DuPont agrees to $10M fine in C8 case

Marietta Times, Kevin Pierson
Published December 15, 2005

Despite agreeing to pay more than $10 million in fines and another $6.25 million in environmental projects as part of a lawsuit settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, some local residents say DuPont has not done enough to atone for putting the chemical known as C8 into area water supplies. The company announced the terms of the settlement of the case on Wednesday. The U.S. EPA alleged DuPont withheld information for more than 20 years about the health effects of the chemical and about the pollution of water supplies in Ohio and West Virginia near the company's Washington Works plant across the Ohio River from western Washington County. The settlement is the largest administrative penalty ever obtained by the U.S. EPA. One local resident said she feels that the fine is not enough since DuPont refused to admit liability as part of the settlement. The company maintains its policy that there are no known adverse human health effects from C8. "They don't know what kind of damage it does and just to deny that it's doing any damage is not really acceptable," said Gayle Camp, of High Street, Vincent. Eva Powell, of 4930 Sandhill Road, Marietta, agrees and said that she feels the reason DuPont made the settlement is to make the situation "go away" in the eyes of the public. "I think that if they were doing something that had the C8 in it, and it came from their plant they should be responsible. I think they may be paying this to make it go away," Powell said. "I think they're responsible but I don't think they want to admit it." DuPont responded with a statement announcing the settlement and admitting no liability. "Frankly, we could have litigated this thing for several years," DuPont general counsel Stacey Mobley told The Associated Press. "We wanted to get this thing behind us so we could move forward." The settlement has to be approved by the EPA Environmental Appeals Board and resolves four counts of reporting violations under the Toxic Substances Control Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act filed last year. Among other things, the EPA said DuPont withheld test results indicating that the chemical had been found in at least one pregnant worker from the Washington Works plant and had been passed on to her fetus. "This sends a strong message that companies are responsible for promptly giving EPA risk information associated with their chemicals," said Granta Nakayama, EPA's assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance to The Associated Press. The environmental projects involved in the settlement include funding for a research program to evaluate the potential for biodegradation of chemicals such as the one used for Teflon and funding for microchemistry and green chemistry programs in West Virginia schools. According to reports obtained by the Environmental Working Group DuPont was aware that C8 was being leaked into the water supply in 1981 and withheld that information from the EPA and the public, which resulted in the lawsuit. Lauren Sucher, director of public affairs with EWG, said that document was what caused the group to begin pushing the EPA to investigate DuPont. Sucher said that she is pleased that the EPA has leveled a high fine against DuPont. "We commend the EPA for taking action against this company but this fine shows us how weak our law is when it comes to toxic chemicals," Sucher said. Despite the magnitude of the fine, Sucher agreed with local residents and said she feels DuPont needs to make more restitution to the people of the community affected by C8. "Moreover, has DuPont apologized to the community for polluting their drinking supply? ... I think at best it's a shallow victory for people whose blood has been polluted and whose water has been polluted," Sucher said. In the agreement, four additional counts raised by the agency this year also were resolved, according to DuPont, which did not make any admission of liability. Under federal law, DuPont faced a fine of more than $300 million for not reporting that the chemical posed a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment. "Our interpretation of the reporting requirements differed from the agency's," said Mobley in the DuPont statement. She also noted that the company has cut C8 emissions from U.S. plant sites by 98 percent and said it hoped to reduce emissions even further by 2007. But Camp expressed concerns that the fine may not be enough to keep similar incidents from occurring in the future. "I think it (fine) should be high enough to make it a deterrent that they'll think twice about doing anything like that again. There's a lot of environmental damage and stuff that cannot be repaired, let alone what they have done to people," Camp said. The Associated Press contributed.