these contaminants,” he said.

Bailey Pennington, a spokesperson with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, told Coastal Review that DeWitt and her colleagues’ paper included important points.

“Communicating about health effects of PFAS exposure is challenging, but it is important to clearly state that there is a substantial and growing body of research indicating that PFAS are harmful to human health. This includes the list of studies provided on our PFAS webpage,” Pennington said. “We also appreciate the need to have different communications for the general public versus more highly exposed communities, such as those near the Chemours plant and downstream of the plant in the lower Cape Fear Region.”

She added that the department would continue reviewing and updating its communications “as we learn more and will consider the recommendations in this article as we do so.”

Although more research is needed, some human health studies have shown that certain PFAS may affect growth, learning, and behavior of infants and older children, lower a woman’s chance of getting pregnant, interfere with the body’s natural hormones, increase cholesterol levels, affect the immune system and increase the risk of certain types of cancer.

“Whether or not you develop health problems after being exposed to PFAS depends on how much, how often, and for how long you are exposed, as well as which PFAS you are exposed to. Personal factors including age, lifestyle, and overall health can impact your body’s ability to respond to chemical exposures,” she said. “Scientists are actively studying the health effects of PFAS to learn more.”

The department continues to work with various federal and state partners to review all new health and toxicity information about these compounds and shares new information with communities as it becomes available, Pennington added. The work includes the ongoing Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) Exposure Assessments and Multi-Site Health Studies and North Carolina State University’s GenX Exposure Study.

Laura Leonard, public information officer for the state Department of Environmental Quality, told Coastal Review that the department worked closely with the Department of Health and Human Services to provide PFAS information to the public. “We are continuously working to provide the most relevant, accessible information to help impacted communities understand their options and make decisions.”

Second in a series.

Vaughn Hagerty was Trista Talton’s editor during her last year and a half as a reporter at the Wilmington StarNews.

This report was updated to clarify Hagerty’s career history.

You have to wonder how much longer Chemours would have gotten away with discharging unregulated contaminants into the Cape Fear River if he did not break the story.

What if Vaughn Hagerty hadn’t had the luxury of time usually lacking in bare-bones-staffed newsrooms fighting for survival in this age of social media and the 24-hour television news cycle?

What if he had missed the story by one fewer clicks of the mouse?

Would we have yet heard the now all-too-familiar term GenX?

Would tens of thousands of residents of the Cape Fear region be made aware that Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant had for decades been releasing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into their drinking water source, the air, and ground?

The story behind the story that ran five years ago Tuesday and ripped back the curtain on synthetic chemical waste being released into the Cape Fear River is about one man’s career that, like the river itself, features a series of twists and turns guiding the water to its destination.

A little too corny? Hey, Hagerty himself recently told Coastal Review that he was living a “charmed life.”

Just another web developer ‘Googling around’

The news editor turned media web developer turned editor again turned back again to web developer had been dabbling as a freelance journalist a few months when, browsing websites in the spring of 2017, he came across something called the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule.

“It was entirely by chance,” said Hagerty.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, implements the rule every five years to gather data on unregulated contaminants by sampling water utilities throughout the country.

One particular set of data that focused on legacy PFAS caught Hagerty’s attention.

Armed with his curious-by-nature journalistic instinct and background as a web developer, he loaded the data to see what would pop up for the Wilmington area. There were some local hits, enough that might make for interesting story, he thought.

He continued to “Google around,” eventually coming across a paper written by North Carolina university-based professors about legacy and emerging perfluoroalkyl substances, including one called GenX, contaminating drinking water in the Cape Fear River watershed

“At that point I knew I had probably a much better story than just this story that, ‘Hey, there’s a little bit of PFOA and PFAS in the water,’ and that’s when I started focusing on the story,” Hagerty said.

He knew nothing about the complexities of which he was to write. If memory serves, he earned a C in college chemistry.

Like any true-grit journalist, Hagerty used what he could to his advantage – people in the know and time.

“I’m definitely pretty persistent and some people might say a little obsessive,” he said. “But, also I was fortunate during this time to have access to a number of very smart and knowledgeable people who were very generous with their time and patient with my complete ignorance of this incredibly complicated topic. I think that what I had that very few other journalists had — or even have — is I could spend as much time as I needed really diving into the story without having to worry about things like covering the school board or meeting my tweet quota.”

He pitched the story early on to the Wilmington StarNews, the daily newspaper for which he’d freelanced some stories in early 2017. It’s also the paper Hagerty, as metro editor, managed the newsroom’s day-to-day operations – assigning reporters stories, editing stories and deciding what stories went where – for three years starting back in 2005.

The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, in Wilmington and other utilities that supply drinking water to residents in New Hanover, Pender, Brunswick and Columbus counties were, in particular, affected by the story about a company discharging toxins into the river.

“It really seemed like the StarNews was going to be the best place for me to do the first story,” Hagerty said.

A chance conversation in a gym

“Toxin taints CFPUA drinking water” ran front page Wednesday, June 7, 2017.

Five years before, Hagerty was working in web development for the paper when he was laid off.

He did pretty well as a freelance web developer after that, but he missed journalism.

Hagerty had continued reporting on PFAS, GenX and Chemours through 2018, including for Coastal Review.

“But, the thing is, it’s very difficult to make a decent living as a freelance journalist or a journalist in general sometimes,” he said. “So, as a result, I’d eaten into a lot of savings. A whole lot. I’d already started thinking that I was probably going to need to get a full-time job.”

Where, he did not know.

Then, call it happenstance, maybe fate, a health-conscious Hagerty was working out at a local gym when fellow gym member and CFPUA’s then-executive director Jim Flechtner offhandedly asked Hagerty if he knew anyone who might be interested in applying for the job of public information officer for the authority.

“The more I thought about it, it just seemed like the perfect transition for me that would not only allow me to get a full-time job, but also to continue really being pretty engaged in the story going forward,” Hagerty said.

He got the job, a move that made local news and spurred some negative reaction on social media. The latter frustrated him.

People who didn’t know him were calling his integrity into question, insinuating bribery landed him the job he started in January 2019.

“If you go back and look at the stories I wrote, I think you’ll see that I wasn’t ever critical of CFPUA,” he said. “What did CFPUA know at the time about this stuff at which pretty much nobody knows anything is in the water? I came to CFPUA knowing full well what this organization is and who the staff are and I know that they are focused really, truly on doing what’s best for this community, and that was important to me.”

Hagerty is now the authority’s director of communications.

The journalist and the web developer

Hagerty’s reaction when he first learned contaminants were being discharged into the Cape Fear River was likely similar to that of those who read that first story about what was in their drinking water source.

“Shock, exasperation, frustration. I think the thing for many people that continues to be so frustrating is the lack of information about the health risks for all but really a tiny fraction of the thousands of PFAS compounds, particularly when what’s known about those few is generally sort of troubling. Researchers are beginning to add to that knowledge, but I think it’s still a pretty steep climb. I’m pretty sure I have some level of PFAS in my body like about 98% of the world. I assume that that’s a fact.”

Hagerty continues to comb through the latest documents, discussing their content with coworkers in a place that 10 years earlier when he was metro editor at the StarNews, he would never have guessed he’d be working.

He’s called Wilmington home since taking that position in May 2005, leaving the West Coast where he worked as managing editor and later division director at a magazine in Santa Barbara, California.

By then he’d gone from editor early in his career, which began at a little weekly in San Antonio, Texas, to his first “real” job in journalism as an editorial assistant at the San Antonio Light, to assistant city editor, then city editor at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

A one-line email from his executive editor at the Caller-Times shifted slightly his career path.

“All it said was, ‘What’s the delay in getting us on the Internet?’ I remember that word for word,” Hagerty said.

That question spurred him to learn web design and a number of programming languages. He eventually became a web developer, mainly for media companies, including the Miami Herald.

