Residents urge DEP to deny more Chemours PFAS pollution | News

Bias was one of many attendees at a recent West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection meeting who fear the DEP is poised to compound the plant’s toxic legacy.

“It’s … like the DEP is not wanting to deal with the liability of what Chemours is going to be doing with their self-regulation that we’re not going to be able to rely on,” Bias said.

She was referring to a request from Chemours — the chemical company spun off from DuPont in 2015 that has operated the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg since then — for a DEP permit to build a plastic production facility that would result in new discharges of the class of cancer-linked chemicals behind that legacy of profiting from making generations of West Virginians sick.

Jean Ambrose, 75, of Wood County struggled to understand why the DEP was willing to accept self-monitoring from Chemours of discharges of those industrial chemicals, known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, at a facility with a history of decades-long reporting violations.

Ambrose said her husband of the same age has endured three different kinds of cancers.

“We have had a very bad experience with this facility,” Ambrose said at the virtual meeting. “Are we saying in the infinite wisdom of the regulators that self-reports are just fine? They haven’t been fine in the past.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said DuPont failed for more than two decades to report data indicating PFAS health risks from manufacturing at the Washington Works plant. The company agreed to pay $10.25 million for reporting violations in 2005 in what the EPA then said was the largest civil administrative penalty it ever obtained under a federal environmental statute.

DEP Deputy Secretary Scott Mandirola said monthly discharge monitoring reports from the facility and other sites pass through DEP-certified labs. Mandirola couldn’t answer how often the Chemours site gets visits from DEP staff, saying visit frequency depends on the size and type of facility.

Lifelong Wood County resident Jim Cayton said his family was affected by PFAS contamination from the Washington Works facility and still drinks bottled water over PFAS pollution fears.

“Now they’re asking for more, and you’re asking us to believe that they’re self-testing,” Cayton said. “I’ve worked in chemical plants all my life. I know what the self-testing is like. If the sample’s bad, throw half of it out, dilute it down.”

No Chemours official spoke at the DEP’s hearing, which lasted almost two hours and featured speakers who nearly unanimously urged the agency to reject the permit application or tighten its oversight. Chemours has said it is committed to manufacturing its products responsibly to support industries, including the products made at the Washington Works site.

PFAS concerns have persisted under Chemours, given frequently recurring large exceedances of PFAS discharge permit limits reported by the company and exponentially more stringent EPA health advisories for PFAS suggesting the chemicals are far more dangerous than the agency previously thought.

Despite those concerns, and although the DEP has yet to issue a final decision on the permit application, Mandirola said Chemours’ request meets application and legislative rule requirements.

That wasn’t a good enough answer for Todd Compston, who can see the Chemours site from his and his wife Sherry’s bedroom window and said his mother was affected by PFAS pollution there.

“If there’s an increase in something that would release more PFAS or more harmful chemicals when we’ve already got a pretty clear experience in the whole area with this, I guess I don’t understand why you would approve something to allow more production of it,” Compston said.

Under the permit it seeks, the proposed facility would discharge into the Ohio River — a drinking water source for 5 million people — water remaining after process water is sent to a new wastewater tank.

The planned operation would use demineralized water and a cooling water from the site to wash and separate solids so they can be dried and packaged as product.

Chemours’ permit application lists maximum daily limits at three outfalls combined of 0.83 parts per billion of one PFAS known as PFOA, and 3.2 parts per billion of another PFAS, known as HFPO-DA.

Those levels exponentially exceed levels the EPA set in 2022 indicating what the agency said offer protection for people from adverse health effects resulting from exposure throughout their lives in drinking water.

The EPA set interim updated health advisories of 0.004 parts per trillion for PFOA and 10 parts per trillion for HFPO-DA, in 2022. The EPA has proposed but not yet finalized maximum enforceable levels of 4 parts per trillion for PFOA and a unitless hazard index for HFPO-DA and some other PFAS compounds.

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources and Department of Environmental Protection said 27 out of 37 public water systems sampled showed detectable levels of select PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in treated water, per results from a U.S. Geological Survey study released last year.

