Georgia officials knew chemicals from carpet mills were polluting local water. The people did not

CALHOUN, Ga. — Growing up in northwest Georgia, Stormy Bost lived her life in the water. During summers she plucked crawdads from the neighborhood creek and played in its cool depths, racing home for dinner to beat the setting sun.

Waiting for her were pitchers of sweet tea, which her family brewed using tap water.

“Your family’s going through a gallon every day or two, and it’s cheap,” Bost said. “But it comes from the faucet.”

As a parent, Bost made sweet tea the same way for her own children — until a few years ago when she learned the local tap water contained toxic chemicals called PFAS.

Bost and her husband are raising two daughters in Calhoun, the same small river town dominated by the region’s multibillion-dollar carpet industry where she was reared. For decades, textile mills relied on PFAS in popular brands like Stainmaster and Scotchgard for stain resistance. Some of the chemicals that didn’t stick on carpets were flushed with the industry’s wastewater into local sewer pipes and, eventually, the region’s rivers.

The same odorless, colorless chemicals in tap water here have accumulated in Bost’s body, blood tests show. Her PFAS levels are higher than national health guidelines consider safe and, at 34, she has been diagnosed with liver and thyroid conditions — the types of ailments that research has linked to PFAS.

Bost is not alone. Everyone in the region seems to know someone whose health problems, including certain types of cancer, could be caused by PFAS, which are commonly known as forever chemicals because they persist in people and take decades or more to break down in the environment.

This crisis was predictable. For more than two decades, scientists have warned of the risks to humans and animals posed by the kinds of chemicals spreading out of the mills.

Even without federal limits on chemicals like PFAS, states have the authority to protect public health and the environment. Instead, Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division did little to confront the problem, issuing neither fish advisories nor do-not-drink orders to the public even as concerns grew among scientists and federal regulators about the dangers of PFAS, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Associated Press and FRONTLINE (PBS) has found.

Testing by the University of Georgia that alerted the industry and state in 2008, when Bost was in her teens, showed the local Conasauga River that supplies the region’s drinking water was polluted. That same year, the state’s environmental director told carpet manufacturers the agency would not take action on the chemicals.

The state’s own testing, which did not occur until 2012 and 2016, when Bost was a young mother, confirmed the university’s results. In 2019, as her daughters turned 8 and 9, federal tests still detected PFAS.

Along the way, Georgia’s EPD deflected efforts by neighboring Alabama and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to track the chemicals more closely, even as PFAS migrated more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) downriver and across the state line, according to detailed court records and interviews with former regulators.

Today, Georgia is still not regulating PFAS, in contrast to other states that have invested tens of millions of dollars in cleanups and sued polluters to recoup costs.

Georgia environmental officials gave several reasons for their approach. In an interview, EPD Deputy Director Anna Truszczynski said her agency looked to federal regulators for guidance and waited for scientists to better understand the risks of PFAS. She said EPD helped several cities struggling with contamination by providing testing support, connecting them to potential funding sources and advising them on possible filtration technologies.

“We believe that there can be a good balance between environment and economy,” Truszczynski said. “We don’t have to sacrifice one for the other.”

The agency is also considering rules limiting the amount of certain PFAS in public drinking water, following federal standards set to take effect in several years. The federal rules would place drinking water safety limits on two of the forever chemicals once relied on by the carpet industry.

PFAS is a catchall term for thousands of related lab-made compounds more formally known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The carpet industry used the chemicals for decades for stain resistance, even after learning, starting in the late 1990s, that they carried health risks as they spread and persisted in the environment.

Although officials with major carpet manufacturers say they stopped using PFAS in 2019, without extensive cleanup the chemicals will remain in the region’s water and soil for generations.

No one has taken responsibility to date. The country’s two largest carpet companies, Shaw Industries and Mohawk Industries Inc., both based in the region, blame their chemical suppliers, which they said for years hid the dangers of PFAS in their products. The carpet companies said they followed regulators’ guidance and pointed out that there are still no enforceable limits on the chemicals. Neither Shaw nor Mohawk had further comment for this story.

In court filings, chemical suppliers 3M and DuPont said it was ultimately the carpet industry, not them, that put PFAS in the water of northwest Georgia. Neither 3M nor DuPont responded to requests seeking comment for this story.

At EPA, a spokesperson said the federal agency is working to offer technical and financial support in the region.

“EPA’s focus today is forward‑looking: working with Georgia, Alabama, affected communities, and water systems to identify PFAS contamination, reduce exposure, and hold polluters accountable where the law supports it,” agency spokesperson Jake Murphy wrote in an email.

While tracing the cause of Bost’s thyroid and liver conditions is difficult, what she and her doctor know is that the drinking water and the river contained PFAS.

