Words by Adele Morris
Photos and Graphics by Anders Ljung
In the fall of 2022, North Carolina produce farmer Ty Jacobus decided to take advantage of free well water testing offered by a local chemical manufacturing company. Jacobus, whose farm is located in Castle Hayne in southeastern North Carolina, wanted to confirm that the well water that supplies his produce was clear of chemical contamination.
Yet the test results revealed the opposite: His water supply had a high contamination of manmade chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly referred to as PFAS. PFAS have been in use since the 1950s in the manufacturing of products ranging from Teflon to popcorn bags to nonstick cookware.
PFAS are not removed by any conventional water treatment in municipal wastewater treatment plants, hence the nickname “forever chemicals.” They have been linked to various health issues, including cancer and infertility.
“We did our research, and very quickly I had to accept the hard truth was that the studies have confirmed it is very dangerous,” Jacobus said. “It has effects on everything from hormones to fertility to cancer.”
Jean Zhuang, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said PFAS cause increased risk of various cancers, developmental harm to mothers and fetuses, and decreased effectiveness of vaccines. She also noted many industries release these chemicals into the Cape Fear River Basin, which she said provides the drinking water for nearly 1 million North Carolinians.
Since his well water was tested, Jacobus has lost years of profit following several failed bids to rid his water of PFAS. Now, after installing multiple filters and spending thousands of dollars, Jacobus can finally label his water clean.
“In essence, it’s cost us about close to four years of absence in the market, damage to our reputation,” he said. “It’s cost me close to eight or nine grand in filters, and not to mention the morale and everything else it’s done from afar —it’s just been awful, dealing with this constantly.”
The History
The PFAS contamination issue in eastern North Carolina is nothing new. The issue originally made local news in 2017, when the Wilmington StarNews published an article revealing that the PFAS chemical GenX had been found in the drinking water system of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority (CFPUA), which was unable to filter it.
The average concentration of GenX measured at CFPUA’s water intake on the Cape Fear in 2013-14 was 631 parts per trillion — nine times the EPA’s advisory level at the time.
The GenX chemical is manufactured by Chemours, the same company that performed Jacobus’ well water testing. Chemours was made obligated to offer free well water testing in local areas with detectable PFAS contamination after a lawsuit filed by the Cape Fear River Watch (CFRW) in 2018.
Zhuang was one of the attorneys who represented CFRW in the lawsuit, which sued Chemours for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act as well as the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (N.C. DEQ) for inaction on its mission to protect human health and the environment. The N.C. DEQ also filed a separate lawsuit against Chemours.
In February 2019, the lawsuits culminated in a court order signed by Chemours, CFRW and the N.C. DEQ that required Chemours to reduce its pollution from air emissions by 99.99 percent and from a large on-site stream by at least 99 percent.
According to a 2020 SELC press release, a 2020 addendum to the court order requires that pollution from every other significant pathway of PFAS contamination from the Chemours’ Fayetteville Works site to the Cape Fear River must be reduced by at least 99 percent.
In an email statement, Chris Hickey, regional communications manager for operations at Chemours, said the company has invested over $400 million to address historical emissions and implement advanced technology to curb future releases at its Fayetteville Works site.
Hickey noted that Chemours has reduced GenX discharges into the Cape Fear River by 99 percent through a combination of a mile-long barrier wall and systems designed to intercept, collect and treat legacy groundwater and surface water. He also highlighted the installation of a thermal oxidizer capable of destroying more than 99.99 percent of PFAS air emissions routed to it.
“We know of no other company that has done as much to create a responsible manufacturing environment as Chemours has, and we encourage the many other PFAS users and dischargers in North Carolina to do their part,” Hickey wrote.
But Genevieve Guerry, a graduate researcher in East Carolina University’s integrated coastal sciences program, noted that lawsuits against big manufacturing companies that produce these chemicals are not always successful.
“It’s hard legally for people to go after the company because they will say, ‘Oh, well, you eat fast food, and that’s in their wrappers, so that’s your lifestyle,’ — which could be a contributing factor,” she said. “But really the drinking water, the concentrations that the Chemours or the Fayetteville Works site was emitting — and it’s still emitting, because it’s in the air, and we still keep finding it in the environment — was a dose that most people would be uncomfortable with having in the body.”
The Research
For her research at ECU, Guerry created a survey for residents in New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties that inquired about topics such as the changes residents have made to their lifestyle after learning about PFAS and the health effects they associate with the chemicals. The survey was released to the public in the fall of 2024 and has around 260 responses.
Guerry’s research is one of many active projects investigating PFAS within the state. Though her research is funded by ECU’s Coastal Studies Institute, much research regarding PFAS in the state is funded by the North Carolina Collaboratory.
The N.C. Collaboratory was established by the state legislature in 2016 as a research funding agency to “facilitate the dissemination of the policy and research expertise found throughout our colleges and universities for practical use by state and local government,” according to the director’s letter in the N.C. Collaboratory’s Annual Report for 2024.
Jeffrey Warren, the executive director of the N.C. Collaboratory, described the organization as “the front porch to academia for the legislature.” He said the N.C. Collaboratory has approximately 300 active projects, most of which center around the environment and natural resources.
He highlighted two key PFAS initiatives led by the N.C. Collaboratory: an aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) takeback program and a beaded resin technology designed to remove PFAS from water.
The AFFF takeback program, developed in partnership with the Office of the State Fire Marshal, aims to sustainably eliminate 65,000 gallons of PFAS-rich foam used in fighting flammable liquid fires. The program will award a financial contract to the company or companies offering the most efficient and cost-effective destruction method.
