More than 250 people attend State of the River forum to talk PFAS
Cape Fear River Watch members welcome a packed house
WILLMINGTON, NC (WWAY) – Cape Fear River Watch hosted an inaugural state of the river forum Wednesday morning.
The forum was to call attention to challenges that face the Cape Fear River Basin surrounding the “forever chemicals” or PFAS and to discuss efforts that can be made to tackle the issue.
Covid-19 prevented the group from gathering and further discussing pollutants released in the Cape Fear River, and their impacts on humans and animals,.
“We just wanted to have an opportunity to have people get together in person,” said Cape Fear River Watch’s executive director, Dana Sargent. “It was really hard to understand what was happening in environmental conservation and environmental justice.”
More than 250 people showed up at Cape Fear Community College’s Windell Daniels Hall to hear experts address health and environmental impacts on the region, and discuss solutions to help fix the problem.
Amy Grogan is a Ph.D. student at UNCW, her work centers around monitoring water quality in the Cape Fear River, she made it a point to drop by to get in on the conversation.
“I came to this meeting today (Wednesday) to learn more about what’s going on in the river basin, what kind of science is conducted, and what kind of advocacy is going on,” said Grogan. “Sharing the knowledge and getting it out there is really important.”
Grogan said change comes through education and getting the word out, Cape Fear River Watch board member Chantay Allen echoes the same sentiment.
“Since then, we’ve had a lot of people in the community get reverse osmosis filtration,” said Allen. “We’ve had businesses change the way they do business with filtering their water and letting people know you should get your water tested.
“So they are aware of the impact, the Chemours plant has had on our water quality here.”
According to both Allen and Sargent, being proactive is key to helping mitigate the issue.
“Discontinue using products from Dupont, and support businesses that are phasing out the use of PFAS,” said Allen. “That’s what you can do.”
“There are things that everyone can do, anything from doing a little clean-up in your neighborhood to picking up the phone and making a call to our legislator,” said Sargent. “It takes thirty seconds”
For more than 35 years Chemours and Dupont dumped “forever chemicals” like Gen-X, into the Cape Fear River.
The companies now face class-action lawsuits for their part in contributing to contaminating land, air and water through their manufacture – use, and disposal of PFAS chemicals.
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