Local News

EPA report: Inspectors didn't police GenX limit because they didn't know about it

For most of a decade, the EPA relied on the company to police itself on PFAS chemical rules because inspectors weren't told about them.

Posted Updated
Chemours sign, Fayetteville Works plant
By
Travis Fain
, WRAL statehouse reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — For eight years, environmental regulators didn't inspect the Chemours facility in Bladen County to make sure it complied with a federal agreement on chemical releases because those regulators didn't know the agreement existed, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general said in a report Thursday.

This on-site inspection didn't take place until 2017, after the Wilmington Star-News published an expose and publicly revealed that GenX – a chemical manufactured at the plant – was in Wilmington's drinking water supply, downstream from the plant along the Cape Fear River.

EPA officials had struck a consent order with the company in 2009, requiring it to capture 99 percent of the chemical from any effluent it sent into the river or released into the air. But the agreement wasn't reviewed by the EPA office responsible for inspections and compliance, nor was it shared with the Atlanta regional office with oversight for the Bladen County plant, the Office of the Inspector General said.

From 2009 to 2017, the EPA simply relied on "information provided by the manufacturer" to verify compliance with the order, according to the inspector general's report, which was released Thursday morning.

The company had been dumping chemicals into the Cape Fear River for years and releasing it into the air through smokestacks at the plant, which is called the Fayetteville Works.

GenX is part of a family of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly called PFAS, that are used in firefighting foams, nonstick cookware and other items. They're hard to remove from drinking water, and some have been linked to cancer and other illnesses.

The inspector general's report doesn't say that Chemours, which was still part of DuPont when the 2009 consent order was put in place, actually violated that consent order. A spokesperson for the office said that was outside the scope of their inquiry.

But after the 2017 revelations, the company said it would stop discharging the chemicals into the river, trucking it away instead for incineration or deep earth burial.

State regulators stepped up their oversight on the plant and filed their own consent order. The company announced a $100 million plan in 2018 to clean up emissions, including plans to install machinery at the works to remove 99 percent of GenX emissions from the air stacks.

Chemours said earlier this year that its new system is destroying 99.999 percent of PFAS emissions.

Company spokeswoman Lisa Randall said in an email Thursday that Chemours "has consistently worked with EPA, DEQ and other agencies related to the operation of the Fayetteville Works site" and that it remains focused on remediation efforts under way at and around the plant.

The back and forth over various cleanup plans at and around the facility continues. The state Department of Environmental Quality said in April that a corrective action plan the company submitted at the end of 2019 needed extensive revisions.

Because of the inspector general's inquiry, the EPA has agreed to build a new searchable database of all consent orders so that regional offices will know about them. That search tool should be ready by the end of this year, the EPA said in its response to the inspector general's report.

But EPA leaders haven't come to terms with the inspector general's office yet on another recommendation in the report: That the agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance review and approve terms of these consent orders.

 Credits 

Copyright 2024 by Capitol Broadcasting Company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.