Written by Rose Hoban and Will Atwater
Important points:
- The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Chemours in federal charges over years of PFAS contamination in three states, including North Carolina.
- North Carolina is likely to receive almost nothing from the proposed settlement, even though it is home to the only GenX production facility in the United States.
- Since 2017, North Carolina has pursued enforcement action against Chemours. We continue to pursue responsibility.
In a surprising move, the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday announced a settlement with chemical manufacturer Chemours over the contamination of major waterways in three states, including North Carolina’s Cape Fear River.
The proposed settlement agreement, totaling approximately $450 million, seeks to remediate what the Department of Justice calls “years of historic and ongoing contamination with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as PFAS, from Defendants’ chemical facilities.”
“Through this initiative, Chemours will be able to better manage PFAS at its plants and continue manufacturing operations while protecting local communities,” the Department of Justice release said. “This agreement ensures that we manufacture these critical materials in a responsible manner.”
But almost immediately, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson, in responses sent to the media, denounced what they called “backroom deals” that “left North Carolina with virtually nothing.”
Jackson said he first learned of the pending agreement on Tuesday, June 23.
“This (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) has already weakened protections for chemicals like GenX, but now it allows polluters to choose how and where to resolve their pollution, leaving North Carolina with no guarantees,” Stein said in the release.
The settlement was announced by the Southern District of West Virginia, where Chemours operates and “transferred PFAS materials between its West Virginia facilities and facilities in New Jersey and North Carolina.”
This is the latest development in a long-running saga of industrial pollution of North Carolina’s and nation’s waterways and efforts to hold manufacturers accountable. These efforts have been developed over the course of multiple presidential and gubernatorial administrations with varying degrees of force.
put in bucket
The agreement was announced on the same day that Stein, along with Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reed Wilson, visited homes in the Wilmington area, where residents have been championing PFAS remediation efforts for nearly a decade.
“Chemicals like PFAS consistently pose serious health problems, and one in three North Carolinians are currently drinking water with PFAS levels that exceed the next federal health standard.” Wilson said in a statement.
The money flowing to North Carolina as a result of this settlement will kill two birds with one stone for water utilities such as the Cape Fear Public Utilities Authority, which provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands of residents in the Wilmington area. Water utilities have spent more than $92 million since 2017 to remove PFAS from ratepayers’ drinking water, including installing granular activated carbon systems, according to information provided by the water utilities.
Stein said the administration is pushing more than $1.6 billion for water infrastructure projects aimed at improving drinking water and wastewater treatment and reducing PFAS contamination. That comes after the Cooper administration and the state Legislature funneled more than $1.5 billion of American Rescue Plan Act funding to water and wastewater projects in the state.
In a joint statement, Mr. Stein and Mr. Jackson criticized the amount paid to North Carolina as a result of Wednesday’s settlement.
In a statement, they said, “Chemours will be able to propose projects to fund without input from the state of North Carolina or its residents. If any state requires additional PFAS cleanup or mitigation from Chemours, the funds spent by Chemours may be deposited into this $90 million pool. Chemours is not required to commit to spending this money in North Carolina.”
If you divide that $90 million by the three states over 15 years, it equates to about $2 million per year in each state.
This amount is miniscule compared to the amount already spent on research and mitigation of PFAS contamination across the state.
North Carolina epidemiologist Jane Hoppin, principal investigator on the GenX exposure study, told NC Health News that since 2017, she has raised about $11.5 million to support the research project, which will collect and test blood and other biological samples from 1,200 people. Hoppin said he will continue to rely on research funding to fund this project for years to come.
Kemp Burdett, executive director of Cape Fear River Watch, a Wilmington-based environmental advocacy group, said the group collects water samples, pays for laboratory testing, and pays for Chemours and Cape Fear River Watch. He could not provide numbers on how much money was spent enforcing a 2019 consent order with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, but told NC Health News it’s a significant amount of money and the effort continues.
Kemp said he and his staff continue to inform the public about PFAS-related environmental issues and contribute to policy proposals and PFAS litigation.