“There’s a lot of us and we’re sick,” Bost said. “We don’t know what’s next.”

When PFAS started showing up in Alabama’s drinking water in 2016, local water utility officials looked to Georgia for answers.

Eastern Alabama and northwest Georgia share a river system that originates in the Blue Ridge Mountains and flows through both states on the way to Mobile Bay. This watershed feeds the region’s carpet mills, which use vast amounts of water, especially in the dyeing process. It is also the source of drinking water for utilities downriver that serve hundreds of thousands of people.

After tests showed PFAS in water at levels exceeding EPA’s voluntary health guidelines at the time, Alabama’s environmental regulators alerted their federal counterparts and asked Georgia’s EPD for help identifying the source.

Georgia had known for years that the waters flowing from Dalton, the hub of the state’s dominant carpet industry, contained high levels of PFAS, including versions that research showed were linked to some types of cancer.

Despite Alabama’s urgent request, Georgia’s environmental regulators did not respond in kind, according to interviews and internal government records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

At the time, “EPD was very defensive,” said Jim Giattina, former director of EPA’s Water Protection Division who organized a call between the two states to coordinate. “There was certainly no commitment on their part to do any more monitoring.”

After the call EPA initiated with the two states, Alabama sent letters to Georgia in 2017 and 2018 requesting data. In one research brief, Alabama officials noted that Georgia’s environmental regulators did not require industrial users to monitor for PFAS.

EPD’s Truszczynski, who joined the agency in 2016, said she found no record of Georgia’s response to Alabama.

“We’re always very happy to work with our friends in Alabama,” she said.

Alabama’s Department of Environmental Management did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or comment.

For years, testing in Georgia by industry, academics and government showed the chemicals continued flowing toward Alabama.

In 2008, the University of Georgia study found “staggeringly high” levels of PFAS in the water downriver from Dalton-area carpet mills. By that time, an EPA panel had determined the type of stain-resistant chemicals used by carpet manufacturers were likely carcinogenic. Georgia’s environmental regulators, concerned the levels in the river were much higher than what early research considered safe, funded a subsequent UGA study that found the chemicals in the river’s fish, state records show.

Absent guidelines from the federal government, EPD did not make any recommendations or issue advisories, the agency said.

Environmental groups wrote a letter imploring EPA leaders and then-EPD Director Carol Couch to regulate PFAS more aggressively. They noted state regulators elsewhere had begun to act.

“The residents of Georgia deserve no less protection than what has been afforded to residents in other states,” the coalition of 21 organizations wrote in March 2008.

Months later, Couch met privately with carpet company representatives and their trade association, the Carpet and Rug Institute, according to records of testimony given during lawsuits against the companies.

Werner Braun, then the carpet institute’s director, later informed his board about the meeting with Couch, noting EPD “has no plans to initiate regulatory action” on PFAS, according to two court deposition transcripts. Braun told his board that Couch also indicated EPD “would probably look at the issue again in five years.” Braun noted the subject of drinking water never came up, according to one of the depositions.

The meeting with Couch went so well that one carpet executive thanked the attendees for “gaining this good outcome,” according to the transcripts.

In response to a request for comment, Couch wrote in a text message that PFAS were only an “emerging concern” at the time and that EPA had not established drinking water standards. EPA’s first guidance about PFAS levels came in 2009.

“To the Carpet and Rug Institute I offered no respite from state regulation of PFAS,” Couch wrote to the AJC and AP. She added that the five-year time frame was typical for new water rules and that, in 2008, EPD “had neither the sufficient science, expertise nor resources to undertake action independent of USEPA.”

A representative for the carpet institute declined to comment. Braun did not respond to a request to comment for this story.

It would be another four years until EPD tested the Conasauga River.

During the nearly two decades since that meeting with carpet executives in 2008, Georgia regulators intermittently tested the waters south of Dalton, confirming time and again the extensive contamination.

Despite these results, and the discovery of PFAS in the drinking water of several northwest Georgia towns, EPD did not post this data on its website until 2020.

By that time, EPD testing had found PFAS in Calhoun’s drinking water — the same water that Bost, her husband and two daughters relied on. When EPA in 2022 issued stricter guidelines for the amount of PFAS in drinking water it considered safe, the city of about 20,000 was several times above this new limit.

The local riverkeeper, Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman, took action.

On a cold, drizzly December day in 2022, Demonbreun-Chapman idled his boat on the Coosawattee River, a waterway that feeds into the Conasauga near Calhoun.

The rain made conditions ideal to test for PFAS pollution flowing into the river, a task riverkeepers have taken on elsewhere. He watched as ribbons of water ran off the riverbank from a local farm.

Demonbreun-Chapman suspected the massive farm was contaminated by PFAS-laden sludge used as fertilizer. The sludge, also known as biosolids, was made from wastewater sent to the local utility and spread on land throughout the area.

