Southern Environmental Law Center investigating Chemours

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — The Southern Environmental Law Center is taking a closer look at Chemours after learning the company was discharging GenX in the Cape Fear River.

North Carolina SELC Director Derb Carter says the firm has requested all the water permitting documents and files the state has on Chemours. Even though the current permit expired in October, the SELC is looking at the documents that accompanied that permit, as well as the documents associated with Chemours’ permit renewal application.

Lawyers are investigating whether the company is complying with the permit, what the permit covers, what it doesn’t cover and whether it adequately covers what it should cover.

As previously mentioned during a news conference with local leaders after their meeting with Chemours last week, the company can still operate under its expired permit.

Carter says North Carolina allows this if the company submits a renewal application 180 days before the permit expires.

Carter says documents show Chemours submitted their renewal application on May 3, just one day before their deadline.

Chemours’ expired permit has a condition that allows monitoring for PFOA (C8), which is the chemical replaced by GenX. The permit requires them to monitor for PFOA at their intake but not their outfall. Carter says the permit says Chemours “may monitor,” which he calls odd. Carter questions whether this means mean they don’t have to? Carter says that’s what they’re trying to get to the bottom of.

Carter notes that in Chemours’ pending application, the company is requesting monitoring for PFOA to be discontinued, as the company contends they no longer manufacture PFOA there. Carter says the point is, Chemours was aware of issues relating to PFOA at the time this permit was previously issued.

Carter says in the renewal application, there is no mention of GenX anywhere, and no supporting material or correspondence between the state and the company. There is no reference of the company doing anything about GenX.

SELC is also looking at the regulatory compliance related to whether they have a permit that complies with state, federal and legal requirements. As for the new permit application, Carter says the state has an obligation to respond and address the issues GenX has raised.

As far as taking any other steps against Chemours, Carter say SELC is slowly starting to get all the materials they have requested, so he is hesitant to say what will happen next.

He does point out, in 2012, Chemours failed a toxicity test on its discharge. NC requires the test to determine whether the pollution is toxic. There’s a specific test that looks at the effects of the effluent (liquid waste or sewage discharged into a river) on organisms. After they failed, they were allowed to do two more tests, which passed under state protocol. Carter says Chemours didn’t have to do anything else after that point. Carter says they are going to get all the details about that as well.

Carter says the EPA does a lot of studies on various chemicals and eventually adopts a “safe threshold,” a number that shows the concentration of a chemical considered safe to humans and aquatic life.

Carter says the EPA prefers states to include those numbers in specific limits, which means a company’s discharge must stay within that limit.

NC is resistant to the EPA’s request to put in those limits, according to Carter. He says instead, NC has adopted a toxicity testing approach, what he calls, an “after the fact” approach, that requires a company, if they potentially have toxic chemicals in wastewater, to put a concentration of it in water with little organisms and measure how many die or don’t reproduce at the expected level. If it triggers the threshold as being toxic, then there’s an inquiry to figure out what the problem is.

Carter says part of the problem when testing that way? It’s already in the water and affecting people.

In recent years, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed lawsuits to force Duke Energy to clean up its coal ash sites.