Kentucky suing DuPont over years of chemical contamination from upstream W.Va. plant

Kentucky is taking one of the nation’s biggest chemical companies to court, alleging a legacy of chemical pollution from a facility in West Virginia has tainted the commonwealth’s natural resources, according to a complaint filed Friday.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of new proposed drinking water limits on those particular chemicals — PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — which can be costly to filter and are expected to add pressure to already-aging public water systems nationally.

Kentucky is seeking damages “to pay all past and future costs incurred by the Commonwealth in investigating, monitoring, and otherwise responding to PFAS contamination throughout Kentucky,” according to the complaint, “as well as damages for harm to the Commonwealth’s natural resources, caused by Defendants’ releases of PFAS.”

DuPont de Nemours and two of its spinoff companies, Chemours and Corteva, are the defendants. The three have collectively shelled out billions of dollars in settling similar suits over the years.

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The filing by Kentucky’s Energy and Environment Cabinet takes aim at the 1,200-acre Washington Works facility a few miles outside Parkersburg, West Virginia, and its releases of PFAS. These chemicals are toxic and have been linked to various cancers, and once they enter the environment, they break down incredibly slowly, if at all.

The site is about 120 miles upstream on the Ohio River from Kentucky, and was the focus of the 2019 film “Dark Waters.” It’s historically been both a central piece of the area’s economy and a notorious PFAS polluter, drawing thousands of lawsuits over the years.

As early as 1951, the plant was using PFAS in the production of Teflon products. A study later found that over half a century, the Washington Works site released more than 1.7 million pounds of PFOA, a type of PFAS sometimes referred to as C-8, into the environment.

“For years, the DuPont Company knowingly discharged (PFAS) into the Ohio River from its plant in West Virginia, all to the detriment of public water systems that use the Ohio River as a source and to Kentuckians who use the Ohio River for recreation,” according to a statement from the Energy and Environment Cabinet.

In the years leading up to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new drinking water restrictions on PFAS proposed last month, the cabinet sampled dozens of sites around Kentucky for the so-called “forever chemicals.”

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In initial monitoring in 2019, PFAS were found all over the state and across finished drinking water in systems supporting a combined 1.7 million people. More has been found since then, both in surface water and fish samples.

“While we don’t comment on litigation matters, we believe these complaints are without merit,” DuPont de Nemours said in a statement, “and we look forward to vigorously defending our record of safety, health and environmental stewardship.”

Chemours and Corteva did not respond to requests for comment.

Chemours was formed in 2015 when DuPont separated its chemical division — along with some of its environmental liabilities. Chemours later sued DuPont over those liabilities, but the case was dismissed.

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Similarly, Corteva was formed in 2019 from DuPont, and was listed as a defendant because it “is believed to have assumed some of the PFAS liabilities of the former DuPont,” according to the complaint.

DuPont “restructured their company, and they put their liabilities in a subsidiary that they knew would not be able to pay for the contamination they created,” the cabinet said in its statement.

Similar lawsuits have been filed around the country over PFAS. Minnesota settled a lawsuit against 3M in 2018 over allegations that the company contaminated drinking water with PFAS, which resulted in about $720 million to be spent on drinking water and natural resources projects, according to the state.

It’s unclear how much it will cost Kentucky’s environmental agencies and drinking water systems to combat PFAS and meet the EPA’s proposed rules. In one of the state’s surface water samples, in the Cumberland River basin, PFAS detection was more than 60 times higher than the limit for drinking water proposed by the EPA.

The Louisville Water Co. — Kentucky’s biggest drinking water utility — said it’s currently within the EPA’s limits, and is assessing further treatment options and potential costs. For smaller and rural systems, meeting guidelines could prove more of an undertaking.

Bennet Goldstein of Wisconsin Watch contributed reporting. This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky suing DuPont over PFAS pollution from West Virginia plant