Of those 27 systems, 19 had PFAS detections above at least one regulatory standard proposed by the EPA.

The Geological Survey study followed another study released in 2022 by that agency of raw water samples at 279 public water systems throughout West Virginia from June 2019 to May 2021. Nearly a quarter of public water systems had at least one PFAS detected.

Meanwhile, the Washington Works site has remained a PFAS pollution hotspot.

The EPA has reported that monthly average and daily maximum HFPO-DA water pollution control permit exceedances of 2,043% and 3,117%, respectively, took place in July and September 2022 at facility outlets.

The EPA has said a 2020 agency study of PFOA and HFPO-DA used at the facility supports a finding that those PFAS were deposited into soils as far as 30 miles from the facility and 25 miles into surface waters from the facility.

The HFPO-DA permit exceedances and deposit travel findings were noted in an EPA’s April administrative consent order that was the agency’s first Clean Water Act enforcement action to address PFAS pollution.

The order required Chemours to take all actions necessary to comply with the Clean Water Act and submit a plan to treat HFPO-DA and PFOA to ensure that discharges meet effluent limits at four outlets.

The order cited discharge monitoring reports submitted by Chemours to the state Department of Environmental Protection showing 69 water pollution control permit exceedances of PFAS from Sept. 30, 2018 through March 31, 2023. Fourteen of the water pollution control permit exceedances were of 1,000% or more.

Last month, Chemours reported a more than eightfold HFPO-DA maximum daily limit exceedance at a Washington Works outlet, a month after reporting a nearly sixfold such exceedance at another site outlet.

Chemours’ permit application notes other manufacturing compounds could be detected in effluent from the proposed facility, including corrosive and potentially dangerous compounds like nitric acid, sodium hydroxide and ammonium hydroxide.

The West Virginia Rivers Coalition has opposed Chemours’ permit application, protesting in written comments it submitted on the application that PFOA and HFPO-DA concentrations in the Ohio River already are too high for the DEP to authorize any further discharges of those pollutants.

The Rivers Coalition urged the DEP to require Chemours to publish the monitoring data it collects on a publicly available website so people living near the facility could use it to make informed decisions about how to manage their own risks.

Heather Sprouse, Ohio River coordinator for the Rivers Coalition, said at the DEP’s March 4 hearing on the permit application she’s heard from Wood County women who recalled generations of family members suffering from preeclampsia and thyroid disease attributed to Washington Works.

“I hear people talk about how upsetting it is that generations of young people can’t eat what they fish, and we know that the more these chemicals are studied, the more toxic that we find them to be in really, really tiny amounts,” Sprouse said.

DuPont began using PFOA to make Teflon-coated products at the site in 1951.

After PFOA used to make Teflon-related products at the Washington Works facility discharged into water supplies, people living in the area experienced increased rates of:

• Testicular and kidney cancer
• Thyroid disease
• Ulcerative colitis
• Preeclampsia

PFAS also have been linked to adverse cardiovascular and immune system effects as well as reduced birth weight. The chemicals build up in the human bloodstream and have been ubiquitous in food packaging, clothes and other household items.

In 2021, DuPont, Corteva and Chemours settled for $83 million in multidistrict litigation over PFOA contamination of drinking water supplies. The companies also agreed to establish a cost-sharing arrangement and escrow account of up to $1 billion to support future legacy PFAS liabilities coming from before Chemours was formed in 2015.

Ohio officials announced a proposed $110 million settlement with manufacturers that included Chemours and DuPont in November. West Virginia has refrained from similar legal action against the manufacturers over PFAS under Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a 2024 Republican gubernatorial candidate.

“In every matter, including this issue, we protect West Virginia’s interests. We will refrain from commenting substantively at this time but will be in touch when we have news to report,” Attorney General’s Office press secretary John Mangalonzo said in a November email.

In the meantime, a disconnect as persistent as PFAS in the bloodstream lingers between those like Todd Compston living near the Washington Works facility and the environmental regulators charged with protecting them.

“Is there any risk assessment on what the impact of this change is on people?” Compston asked about the permit application.

“I’m not sure what you’re asking,” Mandirola replied.