“I would say that I have lived, in general, what some people might call a charmed life, but some of that, I think, is being presented opportunities and then recognizing those opportunities and then acting on them,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate in my life that that has happened enough times, whether it’s an editor saying what’s the delay in getting us on the internet and just happen to meet some guy at the local university to help me learn programming languages and then ending up at the Miami Herald. That’s sort of charmed, right?”

Later in the series: What is being done?

First in a series

WILMINGTON – Raise your hand if you had heard about GenX before the summer of 2017.

Five years have passed since we first learned that the lower Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for more than 300,000 people, was being contaminated by GenX and a host of other man-made chemical compounds called PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

The news sent residents of communities in and around this area reeling. They had questions for which there were few to no answers, particularly when it came to how they could protect themselves against something they could not see, taste or smell in their water.

Perhaps even more frustrating, no one — not the government, not scientists — could tell them whether or how GenX and other PFAS discharging from a chemical manufacturing company some 80 miles upstream might affect their health.

North Carolina-based researchers have worked diligently to find some answers to these questions these past five years.

There have been tests to determine the most effective PFAS-removing water filtration systems. Blood samples collected from more than 300 willing participants in New Hanover County have been examined for the presence of GenX and other PFAS.

Studies exploring the potential health effects in living organisms dosed with some of the PFAS flowing into Cape Fear River have taken place in university laboratories from Greenville to Wilmington to the Triangle to Charlotte.

Meanwhile, public utilities in New Hanover and Brunswick counties are investing millions in upgrades, the costs of which have inevitably trickled down to their customers through nominal fee increases that, during a time when inflation is at a 40-year high, makes it no less painful on the purse.

Related: Measure would hold Chemours liable for contamination

Under a 2019 consent order between the state and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours Co. must reduce at least 99% of PFAS it releases into the river, ground and air from its Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.

DuPont started using PFOA to make Teflon in the early 1950s. In 1980, the company began making vinyl ethers at its Fayetteville Works facility, emitting PFAS into the river, air and ground. Chemours Co. was founded in 2015 as a spinoff from DuPont.

The company has been mailing thousands of letters to addresses of private drinking water well owners in New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Columbus counties. The letters are kicking off a process, also required by the consent order, to identify which wells are eligible to be sampled.

There’s more to be done.

Emerging answers about emerging compounds

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency keeps track of the number of individual PFAS.

At last count, that number was around the order of 10,000.

“We’ve studied a fraction,” said Jamie DeWitt, a professor in East Carolina University’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. “That’s why I’ve been part of a group of scientists who have been calling for regulating PFAS as a class because there’s just so many different PFAS out there that we can’t possibly study them all in order to create regulation.”

Her research of PFAS stretches back to 2005 when she began looking into the health effects of legacy PFAS, chemical compounds that have been around the longest and largely phased out in developed countries. These include perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS, which was used to make things like stain-resistant fabrics, fire-fighting foams and food packaging.

It wasn’t until 2014 she learned about GenX. Back then it was called something else.

“I didn’t know about all of the other compounds. I didn’t realize that there were thousands of individual PFAS until I worked on with some folks a paper in 2017. I didn’t realize that there were so many different subgroups of PFAS and that this class of chemicals was so huge. It’s overwhelming.”

DeWitt is among a group 20 researchers from universities across the state who received funding from the North Carolina General Assembly in 2018 to study PFAS found in the Cape Fear.

The collaboration of researchers, known as the North Carolina PFAS Testing Network, or PFAST, launched studies examining water filtration systems effective in removing PFAS, analyzing water samples from drinking water sources across the state, determining the risks of PFAS to private water wells, how PFAS travels through air emissions and gaining an understanding of how PFAS impact human health and the environment.

In one study, North Carolina State University researchers collected blood samples from more than 300 New Hanover County residents in November 2017.

GenX was not detected in those samples, but 99% contained Nafion byproduct 2, 98% showed PFO4DA, 87% had PFDoDA, and 76% contained hydro-eve, all of which were discharged at the Chemours plant.

DeWitt’s lab has been researching how understudied PFAS like Nafion by-product 2 and perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid, or PMOAA, affect basic responses of the immune system.

Researchers administered doses of such short-chain PFAS to experimental models — mice.

“When we see changes in this response in our model, that makes us very concerned that we may also see changes in that response to people,” DeWitt said. “What we do know is that the PFAS that we’ve studied are persistent and or mobile and or bioaccumulative and or toxic, so PFAS have these characteristics of concern in common.”

Heather Stapleton, a Duke University environmental science professor, is part of a team working with Pittsboro, a town about 17 miles southwest of Chapel Hill, since discovering a couple of years ago that concentrations of PFAS were two to four times higher in the blood of that town’s residents than the U.S. population.

“Basically, we detected them in everyone’s blood sample and they were higher than what we see in the general population and actually were pretty similar to what has been observed in the population in Wilmington,” she said.

Legacy PFAS, including PFOA and PFOS and at least one newer chemical compound, have been found in the Haw River, Pittsboro’s drinking water source.

Researchers are looking into the potential health effects of the chemicals found in the Haw River, which flows southeast where it empties into Jordan Lake, which empties into the Cape Fear River.

Working to uncovering the effects of emerging environmental contaminants to humans and animals faces a unique set of challenges.

That’s because, in many cases, researchers start out with “absolutely no information about what the chemical might do to living organisms,” DeWitt said.

“For example, when we first started asking questions about PFMOAA, one of the compounds found in the Cape Fear River, we had no idea what it might do to living organisms and so where do you start? What questions do you ask? How do you start to figure out what these compounds do?”

A way to get at those initial questions is by gaining access to toxicological data gathered by the companies that make these compounds.

One of DeWitt’s students was able to do just that after finding a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit application DuPont filed in West Virginia to discharge GenX into one of that state’s rivers.

Through public records, researchers were able to get toxicological data from that permit application, which included some of the doses the company had administered to experimental models.

“That allowed us to guide our study and say, ‘OK, if this dose does this in this organism then we’re going to give this dose in this organism.’ Those toxicological databases are really important in helping to guide future studies and helping to really cement understanding about what chemicals do.”

For her, the past five years have been peppered with opportunities she did not have before: access to compounds to dose experimental models, access to resources and instrumentation, and working closely with colleagues she might not have had the opportunity to work with prior to 2017.

That kind of access to those resources has equated to some pretty big strides for researchers of PFAS in North Carolina.

“I know that individuals, especially those who live in the Wilmington area, are frustrated with what seems to be the slow pace of scientific research, but I think we here in the state of North Carolina have really moved forward in a very rapid pace,” DeWitt said. “For some researchers, this could be a lifetime endeavor, but we’ve accomplished it in five years. Although it may appear to be slow, on a scientific timescale, we’ve moved really, really quickly.”

Home sweet home filtration

By early 2020, researchers within the PFAST Network released the results of a study examining which home filtration systems are most effective in removing PFAS from drinking water.

Stapleton was part of the research team that discovered the most effective systems in removing 13 different PFAS molecules found in the Cape Fear River to be reverse osmosis (RO) and dual-stage filters, which typically include one carbon and one sediment filter.

“The (reverse osmosis) and the dual stage did work well for all the different PFAS that we tested, which included short-chain and long-chain PFAS and some of the novel ether-based compounds as well,” Stapleton said.

Until that study was completed, most of the literature and information on the effectiveness of various filtration systems were either from the manufacturers of those systems or from experiments conducted in labs, Stapleton said.

“In reality, how we use some of these filters in our homes can be very different.”

For example, not everyone remembers to change the cartridge in their filter on a regular basis.

“The type of water can make a difference because water here in North Carolina often comes from surface waters, but there’s some places it comes from groundwater and water from different areas will have different types and levels of organic carbon and other molecules so the filtration can be different in different areas,” Stapleton said. “If you look at the upper Cape Fear along the Haw River, it’s really dominated by some of the short-chain PFAS molecules and there has not been a lot of research on how well those have been removed by certain water filters. And then you get down to the lower Cape Fear near the Chemours facility and it’s dominated by the ether compounds like GenX, so there’s a number of reasons we wanted to do this study.”

