The head of the agency providing drinking water to more than 200,000 people in and around Wilmington said Tuesday that unregulated and little-studied chemicals in the Cape Fear River aren’t a hazard — as far as he knows.
Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Jim Flechtner told North Carolina legislators that the agency’s water meets all state and federal standards for drinking water. The problem is that too little is known about emerging pollutants to know whether they’re unhealthy or OK, he said.
"There is a question mark of what else is in the river," Flechtner said.
A state Senate committee is investigating chemicals in the state’s rivers, especially the chemical GenX, which is used in making Teflon and was released from a Chemours Co. plant near Fayetteville. A company spokesman didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
There are no federal health standards for GenX. The chemical is related to other fluorinated chemicals including PFOA, which has been blamed for causing health problems.
Only a fraction of the tens of thousands of chemicals used by U.S. industries have been studied enough to establish the health risks they pose for humans, Duke University professor Lee Ferguson told a similar House hearing last week.
Ensuring public drinking water supplies are safe is complicated by the lack of requirements to notify water treatment plants when a new factory or other operation begins releasing chemicals upstream, Flechtner said.

Heredia eventually reached a friend in Puerto Rico’s capital of San Juan who traveled to Utuado and assured him that Heredia’s mother and other contacts in his hometown were okay.
Heredia took the initiative to start a GoFundMe online campaign to raise money to buy water filters and send them to Utuado so people would have access to safe drinking water.
At first Heredia was hesitant about sharing his fundraising effort with co-workers, but then one of them asked if there was anything they could do to help Puerto Rico.
I’m sending you filters.’
Trump visited with officials in Puerto Rico on Tuesday and praised FEMA’s response to the many hurricanes of the last few weeks, and said that Puerto Rico was lucky to lose only 16 lives in the hurricane in comparison to a "real catastrophe like (hurricane) Katrina."
Many in Puerto Rico are asking for increased federal aid to what they see as a crisis that is just beginning.
"Let’s send a message that we all care," he said. "Everybody is watching and we want Puerto Rico to get over this."

But even before a Category 4 hurricane slammed the U.S. territory, the island’s water supply was in serious trouble.
Some 55 percent of Puerto Ricans still don’t have access to drinking water as of Saturday, and concerns are rising over the potential for waterborne illnesses.
In 2015, nearly 70 percent of the population got their water from sources that violated federal health standards in 2015.
We’re spending money to turn the power back on. To give people drinking water,” Schumer said at a press conference Tuesday.
Puerto Rico is “unfortunately reflective of a system that broke down and a lack of investment in the infrastructure and provision of clean water, compounded by most likely an island system that’s really complicated,” Burke, who previously worked for the Environmental Protection Agency, said.
This could include typhoid and the remote possibility of cholera, according to Hotez.
Now, Puerto Rico is in the long process of recovering from the hurricane, and there’s the hope the water systems will be improved from even before the hurricane.
“We need an investment from the federal government in Puerto Rico’s drinking water systems, in rebuilding Puerto Rico’s infrastructure the right way,” Quintero said.

An appeal has been launched to raise money to help those people fleeing violence in Myanmar.
In the past month, hundreds of thousands of people have fled violence in Rakhine state with most of them seeking refuge in Bangladesh.
More than 500,000 people, mostly Rohingya women and children, are at crowded camps and settlements but many have no access to clean drinking water, toilets or washing facilities and there is a growing risk of disease.
The UK Government has vowed to match the first £3m donated by the public to the appeal, which will be launched by the Disasters Emergency Committee with a video on all major UK broadcasters later.
DEC chief executive Saleh Saeed said: "This is one of the fastest movements of people we have seen in recent decades.
"This humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in a country that is already reeling from the worst flood in decades.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s leader, has been criticised for not condemning the violence in Rakhine state.
Regarding the many thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled for Bangladesh, Ms Suu Kyi said in September: "We want to find out why this exodus is happening.
She added: "It is utterly intolerable that the military who are responsible for this inhumane catastrophe have not heeded calls for restraint and pleas to allow those who are now refugees to return safely to their homes."

DICKINSON – Rene Heredia, a scientist for Marathon Oil in Dickinson, felt helpless as he watched Hurricane Maria devastate his home island of Puerto Rico on Friday, Sept. 22.
“At the beginning I felt so helpless. Me and many friends in the continental U.S. were looking from far away with no communication at all.
Getting in touch with relatives and friends proved extremely difficult because the hurricane nearly wiped out the country’s electrical grid. Heredia eventually reached a friend in Puerto Rico’s capital of San Juan who traveled to Utuado and assured him that Heredia’s mother and other contacts in his hometown were okay.
Late last week, Heredia heard that the U.S. Postal Service was going to soon start delivering mail to places like Utuado, so he had an idea to send water filters to his hometown. As a professional in the field of environmental science and with childhood experiences in Boy Scouts, Heredia knew the water filters would be useful.

