WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) - A new report says Chemours plans to import more than four million pounds of GenX waste to its plant in Bladen County.
Those are the same toxic forever chemicals the company has admitted to dumping into the Cape Fear River for years, which contaminated the drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of people.
“We deserve so much more protection than what we’re getting right now. We do not need to take on the world waste, and be the dumping ground for every other facility,” Emily Donovan with Clean Cape Fear said.
Donovan has worked for years to get better regulations and restrictions on GenX chemicals, otherwise known as PFAS.
“We have been trying to work with the EPA, we’ve been trying to work with the White House. We work with our congressional leaders,” Donovan said. “So, they are very aware of our concerns for our community.”
NC Newsline posted this report saying the EPA approved more than four million pounds of GenX waste from a Chemours facility in the Netherlands being sent to the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County.
“We are not seeing Chemours uphold their end of consent agreements, the legal obligation that they already have to address existing contamination, and yet now we’re supposed to take on waste from other countries. It’s unfathomable. It’s unconscionable. I mean, there’s just there’s not enough words in the dictionary to describe how incredibly disheartening this whole situation is right now,” Donovan said.
Those imports stopped a few years ago because the EPA wanted more up-to-date information about the waste being shipped to the U.S.
Now those imports are coming back to southeastern North Carolina in massive amounts, raising a lot of questions for people like Donovan. She wants to know why these GenX chemicals are not listed as hazardous.
“So, in 2020, we were a part of a group that petitioned the EPA to list GenX and other FAS as hazardous substances under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,” Donovan said. “We were just really surprised that they would reauthorize these and reauthorize them as such staggering levels. It’s very, very difficult to digest this information right now.”
According to the EPA documents, imports started on Sept. 8, 2023, and could continue through early September 2024.
Documents also show that the purpose of this movement in chemical waste is so the Bladen County facility can recycle the waste, but it’s not clear how that process will work and if there will be any impacts to the environment.
A Chemours spokesperson provided the following statement:
