UPDATE JUNE 9, 2025: CINTAS, located at 4345 Federal Drive, Greensboro, sends its industrial wastewater to High Point-owned/operated Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant, in Jamestown. We have been unable to find any records or permits for this facility in EPA’s ECHO database, the NC Secretary of State files, or the NCDEQ digital public records.
The results of 1,4 Dioxane testing by the City of High Point for its 2024 Pretreatment Report shows a concentration of 546,000 PPB in the wastewater of CINTAS Corp., and 1,370 PPB in the wastewater of INNOSPEC Chemicals during the second half of 2024:
The City of High Point owns and operates TWO wastewater/sewer plants: Westside, which outfalls to Rich Fork and the Yadkin River basin, and Eastside, which outfalls to Deep River/Randleman Lake.
The City of High Point sends industrial wastewater from 21 significant industrial users (“SIUs”) to Eastside (and many more “insignificant” industrial users and landfills); and from 4 SIUs to Westside. Once a year, High Point is required to submit to the NC Department of Environmental Quality a water test report on the wastewater it takes in from its “Significant Industrial Users,” defined as companies and landfills that discharge more than 25,000 gallons per day of industrial wastewater.
High Point’s 2024 report (released last month) includes test results for 1,4 Dioxane – but they’re limited to just a few of the “SIUs,” and to just one or two test samples over the entire year.
The 546,000 PPB result for CINTAS (in Greensboro), and 1,370 PPB for INNOSPEC (in High Point) – far exceed the 813 PPB number recorded at the Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) in December. That 813 PPB number is the basis for a lawsuit filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of communities downstream from Asheboro.
Innospec has had 1,4 Dioxane issues with the NC Dept. of Environmental Quality for several cycles (go HERE and scroll down to the “High Point: Multiple industrial suspects” section; it’s also discussed HERE).
In addition to the SIUs in the list, 1,4-Dioxane leaches to Deep River from GFL Construction & Demolition Landfill (Canadian company), Jackson Lake Road Landfill (owned by the City of High Point), Wiley Davis Landfill (owned by D.H. Griffin), Seaboard Chemical/High Point Landfill (owned by the City of High Point).
Included in this report, for the first time, is a PFAS summary for one company, TEKNOR APEX (formerly dba VIKING POLYMERS), a maker of PVC building materials, which sits in the woods near the corner of Main Street and Dillon Road in Jamestown. The NCDEQ public records identify discharge locations for Teknor Apex/Viking Polymers as (1) a tributary to Deep River, (2) the roof of the facility to Deep River, and (3) a location on Wade Avenue.
Unfortunately, the lab that did the PFAS testing for this report, Enthalpy Analytical, is incapable of detecting PFAS at low levels. PFBA, for example, is detected at “less than 16.0 parts per trillion” which means the result is somewhere between 1.0 PPT (parts per trillion) and 15.99 PPT. (By comparison, the Cyclopure and TapScore tests used by local residents can detect PFAS beginning at 1.0 parts per trillion.)
Most disturbing is the amount of wastewater the City of High Point is allowing to be discharged to its noncompliant (since 2018) Eastside WWTP and Deep River; while making massive capacity increases to its landfills; and doing nothing to force the “RESPONSIBLE PARTIES” to remedy the High Point-owned landfill that continue to contaminate Deep River and Randleman Lake. Pages from the 2024 pretreatment report are presented below, and a link to the full report is at the end of this post.
The fine print in this next image can be read in the actual report, which is linked at the bottom of this post. The list of SIUs is included here to stress the imbalance in the amount of wastewater that is being sent to Eastside WWTP, which outfalls to Deep River. The NC State Assembly did not allocate ANY federal stormwater funding for PTRWA/Randleman Lake to help pay for the multimillion dollar reverse osmosis filtering system it now needs due to decades of industrial pollution:
The link to the 2024 Pretreatment report is below. The Pretreatment Reports for 2018 through 2023 are in the Dropbox folder HERE. (you do not need to purchase a Dropbox subscription to VIEW files)
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