SELC Statement on EPA’s Feckless PFAS Action Plan

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—The Southern Environmental Law Center issued the following statement by Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney at the center who has fought for PFAS cleanup in North Carolina, regarding the EPA Administrator’s roundtable today in Fayetteville, N.C., to push the agency’s feckless “PFAS Action Plan.” The plan has not resulted in any identifiable action in North Carolina, despite the state having one of the most severe instances of PFAS contamination in the country. Since 2017, the public has known that the Chemours Company, LLC has tainted the drinking water for more than 300,000 North Carolinians. But EPA has not taken any action to improve water quality for those affected.

“There’s a reason that EPA can only point to its generic national plan when visiting North Carolina. The agency hasn’t done a single thing to improve the lives of North Carolinians. We would welcome EPA involvement to help fund new drinking water infrastructure or the agency actually taking action to clean up the Cape Fear River. Unfortunately, this EPA’s primary focus has been to make it easier to pollute our streams and rivers—not clean them up.”

On behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the Southern Environmental Law Center entered into a consent order and amendment with Chemours and the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality that require the company to provide public water connections or filters for homeowners with contaminated wells and to remove more than 99 percent of all PFAS from the main pathways of contamination to the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for Wilmington, Brunswick County, and Pender County.