Downstream from the farm is the spot where Calhoun’s municipal water system draws river water to treat and eventually deliver to the taps of thousands of customers.

The test results alarmed Demonbreun-Chapman. The water running off the farm tested thousands of times higher than federal drinking water standards for forever chemicals. The city had no effective system to remove PFAS when treating it for the tap. The riverkeeper believed he had found a major source of contamination.

“That was the smoking gun,” Demonbreun-Chapman said.

The samples collected that rainy day became key to a lawsuit his organization, the Coosa River Basin Initiative, filed along with the Southern Environmental Law Center against Calhoun more than a year later.

The complaint alleged stain-resistant chemicals used by carpet mills in Calhoun had contaminated the sludge, which in turn polluted the water.

In a victory for environmental groups, Calhoun settled the case in 2024 and agreed to filter its water for PFAS, stop spreading sludge, test private drinking wells and keep the community informed of risk. The city did not admit liability.

EPD requires none of these actions. Years of static budgets, staffing turnover, a culture of industry deference and a sluggish response by federal regulators have left the agency unprepared to address a contamination crisis of this size and scope, said Demonbreun-Chapman and others.

“Nobody else was coming,” he said.

EPD has a broad mandate, tasked with issuing permits, conducting inspections and providing emergency response to hazardous spills. The agency’s $128 million budget comes from fees as well as state and federal funds. EPD is overseen by the Board of Natural Resources, whose members are appointed by the governor. A spokesperson for Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement that PFAS contamination is a problem facing states across the U.S.

“Addressing this issue has been a top priority for the state and EPD for several years,” said Kemp spokesperson Andrew Isenhour.

In 2022, then-EPD Director Richard Dunn told state lawmakers the agency sees so many annual departures that it turns over its entire staff every five or six years. Most leave to take other positions with EPA or in the private sector, often for higher pay, he said.

“Having a lot of institutional knowledge is critical,” Dunn said, adding: “Having a turnover rate that high is almost an existential challenge for us.”

Truszczynski, EPD’s deputy director, said in an interview that the agency is adequately funded and has made strides over the past few years in keeping staff. She added that the agency took action to address Calhoun’s PFAS contamination, contacting city officials in 2022 and putting the city on a drinking water monitoring plan.

“My perspective is that EPD is really directly involved,” she said.

In the vacuum left by the state, questions about who is responsible and who should pay for cleanup are being hashed out in the courts as cities and counties face hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to filter drinking water.

In 2016, the Alabama cities of Gadsden and Centre sued Mohawk, Shaw, 3M, DuPont and others to fund advanced filtration systems, ultimately settling for an undisclosed sum and no admission of wrongdoing by the companies.

Other cities in Alabama and northwest Georgia have followed. Rome prevailed in its own lawsuit, filed in 2019, and is using the funds to build a $100 million water treatment plant. Calhoun, following its settlement with the Southern Environmental Law Center and Demonbreun-Chapman’s group, turned around and sued carpet manufacturers and their chemical suppliers in 2024, as did Dalton.

“It remains our goal to hold those that contaminated our water supply with PFAS responsible for all past, present, and future costs associated with removing their PFAS contamination from our drinking water,” Calhoun Water and Wastewater Director Erik Henson wrote in an email.

Shaw and Mohawk in court papers and in statements to the AJC and AP said they are not to blame. They point the finger at chemical companies, who they say assured them their products were safe. The carpet giants say they followed state and federal regulations.

EPD said in a statement that it is tracking the litigation in northwest Georgia. The wave of lawsuits has expanded in recent years as dozens of residents and farmers allege PFAS contamination has devalued their properties and put their health and livelihoods at risk.

“People don’t want to put their health on the line and wait for the state to catch up,” said April Lipscomb, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Some northwest Georgia lawmakers have sought to counter these lawsuits by introducing state legislation that would restrict the ability of cities and residents to sue carpet companies.

The bills drew bipartisan condemnation when they were introduced earlier this year, as PFAS emerged as a key issue in elections locally, including the contest to replace former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Increased attention on PFAS came after a recent AJC/AP/FRONTLINE (PBS) investigation detailed how carpet companies continued to use forever chemicals for years, despite growing concerns about the health risks.

Residents protested in February at the Dalton restaurant of Republican Rep. Kasey Carpenter, who sponsored a bill to shield carpet companies from legal liability. Carpenter has said chemical manufacturers, not carpet manufacturers, are to blame. His legislation didn’t pass.

A few weeks later, locals trekked to the Capitol for a hearing on a bill co-sponsored by state Sen. Chuck Payne, another Dalton Republican, that would have given authority to EPD and Georgia’s attorney general to handle PFAS lawsuits brought by local government.

