Emily Donovan, the co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, is en route to Washington DC. A House subcommittee invited her speak during a hearing looking into PFAS and GenX contamination in the water supply. The issue is now receiving more national attention.
The Subcommittee on Environment is chaired by Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois.
It’s part of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is charged with matters that include consumer protection, food and drug safety, public health and research, and the environment.
[Watch the hearing here live at 10 a.m.]
On her trip up I-95 toward Washington, Emily Donovan of Brunswick County telss WHQR this may be a turning point.
“Especially for these types of chemicals. PFAS as a class of chemicals been largely unstudied, and to have this type of national exposure and what we're seeing is that it really does sound like at the national level there's bipartisan support for this, which was surprising because here in North Carolina the landscape that we learned early on is that the issue for some reason was very divisive.”
Other speakers include representatives of the EPA, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and the Department of Defense.
Donovan plans to lay all the issues out there for the members of Congress.
“So our focus is really going to be on kind of the human toll that our exposure has taken. I didn't have to go far to find friends in my inner circle that are suffering some pretty rare non-genetic cancers and I'm just going to remind Congress that this is what we're dealing with. We’re dealing with people who really don’t have a lot of time on their hands.”
The hearing starts at 10 a.m. Thursday. A Senate committee takes up this issue on September 26.
It will be webcast at https://energycommerce.house.gov/hearings/perfluorinated-chemicals-in-the-environment-an-update-on-the-response-to-contamination-and-challenges-presented/