North Carolina has played an outsized role in the United States' forever chemical water contamination crisis, with much of that attention focused on chemical company Chemours' Fayetteville Works plant.
Company officials have admitted that the plant discharged forever chemicals into the Cape Fear River for decades, largely under DuPont before it spun Chemours off amid mounting legal liabilities. Those discharges polluted the primary drinking water source for Wilmington and its surrounding area, while air emissions carrying PFAS polluted groundwater around the plant.
Now, Chemours is weighing in on North Carolina's closely watched U.S. Senate race, with its corporate political action committee contributing $5,000 to GOP candidate Michael Whatley's campaign. The Delaware-based company has also donated $6,500 to five GOP state legislators over the course of this biennium, according to federal campaign finance data.
DJ Griffin, a Whatley campaign spokesman, did not reply to either an email or a text message asking about the GOP candidate's stance on Chemours.
Questions Griffin did not address included whether Whatley believes Chemours has adequately addressed the contamination allegedly caused by it and DuPont; about the GOP candidate's stance on the settlement agreement; and about the Trump EPA's decision to rescind Biden-era health limits for GenX.and three other PFAS.
Erin Carey, the director of the Sierra Club's North Carolina chapter, said it is disappointing that Whatley has not discussed PFAS contamination and more so that he is accepting campaign contributions from the company that is linked with that contamination.
"It's as baffling as it is disgraceful," said Carey, who lives in Wilmington and drank contaminated water for two decades.
Scientists have linked exposure to some PFAS with a number of health effects, including certain cancers, decreased fertility and development delays in children.
The donations come as Chemours is poised to see the Trump Environmental Protection Agency roll back some Biden-era PFAS rules to which the company had long been opposed. The company has long maintained that maximum contaminant levels for GenX and three other chemicals are not backed by science and that the former EPA did not go through the appropriate regulatory process before enacting them.
And last month, the company and the U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement that would see Chemours pay a $22.5 million civil penalty for PFAS contamination in New Jersey, North Carolina and West Virginia. As part of the settlement, Chemours agreed to spend at least $90 million over the next 15 years preventing contamination from three plants, including Fayetteville Works.
Democratic leaders in North Carolina such as Governor Josh Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson have blasted the settlement.
Jackson said that North Carolina officials had no role in crafting the agreement and called it "insulting" to about half a million people whose drinking water has been contaminated by Chemours.
Additionally, Jackson noted that North Carolina is positioned to receive at most $30 million as part of the deal. By comparison, the agreement includes up to $280 million to provide drinking water around Chemours plants in New Jersey and West Virginia, as well as $60 million to prevent discharges from West Virginia's Washington Works plant.
Former governor and current Democratic Senate candidate Roy Cooper dealt with Chemours' contamination throughout his time in office, starting when it became public in 2017.
Cooper posted a message to social media platform X about the settlement that said, "This backroom deal is another example of Washington bailing out billionaires and corporations instead of standing up for hardworking people. I fought to hold corporations accountable for pollution, and I'll do the same as Senator."
Chemours' political activity
Chemours formed its corporate PAC in 2018, a year after the Wilmington-area contamination became public knowledge. The PAC is funded by donations, typically monthly, from Chemours employees.
In North Carolina, the company has largely supported Republican members of the state legislature so far, focusing its donations on powerful anti-regulatory Republicans such as Rep. Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, and Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson.
The only federal candidate to which the Chemours PAC has contributed was $1,000 to former Congressman Wiley Nickel in 2023. The Wake County Democrat left Congress after legislative Republicans redrew the district he was representing to make it more favorable to GOP candidates and is poised to become the next Wake County District Attorney.
Chemours did not respond to a series of questions about why its PAC is supporting Whatley's campaign; what specific legislation or rules it is concerned about; or why Whatley's is the first North Carolina U.S. Senate campaign in which it is spending.
Notably, Chemours made the $5,000 contribution to Whatley's campaign on March 3, technically during the primary. That means the PAC could make another contribution of up to $5,000 for the general election.
During this election cycle, the Chemours PAC also made a maximum $15,000 contribution to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is Senate Republicans' official campaign arm.
Chemours has effectively staved off most federal PFAS limits and also avoided comprehensive PFAS rules in North Carolina, Carey noted.
Right now, the state's Environmental Management Commission is working towards implementing a monitoring and reduction rule for PFAS and 1,4-dioxane that Republican-appointed members of the EMC support instead of numerical limits previously proposed by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality.
"It's very disheartening as someone who drank poisoned drinking water for 20 years to know that the company that did it is essentially buying their way out of it as those of us who were left behind are paying to clean up the mess," Carey said.
New Hanover County's Cape Fear Public Utility Authority spent $43 million to build a granular activated carbon system that can remove PFAS at one of its drinking water plants and also has recurring costs related to swapping out filters. And Brunswick County is spending about $170 million to expand one of its water treatment plants and install reverse osmosis filters that it expects will reduce PFAS.
Both utilities are suing Chemours in an effort to recover the costs of their water plant upgrades.
