-
Lake Sediments Record North Carolina’s Coal Legacy
By: Kimberly M. S. Cartier, EOS October 14, 2022 Sediment cores taken from five lakes in North Carolina reveal the state’s history of coal ash pollution from power plants. Analysis of these cores, published in Environmental Science and Technology, explains that although coal ash deposition has declined in recent years, its legacy lives on in the contaminants the ash left behind to seep into the environment. These toxins could be affecting the health of local residents and ecosystems. “These are recreational lakes,” Zhen Wang, an environmental geochemistry doctoral student at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and the lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Some of them…were originally built for the coal plant, but over the years, it has become very desirable real estate where people build their dream homes. It looks very pristine and beautiful, but if you dig in, you find piles of toxic coal ash.” Decades of Pollution Coal ash is the by-product of burning coal and is one of the most prevalent forms of industrial waste in the United States—around 130 million metric tons are produced every year. Ash contains toxic metals, including lead, mercury, arsenic, and selenium, which can cause respiratory diseases and cancers after short- or long-term exposure. Coauthor Avner Vengosh of Duke University and his colleagues have been investigating the water quality of lakes and groundwater across North Carolina for more than a decade. Some of their past work has focused on pollution in the five artificial lakes sampled in the new study—Hyco Lake, Mayo Lake, Belews Lake, Mountain Island Lake, and Lake Sutton—each of which is located near a coal plant. The team collected cores up to 70 centimeters deep from the lakes between July 2020 and August 2021. They also collected a core from Lake Waccamaw, a natural lake close to Lake Sutton, for comparison. “The oldest sediments we collected were aged to mid-1950s,” Vengosh said, “representing 60–70 years of sedimentation.” Some of the cores look back to before the nearby coal plants were installed and provide a good baseline to understand a plant’s environmental impact. For each core, the researchers analyzed the morphology, magnetic and geochemical properties, and strontium isotopes of the lake sediments and the embedded coal ash to track the history of ash deposition into the lakes. The cores revealed three distinct phases of coal ash release into the lakes. The first phase, from the 1960s to 1970s, saw significant deposition of both coarse and fine-grained ash particles as ash was dumped right into the lakes. During the second phase, from the 1970s to 1990s, the enactment of the Clean Air Act meant that coal ash was stored in ponds next to the plant. The level of pollution into the nearby lakes decreased during this time, and larger particles were captured by air filters instead of entering the environment. The third phase, from the 1990s to the present, also saw a decrease in the quantity of coal ash deposited into the lakes as storage changed from wet coal ash ponds to dry landfills and a few plants shifted from coal to natural gas for energy production. Using streamflow data from the U.S. Geological Survey, the team found that the lakes accumulated more coal ash during times of high streamflow and precipitation. This result suggests that stormwater runoff, flooding, and effluent discharge from coal ash ponds and dry landfills are some of the main mechanisms by which the ash enters nearby lakes. Ash can also enter the air, land in the surrounding landscape, and be washed into the lakes by rain. The researchers noted that climate change continues to heighten the severity of the storms striking North Carolina, including hurricanes like Florence in 2018, which bodes ill for the coal ash still stored at these plants. Research speculates that coal ash enters North Carolina lakes via three pathways: airborne ash that settles into the lakes and surrounding landscape, stormwater runoff from coal ash ponds, and effluent discharge from coal ash ponds. Once in the lake bottom sediments, the coal ash can release contaminants into the water, increasing their bioavailability. Credit: Wang et al., 2022, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04717 A Toxic Legacy The plants near Hyco, Mayo, and Belews Lakes continue to burn coal for power; the Sutton Plant has switched to natural gas, and the Riverbend Plant near Mountain Island Lake has been retired. But the toxic legacy of all of these energy plants continues. “Coal ash that was stored in the nearby coal ash ponds seems to continue [to be] displaced and transported into the lakes, specifically during times of major flooding like hurricane episodes,” Vengosh said. “The problem of coal ash legacy did not go away by switching to natural gas.” Once in the lake bed, the coal ash breaks down and releases contaminants into the water. Those contaminants become bioavailable, which is a concern for the local ecosystems and the residents who live nearby. All five lakes are destinations for recreational boating, fishing, and camping, and Hyco Lake is also a residential area. What’s more, Mountain Island Lake is a local drinking water intake, noted Amanda Strawderman, polluter accountability program director for the nonprofit Clean Water for North Carolina. This study raises pressing questions, she said. “To what degree could suspended particles of coal ash be taken into the municipal drinking water treatment system? Is this water being tested and remediated for toxic coal ash constituents? If remediation is taking place, to what extent are those 800,000 residents of the Charlotte/Mecklenburg area bearing the cost burden of that remediation through water rates?” This study examined the environmental risks of bioaccumulation of coal ash pollutants, Vengosh said, but “it is well known that the assembly of contaminants in coal ash are highly toxic [to people]. There are reports that many workers who participated in the cleanup of the coal ash spill in the Tennessee Valley Authority [in 2008] became severely sick, with a high percentage of cancer. Many of them have already passed.” “This alarming study reinforces the need to regulate generation and management of coal ash waste to understand where coal ash exists,” Strawderman added, “and strengthen protections for communities in North Carolina and beyond.” Read the article on EOS
Continue reading -
After Long Delay, Groups Sue EPA for Response on Factory Farm Water Pollution Rules
Food & Water Watch October 11, 2022 The Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to respond to a legal petition urging the agency to strengthen clean water rules governing factory farms has prompted a broad coalition of public interest and environmental justice organizations to file a lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that aims to force EPA to finally issue a formal response. More than five years ago, over 30 groups – led by Food & Water Watch – filed a rulemaking petition detailing how EPA’s regulation of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) under the Clean Water Act has failed to protect waterways and communities, and urging the EPA to strengthen its lax approach. The agency’s complete failure to respond, the groups say, violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which requires agencies like EPA to respond to petitions “within a reasonable time.” The suit, filed Friday, argues that the current delay is unreasonable on its face, and that EPA’s inaction is unlawfully prolonging dangerous pollution and public health threats from factory farms. Most livestock in the U.S. are raised in CAFOs, which can confine thousands, or even millions, of animals and their waste. The vast quantities of manure generated from CAFOs are typically disposed of, untreated, on cropland, where it can seep or run off to pollute waterways and drinking water sources. The Clean Water Act defines CAFOs as “point sources” of pollution, which should require polluting CAFOs to follow discharge permits that restrict their pollution discharges into rivers and streams. But due to the EPA’s weak regulations, only a small fraction of CAFOs have the required permits. The permits that do exist are weak and inadequately protective of water quality. The agency’s failed approach has led to widespread factory farm pollution in waterways and communities across the country. The petition, filed in May 2017, provided a roadmap for EPA to close loopholes that have enabled CAFOs to avoid regulation, and to make permits stronger and more effective. EPA’s failure to respond to the Petition, and in turn, strengthen its CAFO regulations, is just one of many examples of the Agency shirking its duty to protect communities from CAFO water pollution unless compelled by legal action. For instance, it was only due to a lawsuit filed by Food & Water Watch that the Ninth Circuit recently halted EPA’s illegal failure to require CAFOs monitor their discharges like other polluting industries. With this new legal action, Petitioners hope to once again pressure the Agency to fulfill its Clean Water Act obligations for CAFOs. “This petition provided EPA with a roadmap for how it must finally regulate factory farms as required under the Clean Water Act, and explained why action is critical. EPA’s refusal to even answer simply confirms that it will not hold this industry accountable without legal and public pressure. We will not let EPA continue to delay while factory farms pollute with impunity, endangering public health and fouling our rivers and streams across the country,” said Food & Water Watch Legal Director Tarah Heinzen. “Factory farm water pollution has had an increasingly devastating impact on marginalized communities throughout