Burlington and Asheboro: these two North Carolina cities are less than 50 miles apart, but when it comes to addressing the pollution each has caused in downstream drinking water on their respective rivers, the Haw and Deep rivers, they couldn’t be more different.
One has worked through embarrassment and denial to try to fix the problem, contributing to groundbreaking science along the way; the other is fighting tooth-and-nail in court against environmental groups.
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What happens in each of these cities and their rivers will help determine the future of drinking water quality all along the Cape Fear watershed.
Obstinance in Asheboro
Asheboro, like many NC municipalities, has contracts with nearby landfills and industrial factories, such as the plastics manufacturer StarPet. The companies pay the city to take and treat the wastewater from their facilities.
The city does treat the water, but some of the chemical pollutants cannot be removed with traditional treatment. One such chemical is 1,4-dioxane, an odorless, colorless industrial solvent generated in the production of plastics, laundry detergent, antifreeze and shampoo. The chemical is likely to cause cancer in humans, according to the EPA.
Asheboro regularly dumps massive amounts of 1,4-dioxane into the Deep River, which flows through Randolph, Chatham and Lee counties before joining with the Haw River, where the two smaller rivers converge to form the Cape Fear River, a source of drinking water for 1.5 million North Carolinians. Last month, the NC Department of Environmental Quality notified residents of a discharge of 1,4-dioxane from Asheboro at a concentration nearly 30 times what is considered safe.
Downstream water treatment plants, like those of Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, have no ability to remove the insidious chemical from the rivers either. Doing so would require a massive investment into new technology on the downstream ratepayers’ dime.
There are no discharge limits on 1,4-dioxane. Asheboro can keep disposing of as much as they want. That was decided last year by NC administrative law judge Donald van der Vaart, when Asheboro, Greensboro and Reidsville joined forces to argue in court for their right to continue dumping the chemical. Van der Vaart struck limits from the cities’ permits.
But the Southern Environmental Law Center sued the City of Asheboro under the Clean Water Act, and now, the EPA is involved. The SELC believes that Asheboro has a legal mandate to stop discharging chemicals into drinking water. The EPA conducted a public hearing about Asheboro’s pollution back in October.
“Asheboro’s pollution is against the law,” Jean Zhuang, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Carolina Public Press.
“They are benefiting financially from taking on this pollution. That would be fine if they were adequately using their authority to make sure that that pollution wasn’t going to be harming people downstream.”
The EPA has offered no timeline for its decision on whether to take over the permit and instate limits on Asheboro’s 1,4-dioxane discharges into the river. At the EPA’s public hearing in October, the Asheboro city attorney spoke in support of the city’s right to continue dumping: the only person at the well-attended event to do so.
The city is not backing down from the fight to protect its right to pollute rivers.
“The City of Asheboro has an active permit and is in compliance,” Asheboro city manager Donald Duncan told CPP. “There are no established, legal limits on 1,4-dioxane.”
Asheboro’s defensive response isn’t the only avenue available for NC cities accused of putting the public health of residents in other parts of the state at risk.
What happened in nearby Burlington shows that another reality is possible.
The leaps and bounds of Burlington
Burlington has a similar relationship with nearby industries and landfills. Just like Asheboro, the city makes money processing the industrial wastewater. Only in Burlington, it’s primarily textile mills rather than plastics manufacturing.
When DEQ began requiring sampling for PFAS back in 2019, Burlington found extremely elevated levels downstream of their wastewater treatment plants. PFAS, commonly referred to as “forever chemicals,” are a group of manmade chemicals linked to adverse effects on human health.
Burlington discharges its wastewater into the Haw River, which joins with the Deep River to form the Cape Fear.
Just a few months after these first tests were done, Burlington received a notice of intent to sue from the Southern Environmental Law Center.
“When we got the notice of intent to sue, we were defensive,” Bob Patterson, Burlington city manager, told CPP. “We weren’t doing anything wrong. We were following our permits. We weren’t intentionally discharging PFAS. It felt like we were being attacked.”
But rather than litigate like Asheboro has, Burlington decided to cooperate.
The city worked with an engineering consultant and researchers at Duke University to identify the sources of the chemicals: Elevate Textiles and Shawmut Corp., two major textile mills that use PFAS to treat their fabric, and two nearby landfills. They also discovered that a process the city was using called Zimpro, which uses heat and pressure to treat wastewater, was unwittingly converting PFAS precursors into more dangerous forms of the chemical.
Wielding the Clean Water Act, the city worked with the two textile mills on minimization plans to reduce the amount of PFAS that they were discharging.
Ultimately, each textile mill transitioned to PFAS-free chemistry in early 2024.
Lessons for many rivers
Duke University recently published the results of its scientific work in Burlington. The analysis could help other municipalities across the state, and the country, identify the sources of PFAS in their wastewater, especially the stealthy precursor compounds.
“What Burlington did here just shows how powerful these municipalities are and how much authority they have to control the pollution coming from their industries,” Zhuang said.
“Burlington recognized the potential impact of that pollution on communities downstream, and they were willing to work with us and Duke University to identify that source and get their industry to do something about that pollution.
“Asheboro absolutely should follow suit, and require StarPet to adequately control their 1,4-dioxane pollution because they have full authority and ability to do so.”
The situation in Burlington, however, is not perfect. The city is still discharging some PFAS from its wastewater treatment plants, meaning it ends up in the rivers.
The landfills, for one, have not yet figured out a way to minimize or treat PFAS on site. It’s a problem plaguing landfills across the country.
Burlington also found elevated levels of 1,4-dioxane in its wastewater.
Using the methodology from the PFAS study, the city was able to quickly identify Apollo Chemical as the culprit. Once again, the city worked with the company to create a plan to capture as much of the chemical on-site as possible, and send it somewhere else for treatment. Apollo no longer discharges the chemical to Burlington.
“Not only are other wastewater plants in other places using our PFAS study, but we ourselves are actually using it as a guideline,” Patterson said.
Burlington is also going a step further to combat PFAS pollution. The North Carolina-based company Invicta Water has developed a patented technology to destroy PFAS, rather than just filtering them out. Over this winter and next spring, Burlington is volunteering to be a proving ground for Invicta.
Burlington and Asheboro face similar challenges. One chose cooperation, the other chose court. For the millions of North Carolinians who drink from rivers downstream from their treated water, the difference matters.
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