The Haw River cuts through North Carolina’s Piedmont region from its source in Forsyth County. Below Jordan Lake, it joins the Deep River to form the Cape Fear River, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean near the southernmost tip of the state.
“Haw River watershed is beautiful,” says Emily Sutton, Haw Riverkeeper for the Haw River Assembly. “It’s really rocky. There’s some high bluffs and fun rapids to paddle and lots of hikes—it’s [a] very accessible river.”
The river is undeniably beautiful. But per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly abbreviated as PFAS, are not visible to the naked eye. PFAS are chemicals that have been linked to debilitating health effects in high concentrations, and they are now so widespread that they are found in the blood of 97 percent of Americans.
This year, the EPA issued a proposed rule that public drinking water systems should not have more than four parts per trillion of two PFAS compounds, PFOS and PFOA. Back in 2019, Sutton and the Haw River Assembly detected 30,000 parts per trillion of total PFAS coming into the Haw from the city of Burlington—7,500 times the maximum concentration in the proposed new guidelines. For communities downstream that get their drinking water from the Haw, such as the town of Pittsboro, this invisible danger was a direct threat. The drinking water technically met all state quality standards, but only because there weren’t any for PFAS. The Haw River Assembly, the Southern Environmental Law Center and community members sprang into action.
A global pollution problem, communities such as those along the Haw River are having to deal with the reality of PFAS. While some states, such as Maine and New York, have passed laws beginning to regulate PFAS, federal
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