The filtration systems found to work best removed more than 95% of PFAS. Those systems, however, are the most expensive, running anywhere from more than $100 to well over $300.

But some filtration, Stapleton said, is better than none.

She thinks about worried residents in Pittsboro paying for expensive filtration systems to reduce their exposure to the man-made chemicals being released into their drinking water source.

“They’re bearing the burden of exposure and the costs of these water filters when it’s likely from some manufacturer or industry upstream that may or may not even know they’re contaminating the water all because our system is so lax.”

Detlef Knappe, a professor at North Carolina State University and one of the researchers who discovered GenX in the Cape Fear River, was a panelist at Cape Fear River Watch’s State of the River forum last week in downtown Wilmington.

He said that, while PFAS levels in the river have “dramatically decreased” compared to five years ago, the chemicals will probably be in the river for decades.

In his remarks during the forum, Knappe joined a chorus of researchers calling for government regulation of PFAS as a class of chemicals rather than one chemical at a time.

Managing PFAS at the source is important to breaking the cycle, he said.

“In my opinion that’s an important aspect that really needs to be part of regulations and legislation. While there’s been improvement in water quality, there’s still a lot that needs to be done.”

Later in the series: What is being done?

A bill in the North Carolina General Assembly would hold Chemours Co. financially liable for contaminating drinking water supplies in the Cape Fear region.

Rep. Ted Davis Jr., R-New Hanover, recently introduced House Bill 1095, which would authorize the Environmental Management Commission to adopt maximum levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, safe for human consumption. It would then give the state environmental secretary power to order the responsible party to pay a public water system for any unnecessary costs to remove, correct or evade any adverse effects on the water supply from PFAS contamination.

Rep. Frank Iler, R-Brunswick; Rep. Charles Miller, R-Brunswick-New Hanover; and Minority Democratic House Leader, Rep. Robert Reives II, D-Durham, are cosponsors.

Davis, speaking during a press conference Thursday, said that in North Carolina, everyone should have access to clean drinking water.

“For too long residents in my legislative district in New Hanover County have dealt with contamination from a known polluter,” he said, adding that residents in other nearby counties had the same concerns.

Residents shouldn’t have to pay for safe water when there is a known responsible party for contamination, Davis said, referring to the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County.

“Since 2017, the public water system has incurred enormous expenses to identify and install treatment methods to reduce the PFAS contamination in the drinking water that they give to their customers to consume,” Davis said. “The intent of House Bill 1095 is to make such calls payable by a responsible party and not the ratepayers of that public system.”

The bill passed a first reading May 27 and was referred to a House judiciary committee that met Thursday after the press conference.

The measure would include a $2 million appropriation to the Department of Environmental Quality for implementation of the bill’s provisions and $2 million to the North Carolina Collaboratory to research the maximum contaminant levels that the department would establish for PFAS. The bill would provide retroactive relief to Jan. 1, 2017, the year the news of PFAS contamination was first reported by the Wilmington StarNews.

DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser also spoke Thursday during the press conference, saying that the department was committed to addressing the contamination by holding polluters accountable and protecting communities from the effects of PFAS contamination. She said the adoption of enforceable drinking water standards for PFAS would be a critical step forward because there are no federal drinking water standards for PFAS.

Davis said the bill would apply only to businesses in North Carolina that manufacture PFAS and discharge it into the environment, affecting public water systems. The measure would not apply to fire departments that use PFAS-containing firefighting foam.

The North Carolina League in Municipalities supports the measure, as do utilities officials. Brunswick County Public Utilities Director John Nichols and Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldron expressed support for the bill during a public comment portion of the judiciary committee meeting. Both utilities are spending millions to make the water safe to drink. Brunswick is working on a $100 million upgrade and Cape Fear has invested $46 million to date.

Chemours opposes the measure. Jeff Fritz, the company’s state government affairs lead, called it unnecessary. He said the bill would “undermine due process.”

The North Carolina Manufacturers Alliance and NC Chamber are also among the bill’s opponents.

WILMINGTON – The Cape Fear River is unparalleled in many ways.

It’s the only major river in North Carolina that empties directly into the Atlantic Ocean. It’s the state’s largest river basin where 6,500 miles of navigable waterways snake through 26 counties and 113 municipalities.

The river is also the most industrialized river in North Carolina. Its banks are peppered with power plants, manufacturing plants, wastewater treatment plants, landfills, paper mills and industrial agriculture.

“The Cape Fear River basin has more hog farms than any other watershed on earth,” said Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette.

Speaking at Cape Fear River Watch’s first State of the River forum Wednesday, Burdette talked of a spectacular river crucial to an array of fish species, of a river that is the raw drinking water source for tens of thousands of North Carolinians.

But the river, he said, is a fragile one already, bearing the impacts of climate change and sea level rise, polluted by man-made chemicals, stormwater runoff, and waste runoff from factory farms.

Contamination from concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, remains one of the biggest and most persistent problems affecting the river’s water quality, Burdette said.

“It is a very difficult and slow fight and the wins are small and the progress is incremental,” he said to the more than 100 people attending the forum.

Though there have been buyouts, factory hog farms remain prevalent in the river basin. 

Most of these farms are concentrated in Sampson and Duplin counties, areas that have in the past several years seen a sharp increase in the large poultry farms.

North Carolina has become the leading producer of poultry, an industry that is largely unregulated.

“We need to ban new poultry facilities because we don’t even know what the impacts are,” Burdette said.

He was among a number of speakers at this year’s forum held on Cape Fear Community College’s campus in downtown Wilmington, an area graced by scenic river views about 26 miles upstream of the Atlantic Ocean, one that is rising as a result of climate change.

“By 2050 our watershed and this downtown will look significantly different than it does today,” Burdette said.

He was referring to the area’s sea level rise projections, the latest of which were put out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in February.

The administration predicts that sea level rise here will reach 2 feet between 2060 and 2080.

“We know (sea level rise) is accelerating,” said Roger Shew, Cape Fear River Watch board member and a geologist and earth and ocean sciences lecturer at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. “It keeps rising. We need to know and plan for what’s going on.”

During his talk, Shew displayed on two large projection screens photographs of the flooded parking lot and road leading to the Battleship North Carolina, the World War II memorial tucked on the river’s west bank across from downtown Wilmington.

The photographs were taken Jan. 3, when high tide pushed the river’s waters over its banks where flooding was more than 2 feet deep. It was the 10^th highest recorded flood event in the area.

Shew said considering cumulative impacts to the river – whether its further deepening of the shipping channel between the river’s mouth and the Port of Wilmington or riverside development – is important to protecting the river.

The river hosts a variety of valuable ecosystem services including critical coastal and riverine habitat, commercial and recreational fishery resources, recreational resources and a rich, historic and cultural heritage.

Anadromous fish, or those that are born in freshwater, migrate to sea, then back to freshwater to spawn, are found in the river’s waters. Such species include both endangered Atlantic and shortnose sturgeon, and striped bass.

Cape Fear River Partnership coordinator and coastal scientist Dawn York said NOAA officials have said the Cape Fear River is the only one with anadromous fish to have a series of locks and dams fragmenting the river, limiting the range of migration for those fish.

The partnership spearheaded a project about 10 years ago to construct a rock arch rapids at Lock and Dam No. 1, about 39 miles above Wilmington.

The rapids were modified in 2021. York said that the partnership is hoping to construct similar features at locks and dams Nos. 2 and 3.

The Cape Fear also provides a storm buffer and flood protection. The river’s marshes are one of the most productive areas in the world, Shew said.

