Another 1,4 Dioxane spike was measured at the Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant three weeks ago, according to the North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality. This spike, which occurred April 25th, was recorded at a concentration of 826 ppb (parts per billion). The Asheboro WWTP’s effluent outfalls to a tributary to DEEP RIVER. Deep River merges with the HAW RIVER at Moncure, NC to form the CAPE FEAR RIVER. According to the NCDEQ press release, downstream utilities were notified, including the City of Sanford, Fayetteville Public Works Commission, Brunswick County and the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority in Wilmington.
The Upper Deep River communities between Asheboro and Kernersville do not receive the same level of 1,4 Dioxane monitoring, reporting, and public alerts as the communities the Haw and Cape Fear rivers. The Jamestowner asked the NCDEQ about this more than two years ago. A staff person at the Division of Water Resources, Winston Salem Regional Office responded to us, “1,4 Dioxane in the Cape Fear River Basin is a separate issue and not connected to the Town of Jamestown.”
While reading the aforementioned press release on the NCDEQ website, we learned that a 1,4 Dioxane concentration of 1,070 ppb was measured at Eastside WWTP in Jamestown on July 26, 2024. That’s the first we’ve heard about it.
The City of High Point, Town of Jamestown and Guilford County rarely inform residents about spikes and spills of hazardous contaminants and forever chemicals in their streams, surface waters and drinking water supply. Approximately two years ago, the NC Division of Water Resources, Winston Salem Regional Office stopped responding to Jamestown citizens’ Public Comments and emails.
FEBRUARY 14, 2025 – Port City Daily reported in September that Sandra Van Der Vaart – the wife of Donald van der Vaart, the judge who sided with Asheboro, Greensboro and Reidsville in a lawsuit enabling the cities to ignore 1,4-Dioxane discharge limits – is the chairperson of the NC Chamber of Commerce Legal Institute. [NOTE: On May 15, 2025, The North Carolina Senate Select Committee on Nominations voted to confirm Donald van der Vaart as a member of the North Carolina Utilities Commission.]
NC Chamber of Commerce members include manufacturers and out-of-state industries that do business in North Carolina while lobbying against regulation of their wastewater discharge and air emissions. Sandra Van der Vaart was listed as “chair” on the lobbying group’s form 990 for the year ended December 31, 2023.
North Carolina is the third WORST state in the nation for 1,4 Dioxane and PFAS contamination. Guilford County is the worst county in North Carolina for 1,4 Dioxane.
Testing for 1,4-Dioxane contamination of Deep River (which flows into Randleman Lake/Reservoir and the Cape Fear River) began decades ago at the Seaboard Chemical dump/High Point Landfill site on Riverdale Drive in Jamestown 27282. A “phytoremediation” project to remove 1,4 Dioxane from the soil and groundwater at the site involved planting an orchard of loblolly pinetrees.
1,4 Dioxane is still leaching from the site into Deep River. 1,4 Dioxane is also leaching and/or being discharged from these landfills, industrial facilities and wastewater plants into water supplies that gets treated and piped back to Guilford and Randolph county residents as drinking water.
In the absence of testing and reporting by local authorities, residents of Jamestown, High Point and Greensboro have been testing their tap and well water for PFAS, the results of which may be viewed here.
1,4 Dioxane was detected in Jamestown tap water during February 2023 testing. (Test kits for 1,4 Dioxane may be purchased from TAPSCORE).
PFAS, 1-4 Dioxane, vinyl chloride, chromium, volatile organic compounds and metals are in all of the drinking water supplies serving Guilford and Randolph counties.
ORIGINAL POST, JAN. 15, 2025 – The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) revealed in a press release last week the details of a letter sent by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) formally objecting to the NC Dept. of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ)’s renewal of Asheboro’s wastewater permit, citing the city’s inadequate controls on the discharge of toxic 1,4-DIOXANE into drinking water supplies.
In September 2023, the City of Asheboro petitioned to challenge the 1,4 DIOXANE limits in its NPDES wastewater permit, which was up for renewal. The cities of Reidsville and Greensboro joined the lawsuit a few weeks later.
According to the Southern Environmental Law Center, Asheboro, Greensboro, and Reidsville’s 1,4-DIOXANE pollution comes from industrial customers (companies) that pay the cities for the right to send their industrial wastewater to the cities’ wastewater (sewer) plants. The 1,4-DIOXANE is released directly into the water supply because Asheboro, Greensboro and Reidsville’s wastewater plants do not have filtering technology capable of removing the toxic chemical.