The group wants everyone to know the U.S. territory is in dire need of assistance.
"I have some cousins there and I’ve been in contact with them.
Puerto Ricans En Arkansas has been collecting items like water, mosquito repellent, mosquito nets and candles for those without electricity.
We still need a lot of those,” said Berumen.
“Right now, we’ve got about five pallets of water,” Berumen added. But she said they still need more nonperishable items, things like canned tuna and chicken breasts.
“We have to go to Dardanelle [today] because we have a group of people collecting stuff there.
Puerto Ricans En Arkansas has two more donation drives coming up. One is set for October 7 at the Southwest Community Center and another on October 8 at Little Rock Fire Station #23.
Their plane leaves for Puerto Rico October 20.

SAN JUAN — Access to drinking water has been restored to 45% of Puerto Rico — but more than half of the U.S. territory of 3.4 million is still going without.
The statistics come as a war of words between President Trump and the mayor of Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan, escalated Sunday. Trump is trying to defend his administration’s handling of the humanitarian crisis that has enveloped the island since Hurricane Maria’s brutal onslaught Sept. 20.
But local officials say the response is paltry at best.

When Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, told reporters while begging the White House for help that "people are dying," she wasn’t exaggerating.
Her city and much of the island is coming up on two weeks of suffering after Hurricane Irma, which not only knocked out power for the entire population but also left scores of people without clean drinking water, easy access to gasoline, readily available food and much-needed medical care. Although the death toll is officially 16 right now, that number will almost definitely go up.
"Sadly, the island is so badly damaged that there is no ability to communicate—no way to know the number of people who may have been killed in the storm itself with houses coming down, debris," Stephen E. Flynn, the founding director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University, tells Newsweek.
The director of Puerto Rico’s emergency management agency told reporters during the storm that he predicted he’d "find our island destroyed." Trees fell, buildings flooded and entire communities were effectively cut off from the outside world.
But the chaos didn’t end when the storm passed.
Hospitals have limited power from generators that rely on diesel—which is now in short supply. Doctors who are spread out in various communities have no backup power and, because of their size, aren’t likely to get any of the limited supplies coming in.
For Puerto Rico now, though, all he can hope for is immediate help.

A 2014 report by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on the status of fisheries in the Michigan waters of Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair indicated Lake St. Clair continued to be the "premier Michigan water for trophy muskellunge and smallmouth bass."
Fishing isn’t the only recreational sport for which the lake is valued.
The 2004 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report also said that recreational boating in the lake contributed more than $200 million a year to the economy of southeastern Michigan.
Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties have nearly 189,000 of those registered boats, more than 20% of the overall boat registrations in the state.
The initiative has improved access to the Clinton River in several communities in the county, adding kayak and canoe launches, and is working on a paddleboat launch in Mt. It has improved coastal paddling access at Lake St. Clair Metropark and Burke Park in New Baltimore, said John Paul Rea, the county’s planning and economic development director.
Among its many efforts, the initiative is assisting with the development of a Waterfront Redevelopment Plan and the development of a corridor improvement district in Harrison Township, he said.
Macomb County alone has more than 70 active marinas and more than 16,000 boat slips, Rea said.

HARGEISA – In line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations to build a better world over the next 15 years, DP World will provide a US$ 2 million donation to help increase water availability and improve healthcare in Berbera following an agreement with the Government of Somaliland.
The funding builds on DP World’s ongoing work in Somaliland where it has a 30-year concession to develop a multi-purpose project at the Port of Berbera. The initiative aligns with the UN’s 17 goals for sustainable development that address major issues such as access to clean water and sanitation, ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, combatting climate change, and protecting our oceans and forests. It also forms part of DP World’s “Our World, Our Future” global sustainability programme.
Part of the donation will also help finance improvements to the Berbera General Hospital and the Berbera Mental Hospital, to ensure access to better medical facilities and reduce the need for local residents to travel outside of the town when they require assistance.
This support for Berbera is part of our commitment to help develop the areas in which we operate and we are confident that our donation will have important benefits for many people across the region.
Ongoing efforts include donating 4.5m litres of water to the drought committee in Berbera, sponsorship of 11 schools and a maritime education academy, as well as two hospitals and a clinic. To help tackle food insecurity and famine in the area the company has also supplied 3,000 families with food provisions.