the country, and especially in North Carolina. Thousands of massive hog and poultry operations—of which only 1.1 percent are permitted—have taken root in low-income communities and communities of color, where they pollute the drinking water, ruin public waterways, and degrade the health and quality of life for those that have no choice but to live nearby. Meanwhile, the NC Department of Environmental Quality expects the polluters to regulate themselves! This is an extreme environmental injustice, and EPA is needed to take action to correct it,” said North Carolina Environmental Justice Network Director of Organizing and Policy Rañia Masri. “Iowa is in the midst of a water pollution crisis, thanks to thousands of unpermitted factory farms. EPA’s weak rules have completely let Iowa off the hook from even the most basic Clean Water Act regulation of these facilities. It’s no wonder Iowa has become a magnet for CAFO industry expansion,” said Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement member Julie Duhn. “In Wisconsin, CAFOs have to have Clean Water Act permits, but that hasn’t stopped the 17 industrial dairy CAFOs in my rural county from poisoning our community’s drinking water and decimating the wildlife in our local streams. EPA must grant this petition and strengthen its rules so that rural communities no longer have to shoulder the burden of unchecked factory farm pollution and live with the stress of not having safe drinking water in their homes,” said family farmer and Kewaunee CARES and Food & Water Watch member Nancy Utesch. Petitioners in the lawsuit include: Food & Water Watch, Center for Food Safety, Dakota Rural Action, Dodge County Concerned Citizens, the Environmental Integrity Project, Helping Others Maintain Environmental Standards, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Kewaunee CARES, Midwest Environmental Advocates, and North Carolina Environmental Justice Network. The 33 original petitioners include six national public interest advocacy organizations, and twenty-seven state and community-based organizations based in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Collectively, Petitioners represent millions of members and supporters from across the country. Read the article on Food & Water Watch
Continue reading -
Warren County commemorates 40 years of environmental justice struggle
By: Will Atwater, North Carolina Health News September 21, 2022 At around 7 a.m. last Saturday, cars began collecting in the parking lot of Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church in rural Warren County. Across the road, the sun rose above a mixture of pines and deciduous trees that border a green field. Located somewhere in the distance, a generator’s mechanical hum was softened by early-morning bird songs. In an open field located a few hundred yards uphill and behind the church, chicken was grilling on two large grates parked next to a food truck. Bags of charcoal, needed to keep the cooking going, were being stacked. Something big was unfolding. About 50 yards beyond the food truck stood a roomy white tent that offered clues to what was unfolding. Inside the tent, people were busy, unboxing programs and covering rented tables with white tablecloths and artificial flower bouquets. Others were sorting T-shirts with “We Birthed The Movement” screen printed on them. A few were registering those who had come from near and far to participate in the day’s events. The day had started early for Bill Kearney. By 6:30 a.m. the associate minister of Coley Springs had already made two trips to the church. “I think expectations are so high for me, but I have to realize this is God’s work, and I didn’t do it,” said Kearney. “It was Him that worked through me, they called me to be a facilitator.” Kearney hurried back and forth, greeting people and directing volunteers. Eventually, he and a helper began hanging poster-sized photographs along the tent’s back wall. On display were photographs that document a tumultuous period in Warren County’s history. They harkened back to a time when community members protested. Some were arrested for doing so, some even used their bodies as human shields, trying to prevent injustice from steamrolling their community. They fought valiantly through 1982, but, ultimately, were unable to stop a toxic waste dump from being placed in Warren County later that year. The dump was created to house PCB-contaminated soil, which resulted from an illegal dumping scheme carried out by then North Carolina-based Ward Transformer Company in 1978. To avoid paying to legally dispose of the chemicals, and under the cover of darkness, people who ran the company discharged the toxic waste along roadsides, covering a 250-mile stretch across several counties. ‘We birthed a movement’ PCBs belong to a group of man-made chemicals known as chlorinated hydrocarbons and were widely used in the U.S. from 1929 until 1979, when they were banned. PCBs are considered toxic and carcinogenic. Exposure to these chemicals could result in a suppressed immune system and may cause cancer, among other negative health impacts. By the time people in the area had learned of the contamination, they had started to comprehend how very toxic the waste was. Rev. Ben Chavis speaks with two attendees of the Warren County 40th Anniversary Commemoration event. Credit: Will Atwater Although Warren County residents and supporters were unsuccessful in preventing the toxic waste landfill from being located in their community, their efforts birthed the environmental justice movement, now a worldwide phenomenon. Last Saturday, four decades later, hundreds gathered at the church for the 40th-anniversary commemoration. One of the first guests to arrive was Armenta Eaton, who came over from Franklin County. Eaton was not a Warren County resident when the protests started, but she had strong ties to the community. Her best friend, Dollie Burwell, recognized as the “mother of the movement” asked her to join the cause. “Dollie called me and said, ‘We may have to go to jail tomorrow, but I need you here in Warren County, because we’re starting to protest,’” Eaton recalls. “And I said, ‘Okay, I’ll be there, so I called my boss and I said, ‘I can’t come to work’ … He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll be there too.’ So anyway, that’s how I got involved.” Eaton said that, at the time, she worked for the civil rights organization The United Church of Christ and Rev. Leon White was her boss and the Rev. Ben Chavis, who is recognized as the “father” of the environmental justice movement, was a co-worker. ‘Hope has two daughters’ There were many highlights from Saturday’s commemoration. One memorable moment occurred during the return walk from the area where the toxic landfill was located. Burwell, a long-time activist and community leader, was given a new perspective on an issue she had struggled with for a while. Edgardo Colón-Emeric, dean of the Duke Divinity School, delivered “The Message of Hope and Commitment,” which Burwell said brought her relief. “I was gratified today to hear the reverend say, that hope has two daughters, courage and anger,” Burwell said. “Sometimes I really didn’t think anger was a good quality to have.” Reflecting on those difficult days during the protests when people’s anger reached the boiling point, she recalled that something positive happened. “The church got involved and got everybody engaged in civil disobedience,” she said. “That’s what I would say redirected people’s anger into a movement.” Protesters lie in the road in 1982 to prevent trucks carrying PCB-contaminated soil from reaching the toxic waste landfill that was located in Warren County. Credit: Jenny Lebalme Jenny Labalme was a Duke University senior in 1982 when she snapped an iconic photograph that has become one of the visual symbols of environmental justice. On the walk, she reflected on what it was like 40 years later to walk along the road where she snapped her iconic images. “Oh my gosh, it’s always the songs. I don’t know what it is about it, but when Dollie grabbed the megaphone and started chanting and singing some of the [protest] songs, it just brought me right back to where we were 40 years ago,” Labalme said. “Obviously, no one was lying down in the road today to block dump trucks, and I wasn’t photographing, but just the crowd of people … I just felt a swell of support.” Where do we go from here? Before leaving, Chavis said the environmental justice movement has become an international movement since its 1982 birth in Warren County. He also said he is pleased to see the rise of future movement leaders. “I’m most encouraged to see millions of young people throughout the world demand environmental justice, demand climate justice, the two movements are part of the same outcry for freedom, justice and equality,” he said. Bill Kearney, center, holds the megaphone while Cameron Oglesby, right, leads a chant. Credit: Will Atwater To recognize future leaders, the commemoration had a “Passing of the Torch” ceremony that recognized one of the young leaders, Cameron Oglesby, a Duke graduate student. Oglesby said, while spending time with some of the environmental justice icons during the week leading up to Saturday’s event, she realized that they did not have everything figured out when they were young. “I’m hearing that, ‘Yeah, we didn’t really know what we were doing either, but we did it and we made it happen,’” she said. “And so I see potential reflection and mirroring of that work as the next generation picks it up.” As the next generation begins to take the positions itself to take on more leadership, Warren County residents like Angella Dunston would like to support economic development coming to the area. She points to Chatham County as a place where economic development has taken off, with new industries bringing thousands of new jobs to the area. She suggested that maybe “Warren County could’ve been the Chatham County of North Carolina” had the toxic landfill not been placed there. Near the closing of the event, Bill Kearney stepped to the microphone to thank the sponsors and volunteers who helped produce the event. Before leaving the stage, he offered this thought about the future of Warren County. Read the article on North Carolina Health News Join us on Friday, September 30th for our FREE virtual panel with speakers Angella Dunston, Rev. William (Bill) Kearney, Danielle Koonce & Ghanja O'Flaherty! Visit cwfnc.org/40yearsej to learn more and register
