FAYETTEVILLE — Chemours, a company with troubling history of releasing chemical contaminants into the Cape Fear River, has offered reports and proposed action items to the state Department of Environment Quality and Cape Fear River Watch.
The actions are in accordance with a court order between the three entities. Chemours, in a news release, said its work includes initial data and proposals on reducing PFAS levels from the Fayetteville Works site that reach the river.
Chemours has been under the microscope regionally since June 2017, when the StarNews newspaper of Wilmington reported GenX was being discharged into the Cape Fear River. The river supplies drinking water to some municipalities downstream, including Wilmington.
GenX is a trade name for C3 dimer acid, a compound used in the manufacture of products such as food packaging, nonstick coatings and firefighting foam. It’s also a byproduct of certain manufacturing processes. HFPO-DA, an acronym for hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, is another name for the member of a family of chemical compounds known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
The effects of GenX on humans isn’t fully known. State regulation has been evolving.
GenX is considered the safer alternative to C8, a compound the company no longer makes. DuPont, of which Chemours is a spin-off company, paid an EPA fine of $16.5 million for failing to report C8’s substantial risk to human health and settled a class-action lawsuit involving water contamination in the Ohio River Valley by paying out more than $670 million.
Chemours, in the release, said the compressed period of time to gather data makes for a “smaller and incomplete data set upon which the company can draw conclusions to inform its action plan.”
A corrective action plan is due by Dec. 31.
That’s the same date by which Chemours hopes to already be operating its $75 million facility that will house a thermal oxidizer, calcium flouride system and cooling tower.
Chemours’ announcement this week said it is trying to determine the best approach to long-term mitigation of PFAS loading. It addresses PFAS mass entering the river from site-related sources.
There are seven recommended actions to be taken, four to be completed within two years and three that will take up to five years to complete. Chemours said these and two actions to capture and treat groundwater-releated loading sources directly at the river will significantly reduce PFAS mass entering the river at the facility on the Bladen-Cumberland county line.
Brian Long, the plant manager, said in the release, “Our first phase of action has been to substantially reduce current emissions, and we’ve done that. We have already achieved over a 95 percent decrease of C3 dimer acid in the river, a 92 percent reduction in air emissions of PFAS constituents, and we’ll soon be controlling 99 percent of air emissions when our Emissions Control Facility is completed at the end of this year.”
Long said when current emissions are addressed, experts can assess and understand how historic air deposition and other sources have impacted ground water.
Chemours is building a $75 million facility that will house a thermal oxidizer, calcium flouride system and cooling tower.