Chemical company’s response to water worries is silence

Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C.

Americans have grown accustomed to hearing apologies from everyone from cheating car-makers to cheating presidents, but a Fortune 500 chemical company with a pollution problem in North Carolina is following a different model: Don’t apologize, don’t explain.

For six months, Wilmington, Del.-based Chemours Co. has faced questions about an unregulated chemical with unknown health risks that flowed from the company’s plant into the Cape Fear River, which provides drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people.

The company has said virtually nothing in its own defense about chemicals it may have discharged for nearly four decades, and it skipped legislative hearings looking into health concerns.

Earlier this month, North Carolina environmental regulators said they might fine Chemours, revoke its license to discharge treated wastewater into the nearby river and open a criminal probe. State officials said the company chose silence over reporting a chemical spill last month as required.

In a rare response, Chemours said it’s committed to operating the plant, which employs about 900, “in accordance with all applicable laws and in a manner that respects the environment and public health and safety.”

New tests have detected the chemical GenX, used to make Teflon and other industrial products, at levels beyond the state’s estimated but legally unenforceable safety guidepost in 50 private water wells near Chemours’ Fayetteville plant and at a water treatment plant in Wil-mington, about 100 miles downstream. There are no federal health standards addressing GenX and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies it as an “emerging contaminant” to be studied.

Lack of information about the chemical, its prevalence and health effects has disturbed people across eastern North Carolina.

DuPont began using GenX to replace another fluorinated compound after neighbors of the company’s Parkersburg, W.Va., plant claimed in more than 3,500 lawsuits that the compound made them sick. DuPont spun off Chemours into a separate company two years ago. A jury in July 2016 found the two companies liable for a man’s testicular cancer that he said was linked to a chemical emitted by the West Virginia plant.

The two companies this year agreed to pay nearly $671 million to settle further lawsuits.