Backers said the approach would create a more coordinated response. Critics said it would slow drinking water improvements by shifting litigation to an agency that does not have the resources to handle the cases. That bill also failed. Payne did not respond to a request for comment.

In March, convention halls in Rome and Dalton erupted in applause as speakers, including environmental activist Erin Brockovich, cast the legislative efforts as a dire threat to accountability. The pair of town hall meetings hosted by law firms operating under the name PFAS Georgia turned out nearly 1,000 people and served as an informal campaign stop for about a dozen political candidates — a nod to the grassroots outrage over the topic.

“You need to rise up,” Brockovich told one crowd. “That’s the only way this is going to work, and it’s the only way it has ever worked.”

Other states are taking a more aggressive approach to PFAS.

Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine each have committed millions of dollars for cleanup, started robust testing programs and sued to hold polluters and manufacturers accountable. Throughout the U.S., PFAS have been manufactured and used in a variety of products, including nonstick cookware, waterproof sunscreen, firefighting foam, dental floss and microwave popcorn bags.

A bipartisan group of Wisconsin lawmakers earlier this year approved $133 million for PFAS cleanup. That vote capped a long journey for Jill Billings, a Democratic state assembly member. In 2019, a town in her district discovered its drinking water was contaminated. Residents have been drinking bottled water provided by the state since 2021.

Billings said state-led action becomes more important as the federal government retreats from environmental regulations, including on PFAS. While EPA has still not put enforceable limits on forever chemicals, the agency’s proposed limits include the two that carpet manufacturers used most. Those limits are set to go into effect in 2031.

“I think it’s up to us to solve the problems of regular folks because the federal government seems to be struggling,” Billings said in an interview. “That’s fine. We’re ready.”

Today, even though northwest Georgia’s major carpet manufacturers said they stopped using PFAS in their U.S. production several years ago, the Conasauga River south of Dalton is still being polluted.

The major source is a 9,600-acre (3,900-hectare) tract latticed by a tangle of pipes and sprinklers along the river. Each year, this “land application system” operated at Loopers Bend by the local water agency, Dalton Utilities, sprays the soil with billions of gallons of treated wastewater, most of it from the carpet industry.

The concept — much celebrated during the development of Loopers Bend in the 1980s, before PFAS were widely known — was that the soil and vegetation would filter out pollutants before they reached the Conasauga.

Yet design flaws led to consistent leaks and broken pipes, state and federal regulatory records show. Dead fish bobbed on the river’s surface as wastewater ran off directly into the Conasauga. Scott Gordon, chief of water enforcement for EPA’s regional office at the time, toured the site in 2000 and said he was shocked by how the industrial water found its path into the river, sometimes through gullies cut by the flow.

The utility said it redesigned its wastewater treatment program years ago and has remained compliant and transparent with regulators.

EPA inspectors in 2001 pushed to bring the site under the permitting system of the federal Clean Water Act.

That permit, administered by the state in partnership with EPA, would require Dalton Utilities to report pollution levels and chemical discharges to regulators. It would have also empowered citizens to sue in federal court if the utility or the government didn’t comply with environmental laws.

“That ability for citizens to take matters into their own hands is an extremely powerful tool,” said Gordon, who led EPA negotiations with Georgia.

Congress wrote the Clean Water Act to delegate to states a powerful role in the federal permit process, giving Georgia’s regulators the final say at sites like Loopers Bend. The agreement was in its last stages when EPD’s lawyers sent it back to EPA and asked for a few tweaks, Gordon said. One change to the wording required Dalton Utilities merely to submit the application, rather than to obtain a permit, as EPA had urged.

Gordon did not catch the significance of the change and signed off on it, he said in a recent interview.

Seemingly a bureaucratic detail, the new language sidelined EPA.

Days after Gordon approved the changes in 2001, EPD rejected the application, saying Dalton Utilities didn’t require EPA oversight.

“I was screwed in my federal career twice by state agencies. This is one of them,” Gordon remembered.

In a statement, Georgia’s EPD said PFAS were not regulated in 2001 and neither a federal nor state permit would have included limits on the chemicals.

Today, under EPD oversight, PFAS levels at Loopers Bend remain largely unmonitored.

“They remained in the complete shadows,” said Gordon, referring to Dalton Utilities and the carpet industry. “And, honestly, they still are.”

___

Margaret Kates of AL.com contributed reporting to this story.

___

This story is part of an investigative collaboration with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, FRONTLINE (PBS), The Post and Courier and AL.com that includes the FRONTLINE documentary “Contaminated: The Carpet Industry’s Toxic Legacy.” It is supported through AP’s Local Investigative Reporting Program and FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Watch the documentary “Contaminated: The Carpet Industry’s Toxic Legacy” on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel and in the PBS App, on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel or on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.