Warren said he believes the program is the largest AFFF takeback and destruction project ever undertaken. Currently, the program involves researchers from Duke University, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and it may expand to include researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
As for the beaded resin, Warren called it “by far the best technology out there that we know of.” According to Warren’s director’s letter in the 2024 annual report, the resin removes PFAS from water four times more effectively than currently available filtration technology.
Water flows through the resin, which uses a charge to pull the PFAS out and make them stick to the material. The resin is regenerated in place by stripping off the removed PFAS with alcohol and putting them in a concentrated mixture for disposal.
Under the North Carolina PFAS University Research Alliance (NC Pure), three active pilot programs are using the resin to filter their water — two in New Hanover County with CFPUA and one at the Burlington Wastewater Treatment Plant. The resin technology is currently in the process of obtaining approval from the National Sanitation Foundation.
Despite all the research the N.C. Collaboratory is doing regarding PFAS, Warren believes there is more to be done. He said his current focus areas for future PFAS research are destruction technology, identification, replacement and remediation of PFAS in the environment.
“PFAS have been in production since the 50s, so even if we eliminated all PFAS from materials tomorrow, we’re still going to have 70 years of PFAS in the environment,” he said.
The N.C. Collaboratory received its initial funding for PFAS research in 2018 and now has PFAS researchers across 10 North Carolina colleges. Warren said the North Carolina General Assembly has appropriated approximately $50 million to the N.C. Collaboratory for PFAS research and every year the organization receives $4 million in recurring dollars just for PFAS projects.
“We have probably the highest concentration of PFAS researchers in the nation,” Warren said. “We have devoted more state dollars than any other state to PFAS research from the legislature. We probably have the most advanced laboratories and analytical instruments focused on PFAS.”
But Guerry, the graduate researcher at ECU, and Dana Sargent, the executive director of CFRW, both voiced a desire to see more studies regarding health effects at the cost of the companies releasing PFAS, not the taxpayer.
Sargent said CFRW filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year for effectively denying CFRW’s request for Chemours to fund a large-scale health study. She noted that the request had been denied previously during the first Trump administration.
“These companies are powerful, and the lobbying behind them are powerful, and the legislators in the state and federal governments who support polluters and Chambers of Commerce over public health and the environment have stripped us of the ability to really know the health effects,” she said.
The Politics
Sargent said the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission has failed to prompt adequate state action on the PFAS issue.
According to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (N.C. DEQ) website, the Commission, which consists of 15 members appointed by state officials, is responsible for adopting rules for the “protection, preservation, and enhancement of the state’s air and water resources.”
The website says the Commission oversees and adopts rules for several divisions of the N.C. DEQ, including the Divisions of Air Quality, Land Resources, Waste Management and Water Resources.
Sargent said the Commission has ordered the N.C. DEQ to submit a PFAS minimization plan rule, which she labeled “worse than nothing.”
According to a March 2025 SELC press release, the rule would allow wastewater treatment plants to give polluters nearly a decade to sample and prepare a plan with “goals” for minimizing PFAS. If industries do not make progress toward their “goals,” they would face no consequences.
“This rule, if it goes forward, will give companies coverage to say, ‘Well, I don’t have to do anything, because this rule basically tells me I don’t,” she said. “So we’re going to fight that.”
Zhuang, the SELC senior attorney, echoed Sargent, saying the Commission has been “systematically and consistently blocking any progress on drinking water protection specifically for PFAS chemicals.”
But JD Solomon, the chairman of the N.C. Environmental Management Commission, wrote in an email statement that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “regards minimization plans as a proactive strategy to minimize exposure risks to communities and the environment before contamination becomes widespread or expensive to clean up.”
Despite political tension, Warren, the executive director for the N.C. Collaboratory, said he is not worried about state funding for the Collaboratory’s PFAS research. He said he thinks both Republicans and Democrats alike would support keeping PFAS research funded.
In terms of federal funding, Warren said although the Collaboratory pulls in federal grants, “nobody has a crystal ball.”
“There’s concerns about the indirect costs on grants,” he said. “There’s concerns about grants that are frozen or terminated, funding agencies that are frozen or terminated.”
Warren said he has pitched the UNC Support for Critical Investigations Engaged in NC Experiments (SCIENCE) Act to the state legislature. The UNC SCIENCE Act would put $20 million in reserve as a lifeline for mission-critical research for the N.C. Collaboratory.
Moving Forward
Both Guerry, the ECU graduate researcher, and Jacobus, the farmer, said the responsibility to end PFAS contamination should fall on the source — the companies that produce and release them.
“Taking these things out of the environment is almost near impossible,” Guerry said. “We have to turn off the tap, otherwise we’re just mopping up wet water that’s consistently overflowing the tub.”
Wilmington Republican Rep. Ted Davis has introduced legislation that would make companies pay for PFAS contamination found in the Wilmington area’s drinking water. House Bill 569 would force PFAS manufacturers to pay for treatment technology to keep levels of specific chemicals below standards set by the U.S. EPA.
Jacobus noted that it can be unaffordable to filter the PFAS out of one’s own water. He said the N.C. DEQ does have a fund to reimburse well owners for their filter costs to some extent, but he still lost thousands of dollars in the process.
He said because these manufacturing companies knew the dangers of PFAS before the public and tried to conceal that information, they must be responsible for the clean-up. He said PFAS contamination should not be a subject of political contention.
“I absolutely hate politics, and to me, this is not even a political issue,” he said. “No matter what your politics are, I don’t see how you could possibly be opposed to clean water.”