But as salinity rises in the river with the rising sea, organic soils and peat will break down, a phenomenon that will equate to the loss of marsh.

As saltwater migrates up the river, man-made chemicals and runoff from large factory farms upstream infiltrate the watershed.

North Carolina-based researchers have found high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl, or PFAS, in striped bass and alligators in the river.

PFAS are a group of manmade chemicals used in numerous consumer products, including everything from nonstick cookware, fast food packaging and makeup to flame retardants.

Five years ago, residents of the Cape Fear region learned that the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works Facility upstream in Bladen County had been discharging PFAS, including GenX, directly into their drinking water source since 1980.

A consent order, the result of a lawsuit brought by North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch against the company that’s a spinoff of DuPont, mandates Chemours to reduce the amount of PFAS released from the plant into the river, air and ground by 99%.

In a video address played at the start of Wednesday’s forum, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said combating PFAS contamination is one of his priorities.

“These companies line their own pockets at the expense of people’s health,” he said.

In October 2020, Stein filed a lawsuit in Cumberland County Superior Court against DuPont and a dozen other companies, including Chemours, alleging that the companies knew the chemicals pose health threats to people and the environment.

“They need to clean up the mess they made in the Cape Fear River basin,” he said. “As my investigation continues I may take additional legal actions. Every North Carolinian has a right to clean drinking water. It’s that simple.”

Deborah Dicks Maxwell, president of the NAACP and a board member with Cape Fear River Watch, grew up along the river banks in downtown Wilmington.

She’s drunk the river’s water for most of her life. She was baptized in its waters.

“I’ve had a healthy respect and love for the river for a long time,” she said. “It is the lifeline of this community because water is life. Are we listening to what we need to do? Are we really listening? Do you wish to preserve what is here? It is up to you. Please take heed to what is going on.”

WILMINGTON — Nonprofit Cape Fear River Watch is set to host a discussion about the health and environmental issues affecting the region.

The State of the River forum is 8:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 1, at Cape Fear Community College’s Windell Daniels Hall. There’s no cost to attend but attendees are asked to register in advance.

The forum, which will also include work on realistic solutions, organizers said, is to educate the public and decision makers and bring change.

Cape Fear River Watch works to protect and improve the water quality of the Cape Fear River Basin for all people through education, advocacy and action.

Issues of focus to be presented at the forum by University of North Carolina Wilmington geologist Roger Shew, Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent and Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette include lower Cape Fear River estuary issues, fishery restoration, GenX and similar pollutants, and contamination from hog and swine raising facilities.

Following lunch and networking, a panel discussion is planned featuring Kerri Allen, coastal advocate and regional manager with the North Carolina Coastal Federation; Dr. Detlef Knappe, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering at N.C. State University; Sherri White-Williamson, environmental justice policy director at the N.C. Conservation Network; and Jean Zhuang, staff attorney at Southern Environmental Law Center.

La’Meshia Whittington, deputy director at Advance Carolina/NC Black Alliance, is to provide closing remarks.

Doors open at 8 a.m. Complimentary vegetarian and vegan breakfast and lunch will be provided from Brooklyn Cafe and Peno Mediterranean Grill, respectively.

Public hearings will be held next month on a state draft discharge permit for Chemours’ proposed groundwater treatment system at its Fayetteville Works facility.

Contaminated groundwater is flowing from the Bladen County-based plant into the Cape Fear River, a drinking water source for tens of thousands of people who live down river in Columbus, Pender, Brunswick and New Hanover counties.

Under the 2022 addendum to a consent order with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours must install a more-than-mile-long underground barrier wall parallel to the river to intercept contaminated groundwater.

The groundwater will be collected through a series of extraction wells and pumped to a wastewater treatment system.

The draft state wastewater permit under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, requires the treatment system remove at least 99% of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from entering the Cape Fear River.

PFAS are a group of thousands of synthetic compounds widely used in a variety of consumer products, including nonstick cookware, firefighting foam, water-repellent clothing, lubricants, stain-resistant carpets, paints, cosmetics and fast-food packaging.

Research is being conducted to try and understand possible health implications associated with ingesting and breaking down these forever chemicals.

North Carolina-based research indicates at least some PFAS affects immune systems, but thousands of the compounds have yet to be studied.

The Division of Water Resources is holding an in-person public hearing on the draft NPDES permit at 6 p.m. June 21 at Cape Fear Community College, Union Station, first floor auditorium, 411 N. Front St., Wilmington. Speaker registration opens at 5 p.m.

An online meeting will be held at 6 p.m., June 23. Log on to https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/onstage/g.php?MTID=e6a3cebefc6af2776f229c3d4f2c74da9. The event number is 2421 589 1484 and the password is NCDEQ. Participants may also phone in by dialing +1-415-655-0003, Access code: 2421 589 1484. Speakers may register by noon June 23 at https://forms.office.com/g/YEqDLDDDp7

Contact Peter Johnston if you have issues registering online at 919-707-9011 or email peter.johnston@ncdenr.gov.

The division is accepting comments on the proposed permit through 5 p.m. June 24 by email to publiccomments@ncdenr.gov with CHEMOURS noted in the subject line or by mail to Wastewater Permitting, Attn: Chemours Permit, 1617 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1617.

You do not need to resubmit comments if you sent them in during the previous comment period between March 25 and May 2.

Chemours has been ordered by the state to further expand its drinking water well sampling in New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Columbus counties and to prioritize specific areas for immediate sampling.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is hosting a public meeting at 6 p.m. Monday at the Lumina Theatre on the University of North Carolina Wilmington campus to share sampling information and answer questions about well sampling in the Lower Cape Fear River area. Organizers suggest parking in Visitor Lot M, 4941, Riegel Road.

After its review of Chemours’ Interim Four Counties Sampling and Drinking Water Plan submitted April 1, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officials in a letter Monday wrote that the department collected additional groundwater data from the lower Cape Fear region showing the presence of a type of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in a number of nonwater supply wells. The Cape Fear River is a drinking water source for area residents.

NCDEQ charged Chemours with updating the interim plan to incorporate the new data and taking the following additional steps:

• Prioritize the identification and expeditious sampling of private wells within one-quarter of a mile of public water distribution lines and sanitary sewer network.
• Prioritize the identification and expeditious sampling of private wells within one-quarter of a mile of the detections shown in monitoring data provided by NCDEQ.
• Provide a detailed description of the representative sampling methodology, including justification for any exclusionary criteria.
• Provide a timeline to expeditiously complete sampling in the four counties.
• Increase reporting on the sampling activities from quarterly to monthly.

The interim plan for sampling private wells and implementing mitigation measures in New Hanover, Brunswick, Columbus and Pender counties is in response to a Nov. 3, 2021, notice from NCDEQ about Chemours’ obligations under the the February 2019 consent order with the state and Cape Fear River Watch.

“As around the Chemours facility, the priority in the Lower Cape Fear counties is to identify impacted drinking water wells with these PFAS and to provide alternate drinking water as required by the Consent Order,” according to the May 2 letter.

Lisa Randall, Regional Communications Lead for Chemours, told Coastal Review Wednesday, “We look forward to continuing to work with NCDEQ regarding our downstream four-county sampling and drinking water program.  In the interim, we are implementing the revised plan; reaching out to homeowners and others that are located within the targeted areas.”

Officials respond to public call for hearing

The Division of Water Resources says it will hold a hearing, as requested by the public, on the draft discharge permit for a proposed treatment system at the Chemours facility that officials say would substantially reduce PFAS entering the Cape Fear River through contaminated groundwater at the site.

A public comment period on the proposal ended May 2.

Division officials said details on the public hearing for the draft discharge permit are to be announced with the required 30-day public notice.

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, wastewater permit is part of the required actions to prevent residual PFAS pollution from entering the Cape Fear River, outlined in the 2020 addendum to the 2019 consent order. 