The EPA’s intervention followed a September 2024 ruling that stripped the NCDEQ of its authority to limit Asheboro’s discharge of 1,4-DIOXANE, after Judge Donald van der Vaart sided with Asheboro, Greensboro and Reidsville in their lawsuit.
Van der Vaart’s ruling had an immediate, devastating effect. Following the court order, the city of Asheboro dumped extremely high levels of 1,4-DIOXANE upstream of the drinking water supply for Sanford, Fayetteville, Wilmington, Brunswick County, and Pender County, Pittsboro, Holly Springs, and Fuquay-Varina.
Cities and towns have the legal authority to stop the industrial polluters from sending toxic chemical pollution to their wastewater plants, as recent legal agreements between Burlington, N.C., Calhoun, GA, and groups represented by the SELC demonstrate.
The EPA’s letter directs the NCDEQ to reissue Asheboro’s permit with strict limits on the city’s 1,4-DIOXANE pollution. If the NCDEQ declines, the EPA will take over the permit and impose strict limits to protect the health of North Carolinians living in the downstream communities.
“DEQ tried to do the right thing and protect North Carolinians from toxic 1,4-DIOXANE coming from the city of Asheboro, but three cities tried to overturn our water protection laws in an effort to shield their industrial customers rather than people downstream,” said Jean Zhuang, SELC senior attorney. “EPA’s letter sets the record straight that existing law protects people against pollution, making clear that the North Carolina Administrative Law Judge was wrong in siding with polluters and that DEQ must control toxic 1,4-DIOXANE pollution. Controlling toxic chemicals at the source is the only way to ensure polluters bear the burden of their pollution, not families and communities downstream.”
JAMESTOWN, NC: HOME OF THE 33-ACRE 1,4-DIOXANE TREE FOREST
Locally, 1,4-DIOXANE has been a problem for decades, with contaminants from High Point’s Seaboard Chemical dump/High Point Landfill, High Point’s Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant, High Point’s Kersey Valley Landfill, High Point’s Jackson Lake Road Landfill, GFL C&D Landfill, and a number of High Point, Jamestown and Greensboro facilities that are leaching, draining to, discharging to, spilling in and sending their wastewater to Richland Creek/Deep River and/or the Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant on Deep River, which is five miles upstream from Randleman Lake and Reservoir (PTRWA). Eastside’s effluent outfalls to Deep River above Randleman Lake.
Former Greensboro News & Record writer, Taft Wirebeck, wrote about the 1,4-DIOXANE contamination in this May, 2016 article.
The EPA and NCDEQ maximum health limit for 1,4-Dioxane in water supply surface waters is 0.35 ppb. Deep River, Bull Run, Richland Creek, Copper Branch, Reddicks Creek, Muddy Creek and Long Branch are WSIV-CA* water supply waterways and WOTUS (Waters of the United States). Problem is, the NCDEQ is not providing accurate waterway classifications to the EPA (it’s the state’s’ responsibility to provide accurate, current data to the EPA). The improper classification of Deep River and its tributaries has, in some cases, kept these stream segments off the EPA’s national ‘How’s My Waterway’ map as if they don’t exist; and erroneously gives the impression that it is safe to swim in, and fish in, Bull Run, Richland Creek and Deep River.
High levels of 1,4-DIOXANE have been measured in “slugs” at Eastside WWTP, at Seaboard Chemical dump/High Point Landfill, in Randleman Lake, and in the pretreatment reports of High Point, Jamestown and Greensboro landfills, chemical companies, bus, auto and textile manufacturers, plastics companies and metal plating companies.
The Winston Salem Regional Office of the DWR is misrepresenting the local 1,4 DIOXANE situation to the NC Environmental Resources Commission, suggesting that 1,4 DIOXANE levels are declining at Eastside WWTP and in the Deep River/PTRWA public water system. That’s not what the numbers tell us.
High Point-based Thomas Built Buses has its own “priority” wastewater pipeline to Jamestown:
Here are the 2024 wastewater violations the NCDEQ cited Jamestown for, including the busted Adams Farm sewer pipe that spilled into Deep River on at least two occasions, photographed and reported to the EPA by local residents:
