Dalton River Contains Stain-Repellent Chemical
According to the newspaper, former University of Georgia professor Aaron Fisk, who oversaw a graduate student study measuring amounts of the chemical in rivers in 2006 and 2007, said levels of perfluorooctanoic acid and its compounds in the Conasauga were among the highest ever measured in water at a nonspill location.
“These levels are staggeringly high,” he told the Times Free Press. “Nobody should be eating fish in that Loopers Bend area.”
Each day, the sprinklers at the Looper’s Bend Wastewater Treatment Plant spray 30 million to 40 million gallons of wastewater, 87 percent of which is industrial waste, onto a 9,200-acre peninsula of forested land surrounded on three sides by the Conasauga River, Dalton Utilities officials said.
Waste from the federally approved sewage treatment system is supposed to decompose in the soil, but both Dr. Fisk and EPA officials now believe the man-made perfluorooctanoic acid and its compounds slip virtually unchanged into the river, the newspaper reported.
The chemical, often called PFOA or C8, is legal and has been used in carpet mills and other manufacturing sites in the area for at least 15 years, officials said.
The concern locally, the newspaper reported, is so new that regulators do not monitor or require permits for the chemical, much less have cleanup strategies, according to Georgia Environmental Protection Division officials.