Continue reading -
Viewpoints: We’re Still Waiting on Chapel Hill Coal Ash Answers
By: Amanda Strawderman, Op-Ed for Chapelboro.com September 9, 2022 May 16, 2022. That was the date the Town of Chapel Hill and NC Dept of Environmental Quality held a virtual meeting to inform the public of the process of the urgent yet controversial redevelopment of the town’s property at 828 MLK Blvd. Urgent, first and foremost, because the site contains an estimated 60,000 cubic yards of coal ash made up of carcinogenic compounds and heavy metals, exposure to which is known to be harmful to human health. And even after coal ash was discovered and the Town made initial cleanup efforts, sections of this site have continued to be exposed to rain and wind, and is of concern to the community. Controversial, because the Town has proposed to build residential housing and municipal buildings atop the site without first removing all of the coal ash. Given the risks for more exposure during and after the completion of this project, people naturally have questions about how they will be protected. It’s important to note that this was not the first meeting on the topic. Members of the public have been showing up for Chapel Hill Town Council meetings and reaching out with emails and phone calls for months. After being chided by some council members for speaking out without being fully informed, folks wanted to do just that, to become better informed and give the Town the opportunity to demonstrate that they have public health and safety considerations at the forefront of this project. And so on May 16, despite allotting only 30 minutes for questions, 73 members of the public – neighbors, local and statewide coalitions of coal ash-impacted community members, health experts, clean air and water advocates – attended the meeting to voice their concerns and ask for answers. Some questions were addressed during the meeting while others would require research and consultation, but all were promised to be given written responses that would soon be posted on the Town of Chapel Hill’s website. Seventy days. That’s how long we waited for the Town and DEQ to post those responses (Note that members of the public are expected to provide comments within 30 days after notice of a draft permit for polluting facilities). And even when these replies were posted, less than half the questions were answered and many were essentially evaded, overgeneralized, or pushed to future decisions in later stages of the project. To illustrate, community members have long been asking about the potential removal methods for the coal ash at the site, and when DEQ responded, they simply stated “decisions about removal should be directed to the Town of Chapel Hill representatives.” Yet the Town had insisted they were bringing in DEQ for their expertise. When asked if DEQ’s brownfield program had previous experience with ‘mitigated coal ash on proposed housing sites’ they discussed projects at other types of sites with elevated metals, avoiding the true answer that the program has NEVER put a residential development on top of a former coal ash site. Discourse that has the public running in circles doesn’t exactly build confidence that any number of potentially negative consequences from this project have been considered. Far from trying to obstruct progress, we just want to understand the plan. Aside from the redevelopment proposal that has been put forth, what other types of clean-up and remediation options has the Town even considered or been given estimates? How would potential exposure and health risks differ between users and activities at the redeveloped site (residents/employees or long-term vs visitors or short-term)? Have they consulted the NC Department of Health and Human Services or other health researchers about potential public health impacts from these proposals? How will they ensure workers and community members will be protected during construction? How will the waste be handled, transported, and stored so that coal ash dust doesn’t escape into the air we breathe or the water we drink? How long will they monitor the local environment after the project is completed? And whichever plan they choose, how will they ensure negative impacts are not disproportionately borne by low-income or BIPOC community members? These are just some of the valid concerns that haven’t been addressed. Considering that this is only one of who knows how many undiscovered coal ash sites across the state, what is decided now doesn’t only affect the residents of Chapel Hill, the next one could be in any one of our neighborhoods. It is in everyone’s best interest to see that justice is done for our fellow Carolinians in this matter. Decide for yourself and follow the issue on the Chapel Hill website or Futureof828.org. Watch the recording of the meeting, read their responses, and participate in the upcoming meetings to ask your own questions. This project is still at the early stages, but if we don’t make sure the Town is thinking things through, then decisions will be made and they might just claim it’s too late, that too much effort has already gone into this plan, too much money has been invested, or that we should have said something sooner. It’s now September and the next Chapel Hill Town Council meeting is on the 14th. To the council and DEQ, we HAVE spoken, we’re still here, and we’re waiting for answers. Read the article on Chapelboro.com
Continue reading -
‘Really terrible science experiment’ leads to weeks-long spill from NC hog-waste lagoon
By Adam Wagner, Raleigh News & Observer September 6, 2022 The state inspector knew immediately there was trouble at White Oak Farms. When she visited the Wayne County farm on Feb. 3, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality inspector saw a thick layer of hay laden with charcoal-colored foam in a ditch. That foam seemed to have oozed from under a black tarp covering a hog waste lagoon where manure was combined with unusual ingredients like liquified hog carcasses and discarded hot dogs and deli meat in a slurry to generate methane. The farm’s owners, including a former member of the National Pork Board, had not reported a spill. In a notice of violation dated Feb. 18, two weeks after the inspection, David May, a supervisor in DEQ’s Washington Regional Office, wrote that the inspector couldn’t tell how deep the foam was. But, May wrote, “the inspector stepped in that area sinking at least 4 inches on the edge.” White Oak Farms’ problems were just beginning. Four months later, on May 30, the black cover ruptured, sending an estimated three million gallons of the gelatinous gray foam across the farm and toward nearby Nahunta Swamp. By the time the spill ended weeks later, enough foam had spilled to fill more than four Olympic-sized swimming pools. At least 37,000 gallons had reached wetlands. An anaerobic digester on White Oak Farms in Fremont, N.C., tore on May 30, sending foam across the property. N.C. Department of Environmental Quality Environmental advocates learned about the spill by chance. They are outraged that it happened with minimal public notice, particularly considering that DEQ staff were monitoring the spill even as the department was finalizing a permit making it easier for anaerobic digesters to get environmental approval and easier for farmers to install them. Riverkeepers argue that DEQ’s regulation of White Oak Farms shows the department is not prepared for a potentially exponential increase of digesters on North Carolina’s hog farms. They learned about the White Oaks Farms spill on Aug. 3, more than two months after it began, when Sound Rivers’ Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop flew over the facility. Krop saw that the black bubble that was supposed to be capturing gas appeared deflated, with water pooled across its surface. Krop also noticed that there was no vegetation around the lagoon and that it looked like dirt had been moved around southeast of the digester, where the property borders Nahunta Swamp. “It just didn’t look right,” Krop said. “It didn’t look like they were functioning properly.” An anaerobic digester on White Oak Farms in Fremont, N.C., split open in late May, sending foam oozing out for at least three weeks. Shown here on August 3, the farm mixed hog waste with deli meat, hot dogs and liquified pig carcasses to generate methane in the digester. The Feb. 3 inspection focused on the covered lagoon, a system called an anaerobic digester. Farmers pump manure and other unwanted material into the lagoon, where it decomposes, releasing methane and other gases. Digesters capture those gases, particularly methane, and use them to produce electricity or purified natural gas. In recent years, agricultural groups and environmentalists have debated the use of anaerobic digesters in North Carolina. These disagreements played out first against the backdrop of the 2021 Farm Act, which ordered the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to write a general permit allowing most future digesters to move quickly through the environmental approval process. The N.C. Pork Council and other agricultural