Old (nasty) habits are apparently hard to break:
In a press release Thursday afternoon, officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality said preliminary data revealed a spike in the levels of GenX in untreated water near the chemical company's Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County. After contacting the company, DEQ spokesman Jamie Kritzer said Chemours officials revealed that workers had spilled dimer acid fluoride during planned maintenance at the plant Oct. 6.
Dimer acid fluoride effectively breaks down in water into the equivalent of GenX, a poorly studied and unregulated contaminant in a family of chemicals linked to cancer and other negative health effects. Kritzer said it's unclear how much of the chemical leaked or how long it spilled into the Cape Fear River.
As our Riverkeepers and their cadre of volunteer water watchers will tell you, such "accidents" happen way too often to not be intentional. Whether it's polluting industries or municipal wastewater treatment plants, there are numerous cases of "Oops!" that occur every year. Because making it somebody else's problem is the easiest way to deal with chemicals and sewage. Until it starts costing you a lot of money, which is what needs to happen.
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