'Clean up the mess': Fayetteville rally calls for more action to remove PFAS from water

Yahoo

05-04-2025

Nearly 30 area residents gathered this weekend outside the Fayetteville Public Works Commission headquarters building to protest the possibility of footing a bill to clean chemicals out of water sources.
The rally April 5 was hosted by several environmental and justice groups, including Cape Fear River Watch, Toxic Free North Carolina, Organizing Against Racism Cumberland County, Fayetteville Freedom for All and Action Z and centered around years-long discussions about forever chemicals released into the community.
The chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, are commonly known as PFOA and PFAS, which are substances that are used in manufacturing household products, industrial processes and firefighting foam and have been linked to adverse health outcomes.
While lawsuits have been filed against Chemours' Fayetteville Works plant on the Cumberland-Bladen county line to hold the company responsible for releasing chemicals, organizers at the April 5 rally said they are concerned that federal funding freezes could mean the city's local utility provider potentially loses $80 million to install filtration systems to help eliminate the chemicals.
In 2017, Wilmington-based Cape Fear River Watch learned that Chemours and its predecessor DuPont dumped chemicals from their Fayetteville Works facility into drinking water sources of more than 5,000 people, said Dana Sargent, executive director of Cape Fear River Watch.
'What should have happened then was the state regulators and legislators immediately made them stop the release, clean up the mess, stop producing garbage — that's what should have happened,' Sargent said.
Instead, Sargent said, the nonprofit she works for sued Chemours and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
PFAS and PFOA are manmade and found in microwave popcorn bags, makeup, dental floss, fast food packaging, cookware, paint and firefighting foam, Sargeant said.
She said that because of the lawsuit, a settlement was reached and a PFAS health study was conducted; but, she said, there has not been a health study on hundreds of other chemicals, including Gen X.
'Toxic Free NC and Cape Fear River Watch and several other partners had to sue the EPA last year to try to get a health study funded by Chemours, and we lost,' she said.
North Carolina environmental regulators have been investigating the Chemours company since June 2017, when the Wilmington StarNews first reported that researchers had published a study the previous year showing they had found GenX and similar compounds in the Cape Fear River. GenX has since been discovered in hundreds of private wells near the plant.
GenX is manufactured at the Chemours facility.
Chemours officials have previously said the amount of GenX found in wells around the company's plant is not harmful.
The company agreed to a consent order that requires it to drastically reduce the amount of GenX it is emitting into the air and take other action regarding the contamination.
The consent order requires Chemours to provide permanent replacement of drinking water to residences with wells where test results show detections of GenX above acceptable health guidelines.
In 2019, the company announced it had installed a thermal oxidizer expected to help control air emissions.
In June 2021, a company spokeswoman told The Fayetteville Observer that Chemours was going beyond the requirements of a consent order the company signed with the state and an environmental group and that it was committed to reducing fluorinated PFAS emissions by 99% by 2030.
Sargent said that any cleanup and investments Chemours makes are court-ordered.
She said she would rather see money put toward research and development into PFAS alternatives.
Sargent said that beyond the environmental concerns, she worries about the health implications.
Her brother was a career firefighter who died from a form of brain cancer in 2019, she said.
Sargent said she questions whether her brother's death was avoidable
She wasn't the only speaker who raised concerns about the health issues the chemicals can cause.
Carrol Olinger is the Fayetteville organizer for Action NC and said that she is a dialysis patient.
Olinger said she was exposed to PFAS when she worked in Gray's Creek schools for 17 years and that her neighborhood also had PFAS contamination.
She said she doesn't know whether to tell her children that there is a family history of kidney problems or that her need for dialysis is because she's been 'drinking poisonous water for years.'
'It doesn't matter what color you are. It doesn't matter what your political party is; we all need water,' Olinger said.
Angela Tatum is a Fayetteville doula who works with expectant and new mothers and said PFAS can get into the placenta and human milk.
"Clean water, especially for our moms and our babies, that's literally nonpartisan,' Tatum said. 'Everyone should want babies that are coming into this world to not be exposed to chemicals.'
The rally's organizers issued a call to action, which includes voicing opposition to a proposed NC Environmental Management Commission draft of a PFAS Monitoring and Minimization Program that would allow Chemours to monitor and self-report levels of contamination discharged from its facility.
They also asked residents to call upon senators, state representatives, Cumberland County commissioners and the Fayetteville City Council to write a letter to the commission opposing the changes.
Links to a petition that opposes chemical production companies seeking to seal court documents and a petition opposing a permit for Chemours to expand its Fayetteville facility were also distributed.
Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at [e-mail] or 910-486-3528.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Fayetteville, NC protesters at PWC against PFAS in water