interests argue that covering waste lagoons reduces odor and prevents emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. They also offer farmers a revenue stream. In a written statement, Roy Lee Lindsey, the Pork Council’s CEO, said, “Digesters are a safe and proven technology that provide significant environmental benefits. While this situation was unfortunate, it is an isolated incident and should not discourage us from continuing to pursue renewable natural gas projects in North Carolina.” Environmental groups argue that digesters effectively lock in what they call a primitive waste management system in which hog manure and urine are washed into lagoons before being sprayed across nearby fields. The White Oak Farms spill demonstrates the risks digesters pose, said Blakely Hildebrand, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “It goes to show that these digester systems aren’t the environmental, climate silver bullet that the hog industry has painted them to be,” Hildebrand said. DEQ issued the general permit on June 30 — a week after inspectors concluded the White Oaks spill was continuing. As they finalized the permit, DEQ officials never revealed publicly that staff had been monitoring an active digester spill. That general permit would not have covered White Oak Farms’ digester. It only covers systems that process hog manure and urine, said Anna Gurney, a DEQ spokeswoman, not those that add other things into the slurry like White Oak Farms’ liquid pig carcasses, cast-off hot dogs and deli meat. Despite the digester debate, almost nobody knew a North Carolina hog operation was already operating by adding hogs and meat products to the manure under its black plastic balloon. “We have never heard of this before. We started asking around and nobody else in the environmental advocate world that we’re in has heard of this, either,” Jill Howell, the Pamlico-Tar riverkeeper, told The News & Observer. Howell continued, “It just all seems very strange and like one really terrible science experiment.” A N.C. Department of Environmental Quality inspector holds a handful of the foam that spilled May 30 from an anaerobic digester on White Oak Farms in Fremont, N.C. The farm was mixing hog manure, slurry made from dead hogs and cast-off deli meat in the digester to generate methane. ‘THIS IS THE ULTIMATE RECYCLING’ Deborah and Todd Ballance started hog farming in 1990, first as contract growers. When Coharie Hog Farm folded in 2009, the Ballances bought the pigs on their farm and went independent. “Since the farm was built by my husband’s grandfather our family has always strived to look to the future in order to do what is best for our family, our animals, our community, and our environment,” Deborah Ballance wrote in an email to The News & Observer. “We believe strongly in being sustainable and that is why we covered our lagoon and captured the methane for electricity.” The N.C. Pork Report, a N.C. Pork Council trade publication, profiled the Ballance family in 2017, shortly after then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue named Deborah Ballance to the National Pork Board. The story says Deborah and Todd met in first grade and farm land passed down by Todd’s grandfather. It also discusses the possibilities their efforts to turn manure into energy offer. Deborah Ballance told the Pork Report, “I think we basically reinvent ourselves every three years. You need to keep your ear to the ground and see what you need to be doing next or thinking about next, and that’s what we try to do.” The Ballance family had long been exploring how to generate revenue from hog waste, according to decades of permitting documents reviewed by The News & Observer. In 1997, White Oak Farms sought and received a permit for a two-lagoon system that it said would help lower nitrogen levels before the waste was sprayed over nearby fields. The farm planned to keep hog manure from reaching the lagoon and spread it on a field. Evaluations were underway, the permit said, of compacting solid waste and using it as animal feed. A 1997 application said, “White Oak Farms is very confident that the waste will become suitable animal feed. When it is converted to animal feed it will no longer be land applied.” In 2002, the farm said the manure capture system hadn’t worked as advertised and the equipment used to move liquid between lagoons had proven noisy and expensive to operate. At that point, the farm was permitted to have 5,500 sows. They wanted more hogs, but were limited by a moratorium on new or expanded hog operations the N.C. General Assembly made permanent in 2007 — a moratorium rooted in The News & Observer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Boss Hog” series that showed how a lack of regulation around the industry was leading to environmental threats near some farms. Another 2007 bill offered a solution. The Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard supported renewable energy in North Carolina. It also required that 0.2% of the state’s energy come from swine waste by 2018. In 2013, White Oaks Farms asked DEQ: Could it add 60,000 hogs as long as it added an anaerobic digester, controlling odor, groundwater contamination and other environmental impacts? “Despite a moratorium in place in North Carolina on new hog farm construction, we found the ideal way to expand with finishing floors. We could build a methane digester and sell power to the power company,” the Ballance family wrote in a 2017 USDA loan application. Electricity generated by White Oak Farms could power about 3,000 homes on Duke Energy’s grid, according to the application. “We will take our hog waste and mortality and use it as fuel! This is the ultimate recycling,” the Ballances wrote. DEQ approved the permit in October 2013. In later permits, the regulatory agency would require the Ballances to expand in phases, starting with 15,000 hogs Hildebrand questions DEQ’s approval, pointing to a rule that any waste management system for a new or expanded hog farm must have a synthetic liner preventing contaminants from seeping into soil or groundwater. The permit approved by DEQ in 2013 and again in 2017 says the 8.75-million gallon anaerobic digester is “earthen-lined.” “It’s a very prescriptive standard,” Hildebrand said. “These performance standards aren’t vague.” The digester started operating in April 2019. Randy Wheeless, a Duke Energy spokesman, said the utility has bought power from White Oak Farms since 2019. Over that period, it has averaged enough electricity to power about 400 homes. Energy generated by hog waste, Wheeless said, is more expensive than energy from solar farms or natural gas. Wheeless said, “It’s a premium product because there’s just not that many facilities in a position to do that, and you still have a law in place in the state that says utilities shall buy or secure that type of power.” CHANGING SOURCES In 2020, DEQ approved an updated permit limiting what could go into the digester each day. The farm could add swine waste, up to 20,000 pounds of food waste like hot dogs or deli meat from Smithfield’s Kinston plant, and 210,000 pounds of dead pigs. With that approval, the farm started adding the dead pigs in July 2020. They later reported the pigs caused significantly higher methane production. Around the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting the farm’s operation. Despite having permission to add as many as 15,000 hogs, the farm instead found itself operating with 100 sows at most. That impacted the digester, too. In a year-end report, the Ballances wrote, “With swine production and processing decreasing industrywide, the facility has experienced a temporary change from a manure dominated digester feed source to primarily a food waste and mortality source.” In other words, the farm was putting more dead pigs and cast-off meat into the digester than hog waste, despite its permit explicitly stating that manure should be the main additive. The trend continued throughout 2021, with the number of hogs dwindling from 81 to 50. Still, the digester was operating well on mostly dead pigs and unwanted meat. In 2021’s year-end report, the Ballance family wrote, “From an energy production standpoint, the facility experienced its best period to date.” The farm submitted that report on Jan. 31, 2022. Three days later, the DEQ inspector found signs of the digester’s unreported spill. During a February inspection, a N.C. Department of Environmental Quality inspector found signs that a discharge of foam from an anaerobic digester on White Oak Farms had not been reported. Those signs included foam on top of the digester. N.C. Department of Environmental Quality THE SPILL The bubble burst in the middle of the night. White Oak Farms’ digester ruptured around 3 a.m. on May 30, according to a press release the farm sent to local newspapers. Later, the farm would write that “an unexpectedly severe digester foaming event” started with a fissure on the northern face of the black plastic covering. That’s also where the DEQ inspector identified the previous, unreported spill during her February inspection. A “thick foam” made of hog matter, liquid and gases gurgled out of the digester. According to the farm’s accounts, the foam ran across a field and reached a forest that contains wetlands. The farm maintains none of the foam reached Nahunta Swamp on its southern boundary. DEQ staff conducted several inspections over the ensuing weeks. On June 3, they saw foam on nearby surface water, possibly including Nahunta Swamp. That foam was cleaned up when staff returned on June 7. The spill was still active on June 23, according to a notice of violation DEQ issued in July. That notice said DEQ staff had detected “objectionable” odors and air quality and saw foam coming out of concrete structures on the digester’s