Infamous PFAS polluter still spewing ‘forever chemicals'

E&E News

19-05-2025

A West Virginia chemical plant widely known for its discharge of 'forever chemicals' into the Ohio River is still spewing those contaminants at levels far above what's considered safe, in spite of a ballyhooed federal pollution crackdown.
In what was hailed as a landmark agreement with the Biden administration in April 2023, Chemours pledged to contain those chemicals — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — at its Washington Works plant.
But PFAS are still flowing.
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Pollution from Washington Works — the focus of a 2019 film, 'Dark Waters' — is a scourge for water utilities as far away as Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. Located hundreds of miles downstream from the Chemours' plant, both cities draw drinking water from the Ohio River.
Peter Goodmann, director of water quality at Louisville Water, said the city's drinking water intakes have seen PFAS spikes that correlate with the plant's discharges. He has notified EPA and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.
'I'm trying to get EPA and West Virginia DEP, who has been really helpful to us, to hold their feet to the fire,' Goodmann said in an interview. 'There's politics to this, particularly with [the Trump] administration. I don't know what their enforcement stance will be.'
PFAS, which earned the nickname 'forever chemicals' because they don't break down in the environment and accumulate in the human body, have been dumped in the Ohio River by Washington Works since 1951. Today, it is one of a dozen U.S. plants that produce the substances, prized for their resistance to heat, oil and water and used in products like plastics, carpets and semiconductors.
One substance being discharged at high levels by Washington Works is PFOA, which is considered so toxic that chemical companies agreed years ago to stop making it. The other major pollutant is GenX, a similar 'forever' substance that studies have linked to kidney damage, liver problems, weakened immune systems and cancer.
Chemours has routinely exceeded limits its wastewater permit places on both pollutants since at least January 2022, according to data in EPA's enforcement and compliance database. The permit limits are weak to begin with, experts say, because they are based on outdated health guidance on PFAS.
'You've got West Virginia with a permit that's out of date and is imposing inadequate discharge limits, a company that's violating those discharge limits and a federal agency that's sort of lackadaisical in enforcing the limits on the books,' said Robert Sussman, an EPA attorney during the Clinton and Obama administrations.
Chemours is facing a lawsuit from the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, which is asking a district court to order the company to stop violating its permit.
The West Virginia DEP says it is working to address the violations. The plant is also subject to EPA oversight.
'We've learned and are learning more and more about the dangers of these chemicals,' said Larry Starfield, who was principal deputy assistant administrator in EPA's enforcement office from 2011 to 2023. 'Where there are discharges that exceed safe levels, enforcement needs to be fast and strong.'
Whether the Trump EPA can step up to the task remains to be seen.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin recently announced his intention to hold polluters accountable for PFAS discharges and prevent more contamination. But his pledge comes as he is slashing agency staffing and spending. All eyes are on EPA's planned regulatory revamp, including an effort to redo the first federal limits on PFAS in drinking water.
'An ideal pollutant'
Originally operated by DuPont, Washington Works was among the first PFAS production sites whose discharges grabbed the attention of its neighbors and — eventually — of regulators.
There was a protracted fight in the late 1990s over PFOA that was dramatized in 'Dark Waters,' which starred Mark Ruffalo. For decades, people living nearby were unknowingly exposed to extremely high concentration of PFOA in their tap water, according to David Altman, an environmental attorney who represents the Little Hocking Water Association across the river in Ohio.
'It was an ideal pollutant [back then] if you were a polluter, because nobody would know they had it,' Altman said. 'Now, you'd think they'd at least abide by the weak permits.'
Chemours was spun off from DuPont as an independent company in 2015. Since then, it has not intentionally made or used any PFOA, company spokesperson Jess Loizeaux said.
But PFOA remains at the plant site a 'legacy' pollutant, she said. The plant also uses a PFOA replacement, GenX.
When the Biden administration announced a crackdown on Washington Works in 2023, it was hailed as the first federal attempt to hold PFAS producers accountable for water pollution. At the time, EPA found PFAS waste was being left in partially uncovered grates and spilling into Ohio River tributaries, among other problems.
The ensuing consent order with Chemours did not include monetary penalties. But EPA hoped the company would agree to better control its PFAS discharges, because it was already doing so at another plant in Fayetteville, North Carolina, said Zachary Schafer, a former senior official in the agency's water office.
'The cost of installing and maintaining these controls is so low relative to the revenue generated by these companies that it's really challenging to try to justify not implementing those same controls across the industry,' Schafer said
The consent order required Chemours to implement a stormwater plan to prevent PFAS from washing off the site when it rains. The company has done that, Loizeaux said.
Chemours was also ordered to craft a plan for treating GenX and PFOA, aimed at reducing discharges and complying with its permit. While the company submitted that plan to EPA in August 2023, the agency did not provide feedback until December 2024, Loizeaux said.
'We're continuing conversations with EPA and awaiting the Agency's approval of the plan before we can move forward with implementation of the proposed abatement projects,' she said in an email.
Chemours' original plan was rejected, an EPA spokesperson said. It involved injecting PFAS-filled wastewater underground, which EPA said could threaten groundwater and violated West Virginia law.
A former EPA enforcement attorney, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about confidential proceedings, said Chemours resisted more protective PFAS storage and treatment options.
'We didn't think they had done enough of the homework. I think that was probably by design — the longer you draw this thing out, the more money they make,' said the former EPA attorney, who left the agency about a year ago. 'It was very frustrating.'
Chemours reported $86 million in income last year.