The consent order requires Chemours to address the contamination by installing an underground, barrier wall for more than a mile along the Cape Fear River. The proposed wall is to intercept contaminated groundwater from the facility before it reaches the river, where a series of extraction wells will pump the captured groundwater to a treatment system required to remove more than 99% of PFAS, according to NCDEQ.

“Regarding the Outfall 004 permit, we value the opportunity for the public meeting to address misperceptions that appear to exist, and to clarify the reductions in legacy PFAS reaching the Cape Fear River, which our work is addressing,” Randall said.

Chemours has also requested to modify an existing permit with the Army Corps of Engineers to build the barrier wall and treatment system. Public comment is being accepted until June 1.

Related: Chemours asks to build barrier wall to slow PFAS

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority submitted Monday comments to NCDEQ with concerns regarding the draft discharge permit “that would allow Chemours to discharge treated water mainly from wells at the site extracting groundwater with high levels of PFAS,” according to a release Tuesday.

“In March, NCDEQ announced it was accepting comments on a draft National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) wastewater permit that would allow Chemours to discharge as much as 2.9 million gallons per day of effluent containing certain levels of PFAS, including GenX, into the Cape Fear River,” CFPUA officials said.

‘Neighbors’ campaign

In recent months, Chemours has launched a campaign, Chemours Neighbors, committing to community involvement and investment.

The company has a petition on its Chemours Neighbors website asking for support of the draft discharge permit “to help build the wall and help improve the quality of life for our communities.”

Dana Sargent, executive director of Cape Fear River Watch, told Coastal Review Wednesday that Chemours is using the draft permit “to promote their ‘Good Neighbor’ nonsense — pretending they’re doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and leaving out that this wall and the reductions to groundwater contamination into the river is required by court order under the consent order.”

Chemours is asking people to sign the petition to support “their effort” to clean up the river by supporting DEQ’s draft permit. “They support the draft because it would allow them continue to dump more PFAS than the law requires into the river and drinking water supply for 500,000 people,” she said.

In January, Chemours issued the following statement about the campaign:

“Chemours has done a significant amount of work to reduce emissions and complete remediation activity at our Fayetteville site in the past four years. Messages in our ad campaign are meant to keep the public informed about the work we are doing — exactly the type of information our communities around the plant and downstream have asked us about.”

Information on the proposed treatment system, the reductions required by the consent order, and links to the draft permit documents are online.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials announced last week three steps they say will better protect communities from pollutants that are often called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment or in our bodies.

The federal agency detailed plans to improve methods to detect per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in water, reduce PFAS discharges into the country’s waterways, and protect fish and aquatic ecosystems from PFAS. 

PFAS are a large group of man-made chemicals resistant to heat, oils, stains, grease and water that have been used in consumer products and industrial processes since the 1940s. Research shows that exposure to some PFAS may be linked to harmful health effects in humans and animals.

Many in the state have been keeping close tabs on action being taken to stop PFAS pollution since news broke five years ago that the chemicals were detected in the Cape Fear River, a source of drinking water for many in the Wilmington area.

The Wilmington StarNews first reported in June 2017 that a North Carolina State University-led study had detected a compound called GenX and other PFAS in the Cape Fear River. Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility was found to be the source of the chemicals in the waterway.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, litigated a 2019 consent order requiring Chemours to stop at least 99% of PFAS pollution. During all this, EPA Administrator Michael Regan was secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Regan put out a statement Thursday on the latest actions, which follow the administration’s plan announced last fall to combat PFAS pollution and complement the $10 billion in spending to address PFAS and emerging contaminants in the $1 trillion infrastructure legislation passed last year.

“EPA is using all available tools to address PFAS contamination as part of a broader, whole of government effort to protect communities across the country from these chemicals,” Regan said. “This is why we put a Strategic Roadmap in place, and why President Biden fought for billions in funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to tackle this challenge. Today’s actions help protect the health of all Americans as we deliver on our commitment to research, restrict, and remediate PFAS.”

New testing method

PFAS and non-PFAS fluorinated compounds such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals are a common source of organofluorines, or molecules with a carbon-fluorine bond, found in wastewater, according to the EPA.

EPA’s Draft Method 1621 announced Thursday detects organofluorines, which do not often occur naturally. When used in conjunction with methods that target individual PFAS, the new method can broadly screen for the presence of PFAS at the parts-per-billion level in wastewater. It’s still in testing and officials intend to publish an updated version later this year. 

Dana Sargent, executive director with Cape Fear River Watch, responded to Coastal Review in an email Friday, saying that the new method would add to, but should not replace, the current method, mass spectrometry using targeted analysis. She said current the method alone only provides insight on a tiny subset of the PFAS known to be out there. 

“The nontargeted analysis the consent order required Chemours conduct showed 257 ‘unknown’ PFAS being discharged from this one facility, yet regular sampling by the state, utilities and others only provides concentrations for about 20-30 PFAS,” she said. “Neither the public nor our decision makers are getting an accurate view of the extent of the issue when relying solely on testing for specific PFAS. This new method will not provide specifics on which types of PFAS or how much of each is in a given sample, but will give us that big picture view to inform more detailed sampling.”

New permitting direction

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permitting program, created in 1972 by the Clean Water Act, helps address water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants to waters of the United States.

EPA officials propose to use existing NPDES authorities to reduce discharges at the source and obtain more comprehensive information through monitoring on sources of PFAS.

The agency on Thursday issued the memo, Addressing PFAS Discharges in EPA-Issued NPDES Permits and Expectations Where EPA is the Pretreatment Control Authority, which provides instructions for monitoring provisions, analytical methods, the use of pollution prevention, and best management practices to address discharges of PFAS. 

EPA also plans to issue new guidance to state permitting authorities to address PFAS in NPDES permits in a future action.

Sargent noted that the instructions for federally issued NPDES permits would not apply to permits issued by states, “So we look forward to even stronger recommendations from EPA to the states.”

Protecting aquatic life

EPA officials are also proposing the first Clean Water Act aquatic life criteria for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, to protect aquatic life from short-term and long-term toxic effects of these chemicals, which are two of the most studied PFAS.

The agency published Monday in the Federal Register the “Draft Recommended Aquatic Life Ambient Water Quality Criteria for Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)” and “Draft Recommended Aquatic Life Ambient Water Quality Criteria for Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid (PFOS)” for a 30-day public comment period ending June 2. 

Following the comment period, the EPA intends to issue final PFOA and PFOS recommended criteria. States and Tribes may consider adopting the final criteria into their water quality standards or can adopt other scientifically defensible criteria that are based on local or site-specific conditions. 

In the Cape Fear area, advocates say many depend on subsistence fishing. They say standards for aquatic life are important for those who consume it.

Veronica Carter is a member of DEQ’s 16-member Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board, Leland town council member and longtime board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. She is among those who have called for safeguards for people who consume fish they catch in the river. She said the potential exposure to contaminants is an environmental justice issue. 

It’s a source of protein for those who can’t afford to buy food, Carter says in a video made last summer for the Stop, Check, and Enjoy! campaign, a collaborative effort that encourages eating and preparing fish in ways to limit exposure to chemical contaminants found in those caught in the Cape Fear River. 

“It’s an environmental justice issue because it is not their fault that the river is impaired. We have polluted the environment, our Cape Fear River,” Carter says in the video. 

Carter said it’s great that there’s a new way to detect PFAS levels, but “what are we doing about getting rid of PFAS?”

“I don’t want to reduce, I want to eliminate,” she said.

‘Well past time’

Sargent said in an interview that there needs to be requirements and reminders by the EPA that state regulators adhere to the Clean Water Act and include technology-based effluent limits within their permits, rather than rely on best management practices after the fact. 

States should not be permitted to wait for a permit to expire, but should have the authority to revise current permits to stop the ongoing contamination by PFAS polluters across this country now, she said.

