Cape Fear River

Chemours appealing EPA’s stricter health advisory goal for GenX

BY: - July 13, 2022

Chemours announced today it has filed a legal challenge to the EPA’s new health advisory goal for GenX, a type of toxic perfluorinated compound, alleging the agency’s decision is not grounded in the best available science. Chemours petitioned the Third Circuit Court for a review. The court covers New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as […]

Citing toxic effects on humans, EPA issues strict new health advisory goals for GenX, other PFAS

BY: - June 15, 2022

WILMINGTON -- Even infinitesimal levels of several types of PFAS, including GenX, can harm human health, the EPA said today, underscoring the toxicity of these compounds in drinking water. Radihka Fox, assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Water, announced the more stringent lifetime health advisory goals at the national PFAS conference in Wilmington.

EPA: Two types of PFAS far more toxic than previously understood

BY: - November 17, 2021

The EPA released data yesterday that suggests two types of PFAS are more toxic than previously understood, which could trigger a drastic reduction in what the agency considers acceptable amounts in drinking water. The data showed that PFOA and PFOS were found to cause health problems at much lower reference doses by thousands of times. […]

Waccamaw Siouan tribal members are sick, and they want to know why

BY: - September 17, 2021

The Waccamaw Siouan, one of eight state-recognized Native American tribes in North Carolina, are known as  “The People of the Falling Star.” Tribal history says their homeland was formed when a meteor struck the earth thousands of years ago. Water from nearby lakes and rivers then flowed toward the crater, forming Lake Waccamaw, now a […]

Toxic PFAS found in livers of Atlantic seabirds, including those in NC

BY: - October 1, 2020

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are accumulating in dead juvenile seabirds in three locations off the Atlantic Coast, including North Carolina, according to a study published this month in Environmental Science and Technology, raising questions about how the chemicals might be  affecting humans.  PFAS refers to a group of nearly 5,000 substances often called […]

BREAKING: New analysis indicates that toxics were present in Wilmington drinking water at extreme levels

BY: - October 9, 2019

Tests of samples collected between 2014 and 2016 reveal sky-high PFAS readings Astronomical concentrations of toxic compounds commonly known as PFAS were present in the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, years before researchers had the technology to detect them. According to a new analysis of preserved samples from 2014 to 2016, PFAS that contain an […]

COMMENTARY

Editorial: Hurricanes show need for tougher regulation of hogs, sewage, development

BY: - October 18, 2018

There was a fine editorial in the Fayetteville Observer earlier this week (and republished today in the Greenville Daily Reflector) that tells it like it is with respect to the massive water pollution issues that confront eastern North Carolina — particularly in what the editorial describes as the “open sewer” that is the Cape Fear […]

Duke Energy reporting another coal ash breach at Sutton; shuts down nat gas plant

BY: - September 21, 2018

The Cape Fear River has overtopped a dam at Sutton Lake in Wilmington, sending coal ash into the water body from the 1971 ash basin. The lake provides cooling water for Duke Energy’s Sutton plant. According to the utility, cenospheres, which are coal combustion byproducts, are moving from that basin into the lake and onto […]

Two breaches in Sutton coal ash landfill, plus flooding at three inactive ash basins at Lee plant

BY: - September 17, 2018

Rising rivers and historic flooding are hampering the state and Duke Energy from fully assessing the extent of the damage to coal ash landfills and basins in eastern North Carolina, but there are reports of breaches at the Sutton plant in Wilmington and flooding at HF Lee in Goldsboro. Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette told […]

COMMENTARY

N.C. General Assembly has failed to act, but the time to stop Chemours’ pollution is now

BY: - July 18, 2018

“How long before we say enough is enough?” state lawmaker Ted Davis Jr. asked his colleagues in the N.C. House in February. “How much more is Chemours going to get away with before something is done?”

EPA grossly underestimated “safe” levels of fluorinated compounds in drinking water

BY: - June 25, 2018

The Environmental Protection Agency was far too lenient when it set a provisional health goal of 70 parts per trillion for fluorinated compounds such as PFOS and PFOA in drinking water. That’s the conclusion of an 842-page report — which the EPA had tried to suppress — published June 21 by the Agency for Toxic […]

COMMENTARY

Scathing editorial blasts legislature’s “betrayal of the health and safety” of North Carolinians

BY: - June 7, 2018

Wow. A lead editorial in the Fayetteville Observer pulls few punches today in its scathing assessment of the General Assembly leadership’s craven kowtowing to chemical industry lobbyists in and around GenX water pollution crisis. This is from “What’s in the water? Don’t ask, lawmakers say”: “In a week when many of us observe the 1-year […]