western edge. The covering on a Wayne County lagoon broke open in late May, sending more than four swimming pools’ of foam across White Oak Farms in Fremont. The damaged anaerobic digester is shown here on August 3. Samantha Krop Sound Rivers What caused the spill is not immediately clear, and the Ballance family did not directly answer an emailed question about why the digester failed. But an N.C. State professor who studies anaerobic digesters said the dead hogs and cast-off meat could have played a role. Adding materials containing fat, oil and grease to anaerobic digesters can significantly heighten biogas production, Mahmoud Sharara wrote in an email to The News & Observer. But at the same time, long chain fatty acids within the so-called FOG material can cause a layer of foam and crust to develop on top of the slurry. Sharara, an agricultural and biological engineering professor, does not have first-hand knowledge of the White Oak Farms facility. It is possible, Sharara added, that the higher levels of gas could have been incompatible with existing infrastructure like the generator or motor that processed the gas. Pressure could have built up underneath the cover, he wrote, ultimately causing the rupture and allowing the foam to spill out. In response to The News & Observer, the Ballance family wrote, “As soon as our cover tore and leaked foam, we called the Department of Environmental Quality and began immediate cleanup. We have repaired our cover and complied with every requirement and suggestion made by DEQ. We will continue to consult with our engineer and scientific consultants to perfect our unique operation.” As of June 13, there were no hogs on White Oak Farms. LINGERING QUESTIONS After learning of the spill via Krop’s flight, riverkeepers dug into the permit record. They were alarmed that they hadn’t heard of the spill before and that the public notice requirements allowed White Oak Farms to report the spill without specific details. “There was no reference to what was in the wastewater foam, there was no acknowledgment that it was swine waste or dead hogs or food waste product,” Howell said. “It’s like a bare, bare bones public notice.” North Carolina laws require any facility that spills more than 15,000 gallons of animal waste into the state’s surface waters or wetlands to issue a press release in both the county where the spill happened and the county immediately downstream. That press release needs to say where and when the spill happened, how much waste was discharged, how long the spill went on and what the facility is doing to prevent further spills. Hildebrand, of the Southern Environmental Law Center, said White Oak Farms followed the law, but that the law or DEQ should require information about a spill to be spread futher than a public notice in a local newspaper’s classified section. “Especially in this day and age. I think the law could be better, the requirements could and should be better around public notification,” Hildebrand said, adding that DEQ is able to issue public notification itself or require operators that have spills to issue more widespread notification. Advocates also wonder whether DEQ can adequately regulate digesters, particularly considering Dominion Energy and Smithfield’s joint $500 million Align RNG initiative that is already forging ahead in Duplin and Sampson counties. With more digesters appearing likely to come online in the coming years, Howell and other advocates are concerned that DEQ field staff have not been specifically trained to inspect them. Gurney, the DEQ spokesman, said the Division of Water Resources “will conduct additional training for regional inspectors as needed as facilities are covered by the Digester General Permit.” The department’s field staff noted violations at White Oak Farms and issued notices of violation, including the one in February, but Howell argues that wasn’t enough to convince the farm to correct the problems. “DEQ’s enforcement was insufficient in all of this,” Howell said. On July 5, DEQ issued another notice of violation against White Oak Farms. The department said the Ballance family’s improper operation of the digester had resulted in the spill and impacts on nearby surface waters and wetlands. The state agency said the farm had failed to update its permit to account for operating without hogs for months and had on multiple occasions accepted more than 20,000 pounds of food waste on a given day, exceeding the amounts allowed in its permit. It noted that ammonia levels in wells between the digester and Nahunta Swamp were more than 12 times higher than the allowable concentration. In response to DEQ, the Ballance family said they stopped adding new material to the digester “at least three weeks” before the spill happened. The Ballance family also mentioned its plans to build another digester. Ideally, they wrote, the manure and meat products that had spilled from the old digester could be pumped into the new one to “seed the digestion process.” The new digester would have a synthetic liner to protect groundwater, as well as a berm on its southern side to contain any future spills. Read the article at News & Observer
Continue reading -
NC hog farm buyout failure leaves vulnerable communities at risk
By: Makaelah Walters, Facing South July 21, 2022 Back in May, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) called on the Republican-controlled state legislature to include $18 million in the new state budget to fund the state’s Swine Floodplain Buyout Program. Created in 1999 in response to devastating floods from Hurricane Floyd that sent enormous amounts of hog farm pollution into communities and waterways, the program buys out owners of farms in low-lying areas prone to flooding. But the budget passed by the legislature — and signed into law by Cooper on July 1 — does not include funding for the program. "This is one of many examples of this industry wielding political power at the legislature," said Brooks Pearson, legislative counsel at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) in Chapel Hill. The nonprofit law firm has long fought to protect communities from hog farm pollution. The hog industry has been a mighty political force in North Carolina for decades now. Since 2000, hog farmers and other meat industry interests have contributed more than $5.6 million to North Carolina state candidates, as Vox recently reported. In addition, several legislators themselves are farmers who champion the industry’s interests. The buyout program's funds have also been used to close hog farms' notoriously smelly "lagoons" — massive, open pits used store animal waste, including feces, urine, and blood. When lagoons get full, the contents are typically sprayed onto nearby fields, risking runoff into waterways while making life miserable for nearby residents. And while the lagoons pose a particular risk during hurricane season, they can overflow at any time due to lack of maintenance coupled with weak regulatory oversight. In December 2020, for example, a lagoon failure at DC Mills Farm in Eastern North Carolina’s Jones County spilled 1 million gallons of hog waste into a tributary of the Trent River. The farm raised pigs for Smithfield Foods, a Virginia-based food-processing company that's owned by the Chinese conglomerate WH Group. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) had previously cited DC Mills Farm twice for lagoons being over capacity. "It's not necessarily a matter of if there will be another devastating hurricane in Eastern North Carolina," Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Jill Howell told Facing South. "We see climate change manifesting in smaller ways. When three or four inches of rain is dumped all at once — and that's not an event here in Eastern North Carolina, it happens all the time — it causes serious localized flooding." For a time, environmental advocates were encouraged by farmers’ interest in the Swine Floodplain Buyout. In all, the state has spent nearly $19 million to halt operations on 43 swine farms. But in 2007 — the same year the legislature made its 1997 moratorium on swine farms permanent — it stopped funding the program. More than 100 farmers who applied were sent away empty-handed. "There are very few things that environmental advocates and operators at CAFOs agree on, but it feels like a swine buyout may be one of them," Howell said. Though the state's hog farms remained under scrutiny after a series of hurricanes and lagoon breaches, the buyout program did not resume until 2018, when Hurricane Florence sent animal waste from 46 lagoons flowing into communities and waterways. Twenty-three farmers applied for the last round of buyout funding, but there was only enough money to close three to five facilities, according to the state Soil and Water Conservation Division. The number of farmers volunteering for the program consistently outpaced the funding, leaving the communities most impacted by the industry vulnerable to disaster. "Every time this program gets funded, there are more applications than there is money to cover it," Pearson said. "The wall we typically hit is Steve Troxler." Troxler, North Carolina’s elected Republican agriculture commissioner, campaigned on making agriculture a $100 billion industry in the state. At the same time, his campaign is heavily supported by agricultural interests, with the North Carolina Pork Council and Smithfield Foods among his top donors, according to FollowTheMoney.org. Given current political realities, Pearson thinks any policy proposal that reduces the number of hogs in North Carolina likely isn’t going to fly. The entire legislature is up for election this year, but it will be elected using GOP-drawn maps favorable to the GOP. For Republicans to retake the supermajority and override Cooper's