“Polluters have been given carte blanche to dump their toxic chemicals into our environment and our bodies for decades; it is well past time for our regulators to protect people and the environment instead of the corporate polluters,” she added.

The Southern Environmental Law Center’s Geoff Gisler, senior attorney who represented Cape Fear River Watch against Chemours in North Carolina, said in a statement Thursday that the EPA’s action is the beginning of a significant step forward in protecting communities from PFAS. 

The groups’ lawsuit resulted in a consent order with DEQ, Riverwatch and Chemours to stop the GenX and other PFAS pollution at its source.

Related: Chemours asks to build barrier wall to slow PFAS

“The agency recognizes that existing law requires all sources to disclose their pollution and that EPA has the responsibility to reduce or eliminate those discharges through the permitting process,” he said. “Now, the agency must put monitoring requirements and pollution controls into action. We encourage EPA to use its full authority under the Clean Water Act to eliminate PFAS contamination by modifying its permits as fast as possible.”  

Carter said one of her concerns is that low-income families downriver are paying for water they can’t drink and can’t afford to buy bottled water. Particularly school-aged children who are receiving free breakfast and lunch, “what do they do about water? The water fountains are closed off and they can’t afford to buy bottled water for the kids.”

“At least the EPA is talking about PFAS, and I give Regan credit for that. One of the things I said to him when he left DEQ was not to forget us, and he hasn’t,” Carter said. “It is going to take state law and permit changes to protect us better from pollution.”

She said action needs to come from the federal government as well.

“Pollution doesn’t recognize state boundaries.”

Chemours Co. is looking to change an existing permit to include the construction of a barrier wall in an effort to comply with state-mandated action to address PFAS contamination from the company’s facility south of Fayetteville.

The Wilmington District Corps of Engineers posted Monday on the Corps website the application along with site plans.

The state Department of Environmental Quality, Cape Fear River Watch, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Chemours entered into a consent order in February 2019 in Bladen County Superior Court to address discharges of PFAS at the Chemours facility, first brought to light in June 2017 after the state was informed that GenX was found in the Cape Fear River. it was determined that Chemours was the source of what are often called forever chemicals.

The state in August 2020 ordered Chemours to take more action in the Addendum to the Consent Order, filed in October of that year.

The proposed project is to comply with that addendum consent order, which requires a barrier wall to capture groundwater and surface waters from potentially discharging PFAS-impacted waters to the Cape Fear River. Chemours was issued a permit Oct. 2, 2020, that was then modified Dec. 18, 2020.

The applicant is requesting to install the barrier wall east of the facility between the Chemours plant and the Cape Fear River. The proposed materials to build the wall, which will be about 80 feet underground, will include a mix of cement, bentonite clay, and onsite soils and have a minimum thickness of 1.5 feet.

On the site there are several groundwater seeps along where this barrier wall is proposed. The barrier wall is expected to capture surface flows from the first half-inch of a precipitation event and groundwater upgradient, or the source groundwater for another location, of the wall. The water is to be transferred to pump stations where it will then be pumped to a proposed onsite surge pond. The surge pond will transfer the water to the onsite wastewater treatment plant prior to discharge to the Cape Fear River

Written comments can be submitted until 5 p.m. June 1 to Liz Hair, Wilmington Regulatory Field Office, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC 28403, 910-251-4049 or by email at sarah.e.hair@usace.army.mil.

Chemours has agreed to further limit GenX emissions, conduct additional testing and pay the six-figure penalty assessed last year by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality.

The Division of Air Quality and Chemours signed a settlement agreement Tuesday requiring Chemours to reduce GenX emissions from the carbon adsorber unit, an emissions control device, in the vinyl ethers north manufacturing area to no more than an average of 1 pound per month between May and September of this year.

Fugitive emissions from the vinyl ethers north area are primarily controlled by the carbon adsorber unit, which is a separate system from the onsite thermal oxidizer. 

Chemours’ facility-wide emissions are limited to 23.027 pounds per year under the current air permit.

Chemours also is required to take additional actions this year to reduce emissions, including installing new process and emission control equipment. The company must follow a rigorous schedule of stack tests to measure how well the carbon adsorber unit at vinyl ethers north is controlling emissions.

Chemours will also pay in full the $305,000 penalty, which the Division of Air Quality assessed last year after finding Chemours was in violation of the stringent GenX emission requirements of its air permit, which requires Chemours to limit its total GenX emissions to 23.027 pounds per year, using a rolling 12-month calculation.

This limit equates to a 99% reduction from GenX emissions in 2017.

Excess GenX emissions in March 2021 resulted in noncompliance with the rolling 12-month limits from March through September of last year. In October 2021, the division issued a written Notice of Violation and Notice of Recommendation for Enforcement to Chemours. DAQ noted the Carbon Adsorber Unit was not properly operated or maintained for 26 days following its March 9, 2021, stack test.

Chemours filed a Petition for a Contested Case Hearing in response to DAQ’s civil assessment. Today’s settlement resolves DAQ’s civil penalty and Chemours’ petition.

Lisa Randall, regional communications lead for Chemours provided Coastal Review with the following statement:

“Chemours has reached an agreement with NCDEQ regarding the agency’s 2021 notice of violation (NOV) for exceeding the 12-month rolling average for Fayetteville Works’ site HFPO-DA air emissions. Chemours has agreed to pay the $305,000 civil penalty assessed by the agency, and will also dismiss its administrative appeal of the NOV. Chemours has also agreed to take additional steps toward reducing air emissions. NCDEQ has agreed to not issue additional NOVs related to the rolling calculation for the remainder of the 12-month period as long as agreed-to-emission limits are met. Chemours continues to make progress on all requirements of the Consent Order agreement with NCDEQ and Cape Fear River Watch, and remains committed to being a leader in reducing PFAS emissions.”

The state Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board is to meet Monday, April 4, to hear an update on toxins in the Wilmington area’s drinking water source.

The meeting is at 10 a.m. The public can join the meeting online via WebEx or to listen by phone, call 415-655-0003 and use access code 2427 189 9453. Organizers ask those joining by phone to mute when entering.

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board assists the departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services. An agenda for the meeting is online.

The Department of Environmental Quality staff will present information about the signatures of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in the Lower Cape Fear River area, and about the availability of reference doses for PFAS in North Carolina. Department of Health and Human Services staff will give an overview of the process to develop fish consumption advisories.

PFAS are widely used, long-lasting chemicals that break down very slowly over time. Many PFAS are found in the blood of people and animals all over the world and are present at low levels in a variety of food products and in the environment. Scientific studies have shown that exposure to some PFAS in the environment may be linked to harmful health effects in humans and animals, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Department of Health and Human Services was notified in June 2017 of a chemical called GenX and other emerging PFAS were found in drinking water sourced from the lower Cape Fear River in a study led by researchers at North Carolina State University. The Chemours facility in Fayetteville was identified as the source

The meeting is to include an opportunity for public comment on the agenda topics. Complete the registration form to speak by 5 p.m. April 1.

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board, which includes 13 experts in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering and other related fields, assists the two state departments by recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, acting as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and helping the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be studied further. 

This report has been updated to note the lawsuit that led to the consent order under which Chemours operates.

Top elected officials in New Hanover and Brunswick counties have issued blistering criticisms of Chemours’ recent television ads touting the chemical company’s environmental record.

Chemours has been airing TV spots in recent weeks highlighting the company’s $100 million investment in new technology to reduce pollutants by more than 95%. The 30-second spot, “Good Neighbors Care,” states the company’s goal of further reductions to 99% by 2030. The company said the ads are intended to keep the public updated on its progress.

“Our quality of life begins with a quality environment. That’s our Chemours commitment,” the ad’s narrator says.

Related: Groups revive lawsuit against EPA over Chemours’ pollution

Researchers and state environmental regulators have identified the company as the source of surface and groundwater contamination and illegal air emission levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. This includes years of dumping PFAS into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for communities downriver, including Wilmington and Brunswick County. The company is also operating under a court order in 2019 to reduce its PFAS emissions by 99%.

