CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WVDN) – West Virginia Rivers Coalition (“WV Rivers”) today filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against The Chemours Company FC, LLC (“Chemours”) to stop its unlawful releases of a “forever chemical” that threatens public drinking water sources downstream along the Ohio River. The chemical, which is called hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid and sometimes called HFPO-DA or Gen X, has serious adverse effects on human health and can persist and accumulate in the environment. The federal drinking water standard for that chemical is extremely low—10 parts per trillion (ppt). WV Rivers is asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia to issue a preliminary injunction that would require Chemours to reduce its HFPO-DA discharges to comply with its permit. Appalachian Mountain Advocates and Public Justice filed the motion on behalf of WV Rivers.
For years, Chemours has been discharging wastewater containing HFPO-DA from its Washington Works Plant in Washington, West Virginia, into the Ohio River in amounts that greatly exceed the permit limits in its Clean Water Act permit. For example, in November 2024, Chemours exceeded its average monthly HFPO-DA limit at Outlets 002 and 005 by 454% and 166%, respectively. Those discharges threaten additional risks to the already impacted local community and to downstream communities that rely on the Ohio River for drinking water, such as Huntington, West Virginia, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky.
Chemours’ discharges are so excessive that Louisville has detected increased levels of HFPO-DA in its drinking water in recent intake samples. That intake is approximately 400 miles downstream and serves 700,000 people.
“The Ohio River is the drinking water source for over 5 million people. The Washington Works facility continues to externalize its costs, threaten public health, and place the burden on water utilities to provide safe water to their customers,” said Autumn Crowe, Deputy Director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.
Chemours has admitted that its current treatment system is inadequate and is asking the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (“WVDEP”) to give it three years to fix that system. The public is being exposed to toxic chemicals in the meantime and cannot afford to wait that long. Chemours’ permit says that it must reduce its operations if that is necessary for permit compliance. Chemours should reduce its HFPO-DA discharges by reducing its production of fluoropolymers. Alternatively, Chemours should dispose of its most contaminated wastewater properly off-site, as it does at its similar manufacturing plant in Fayetteville, NC.
“WV Rivers is filing this motion because WVDEP and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have failed to enforce the law,” said Jim Hecker, Senior Environmental Enforcement Attorney at Public Justice in Washington, D.C.
EPA issued an administrative order in April 2023 requiring Chemours to draft a compliance plan. After a year of EPA inaction, WV Rivers notified EPA, WVDEP and Chemours that it intended to sue. WV Rivers filed its citizen suit in December 2024. EPA recently froze all of its own enforcement actions. Although WVDEP is considering Chemours’ application for a revised permit, the last time WVDEP did so, it took ten years to act. Meanwhile, Chemours continues to expose the public to harmful levels of HFPO-DA in violation of its current permit.