veto, they need to gain three seats in the state House and two in the Senate. Meanwhile, new pressure is building to keep hog waste lagoons in operation thanks to the state’s energy companies. In 2020, Smithfield Foods and Virginia-based Dominion Energy proposed the largest swine waste-to-energy project in North Carolina. The $500 million project would involve capping waste lagoons to collect methane gas, which would then be processed and transported via pipeline and sold to Piedmont Natural Gas. "It's the poster child for greenwashing," said Blakely Hildebrand, a senior attorney with SELC. "Industry is holding up biogas as this silver bullet to the climate crisis for the agricultural industry. And it is far far from that." As powerful industries team up to continue polluting, the resulting pain is disproportionately borne by residents of North Carolina’s environmental justice communities. A growing body of public health research shows that people who live closer to industrial animal operations get sick more often, stay sick longer, and die more often than people who live further away. And census data shows between a quarter to a third of residents of the state’s major pork-producing counties are Black and around a quarter of are Latinx. In Robeson County, home to both hog and poultry farms, nearly 42% of residents are Native American and 23% are Black. Despite the environmental health risks, the DEQ issued permits to four farms to begin biogas operations at the beginning of this year — a move that many advocates saw as environmental racism. "There’s lots of talk about how covering lagoons will be good for odors and for flooding related things," said Howell. "But what nobody talks about is how building out natural gas infrastructure does nothing to reduce the number of open air lagoons in Eastern North Carolina." Read the article on Facing South
Continue reading -
Experts to Congress: Restore EPA enforcement staffing and funding for environmental justice
By: Julia Kane, Grist July 22, 2022 For the past three years, the Valero Houston Refinery hasn’t gone a single quarter without committing a significant violation of the Clean Air Act. Year after year, as toxic air pollution has wafted through Manchester — a predominantly Hispanic, low-income neighborhood across the street — the facility has racked up a long list of violation notices from state regulators, but that’s done little to actually stop the onslaught. “We always voice concerns about non-enforcement,” said Juan Parras, executive director of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, who has advocated for Manchester and other communities along the Houston Ship Channel for more than 20 years. “Even when there is enforcement, the penalty is so ridiculously low that it doesn’t pressure the industry to clean up,” he said. To Parras, this is unconscionable. “We ought to be showing communities that are impacted like we are — throughout the nation — that the law is going to back them up,” he said. A mural in the park next to the Valero Houston Refinery shows Manchester, a neighborhood inundated by industrial pollution. Environmental Protection Agency The Valero Houston Refinery is just one of 485 facilities across the country with “high priority violations” of the Clean Air Act that have been left unaddressed through formal enforcement actions. Those violations could include operating without a permit or not using the best available technology to control emissions, among other infractions. At the federal level, EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance is responsible for enforcing environmental laws. The division runs programs to assist companies with compliance, carries out investigations into suspected violations, issues penalties, and refers the more severe violations to the Department of Justice for prosecution. But for the past decade, Congress has steadily chipped away at the enforcement division’s funding and staffing levels. Since 2011, enforcement funding has fallen by nearly 30 percent once adjusted for inflation. The division currently has 713 fewer staffers than it did back then — a decrease of about 28 percent. As a result, the number of inspections, investigations, and civil and criminal cases the division initiates each year has plummeted, too. There’s a backlog of violations that the EPA hasn’t taken enforcement action on, and there are likely many more that the agency doesn’t even know about because investigators aren’t examining the data companies report or getting out into the field as often. Grist / Chad Small That has real-world consequences for neighborhoods inundated with industrial pollution, which tend to be communities of color or low-income communities. When it comes to enforcing the law, “if our state’s not going to do it and our EPA can’t because they don’t have the capacity, then now there’s nobody left, right? There’s nobody who can hold polluters accountable,” said Jennifer Hadayia, executive director of the environmental justice non-profit Air Alliance Houston. Environmental justice advocates hope Congress will soon reverse course and begin building the enforcement division back up. Last week Air Alliance Houston and 26 other environmental groups from across the country urged lawmakers to fund the EPA’s enforcement efforts at the levels proposed in the Biden administration’s budget. Any day now, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on a spending bill outlining funding for the agency through the next fiscal year. Since his first day in office, President Biden has pledged to make environmental justice a cornerstone of his policy agenda. In May, EPA Administrator Michael Regan and Attorney General Merrick Garland unveiled a new enforcement strategy outlining how their agencies would work together to help fulfill that pledge and pursue environmental justice. “Communities of color, Indigenous communities, and low-income communities often bear the brunt of the harm caused by environmental crime, pollution, and climate change,” Garland said during a press conference. “We will prioritize the cases that will have the greatest impact on the communities most overburdened by environmental harm.” Grist / Chad Small But it isn’t enough to just better prioritize cases, says Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and a former director of the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement. “Many if not most EPA enforcement actions are already brought against polluters surrounded by lower-income neighborhoods or communities of color, since that’s where the biggest polluters are concentrated,” Schaeffer said. “The problem is that there aren’t nearly enough of them, they take longer than they should, and they sometimes aren’t significant enough to make a long-term difference.” “That won’t be solved by continually refining targeting strategies for an ever-shrinking number of cases,” he said. Instead, the enforcement division needs to conduct more investigations and bring more cases when they find violations. And to do that, they need adequate funding and staff. The Biden administration’s proposed budget allocates over $630 million for enforcement — an 11 percent increase from last year when adjusted for inflation, but still significantly less than in 2011, when enforcement expenditures were nearly $730 million. Biden also wants to boost the division’s staff by more than 130 — which would still leave the division about 600 shy of the nearly 3,300 employees it had a decade ago. “It’s a start,” said Schaeffer. He’d like to see a bigger investment, but “we live in the real world, and we’ve got a fifty-fifty Senate,” he said. Once the House passes legislation to fund the EPA, they will still have to iron out any differences between their version and the Senate’s version, which lawmakers say they’ll release before the end of the month. Then both chambers will need to pass the final version of the bill, which likely won’t happen until after the election in November. “The administration is trying to reorient its focus, but it needs the tools to do that,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and a former senior attorney for EPA’s enforcement division. “It needs the enforcement officers, it needs the inspectors, it needs the attorneys to make sure that there is environmental justice in this country.” But building the division back up won’t be easy. “Just on a human level, you know, it takes time,” Whitehouse said. “These are very complicated laws and regulations. And so EPA needs to make sure it has the best available people and the proper expertise to see these enforcement cases through from beginning to end.” For more than a decade, conservatives who see the EPA’s enforcement efforts as overreach have successfully whittled away funding and staffing for the enforcement division. That came to a head under the Trump administration. In 2017, the Washington Post wrote that former President Trump was planning “to take a sledgehammer” to the agency, attempting to cut enforcement funding by 60 percent. Whitehouse thinks it will take several years of sustained funding to get the enforcement division back to a place where it can adequately enforce the country’s environmental laws. “It’s pretty easy to break something,” he said. “It’s really hard to put it back together. Read the article on Grist
Continue reading -
Chemours says it will offer alternative water to more GenX-affected households, but is vague about future
