Name: Health Concerns Arise over Chemical Discharge into Cape Fear River
Uploaded: 2018-05-23
Duration: 7 min 6 s
Description: For nearly 40 years, Chemours Co. and DuPont have been releasing a chemical byproduct known as GenX into the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.

[ MUSIC ] The Cape Fear is an incredible river. It's the largest river in North Carolina. It's the most diverse river in North Carolina. The ecosystem and the environment around here is important for lots Of reasons. It drives our local economy. People come here to see this river, they come here to walk along the river on the river walk. The river is the heart and soul of this community. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] The story came out about this new contaminant, this emerging contaminant being in the river and at fairly high levels, and that started the conversation in our community. I started getting calls from all my neighbors. They know I'm a lawyer, they were looking to me for answers, which I did not have. And we all were very frightened and concerned. They tested a well on a piece of property that I owned with some friends of mine down on the Cape Fear River. Where we ski and raised our kids, camping and fishing and having birthday parties and Christmas events. And this is what we enjoy, why we moved to the country. So all of this became changed when we learned about Gen X. [ MUSIC ] So GenX is part of the family of perflorinated alkylated substances. And these are chemicals that have a lot of fluorine. Atoms on them which gives them unique properties. And one of the unique properties is the nonstick properties that things like Teflon and Goretex and Stainmaster, all those things that we love. It's a compound that replaced C8 which is a pretty well known On a countdown that was previously used to produce teflon. In CA it was found to be very hazardous to human health, and as part of a huge settlement based on a lawsuit, the company has phased out CA. And they replaced it, at least in Du Pont and ten more states, they replaced that With Gen X. One of the key issues in understanding the risk assessment for Gen X and for [ INAUDIBLE ] compounds is how long it remains in the body. And right now we have no information. We're doing foundational research. We are developing the methods to analyze these. Newly identified chemicals so there maybe health consequences or there maybe no health consequences, but until we can kind of quantify the levels we can't go on and answer those next questions because everybody's concerned about I've been drinking this water what does it mean, what does it mean for my children, what does it mean for my health. Our community had been drinking this stuff for close to 40 years. And it was startling, and our community was, and is, outraged. The really troubling thing was, is that it was in the river, it was being taken into our drinking water treatment plant. And our treatment plant was completely ineffective at treating it, as is almost every other treatment plant in In the entire country because water treatment plants aren't designed to take out these kinds of chemicals. [ MUSIC ] We have a highly advanced water treatment plant. But it was never designed to remove these compounds. [ MUSIC ] We estimate it will cost about $ 46 million to upgrade our plants and another $ 2 to $ 3 million per year to operate the plant with this additional treatment. In my opinion this is not a cost that our rate payer should have. This is something that the people upstream who are putting these contaminants in the river should bear. We shouldn't be paying to treat. Industrial waste in our drinking water, while the industry that's producing that waste and putting it in the drinking water, is allowed to just continue to do that with no repercussions. There's no single solution to it. It's gonna take a lot of different efforts across a lot of different fronts. It's going to take proper discharge control, proper enforcement of the discharges, making sure that the industries and the people who are putting these contaminants into the river and into the environment are the ones who are filtering it. [ MUSIC ] Our community is kind of terrified of what this means for our health, and what is means moving forward if we can't get the stuff out of water. You know my wife worries about the effects. Our childrens were raised drinking that water. We drank water. Or drank tea which is made from our water? And we mixed our infant meal baby formula with that water. And we don't know, at this time, what the medical effects are. You live with it, constantly. And I know they're things that our society uses, but is it really worth ruining sections of our state for that, and I say, " No ." I don't know that we'll ever be able to Cleanse the water underneath our property, get the gen x out of the trees and the ground. I want to be compensated for what I know that I've lost at this point. There's a balance that man has to have with nature, and if you cross that line, you're gonna start killing man and nature Damaging things to the point of no return, and that's what frightens me. I don't know that this mess can be cleaned up. But my hopes are that it can, and [ BLANK_AUDIO ] We can get back to the style of living we were accustomed to. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ]

For nearly 40 years, Chemours Co. and DuPont have been releasing a chemical byproduct known as GenX into the Cape Fear River in North Carolina.