Residents still on bottled water as more ‘forever chemicals’ on way to Fayetteville Works
I met Vickie Mullins in September of last year on campus at Bladen County Community College.
A slight frame and spitfire personality, Mullins wore an orange shirt for her organization, Gray's Creek Residents United Against PFAS in our Wells & Rivers.
PFAs, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are the so-called “forever chemicals” like GenX produced by Chemours, which had sponsored the event Mullins and I attended. It was an open house about the company’s plans to expand at its Fayetteville Works site off N.C. 87 at the Cumberland and Bladen county lines.
More: EPA explains why it authorized GenX imports to Fayetteville
Mullins and her family have been using bottled water for six years now; their wells are among those near the Fayetteville plant that has been found to be contaminated. They have jugs of water everywhere — under the kitchen table, in every bathroom.
As for showers, which spray down unfiltered water?
More: Chemours advances with Fayetteville site expansion; residents skeptical
“We take fast showers,” she said. “We have to. You got to do something.”
She says it can be difficult to make her young grandkids understand.
“How do you tell him he can’t take a bath?" she said of one grandson. "He’s 8. He wants to play in the tub.
“We don’t let him.”
Mullins opposed the expansion plans, which went ahead anyway.
It was not the only sign the company is marching on with its production of GenX. This, despite environmental and health concerns that the compound has raised with both state and national environmental officials. Despite, also, Chemours' participation in a consent order, which was entered into by Chemours, the N.C. Dept. of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center.
More: How up to 4 million pounds of GenX could be coming to Chemours' Fayetteville Works plant
4 million pounds of GenX
Last month, Mullins was among those shocked to learn that the Environmental Protection Agency in a letter had cleared Chemours to import 4 million pounds of GenX from a site in the Netherlands to the Fayetteville Works, according to reporting at NC Newsline.
“We had no clue,” she said. “When I seen it — I have not been a happy camper since. It’s just crazy.
“We are already battling a mess. It’s like they just don’t care.”
The story about the imported GenX caught me off guard, too. I was surprised by the actions of the EPA, which in a fact sheet about GenX notes "animal studies following oral exposure have shown health effects including on the liver, kidneys, the immune system, development of offspring, and an association with cancer" with the liver being particularly vulnerable.
The federal agency is also headed by Michael S. Regan, whose last job was head of our state’s DEQ. That agency had been on the front lines (or so I thought) of tracking the contamination, which has hit hard Cumberland and Bladen residents and residents in Wilmington, in the lower Cape Fear River basin. I thought Regan might look out for us.
A concerned river watcher
But Dana Sargent, director of Cape Fear River Watch, reminded me that the watch sued the NC DEQ for not taking stronger action against Chemours.
She likes to point out that many of Chemours’ public-facing actions related to GenX are requirements of the decree, including the open house where I met Mullins, i.e. not actions done out of the goodness of anyone’s heart.
The company's paying for bottled water and under-sink filtration systems are also part of the decree.
“They’re doing that again by court order,” she says. “They’re not conducting any cleaning or providing any maintenance unless they’re by court orders.”
Sargent, who is based in Wilmington, said the importing of the GenX from the Netherlands concerns her, even the transport of what she considers toxic "sludge" to different ports of call and in trucks overland.
Normal people
Chemours in a statement told a Fayetteville Observer reporter that the Fayetteville plant would not likely use anywhere close to its full allotment of imported GenX. It said the plant employed technology that would abate emissions in line with operating permits and the consent order.
Recycling GenX is important in manufacturing GenX and allows the company to produce less of the material, the statement said.
In 2018, Chemours imported 116 tons of GenX to the Fayetteville plant from the Netherlands.
In the meantime, the effects of GenX are marching onward, as inexorably as Chemours.
Researchers at N.C. State University reopened this past summer their GenX Exposure Study, where they track and investigate the effects on more than 1,000 people in the Fayetteville and Wilmington areas. Information on how to enroll or re-enroll is available at the website, hgenxstudy.ncsu.edu.
Mullins does not know when it all will end. She told another story about her grandchildren.
“We went to West Virginia to see my family. The middle grandson turns on my niece’s water and was getting himself a glass of water and the littlest one started screaming, “No! You’re not allowed to drink the water. We can’t drink the water!
“I stopped him. I said, ‘No baby, that’s how normal people live. We had that right taken away from us.”
Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Forever in Fayetteville: More GenX coming even as cleanup, study continue
