Facility accused of regular discharges of dangerous forever chemicals into the Ohio River
Fighting for Clean WaterA letter from our Executive Director
I am writing to share with you that we filed a formal notice of appeal to the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board objecting to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s issuance of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”) Permit No. PA0091227 to the Calgon Carbon Corporation(Calgon). The facility is located on Neville Island in Allegheny County and handles both hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and nonhazardous materials. This waste includes spent carbon that has been used to remove organic chemicals and other contaminants such as PFAS from wastewater and air emissions produced by Calgon’s customers, as well as from drinking water. Three Rivers Waterkeeper, represented by Appalachian Mountain Advocates, is challenging the issuance of this permit as written because it does not provide the people of Pennsylvania with adequate or legally required protection from Calgon’s PFAS discharges.
Located at the headwaters of the Ohio River just downstream of Pittsburgh, the Calgon facility on Neville Island is one of two the company uses to handle hazardous wastes, including the spent carbon that the company reactivates and uses in many of its own products and services. Among many other industrial applications, activated carbon is necessary for the PFAS treatment systems that Calgon sells to companies and municipal authorities across the country, from which it also collects spent carbon. Despite its experience in the water treatment business, Calgon is not preventing the PFAS it brings into Allegheny County from entering the Ohio River, where those chemicals will endanger the dozens of downstream communities that draw their water either directly from the river or from adjacent wells.
Calgon identifies as the “activated carbon industry forerunner” with “cutting-edge purification systems for drinking water, wastewater, odor control, pollution abatement, and a variety of industrial and commercial manufacturing processes.” However, in the spring of 2025, Three Rivers Waterkeeper documented PFAS in wastewater coming from three Calgon’s outfalls and found 24 kinds of PFAS being discharged with total PFAS concentrations of 252.1 ppt, 209.6 ppt, and 360.6 ppt. The most prominent kind of PFAS was HFPO-DA, one of the GenX chemicals used by the Chemours Company in its industrial processes, which the Waterkeeper recorded at 167.3 ppt in one outfall. These results were consistent with the PA Department of Environmental Protection’s (PA DEP) documentation of PFAS discharges in Calgon’s recent water discharge permit renewal application.
The PFAS and related chemicals that are part of the permit are only “monitor and report” – meaning that there is no actual limit to their discharges. Put simply, this is a permit to discharge any amount of PFAS into our source drinking water without accountability. The levels of PFAS around this facility were the highest we ever documented in our region by us, and that includes a known spill of PFAS contaminants. We believe this is unacceptable, and we are appealing the permit to fight for PFAS discharge limits into our drinking water source. We can’t let this level of toxic contamination be released into our drinking water sources. Now is the time to take action before it’s too late.
If you would like to help us fight for clean water and prevent these harmful chemicals from entering our drinking water sources, please donate here— any amount helps, and no donation is too small!
Heather Hulton VanTassel, PhDExecutive Director |
Three Rivers Waterkeeper is represented by Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a public interest law and policy organization dedicated to fighting for people, clean water, clean air, and a responsible energy future. They use law and science to protect our region’s communities, land, forests, air, and water. For more information, visit appalmad.org.