New Hanover County Board of Commissioners Chair Julia Olson-Boseman and Brunswick County Chair Randy Thompson each issued statements Thursday criticizing the “good neighbor” ads.

“We certainly wouldn’t knowingly dump poisonous chemicals in our neighbors’ drinking water for decades, reap huge profits and refuse requests to pay to clean up our mess, then go around the neighborhood bragging about how awesome a neighbor we are,” Olson-Boseman said in her statement.

“Since the discovery of GenX and other emerging contaminants in our drinking water system became public in 2017, New Hanover County and the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority have pushed Chemours to voluntarily clean up the mess they made,” she continued. “A good neighbor would have eagerly done so.”

Instead, she said, the company is now acting only because of a consent order that forces Chemours to provide testing of private wells and remediation.

“A good neighbor would have voluntarily paid for upgrades to drinking water systems to filter out the chemicals they dumped into our environment. Instead, the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority has undertaken upgrades costing nearly $50 million and are suing Chemours to recover costs,” she said. “A good neighbor would have voluntarily taken steps to prevent contamination in the future. They did, as the advertisements suggest, invest in systems to remove pollutants from entering the Cape Fear River. But only after being forced to by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality.”

The consent order and enforcement actions by NCDEQ and Chemours came in November 2018 after the nonprofit Cape Fear River Watch sued Chemours and the department.

In his comments, Thompson called the ads deceptive and frivolous and said the company is no friend to North Carolina or Brunswick County.

“Publicly patting yourself on the back for doing something only because you’re in trouble with the State would be comical if it wasn’t so serious for those of us who live downstream from them. That’s because the new technologies Chemours had to install only prevent more PFAS from escaping their Fayetteville Works Plant. They do nothing to remediate the decades-worth of contaminants that remain in the Cape Fear River— our County’s main source of water,” he said.

Thompson noted that Brunswick County is currently financing and building an advanced treatment system to remove PFAS from its drinking water, “to the tune of more than $160 million” with no compensation from the company. He notes the county’s ongoing lawsuit against the firm filed in 2017.

“If Chemours cared so much about being a good neighbor to North Carolinians, they would not have spent decades knowingly putting contaminants into our environment that next to no one knew existed nor how to test for,” he said. “If Chemours cared, they would have put safeguards in place decades ago to protect people and the environment from their plant’s contaminants before they came under scrutiny through media-driven exposés and state-mandated consent orders.

“And if Chemours really cared, they would voluntarily pay for the expensive water treatment upgrades that utilities like Brunswick County need to remove their contaminants from our drinking water. That is what a good neighbor would do.”

Chemours provided the following statement regarding the ads:

“Chemours has done a significant amount of work to reduce emissions and complete remediation activity at our Fayetteville site in the past four years. These messages in our ad campaign are meant to keep the public informed about the work we are doing—exactly the type of information our communities around the plant and downstream—including your viewers—have asked us about. Our goal to reduce PFAS emissions by 99% is part of our Corporate Responsibility Commitment announced in 2018 to reduce fluorinated organic compound emissions from our manufacturing process. We know of no other company that has made a similar commitment. Chemours has worked closely with our state regulatory agencies throughout these four years, including entering a Consent Order, and that work sets a high bar for our company and our manufacturing processes. In fact, we are currently designing and beginning construction for an in-ground barrier wall along the Cape Fear River next to our site; that wall is planned to be a mile long and six stories deep into the ground to help keep compounds from reaching the river. We are one of many contributors along the Cape Fear River system – the largest river system in the state. Chemours is doing our part to improve the river and we hope others will as well.”

Six eastern North Carolina environmental justice and community groups that sued the Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 seeking EPA-required health studies in communities affected by dozens of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances have revived a lawsuit originally filed during the Trump administration after the agency’s action on their petition fell short of their demands.

The groups, the Center for Environmental Health, Cape Fear River Watch, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, the NC Black Alliance and Toxic Free NC, announced Thursday that they were reactivating their lawsuit against the EPA. The groups said the agency failed to grant their petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act seeking to require Chemours Co., the manufacturer of a compound known as GenX and based near Fayetteville, to conduct critical health studies on 54 substances that the groups say are putting hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents at risk.

In a statement, Bob Sussman, the petitioners’ counsel and a former senior EPA official, said that “We are returning to court to exercise our right under TSCA to challenge EPA’s disappointing refusal to hold Chemours accountable for studies that EPA had the clear authority to require. We are confident that the court will direct EPA to assure that Chemours pays for essential testing on chemicals that are in the drinking water and blood of hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians.”    

The groups’ petition, filed Oct. 14, 2020, asked EPA to require that Chemours fund a comprehensive research program addressing residents’ concerns in communities along the Cape Fear River.

Related: Brunswick, New Hanover County chairs blast Chemours ads

The EPA on Dec. 28, 2021, announced it was granting the petition but stopped short of meeting the groups’ demands, agreeing to require limited testing on only seven of the 54 PFAS that it had announced in October would be conducted under its general PFAS testing strategy. The agency also refused to require an epidemiological study of contaminated communities or testing of PFAS mixtures present in drinking water and in residents’ blood, which the groups said were the most important studies in understanding how PFAS pollution has affected the health of exposed populations.

The groups say residents have been exposed for decades to numerous PFAS in their drinking water, air, food and soil because of pollution from the Chemours facility. 

“For decades, our communities have suffered silently from PFAS contaminated water. All the while, polluting corporations have continued to profit from our pain. Our dedicated team of community advocates, legal counsel, and scientists have provided EPA with the tools to clearly and swiftly act to save our communities. If EPA is unwilling to use these tools, we will look to our legal remedies to make sure the agency holds Chemours accountable ” said La’Meshia Whittington, NC Black Alliance, in a statement.

Researchers detected the compound GenX in the river downstream from Chemours nearly 10 years ago and subsequently in the river-drawn drinking water supply for the Wilmington area. State health officials in 2017 were notified of the contamination, which also included other related substances. As recently as last year, the state fined Chemours over air emissions of PFAS and required to take additional actions to address contamination, including that of private wells.

A spokesperson for Chemours declined Coastal Review’s request for comment for this report.

Updated to include comments from New Hanover County

The state is requiring Chemours to take more action to address GenX and PFAS contamination into the Cape Fear River from the Fayetteville Works facility, especially that affecting private well owners.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which includes GenX, are widely used, man-made toxins often called “forever chemicals” that break down very slowly over time and build up in humans, animals and the environment, according to the EPA. Studies show that exposure to some of these chemicals may be linked to harmful health effects.

First, Chemours must assess the extent of contamination in communities downstream, to include well sampling and provision of replacement drinking water supplies, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officials said Wednesday.

Second, Chemours is required to review existing well sampling in communities surrounding the Fayetteville Works facility to determine additional eligibility for whole-house filtration and public water, in light of the revised Toxicity Assessment for GenX from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“The contamination from Chemours extends down the Cape Fear River into multiple communities and Chemours’ actions to address that contamination must reach those communities as well,” said DEQ Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser in a statement. “DEQ will continue to take the necessary steps to provide relief to affected North Carolinians as the science and regulations require.”

Copies of the notifications to Chemours are online.

DEQ officials said the department has determined that Chemours is responsible for contamination of groundwater monitoring wells and water supply wells in New Hanover County and possibly Pender, Columbus, and Brunswick counties.

“Chemours is required to expand the off-site assessment required under the 2019 Consent Order to determine the extent of the contamination. Chemours must also conduct sampling of private drinking water wells to identify residents who may be eligible for replacement drinking water supplies. Chemours must submit plans to DEQ for approval,” officials said.

