WILMINGTON — At a community screening of “Dark Waters,” activists and filmmakers turned the attention back on the source of the region’s water quality crisis: corporate polluters.
Organized by Clean Cape Fear, North Carolina Conservation Network, Clean Cape Fear, the Center for Environmental Health, and the actor Mark Ruffalo, the film company Participant launched its “Why We Fight” campaign tour at Wilmington’s Thalian Hall Tuesday.
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“Dark Waters” stars Ruffalo as the real-life corporate defense attorney Robert Bilott, who challenged DuPont in one of the most historic legal cases in the nation’s history. A yearslong medical monitoring study that included more than 69,000 voluntary human participants definitively linked C-8 (also known as Perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA) to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and high cholesterol.
“It was probably one of the biggest corporate crimes in history and none of us knew about it — we were all poisoned and none of us had a choice about it. And the fact that it was on the supplement of the New York Times instead of on the cover of every single publication in the world was just absolutely shocking to me,” Ruffalo said at the pre-screening panel.
Explaining why he helped create the film, Ruffalo said he wanted to evoke a sense of community connection. “I feel like we’ve lost our connection to each other. and the only way I know how to reinstate that connection is through storytelling.”
Used for commercial purposes because of their impenetrable qualities, the larger per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) family of compounds do not break down in the environment. The so-called “forever chemicals” have been found in alarming amounts in public water systems in New Hanover and Brunswick County.
A recent national study ranked a water sample taken at Belville Elementary in Brunswick County at the top of its list of 44 metropolitan areas tested with 186 parts per trillion of total PFAS tested.
A majority of PFAS found in the Cape Fear River are believed to come from Chemours in Fayetteville, a DuPont spin-off company. Chemours produces the proprietary GenX compound, the headline-grabbing chemical that first caught the attention of Wilmington-area residents in June 2017.
“We know that the hurt runs deep in this area. We know the public trust has been broken,” Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, said at the Tuesday screening.
Referencing the Parkersburg, West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, who first sued his neighbor DuPont for poisoning his livestock, La’Meshia Whittington-Kaminski of the North Carolina Black Alliance reminded the audience of how the public came to know about cancer-causing chemicals in the water supply.
“The only reason we are here tonight is because a farmer would not take no for an answer. We are here tonight because a lawyer had the courage to take on a giant chemical company,” Whittington-Kaminski said. “We are here tonight because a community in West Virginia gave us the largest human health study in U.S. history so that we could better protect our health.”
New Hanover County Chairman Jonathan Barfield described the region’s difficulty getting the DEQ, Governor’s Office, Department of Health and Human Services, and Chemours to address the issue. “Wanting answers, trying to get answers trying to get them to step up to the plate and get them what they should be doing,” Barfield said.
He reminded the audience of the infamous 2018 Thanksgiving-eve consent order between DEQ, Chemours, and Cape Fear River Watch. The order resulted in Chemours paying a $12 million fine — the largest in DEQ history — but was quickly condemned by Cape Fear Public Utility Authority and New Hanover County.
“In fact, we wanted more for our community. We wanted more for New Hanover County. We wanted more for the City of Wilmington,” Barfield said.
Years after the public’s discovery, New Hanover and Brunswick County are investing nearly $150 million combined in advanced water treatment efforts to filter out PFAS compounds. The upgrades will result in rate increases for hundreds of thousands of customers in the region. A successful legal outcome in ongoing lawsuits filed by local utilities against Chemours is the only way at this time to recoup those costs.
Send tips and comments to Johanna Ferebee Still at johanna@localvoicemedia.com