By: Lisa Sorg, NC Policy Watch July 15, 2022 Chemours told the NC Department of Environmental Quality this week that it would offer replacement water supplies to more North Carolinians whose wells are contaminated with GenX, but was vague as to whether it would continue to do so if the company wins a federal court case. In a July 13 letter from Chemours plant manager Dawn Hughes to DEQ, she wrote that the company “reserves its rights to take appropriate actions … based upon the results of the pending federal litigation, including in the event EPA’s Final Advisory is found to be invalid.” Chemours, which operates its Fayetteville Works plant near the Cumberland/Bladen county line, is responsible for contaminating public and private drinking water supplies in the Lower Cape Fear River Basin with GenX. An estimated 800,000 people who live in the basin have been affected. Exposure to GenX has been linked to myriad health problems: including reproductive problems, low birth weight, high cholesterol and several types of cancers. The new EPA toxicity assessment said the liver “is particularly sensitive” to the effects of GenX. As part of a 2019 consent order between DEQ, the company and Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours must offer alternative water supplies to private well owners whose water tests either greater than 140 parts per trillion — the state’s health advisory goal at the time — or above EPA thresholds, even if they change. Last month, the EPA sharply reduced its goal to 10 ppt; it was originally 70 ppt. Chemours has challenged the EPA’s scientific basis for the new goal in a petition to a federal court. A health advisory goal is not legally enforceable, but it is among the steps toward a national drinking water standard, which is law. Nonetheless, the more stringent threshold legally forces Chemours to offer alternative water to more than 1,500 private well owners in North Carolina whose drinking water contains levels of GenX between 10 ppt and 140 ppt. In her remarks to the Environmental Management Commission yesterday, Assistant Secretary for the Environment Sushma Masemore said 1,545 well owners could be eligible, based on Chemours estimates. That number has since been updated to 1,697 residences or other properties in Cumberland, Bladen, and Robeson counties. Policy Watch reported yesterday that the cost of installing, operating and maintaining these replacement water systems could cost Chemours $200 million, based on the maximum amount per customer, as laid out in the consent order. Regardless of the federal court’s decision, which could be months away, Assistant Secretary Masemore reiterated to Chemours that it must immediately begin complying with the updated health advisory goals. In a letter dated July 14, Masemore responded to Chemours: .. the Department wishes to make clear its position that the Consent Order is unequivocal in requiring Chemours to provide replacement drinking water supplies in the form of public water or whole building filtration systems to parties with private drinking water wells impacted by EPA’s new health advisory, which is now in effect and applicable. This requirement is of real and immediate importance to parties whose wells have been contaminated by pollution from the Fayetteville Works Facility. Affected parties must be assured that the replacement drinking water supply provisions in the Consent Order will be fully and timely implemented.” Chemours itemized to DEQ the status of replacement systems. This does not include households downstream, such as in New Hanover and Brunswick counties, who are connected to public systems. 885 have reverse osmosis systems that were installed by Chemours and are operating; 124 already have public water connections, including 84 that were connected by Chemours to public water systems, and are receiving public water; 108 are under consideration for public water connections and in the interim are receiving bottled water or have reverse osmosis systems already installed; 3 have had new deeper wells constructed by Chemours, producing water tested to have below 10 ppt for HFPO-DA; 5 (all non-residential properties) have granulated activated carbon (“GAC”) systems that were installed by Chemours and are operating; 4 of the wells are no longer in use; 519 have not accepted Chemours’s offer for reverse osmosis systems and are receiving bottled water deliveries or vouchers; and 49 have declined Chemours’s offer for reverse osmosis systems, and are not currently receiving replacement drinking water. There are an additional seven wells in New Hanover County whose owners have been provided with bottled water deliveries or vouchers. DEQ is hosting a public meeting on Tuesday, July 26 about the impacts of the new EPA goals on private well owners. The meeting will be held at the Crown Theatre, 1960 Coliseum Drive in Fayetteville, at 6 p.m. Read the article on NC Policy Watch
Continue reading -
EPA warns toxic ‘forever chemicals’ more dangerous than once thought
By: Gino Grandoni, The Washington Post June 15, 2022 The Environmental Protection Agency warned Wednesday that a group of human-made chemicals found in the drinking water, cosmetics and food packaging used by millions of Americans poses a greater danger to human health than regulators previously thought. The new health advisories for a ubiquitous class of compounds known as polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, underscore the risk facing dozens of communities across the country. Linked to infertility, thyroid problems and several types of cancer, these “forever chemicals” can persist in the environment for years without breaking down. “People on the front-lines of PFAS contamination have suffered for far too long,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “That’s why EPA is taking aggressive action.” The guidance aims to prompt local officials to install water filters or at least notify residents of contamination. But for now, the federal government does not regulate the chemicals. Health advocates have called on the Biden administration to act more quickly to address what officials from both parties describe as a contamination crisis that has touched every state. “Today’s announcement should set off alarm bells for consumers and regulators,” said Melanie Benesh, legislative attorney at the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization. “These proposed advisory levels demonstrate that we must move much faster to dramatically reduce exposures to these toxic chemicals.” Since the 1940s, chemical makers have used the highly durable compounds to make nonstick cookware, moisture-repellent fabrics and flame-retardant equipment. But that same toughness against water and fire, which made the chemicals profitable, allowed them to accumulate in nature and build up in the body — with long-term health effects. The sun sets behind the control tower of the former Loring Air Force Base on July 18, 2020, in Limestone, Maine, where the Air Force plans to test for contamination by “forever chemicals.” (David Sharp/AP) Agency officials assessed two of the most common ones, known as PFOA and PFOS, in recent human health studies and announced Wednesday that lifetime exposure at staggeringly low levels of 0.004 and 0.02 parts per trillion, respectively, can compromise the immune and cardiovascular systems and are linked to decreased birth weights. Those drinking-water concentrations represent “really sharp reductions” from previous health advisories set at 70 parts per trillion in 2016, said Erik Olson, a senior strategic director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. The announcement, he added, sends “an important signal to get this stuff out of our drinking water.” More significantly, the EPA is preparing to propose mandatory standards for the two chemicals this fall. Once finalized, water utilities will face penalties if they neglect to meet them. The advisories will remain in place until the rule comes out. The EPA also said Wednesday that it is offering $1 billion in grants to states and tribes through the bipartisan infrastructure law to address drinking-water contamination. The advisories’ levels are so low that they are difficult to detect with today’s technology. Some lawmakers, including Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement that this meant the new guidance is impractical. “EPA’s announcement will only increase confusion for water systems’ compliance efforts and further complicate risk communication to the public,” she said. The American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade group, said in a statement that it supports developing enforceable standards for these long-lasting compounds. But it faulted the EPA for issuing the advisories before outside experts on the agency’s Science Advisory Board had finished reviewing the underlying research, suggesting the process is “fundamentally flawed.” “Rather than wait for the outcome of this peer review, EPA has announced new Advisories that are 3,000 to 17,000 times lower than those released by the Obama Administration in 2016,” it said. Already in the United States, manufacturers have largely replaced PFOA and PFOS with other fluorinated compounds. The EPA determined that two of those alternatives — dubbed GenX and PFBS — also are dangerous to ingest even at relatively low levels, according to a review of recent research on mice. Among the communities hit hardest with contamination are those near military bases, where PFAS-laden foams were used for decades to fight jet-fuel fires. Many residents in Oscoda, Mich., for instance, have heeded warnings from state health officials and stopped drinking untreated well water and eating deer hunted near the now-shuttered Wurtsmith Air Force Base. “There still is no plan in place for the cleanup,” said Anthony Spaniola, an attorney and co-chair of the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network whose family has a lakeside home in Oscoda. “The Department of Defense, quite frankly, has mismanaged this site, bordering on reckless.” Spaniola hopes the new health advisories mean the military will “change the scope of what they need to clean up.” In North