Regarding the second action, officials said Chemours had been advised that the EPA will be releasing a federal drinking water health advisory level for GenX in the coming months. The 2019 Consent Order requires Chemours to provide replacement permanent drinking water to private wells with “detections of GenX compounds in exceedance of 140 ng/L (nanogram per liter), or any applicable health advisory, whichever is lower.”

In advance of a likely EPA health advisory level below 140 nanogram per liter, DEQ is requiring Chemours to review existing well sampling data to identify residents who would be entitled to public water or whole house filtration under a revised health advisory level.  Chemours must revise the assessment of public water feasibility for all affected residents under a lower health advisory level. 

DEQ is also requiring Chemours to create a plan to transition residents who have previously received reverse osmosis systems based on GenX results to either public water or whole-house filtrations systems as appropriate under a lower GenX health advisory level.

“I want to thank DEQ and Secretary Biser for taking these steps to require action from Chemours so they take responsibility for the PFAS contamination they have caused in our community,” said New Hanover County Board of Commissioners Chair Julia Olson-Boseman in a statement.

“It is important for our residents to be provided with the same protections as those who are close to the Chemours plant, and that means testing and monitoring the groundwater wells in our county and providing bottled water and then a permanent filtration or connection to a public water supply if elevated PFAS are detected,” she said. “New Hanover County has advocated to be included in the Consent Order, and today’s actions are a positive step towards that. We will continue to do all we can to support DEQ’s efforts and ensure our residents have access to safe drinking water.”

Lisa Randall, regional communications lead for Chemours, provided the following statement on behalf of the company:

“Chemours is a part of the solution to addressing PFAS contamination in North Carolina, and we will continue working with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ), as we have been for several years, to move forward with efforts to address PFAS found in the environment related to our Fayetteville Works manufacturing site. We have worked closely with NCDEQ on implementation of on-site and off-site programs, including a private well sampling program, as part of the consent order agreement between Chemours, Cape Fear River Watch and the state of North Carolina.

“We are continuing to review the NCDEQ correspondence we just received and will follow-up with the agency for further clarification of their correspondence.”

A study of fish routinely caught in the Cape Fear and Brunswick rivers as a source of food for people in low-income communities has prompted the state to update its fish consumption advisories.

The North Carolina Department of Human Health and Services in October issued updates advising consumers against eating certain species of fish from areas of both rivers after a Duke University-led study found elevated levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and affect neurological systems in humans.

In the Cape Fear River between Riegelwood Landing and the river’s confluence with Livingston Creek, bluegill, bowfin and channel catfish caught by researchers contained elevated levels of arsenic, hexavalent chromium and mercury, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services advisory.

“People should not eat bowfin and channel catfish due to elevated levels of hexavalent chromium and mercury,” the advisory states. “People should eat no more than 1 meal per week of bluegill due to elevated hexavalent chromium.”

That area of the river includes Columbus, Pender and Brunswick counites.

Red drum caught in the Brunswick River near the U.S. 74/U.S. 17 bridge in Brunswick County also contained elevated levels of the same pollutants.

The state is advising people not to eat red drum due to the higher levels of hexavalent chromium found in that species in the Brunswick River.

The updates were made as a result of research ultimately borne out of a collaborative effort going back a few years ago at the pinnacle of a locally charged fight against a cement-production company from building a plant on the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River in New Hanover County.

Activists and environmentalists giving federal and state agency officials a tour to show how the river would be impacted if the cement plant were to be built there noticed people, sometimes whole families, fishing off the river banks.

“They knew those folks were taking that fish home to eat and they were very concerned about it,” said Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza, director of Duke Superfund Research Center Community Engagement Core.

The movement to stifle Titan America LLC’s plans to build a cement plant on more than 1,000 acres on the Northeast Cape Fear River ended in 2016 with the company pulling the plug on its plan.

The group that led the tour of officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality won the fight, but they had not forgotten the people, those families, who fish the river for sustenance.

Around the same year Titan backed out of its plans for a Castle Hayne plant, a coalition that included the New Hanover County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Cape Fear River Watch and the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, applied for funding from the EPA’s Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement Program.

Under the program, financial assistance is given to organizations that work or plan to work on local environmental and/or public health issues projects within their communities.

“The idea behind that grant was to do research to do a household survey in low-income neighborhoods along the Cape Fear to find out what kind of fish people were eating, how much they were eating, who was doing the eating and how they’re preparing the fish,” Shapiro-Garza said.

What they found is that people are eating fish from the river. They’re sharing it with their families, their children, and their neighbors, she said.

“People are eating portion sizes and quantities that are likely to be detrimental to their health, especially children,” Shapiro-Garza said.

That’s a fact many of the people included in the survey were unaware, according to the research.

The state does issue fish consumption advisories, but the study revealed that there are a couple of issues with those advisories.

Signs are posted in some areas by the river containing information about the advisories, but they include a lot of text and can be hard to understand.

The second issue is that the state’s information tends to be out of date and, in some cases, based on sampling of fish people are not eating.

Mozhgon Rajaee, an assistant professor of public health with Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, was teaching environmental justice at Duke as a visiting professor, a spot she got through a fellowship in 2018-2019.

During her time there, she met Shapiro-Garza and the two soon found they had common interest in environmental justice issues.

“They’d already done some work on how people were consuming fish in the Cape Fear River, particularly the lower Cape Fear,” Rajaee said.

Their discussions of environmental justice evolved into how they could look further into sustenance fishing in the Cape Fear River.

Once they secured funding for research, Rajaee took a year off from teaching up north and headed back to North Carolina in 2020 to start collecting species of fish popular among people who fish the Cape Fear for food.

Rajaee and field technicians caught fish at five different sites along the river. They tested seven species in all — blue, channel and flathead catfish; bowfin; bluegill; red drum; and blue crab.

They caught a little more than 130 fish and crab.

“We measured mercury, arsenic and chromium in almost all of the fish that we analyzed,” Rajaee said. “Part of the research was to try to figure out how to fill in the gaps on data. Fish weren’t sampled in the lower Cape Fear frequently.”

Frankly, they were expecting to find contamination in the fish they caught.

The Cape Fear River, which is the drinking water source of tens of thousands of people in Wilmington and surrounding areas, has been plagued by pollutants.

Sources of pollution come from everything like industrial facilities to hog farms and other agriculture operations, powerplants, wastewater treatment plants and landfills, and unregulated, nonpoint source runoff.

There’s been a growing awareness of chemical contaminants in the river in recent years since researchers revealed the Chemours Fayetteville Works Facility has for decades been discharging “forever chemicals” known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, into the lower Cape Fear.

“I think because of that people are probably more receptive to thinking about, OK what does that mean for the fish I’m catching out of the river and should I be eating it,” Shapiro-Garza said.

To help get the word out about the impacts these pollutants are having on fish in the Cape Fear River, Duke’s Community Engagement Core, in partnership with Cape Fear River Watch, community health educators in New Hanover County and the NAACP, launched in 2018 a campaign entitled “Stop, Check, Enjoy!”

Through community outreach events, health educators have been sharing the campaign message: vulnerable populations including pregnant women and children should Stop eating fish high in mercury; Check fish consumption advisories on fish from the Northeast Cape Fear River to stay in the know; and Enjoy locally caught fish by choosing fish that are not under advisory, are lower on the food chain and not bottom eaters, filleting fish first to remove fatty tissues where many contaminants except mercury can be found, and grilling or baking fish, which can reduce fat build-up and contaminant loads in fish.

Shapiro-Garza said in a statement that the release of the updated fish consumption advisories by the state is the result of endless hours of work by organizations within the partnership and “represents the power of their determination and persistence.”

“However, while it is a triumph, it’s not the end point,” she said. “With these further advisories for the lower Cape Fear and Brunswick Rivers our group now has a lot more information about what kind of wild caught fish and how much is safe to eat from where and a mandate, especially in the case of the county health departments, for making sure that word gets out to the people whose health is at risk.”