Source: NCDEQ, 6/16/22 The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Division of
Water Resources (DWR) will hold public hearings on June 21 and 23 to accept
comments on a proposed National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) wastewater permit, for a groundwater treatment system at the Chemours
Fayetteville Works facility. The draft permit would substantially reduce the
PFAS entering the Cape Fear River via contaminated groundwater which is currently entering the river
untreated. IN PERSON Date:
Tuesday, June
21, 2022, at 6 p.m. Location:
Cape Fear Community College, 411 N. Front Street, Wilmington
Union
Station, First Floor Auditorium Register:
Speaker
registration opens at 5 p.m., onsite signup sheet REMOTE/ONLINE Date:
Thursday, June 23, 2022, at 6.p.m. Meeting
Access: WebEx link: https://ncdenrits.webex.com/ncdenrits/onstage/g.php?MTID=e6a3cebefc6af2776f229c3d4f2c74da9 Event number:
2421 589 1484 Event password:
NCDEQ Audio conference:
US TOLL +1-415-655-0003, Access code: 2421 589 1484 Register to
Speak: Speaker registration by 12 noon,
June 23, at https://forms.office.com/g/YEqDLDDDp7 Please contact Peter
Johnston if you have issues registering online at 919-707-9011 or email peter.johnston@ncdenr.gov. To submit comments by
email, send to publiccomments@ncdenr.gov with
CHEMOURS noted in the subject line by 5 p.m. June 24, 2022. Public comments may
also be mailed to Wastewater Permitting, Attn: Chemours Permit, 1617 Mail
Service Center, Raleigh, N.C., 27699-1617. The draft permit and fact sheet are available to view online. Chemours has been
prohibited from discharging PFAS-contaminated process wastewater from its
manufacturing operations into the Cape Fear River since 2017. However, historic
operations at the facility have caused significant groundwater contamination at
the site. The draft NPDES permit (NC0090042) allows only the discharge of
treated water associated with groundwater remediation efforts, primarily
treated groundwater, some surface water and stormwater. It
would not allow the discharge of wastewater from Chemours manufacturing
processes. As outlined in the 2020 Addendum to the Consent Order, Chemours is required to address
groundwater contamination by installing an underground barrier wall that will
run more than a mile alongside the Cape Fear River. This wall will intercept
contaminated groundwater from the facility before it reaches the river, and a
series of extraction wells will pump the captured groundwater to a treatment
system. The draft permit requires that the treatment system remove at
least 99% of PFAS from the pumped groundwater before it enters the river.
Without this treatment system intervention and accompanying discharge permit,
this heavily contaminated groundwater would continue to flow to the river
untreated and continue to impact downstream water supplies.
The proposed NPDES
permit does not change the conditions of any previous NPDES permit held by
Chemours.
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