Carolina, Emily Donovan’s family of four started carrying around bottled water and installed a filter under their sink after PFAS were discovered in and around Cape Fear River. Instead of asking parents to donate cookies and cupcakes, schools request bottles of water for dances and other events. “It’s a layer of stress that we all live with now,” said Donovan, now an activist who co-founded Clean Cape Fear and is on the leadership team of the National PFAS Contamination Coalition. “You’re constantly wondering,” she added, “is there something inside of me? Is there something inside of my children?” Regan, who served as North Carolina’s top environmental official before joining the EPA, ordered the chemical company Chemours to stop the compounds from trickling into the river. On Wednesday, the company took issue with the analysis the EPA used to craft its latest guidance. “We are already using state-of-the-art technologies at our sites to abate emissions and remediate historical releases,” Chemours said in a statement. “We are evaluating our next steps, including potential legal action, to address the EPA’s scientifically unsound action.” While the agency is planning to regulate two PFAS, thousands of distinct compounds have been discovered. Many health advocates say federal regulators need to crack down on the compounds as a group. “We can’t continue this whack-a-mole approach to regulating them,” Olson said. “We’ll never be finished in anyone’s lifetime.” Radhika Fox, who heads the Office of Water at the EPA, said the agency is considering more sweeping regulations of the class of compounds. “We are exploring options to propose a rule that is for groups, not just PFOA and PFOS,” she told reporters Tuesday in a Zoom call. Read the article on The Washington Post
Continue reading -
Climate-driven flooding poses well water contamination risks
By: Michael Phillis and John Flesher, Associated Press June 08, 2022 ST. LOUIS -- After a record-setting Midwestern rainstorm that damaged thousands of homes and businesses, Stefanie Johnson’s farmhouse in Blandinsville, Illinois, didn’t have safe drinking water for nearly two months. Flood water poured into her well, turning the water a muddy brown and forcing Johnson, her husband and their two young children to use store-bought supplies. Even after sediment cleared, testing found bacteria — including E. coli, which can cause diarrhea. The family boiled water for drinking and cooking. The YMCA was a refuge for showers. “I was pretty strict with the kids,” said Johnson, who works with a private well protection program at the local health department. “I’d pour bottled water on their toothbrushes.” Though estimates vary, roughly 53 million U.S. residents — about 17% of the population — rely on private wells, according to a study conducted in part by Environmental Protection Agency researchers. Most live in rural areas. But others are in subdivisions near fast-growing metro regions or otherwise beyond the reach of public water pipes. While many private wells provide safe water, the absence of regulation and treatment afforded by larger municipal systems may expose some users to health risks, from bacteria and viruses to chemicals and lead, studies have found. Risks are elevated after flooding or heavy rainfall, when animal and human feces, dirt, nutrients such as nitrogen and other contaminants can seep into wells. And experts say the threat is growing as the warming climate fuels more intense rainstorms and stronger and wetter hurricanes. “Areas that hadn't been impacted are now. New areas are getting flooded,” said Kelsey Pieper, a Northeastern University professor of environmental engineering. “We know the environment is shifting and we're playing catch-up, trying to increase awareness.” Pieper is among scientists conducting well testing and education programs in storm-prone areas. After Hurricane Harvey caused widespread flooding along the Texas coast in 2017, sampling of more than 8,800 wells in 44 counties found average E. coli levels nearly three times higher than normal, she said. Sampling of 108 wells in Mississippi following Hurricane Ida in 2021 produced a similar bump in E. coli readings. Other studies turned up higher levels in North Carolina after Hurricane Florence in 2018. The following year, above-average snowfall and a March storm unleashed flooding in Nebraska. Levees and dams were breached. Fremont, a city of more than 25,000, turned into an island when the nearby Platte and Elkhorn rivers overflowed. The municipal system continued to supply drinking water but some nearby private wells were damaged or contaminated. Julie Hindmarsh's farm was flooded for three days, and it took months to make the well water drinkable again. At times, the cleanup crew wore protective suits. “They didn’t know what was in that floodwater,” she said. CONTAMINATION RISK Groundwater is often a cleaner source than surface supplies because soil can provide a protective buffer, said Heather Murphy, an epidemiologist at the University of Guelph in Canada. But she said that can give well owners a false sense of security, leading them to forgo testing, maintenance and treatment. “There's a big misconception that it's underground, therefore it's safe,” said Murphy, who estimates 1.3 million cases of acute gastrointestinal illness in the U.S. are caused annually by drinking untreated water from private wells. Old, poorly maintained wells are especially vulnerable to floodwaters entering through openings at the top. “It just runs right in and it’s full of bacteria,” said Steven Wilson, a well expert at the University of Illinois. It doesn’t always take a flood or hurricane to pollute wells. Industrial contamination can reach them by seeping into groundwater. Around 1,000 residential wells in Michigan’s Kent County were tainted for decades with toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in landfill sludge from footwear company Wolverine World Wide. The pollution, discovered in 2017, spurred lawsuits and a $69.5 million settlement with the state that extended city water lines to affected houses. “We thought we were getting this pristine, straight-from-nature water and it would be much better for us,” said Sandy Wynn-Stelt, who has lived across from one of the dump sites since the early 1990s. She said tests detected high levels of PFAS chemicals in her water and blood, leaving her fearful to drink or even brush her teeth with well water. In a suit later settled, she blamed the contamination for her husband’s 2016 death from liver cancer. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer four years later. LITTLE REGULATION FOR WELL OWNERS While many well owners don’t have the option of hooking up to a public water system, others are happy with well water. They might favor the taste or want to avoid monthly bills and government regulation. “What I hear from people is freedom,” said Jesse Campbell, private well coordinator for the Midwest Assistance Program Inc., which addresses rural water needs. Private well owners are responsible for them. While public water systems must meet federal safety standards, those rules don’t apply to wells that have fewer than 15 connections or serve fewer than 25 people. State and local standards usually involve only construction and design, although some states set tougher rules. New Jersey requires water quality testing before sales of property with private wells. Rhode Island requires testing when new wells are built and when property with a well is sold. But many states rely on public outreach and voluntary action to protect private well users. “There’s an overall lack of education,” Campbell said. He meets with well owners from Montana to Missouri, providing free inspections and advice. A lot of harm can be prevented if owners make sure the well's top keeps out debris and that the pump is turned off before a storm to keep out floodwaters. Experts recommend testing after a flood and decontaminating wells with chlorine if a problem is found. “People aren’t regularly testing,” said Riley Mulhern, an environmental engineer at the research group RTI International. Indiana’s health department offers testing for bacteria, lead, copper, fluoride and other contaminants. Some land-grant universities and private labs provide similar services. While many owners know how to maintain their wells, others ignore problems even if the water isn’t sanitary. Water that tastes fine can still be contaminated. “I wish I had a nickel for everyone who's walked into a workshop and said, ‘I’ve been drinking this water forever and it's fine,'” said Jason Barrett, who directs a Mississippi State University program that educates well owners. It provides free testing. But where such assistance isn't available, costs can run to a few hundred dollars, according to experts. Some owners avoid testing because they are concerned it will reveal an expensive problem. Johnson, the Illinois resident whose well was fouled by the 2013 downpour that killed four people and caused $465 million in flood damage, paid about $3,500 for repairs and upgrades. “Luckily, none of us became ill,” she said. Even ordinary rainstorms can carry diseases into groundwater, said Mark Borchardt, a microbiologist formerly with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “A lot of times people say, ‘Well, no one got sick,'” Borchardt said. “It's hard to see when people get sick unless it is a huge outbreak." Bea and Neil Jobe live in Primm Springs, Tennessee, an hour’s drive from Nashville. Several times a year, when there is heavy rain and a nearby creek floods, their well water turns “dingy," Bea Jobe said. The discoloration disappears after a few days but Jobe takes precautions such as keeping bottled water available. “I guess I’m used to it,” she said. Read the article on ABC
Continue reading