Forever War, Part 1: This story is published in partnership with The Assembly and with WHQR, a nonprofit radio station and NPR affiliate in Wilmington. It is the first in a series of stories about the PFAS crisis in North Carolina.
Listen to an audio version of this story below.
OAK ISLAND, N.C.—Emily Donovan stood before 100 people in the pews at Ocean View United Methodist Church in a small seaside town in Brunswick County, North Carolina. It was May, the start of beach season. She had invited a scientist to speak about the astronomical levels of PFAS—nicknamed “forever chemicals”—that had been detected in sea foam four miles away.
But before she began her presentation, Donovan, a co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, had to deliver some bad news. That morning, Lee Zeldin, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator appointed by President Donald Trump, had announced his intention to rescind drinking water regulations for several types of PFAS compounds.
The rollbacks included GenX, one of dozens that have contaminated the region’s drinking water and have been linked to disorders of the liver, kidneys and the immune system, as well as low birth weight and cancer.
Donovan felt devastated and enraged.
Emily Donovan is a co-founder of Clean Cape Fear. Credit: Justin Cook/Inside Climate News
“Churches in Brunswick County baptize their babies in PFAS-contaminated tap water,” Donovan told the crowd. “We fought so hard. And now our hard work is getting rolled back.”
In 2013, scientists first discovered several types of PFAS in the Lower Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for several utilities in the region. The insidious chemicals were eluding traditional water treatment systems and flowing through the taps of hundreds of thousands of people.
The scientists traced many of the compounds to Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant, 80 miles upstream. State and federal documents show that for 40 years Chemours and its predecessor, DuPont had been quietly tainting the drinking water of a half-million North Carolinians with high levels of toxic PFAS.
It took several years for that information to reach the public, but once it did, Donovan and her fellow environmental activists, as well as public interest lawyers, state legislators and local residents, started urging the EPA and the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to regulate the compounds.
Many went to Congress and to court. Clean Cape Fear pleaded its case to the United Nations special rapporteurs on human rights, who concluded last year that PFAS contamination coming from the Chemours facility constituted “a business-related human rights abuse.”
Meanwhile, the scope of the contamination expanded throughout the state. Scientists found the compounds in fresh vegetables and fish, eggs and beer. Pine needles, honey and house dust. Landfills, compost and sewage sludge.
Blood of horses. Blood of dogs. Their own blood.
Finally, the environmental advocates prevailed.