Watch Now to learn about the incredible accomplishments of our local leaders in their fight for clean drinking water.
We’ve heard about GenX for over five years now. It started off as a hot topic with headline after headline decrying its toxicity. Documentaries were made about it… and then it … faded away. What happened? Are our NC waters still polluted or are they now safe? Can we now drink tap water with peace of mind?
As often happens with a disaster, the outrage receives the initial spotlight, but as the hard work to deliver a solution drags on, media and public interest wanes.
This topic is too important not to follow up with. Read on to see the amazing efforts and initial solutions that the private, education and legislative sectors collaborated on to take big steps towards cleaning up our water. We still need your citizen voice to encourage accountability.
We believe Wilmington has benefited from some serious Warriors for Water! The duo of Senator Michael Lee and Representative Ted Davis have spent the last five-plus years advocating for solutions and accountability when it comes to GenX.
A Global Game-Changer.
In 2016, the NC General Assembly established the NC Collaboratory.1 Consisting of 17 universities across North Carolina, the Collaboratory brought together the best professors and the brightest students to share data across the state in order to study and address complex issues. These enthusiastic experts in their fields have access to state-of-the-art (and expensive) instrumentation and the know-how to deliver results.
When the GenX crisis became public in 2017, the go-to solution was to work with the DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality). Governor Cooper requested more money for the DEQ to address the issue. Yet, the more our representatives learned, they quickly realized the DEQ alone wasn’t the answer.
Senator Michael Lee proposed that the Collaboratory be used to address the PFAS crisis. Sen. Lee visited the laboratories of academic water-quality experts in North Carolina, spending hours discussing the details involved in establishing a statewide emerging-contaminant monitoring and alert program.2 The idea was to utilize the University system to monitor water across the state, share data, and research solutions.
The General Assembly agreed with Lee’s proposal, and SB99 was incorporated into the 2018 Budget Bill to fund The Collaboratory, which in turn created the North Carolina PFAST Network, a special group within the NC Collaboratory that would focus on PFAS pollutants, which includes GenX.
The media coverage of this Collaboratory solution was underwhelming relative to the feat that was accomplished. After the initial statewide media coverage of PFAS and Gen X generated by the Dupont Chemours plant in Fayetteville, only a handful of articles addressed the solution. It was hard to believe the left, including Governor Cooper and some local leaders, fought the General Assembly’s solution, when the solution actually benefitted ALL citizens in NC and their health. Clean water is not a partisan issue.
But they were wrong! This was a Smart Solution!!
Dr. Lee Ferguson, an Environmental Analytical Chemist at Duke and leading expert on emerging contaminants, wrote an Op-Ed featured in the Star News and called the efforts of the North Carolina General Assembly “visionary.” He praised Sen. Lee and his colleagues for their passion and commitment and stated that the monitoring program is “without question, the most sophisticated and comprehensive emerging-pollutant monitoring program for water in the United States.”2
What has the Collaboratory’s PFAST Network actually accomplished?
Not only does it monitor our state waterways for PFAS, but they have already developed a novel filtration technology to remove PFAS, ensuring we have safe water to drink. If the DEQ was the singular solution (as so many wanted), we wouldn’t be drinking cleaner water today. We are thankful for an innovative Collaboratory solution that has led to ground-breaking technology to address the crisis of forever chemicals around the world.
Fiscal Responsibility
North Carolina is now leading the way! With the largest investment made in the country, we could actually see the PFAS solution pay off. The state-of-the-art filtration solution developed by the PFAST Network can be licensed for use around the world with a portion of that fee coming back to the state. This solution checks all the boxes! It repurposed a system in already in place, the best of the best are working together, funds invested can be recouped – and best of all, Wilmington residents can rest assured their water is safe to drink!
So we have a novel water filtration solution but at the taxpayers cost! What stands in the way of making the polluters pay?
You’d think everyone is on the side of having clean drinking water, right? Think again. It’s hard to believe that business groups, including the NC Chamber of Commerce, Manufacturers Alliance, and the American Chemistry Council, argue that legislation that holds manufacturers accountable for PFAS pollution is ANTI-BUSINESS and, therefore, shouldn’t be passed.1
Sen. Ted Davis and Sen Lee have been fighting the battle for clean for years! Rep. Davis has introduced multiple bills designed to hold manufacturers accountable and prioritize our community’s health, yet he continues to get pushback from the governor and entities listed above. His latest Bill, HB 864, the PFAS Pollution and Polluter Liability, should come up for a vote in early 2024. Please call or write your legislators in support of this bill so the cost of clean water isn’t incumbent entirely on you, the taxpayer.
