Disclosure: I run a company that sells home environmental testing kits, including for PFAS. This update is about testing pathways beyond tap water. Noted.

I wrote up the Chemours settlement last week at $455 million. The full figure, per Coastal Review, is $590 million: the $455 million to the state and 11 local governments over 10 to 15 years, plus a $135 million consent-order compliance reserve. It’s North Carolina’s largest environmental settlement.

Cape Fear River Watch and Clean Cape Fear say it’s not enough, and their reasons are worth reading because they’re not the usual “the number should be bigger.” They’re specific. Chemours is still discharging PFAS. The company hasn’t fully identified the affected private wells. And the contamination isn’t only in tap water; it’s in beaches, farms, gardens, honey, fish, and wildlife across the region.

Why that’s a sampling argument

The settlement, like most PFAS settlements, is built around drinking water. Water is what got measured, water is what has a federal standard, water is what the treatment plants need money to fix. So water is what got priced.

But a family in Bladen County drinks the water and also eats tomatoes from the backyard, eggs from the chickens that scratch in the yard, honey from the neighbor’s hives, and fish from the river. Every one of those is a PFAS pathway with published data behind it. Backyard eggs in contaminated areas have been found with PFAS at levels that make the water look minor. The settlement doesn’t test any of that, and doesn’t pay for it.

So the advocates’ complaint reduces to: you measured one route and paid for one route, and the people were exposed by five. That’s not a rhetorical point. It’s a sampling design point, and it’s the template every community downstream of a PFAS source is going to use from now on, including the ones on Long Island near foam sites. Water first, and then the garden, and then the eggs.

What we know

  • (new since September 11)
  • Total settlement: $590 million ($455 million to state and 11 local governments over 10–15 years, plus $135 million consent-order compliance reserve). North Carolina’s largest environmental settlement.
  • Cape Fear River Watch and Clean Cape Fear: Chemours continues discharging; affected private wells not fully identified; contamination extends to beaches, farms, gardens, honey, fish, and wildlife.

What we don’t know yet

Whether any non-drinking-water pathway is funded for testing or remediation under the settlement.

Sources

Corrections: If we got something wrong, tell us at kelly.sacredintel@gmail.com. We fix errors publicly and note the change here.

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