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Mid-Ohio Valley entities react to EPA announcement

PARKERSBURG — An attorney for a local utility with C8 in its water supply said Friday’s designation of that and a related chemical as hazardous substances should have happened long ago.

“It is decades overdue to take that action, because it clearly has cost Little Hocking a tremendous amount of money to fight through things the harder way,” said David Altman, who represents the Little Hocking Water Association.

C8 was used in the Teflon-manufacturing process at DuPont’s Washington Works plant. Little Hocking was among the nearby water suppliers who had active carbon filtration systems installed by the company as part of a 2009 EPA order. A science panel established by that settlement found possible links between C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pregnancy induced hypertension including preeclampsia and hypercholesterolemia.

Designating PFOA and PFOS — part of a family of compounds known as PFAS — as hazardous under the federal Superfund law will allow for better protection of property from the substances and “will cost those responsible more money,” Altman said.

“That is merely going back to the ways our laws were designed,” he said, adding it should put the burden on those who benefited from use of the chemicals and hid the truth about their effects.

Parkersburg Utility Board Manager Eric Bennett said he was not sure what changes, if any, there would be for the utility as a result of the designation. C8 has been present in the PUB water supply for years, but not at a level that made the utility eligible for the filtration systems and below the EPA’s 2016 health risk threshold of 70 parts per trillion. But a new, nonbinding lifetime drinking water advisory issued in June was 0.004 parts per trillion.

“I’ll have to review” the new guidance, Bennett said.

Although not required to, the PUB tests annually for C8. The results for 2022 have not come in yet but the most recent showed 12 parts per trillion.

Altman noted there have been multiple corporate changes since use of C8 and related chemicals was phased out. Those include DuPont spinning that portion of its business off as Chemours, which now owns the Washington Works; merging with Dow Chemical; and creating a new company, DuPont de Nemours, in 2019.

That new entity has not used C8 or PFOS, a claim Chemours has also made since it didn’t exist either prior to the phaseout.

“DuPont (de Nemours) has publicly stated its support for EPA, utilizing peer-reviewed sound science and the regulatory process, to list PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances,” said Dan Turner, with DuPont corporate media relations, via email Friday. “However, we also recognize that there is risk of unintended consequences with a CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act) listing that could capture a very wide swath of entities into the statute’s liability scheme.”

That echoes concerns raised Friday by U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

“If this proposal is finalized, property owners, farmers, employers, essential utilities and individuals may be liable for unknowingly having PFAS on their land, even if it was there years or even generations prior to ownership and came from an unknown source,” she said in a press release Friday. “The best way to give Americans confidence that they are safe from PFAS should be prioritizing research efforts to both understand the environmental and public health challenges the chemicals pose and develop technologies to ultimately find, remove and destroy PFAS for good.”

Capito repeated her call for the EPA “to expeditiously complete work on an enforceable drinking water standard to promote the health and safety of every American.”

Altman said he cannot disclose details about Little Hocking’s settlement with DuPont, but said Chemours is part of it.

In general, “without any question Chemours is liable because DuPont assigned Chemours liability,” Altman said, noting the companies were in a legal dispute over the matter that was resolved in 2021.

A message to Chemours representatives had not been returned Friday afternoon.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com.

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