EPA gets earful from Cumberland residents on GenX

Chemours, a chemical company with a plant near the Cumberland-Bladen county line, produces GenX for use in Teflon, fast food wrappers and other products. The compound's effects on human health are largely unstudied, but it was designed as the replacement for C8, a compound linked to cancer that's at the center of thousands of lawsuits.

GenX was dumped into the Cape Fear River for years until state officials asked Chemours to halt the practice a year ago, when tests revealed the compound was showing up in treated drinking water in Wilmington. State regulators have since been checking for GenX emissions into the air from the plant and its related appearance in groundwater and private wells.

Timeline: Tracking GenX contamination in NC

The state Department of Environmental Control has pressed Chemours for faster deployment of technology to cut GenX emissions, and environmental groups have sued over the issue.

Representatives from DEQ and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency held a community forum in Fayetteville to share information about GenX publicly and get feedback from dozens of residents about how the chemical's presence in the water and air has affected them.

John Pate, who lives about 3 miles from the Chemours plant, said he and his neighbors don't want to end up the future like other communities with contaminated water.

"[They had] the same problem up in West Virginia. We could be still looking at 20 years down the road people coming up with things. We don't know," Pate said.

Peter Grevatt, a drinking water expert with the EPA, and other officials tried to reassure residents they are doing everything possible to make sure their water supply is safe.

"We'll have toxicity information available this September on GenX, and we're working side by side with the state of North Carolina in partnership to make sure we have the very best information available for the public," Grevatt said.

"PFAS contamination is a problem that affects drinking water providers across the country," Carel Vandermeyden, director of engineering for the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority in Wilmington, said in a statement, referring to the general name for chemicals like GenX. "Water utilities cannot solve this problem alone. We need a collaborative strategy to address PFAS contamination. We need stricter source control, an improved [wastewater] permitting system and methods of remediation that protect drinking water sources and users of our nation's waterways."

State officials last year set a health goal for concentrations of GenX in water at 140 parts per trillion, a conservative estimate they say is safe for a baby being bottle-fed formula prepared from drinking water. A panel of scientists is reviewing that threshold and could revise it up or down.

In addition to making sure Chemours continues to provide bottled water to nearby residents with contaminated wells, the state is moving forward with legal action against the company.

"We have an order that we filed before the court," DEQ Secretary Michael Regan said. "We'll move forward on that order to ensure that adequate protection for our drinking water and our families but also that the company is held accountable."

"Communities across North Carolina are extremely concerned about the impacts of PFAS contamination on our health and our environment," Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette said in a statement. "We appreciate the opportunity to share those concerns with the EPA and we expect the EPA to take action on this critical issue."