Charleston Gazette, Ken Ward Jr.
Published March 21, 2005
State regulators have reissued permits for a DuPont Co. landfill in Wood County and declined to limit the dump's discharge of the toxic chemical C8.
The state Department of Environmental Protection renewed water pollution and waste management permits for DuPont's Dry Run Landfill on March 3, officials said last week.
The permits had last been renewed in April 1998, and formally expired in April 2003.
DEP officials "extended" that expiration date 10 times over the next two years before formally renewing the permits for another five years.
Hundreds of area residents objected to the permit renewal, and some demanded that DEP forbid or strictly limit C8 discharges from the facility.
DEP officials refused to ban C8 discharges, and said that they could not even limit them because the state has no water pollution standards for C8.
"There is no water quality criteria or risk assessment," said Cliff Whyte, permit program manager for the DEP Division of Water and Waste Management. "We didn't really have a basis for a water quality limit."
Whyte said that DEP added language to the final permit that requires DuPont to immediately apply for a permit change if federal or state officials draft a C8 water quality standard or finalize a risk assessment on the chemical.
The permit document states that, "Should the United States Environmental Protection Agency promulgate a final risk assessment or water quality criteria for ammonium perfluorooctanoate which is different than 150 parts per billion ... said concentration shall take precedence." C8 is another name for ammonium perfluorooctanoate.
Residents have until early April to appeal the DEP decisions to the state Environmental Quality Board.
Under the law, residents could also petition the board to write a water quality standard for C8. If the board did so, DEP would be required to limit the company's discharges to ensure the standard was not violated in Dry Run Creek.
The 17-acre landfill, about 4 miles southwest of the community of Lubeck, is at the center of a major controversy over C8.
DuPont uses C8 to make its popular Teflon products, and similar nonstick products it sells to other manufacturers.
Since the dump was opened in 1984, DuPont has disposed of large amounts of C8-contaminated wastes in the Dry Run facility.
Company tests have confirmed that C8 is leaching from the landfill into Dry Run Creek.
The most recent data on file with DEP shows C8 concentrations of more than 80 parts per billion.
That's far more than the 1-part-per-billion company limit that DuPont set years ago for drinking water. But, it is far less than the 150 parts per billion that DEP agreed to as a "screening level" for whether DuPont must replace local water supplies.
DuPont has used C8 at its Washington Works plant south of Parkersburg since 1951. Since then, C8 -- and DuPont's emissions of it -- have essentially been unregulated by state and federal agencies.
Fueled in large part by internal DuPont documents uncovered by lawyers for Wood County residents, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has begun a detailed study of the chemical and sued DuPont for allegedly hiding information about the C8's dangers.
In its lawsuit last July, EPA alleged that DuPont had caused "widespread contamination" of drinking-water supplies near the Parkersburg plant.
EPA officials also alleged that this pollution has created a "substantial risk of injury to health or the environment."
But, no state or federal agency has taken steps to eliminate this risk.
Last month, a Wood County judge approved a $ 107.6 million settlement of a lawsuit filed against DuPont on behalf of thousands of residents whose drinking water was allegedly poisoned with C8.
As part of that settlement, residents' lawyers persuaded DuPont to pay to install new pollution control equipment to reduce the amount of C8 in local drinking water.
Also last month, members of the EPA's Science Advisory Board urged the agency to elevate its cancer-causing classification for the chemical and do a more thorough review of the substance.
In a draft study, EPA had characterized C8 as a "suggestive" carcinogen. But advisory board members said that the evidence may indicate that the chemical is a "likely" carcinogen.
Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group said that EPA's draft study ignored evidence that links C8 to heart attacks, breast cancer, testicular cancer and other ailments.
In the mid-1980s, DuPont disposed of 7,100 tons of C8-contaminated sludge from the Washington Works plant in the unlined Dry Run landfill, records show.
By April 1990, DuPont tests confirmed that C8 was leaching from the landfill into Dry Run Creek at concentrations as high as 1.6 parts per million -- more than 100 times the company's own limits for C8 in water.
Still, DuPont continued to dispose of large amounts of C8 wastes in the landfill, records show.
In August 2001, the company settled out of court a lawsuit brought by Wilbur and Sandra Tennant, Dry Run landfill neighbors who said that C8 pollution killed their cattle and made their family sick.
During a public comment period in 2003, lawyers for the Tennants and other residents urged DEP to outlaw any additional C8 discharges.
"Despite the obvious need to limit the release of C8 into the environment, as now openly acknowledged by state and federal regulators, DuPont has been free to dump as much C8 and related materials into the landfill as it wanted for decades without any restrictions or limits of any kind by WVDEP," wrote Robert A. Bilott, a lawyer for the residents, in a Nov. 11, 2003, letter to DEP.
"Such unrestricted, unlimited disposal has created a serious risk of harm to human health and the environment from continued operation of the landfill," Bilott wrote.
In a letter last month to EPA, Bilott cited new scientific studies that found "significantly elevated incidences" of angina, heart attacks and strokes among area residents whose drinking water contained C8.