As difficult as it was to address Chemours' pollution under the Biden administration, the former EPA attorney doubts anything will happen now under President Donald Trump.
The Trump White House has proposed cutting EPA's budget in half next year. It's also hoping to shrink EPA's workforce. All told, about 20 percent of EPA employees have applied for deferred resignation or early retirement since Trump took office, according to the latest figures.
In addition, Zeldin aims to reassign hundreds of researchers and staff scientists, including to the office that approves new chemicals. That's raising questions about the future of federal research on PFAS monitoring, health effects and disposal methods.
'There's such a brain drain going on with this administration,' the former EPA attorney said. 'The programs are limping along, even the most established ones. And the PFAS one was cutting-edge and just getting started.'
An EPA spokesperson said the agency is evaluating Chemours' latest PFAS proposals for Washington Works.
'EPA continues to be actively engaged in reviewing the company's [plant], which is another step toward addressing these discharges,' the spokesperson said. 'EPA has not issued any penalties in this matter, but nothing forecloses the Agency from seeking penalties in the future.'
The agency also maintains that it can fulfill its mission and protect the environment with fewer staff. Even so, EPA has seemingly fallen behind on yet another agreement it reached with Chemours in December 2023.
That one demanded that Chemours sample for PFAS at Washington Works that have accumulated over decades in the soil, surface water, sediment groundwater and waste streams. The company agreed to develop a plan to determine how far the contamination has spread and ensure nearby communities were protected.
Chemours' work plan for PFAS sampling wasn't submitted until last month, the EPA spokesperson said. It is now under review.
'The facilities will sue you'
West Virginia DEP issued Chemours' current wastewater permit in 2018. Today, the state is aware of 'significant noncompliance' issues and continues to work on resolving them, DEP spokesperson Terry Fletcher said.
But after the permit expired in July 2023, the state agreed to extend it at Chemours' request — without adding additional requirements on PFAS.
That practice, known as an administrative extension, is allowed under the Clean Water Act. But it can constitute a significant loophole, said James Giattina, a retired EPA staffer who worked at the agency for over 30 years.
When a company files to renew a wastewater permit, there's no strict timeline for states or EPA to issue them, Giattina said. That raises the possibility that pollution controls and limits will become outdated, especially for newer pollutants like PFAS, he said.
'We actually proposed a fix on [these] permits, back in the last part of the Obama administration, to close the loophole by setting a time limit on how long a permit could go without reissuance before EPA could step in and have to reissue the permit,' Giattina said. 'But that didn't get anywhere.'
Chemours' permit is based on a 'provisional health goal' established for its other chemical plant in Fayetteville, Fletcher said. Developed in 2017, the health goal set a maximum 'safe' limit for GenX in drinking water at 140 parts per trillion, he said.
'West Virginia is using that value to protect human health and support the designated uses of the Ohio River,' Fletcher said.
But whether that level is sufficiently protective — or the best Chemours can do — is debatable.
Since 2022, North Carolina has required Chemours to capture 99.99 percent of PFAS discharges at its plant in Fayetteville. That requirement came after revelations that the company had released GenX for years into the Cape Fear River, a drinking water source for Wilmington and other cities.
'We've seen significant reductions in PFAS as a result, both from air emissions standpoint and cleaning up groundwater,' said Elizabeth Biser, the former head of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
Why a similar agreement hasn't been reached in West Virginia is unclear. Bruno Pigott, who led the Indiana Department of Environmental Management from 2017 to 2021, said states might be hesitant to impose strict permit limits that go beyond EPA requirements.
'The facilities will sue you,' said Pigott, who led EPA's water office in the final year of the Biden administration. 'They'll say, 'What's the basis for this?' You'll be in litigation, and potentially, a limit could be stayed.'
Advocacy groups like the West Virginia Rivers Coalition seem less sympathetic to their state's regulators.
Months before the group filed its lawsuit last December, West Virginia granted Chemours a second wastewater permit. That has enabled the company to ramp up production of a PFAS-containing product called Teflon and spurred more pollution.
While the new permit imposes tougher discharge limits for PFOA and GenX, it was opposed by many nearby residents, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported. The West Virginia Rivers Coalition and Earthjustice also objected on the grounds that the Ohio River would not be able to handle more PFAS. At least a dozen PFAS compounds have been detected in the river.
Since obtaining the permit, Chemours has at times violated the new limits for GenX and PFOA.
'The WVDEP has issued Notices of Violations (NOVs) for these non-compliances,' Fletcher said in an email.
Loizeaux, the Chemours spokesperson, said the company increased production to meet growing demand for Teflon from the semiconductor industry. Washington Works is the only facility that makes the material, which she said is essential to making semiconductor chips used in data centers.
'The expansion of production capacity for Teflon™ PFA fluoropolymers was necessary to meet rising market demand as the [artificial intelligence] boom gains steam and as the U.S. works to build out domestic supply chains to minimize its reliance on foreign suppliers for national security reasons,' Loizeaux said.
Chemours has a goal of eliminating at least 99 percent of PFAS water and air emissions from all its plants by 2030, she added.
Still, the drinking water well fields across the river in Little Hocking, Ohio, have seen a fivefold increase in GenX in the last several years, said Altman, the water utility's attorney.
Chemours pays for the community's carbon treatment system to remove PFAS from the water. But Altman worries the system will stop working for GenX, a shorter-chain chemical, if concentrations keep increasing.
That would be especially devastating if EPA walks back its drinking water limits for the substance, he said. So far, EPA has committed to continuing to regulate PFOA and PFOS in drinking water, but not GenX.
'There are very real concerns about what has already been done and whether it's going to be left in place,' Altman said.