The North Carolina Collaborative, an initiative of the General Assembly that coordinates research across the UNC system to support state and local government decision-making, has received approximately $54 million from the North Carolina General Assembly since 2018 to support PFAS research, senior research adviser Steve Wall revealed in an email to NC Health News.
“$450 million sounds like a lot, but $450 million divided among three states over 15 years is a drop in the bucket for the amount of money needed to clean up PFAS,” said Beth Klein Marchesino, former founder of the nonprofit advocacy group Stop GenX in our Water.
“This does not include the thousands of well owners across the state who have detectable PFAS limits from Chemours,” she continued. “The $450 million is a start to help struggling utilities install filters, and what our country needs is mandatory PFAS limits in drinking water.
decades of pollution
Since PFAS contamination was first detected in the Ohio River Basin in the early 2000s, research has been conducted to track the health effects of chemicals known to persist in the environment.
Since then, researchers have found a possible link between PFAS and several health effects, including lower birth rates, certain types of cancer, weakened immune systems, thyroid disease, and liver and kidney damage.
Contamination of the Cape Fear River was brought to light in a 2017 Wilmington Star-News exposé that revealed the chemical GenX and other older forms of PFAS were detected in river water downstream of Chemours’ Fayetteville plant on the Bladen County line. Local power companies and the state were initially alerted to the problem by Detlef Knappe, a water quality scientist at North Carolina State University, but did not release the findings.
The Cape Fear River winds 320 miles through central and eastern North Carolina. It is the source of water for industrial and public drinking water systems and was found to contain the chemical contaminant GenX in the summer of 2016. This aerial photo captures Lock and Dam No. over Wilmington.
The facility produces industrial gases, plastics and resin chemicals, and had improperly stored chemicals on-site. The settlement documents also say the company allowed PFAS-contaminated wastewater to flow into the Cape Fear River.
“From 2004 to 2022, surface water sampling at Old DuPont and Chemours downstream of the Fayetteville plant detected discharges of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid) into the Cape Fear River. PFOA concentrations ranged from 42,000 to 49,000 (parts per trillion); “Concentrations will be 40,000 to 44,000 (parts per trillion) by 2021,” the settlement states.
A subsequent investigation of the surrounding area revealed contamination of the soil and drinking water wells with PFAS, ostensibly released from the chemical facility’s chimney and carried by the wind into the surrounding area.
Monitoring also detected other stormwater runoff from 2019 to 2021 that totaled approximately 1.8 million ppa of PFOA. In 2020, an NCDEQ report found “staggering” amounts of PFAS contamination in discharges to Deep River, a tributary of the Cape Fear River, with measured PFOS concentrations of 1,000 parts per trillion, far lower than the concentrations released by Chemours.
The state reached a consent agreement with Chemours in 2019 that fined the company $12 million and required it to accelerate steps to remove pollutants from the air, groundwater and river water.
After the first contamination incidents in Ohio and West Virginia, Chemours’ predecessor company, DuPont, paid hundreds of millions of dollars to study the effects of the chemicals, remediate the contamination, and compensate victims.
The proposed consent decree, filed in the Southern District of West Virginia, requires a 30-day comment period and final court approval. Information about submitting comments and accessing the settlement agreement is available at: Department of Justice Consent Order Proposed Web PageAccording to information provided by EP.”A.
Multiple claims against Chemours:
Wednesday’s agreement details long-standing issues with how Chemours handles hazardous waste at its plants in all three states. According to the survey results, Chemours in North Carolina:
- Discharged contaminated water without proper federal permits
- When it began releasing GenX in 2008, it failed to include relevant information about the chemicals produced in the process. This includes failing to include all information “to the extent known or reasonably ascertainable regarding worker exposure to GenX and environmental releases.”
- GenX failed to document compliance with limits on the amount released into the environment.
- Illegal manufacturing and processing of hexafluoropropylene oxide as part of the PFAS production process at the Fayetteville plant.
- Illegal manufacturing and processing of carbooxohalides, a PFAS precursor chemical, at the Fayetteville plant.
- Unauthorized acceptance of GenX waste shipped from a Chemours facility in the Netherlands for long-term storage in North Carolina.
The complaint also alleges that Chemours stored hazardous waste in unauthorized containers and improperly labeled them.
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