PFAS aren’t found only in the Cape Fear River – they are across waterways in North Carolina. Getting this Bill passed affects all North Carolinians and helps ensure that we are getting one of our most basic needs met – clean drinking water! Please reach out to your representatives and encourage their support of this Bill.
For Your Consideration
As the 2024 election draws nearer, consider the role of the Governor in a case like this. Why did Governor Cooper allow Chemours to remain open after they caused a public health crisis? Yet, had no problem shutting down small businesses during Covid in the name of public health. The NC General Assembly made sure he had the power to shut down polluters, but it remained operational.
At one point, Rep Ted Davis asked the DEQ, “What does Chemours have to do before you cease their operations?” and then, in a letter, requested Gov Cooper’s assistance to have the DEQ shut down Chemours until they could “absolutely guarantee that they could operate without endangering the quality of our drinking water.” Yet, Chemours remained operational.
In addition to local leaders standing up for our community, we need a Governor who cares enough about his/her people to make a stand when needed – even against big-money corporations. Some things, like health, are more important than money.
Don’t get us wrong, we LOVE business, especially manufacturing! We’d rather see more manufacturers make North Carolina their home than sweet-talking and incentivizing tech companies to move here – BUT not at the expense of our health. If you truly want to encourage businesses to move here, start with safe drinking water in your sales pitch!
EXTRA DETAILS
We’ve highlighted key aspects and linked to reports by many news outlets over the last 5 years detailing the timeline and actions of Dupont and the DEQ.
In 2000 Chemical manufacturer, 3M began to phase out C-8 because of their studies showing related health risks and citing “principles of responsible environmental management.” 1
Yet in early 2001, Dupont dismissed the studies by 3M2 and set about renewing its discharge permit with the DEQ. Dupont “wanted to bypass its wastewater treatment plant … [and] discharge the C8 waste into a wood-lined ditch leading to the Cape Fear River.” The agency allowed the production of C-8 and two years later approved a discharge permit to allow C-8 wastewater to be dumped in the river, although upon approval Dupont decided not to discharge the waste.3
Soon after, in 2003 it was discovered Dupont’s C-8 holding tanks were leaking and had contaminated groundwater. DEQ was made aware, but the state allowed the company to police itself. Two years later when the public found out, environmentalists pushed for more monitoring of Dupont and the Cape Fear River but said the DEQ “largely ignored the warnings.”4
In 2006 the DEQ finally set a temporary limit for PFOAs.5 The limit was set at 2,000 parts per trillion. This same year the EPA set a stricter threshold of 500 parts per trillion for PFOA under the Safe Water Drinking Act, but it only applied to areas near one of Dupont’s other Chemical Manufacturing plants, the Washington Works facility that was polluting the Ohio River and its tributaries with C-8. 6, 7
Why didn’t the EPA mandate apply nationwide? And why wasn’t this a red flag for the NC DEQ? The same company, Dupont, was polluting another waterway with the same chemical, C-8, that was seeping into the Cape Fear. The EPA’s standard was significantly lower than the DEQs that would stay in place for another 6 years.
By 2009, after a massive class-action lawsuit, Dupont phased out C-8, announcing it planned to replace it by commercially producing GenX, another man-made chemical falling under the PFAS umbrella.
They touted “GenX as having a “more favorable toxicological profile” than C-8.” YET between 2006 and 2013, they filed 16 reports8 of “substantial risk of injury to health or the environment,” which were submitted to the EPA.9 Yet, Dupont toxicologists concluded their findings were “not considered relevant for human risk assessment”.10
In 2012, DEQ’s Science Advisory Board unanimously recommended setting a maximum state limit for PFOA11 at 1,000 parts per trillion for groundwater which still did not meet the EPA’s Safe Water Act threshold set six years earlier.
Later that year, Chemists Mark Strynar and Andy Lindstrom from the EPA took water samples from the Cape Fear River, upriver from the plant’s discharge location and downriver. For over a year, a team of 10 scientists from five institutions worked to figure out what the chemicals they found in the water samples were – one was confirmed as GenX. 12
Dr. Detlef Knappe led a study at NC State University using raw tap water samples taken in 2013 and 2014. The study confirmed that conventional filtration did not remove PFAs – high levels of GenX were in Wilmington’s drinking water. Knappe’s research group and collaborators at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published the study in 2016. 13, 14, 15
While both legacy PFAs and emerging PFAs were found, a higher concentration of the emerging PFAs, including GenX was found. This suggested the newer, short-chain PFAs may be harder to remove than the older ones. 16
