A Global Chemical Giant Racks Up Violations in Durham, N.C., Where Drinking Water for a Million Is Threatened

DURHAM, N.C.—Brenntag Mid-South continues to amass serious environmental violations related to its chemical repackaging plant in East Durham, where state inspectors cited the company in November for failing to clean up leaking barrels on the property. 

Recent testing also shows a chemical cocktail continues to enter a neighborhood stream that runs behind an elementary school, through a public park and flows into Third Fork Creek and Jordan Lake, the drinking water supply for more than a million people, according to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

City and state agencies have issued numerous violations to the billion-dollar company, but after more than two years of investigations, have yet to impose financial penalties. 

A spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality told Inside Climate News the agency “cannot comment on future enforcement actions, but it continues to work with Brenntag to receive data and ensure the completion of the actions required in last fall’s Notice of Violation, including some items with deadlines this month and in May.”

The Durham Environmental Affairs Board is scheduled to discuss the issue at its March 4 meeting. Brenntag Mid-South is a global chemical distribution company that warehouses liquid and granular chemicals in bulk storage in Durham and repackages them for truck and rail shipments. 

Brenntag spokesperson Raquel Sheppard did not answer direct questions about plant conditions and the company’s efforts to keep chemicals from entering the stream. Instead, Sheppard provided a written statement:

“The issues affecting Third Fork Creek are complex and may be the result of multiple sources that are not yet known with certainty. While Brenntag Mid-South’s operations are not the source of the site’s historical contamination, Brenntag has consistently taken numerous steps in close coordination with the City of Durham to help address these issues, as documented in our quarterly reporting to and communications with the City.

“Brenntag Mid-South is committed to collaboration in this investigative process and continues to expend internal and external resources and expertise in coordination with local authorities.”

Aidil Ortiz, a community organizer who lives across from the plant, expressed her continuing concern. “It feels like this ominous danger that’s lurking in my backyard,” she said. “Brenntag has the money, and I wish they would do right by us. We know that we have industrial uses around the corner. And none of us have ever made a fuss about them just existing, but we will make a fuss about you deliberately harming us when you know better.”

A DEQ inspector last September found steel drums outside that had “fluids running down the sides with liquids accumulated on the top,” according to state records. “The drums that were found spilling chemicals onto the pallets brings into question how many other pallets kept on site have been contaminated.”

This was the third time state regulators discovered poor housekeeping at the plant. In April 2025, inspectors found rusted, dented and leaking drums, although they had been removed by the fall site visit.

In March 2022, the state inspected the facility and found barrels that stored chemicals were lying on their side. Others were dented, and “an unknown liquid appeared to be leaking in the containment area.” 

Even more alarming, advocates say, are the chemicals, some of them cancer-causing, that continue to enter the stream from the Brenntag property.

Sampling by Brenntag contractors in December found more than a dozen chemicals leaving an outfall at the property’s southern boundary. Of those, three were detected above state regulatory or recommended levels: ethanol and the likely carcinogens acetone and 1,4-dioxane, both solvents.

A month later, in January, the Haw River Assembly, a nonprofit organization that monitors water quality in central North Carolina, sampled the creek behind Burton Elementary School, about 1,500 feet from Brenntag. 

The testing found levels of acetone at 3,820 parts per billion (ppb), nearly twice the state maximum for surface water. The assembly detected another carcinogen, methylene chloride, at 124 parts per billion. The compound has multiple uses in degreasers, paint and adhesive removers, and cleaning agents.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established a drinking water standard of 5 ppb for both acetone and methylene chloride.

There is no surface water standard for methylene chloride in North Carolina, but New Jersey has set a maximum of 2 ppb. The compound has been found in surface water at an average of 68 parts per billion at some hazardous waste sites, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. 

The EPA has determined methylene chloride, a chemical used in consumer and commercial applications including adhesives and sealants, automotive products and paint, presents “an unreasonable risk to human health” because it is a neurotoxin that can also damage the liver. Breathing extremely high levels can be fatal. Regularly inhaling or touching the compound can increase the risk of developing cancer, according to the EPA. 

Brenntag’s state air permit allows the company to emit up to 1,600 pounds of methylene chloride each year.

When Brenntag contractors sampled upstream of the school in December, they didn’t detect methylene chloride. The discrepancy between those results and the Haw River Assembly’s could reflect the different laboratories’ detection methods. 

Even though it’s unlikely that people drink water directly from the stream, children could inadvertently ingest it while playing. The stream runs behind the Burton Elementary School playground and through McDougald Terrace, the largest and oldest public housing community in Durham.

The stream flows into Third Fork Creek, a tributary of Jordan Lake, the drinking water supply for more than a million people.

State records show the violations from last year included “dark, discolored water flowing from the plant into the stream.” Those conditions, plus the presence of chemicals flowing from the property “represents a potential risk for human health through contact with the water, as well as harm to aquatic life.”

Haw Riverkeeper Emily Sutton said Haw River Assembly would continue to test the creek, with help from community groups. “We’re going to build the evidence that enforcement needs to happen, but we have to rely on our state agencies to hold them accountable through their permits and violations,” she said.

Brenntag contractors only recently began to test for 1,4-dioxane, so December’s results were the first to detect it. A likely carcinogen, 1,4-dioxane has contaminated several waterways and drinking water supplies in North Carolina, including the Haw, Deep and Cape Fear Rivers. 

The compound is found in solvents, degreasers and even some consumer products. 

Levels of 1,4-dioxane ranged from 3.6 ppb at the Brenntag property line to 1.49 ppb in the stream at the Durham Freeway. The EPA set a health advisory goal of 0.35 ppb in surface water that serves as a drinking water supply and 80 ppb for non-drinking water supplies. 

“These are very clear water quality violations, very clear groundwater violations, and it’s ongoing,” Sutton said. “This is a bad actor, and they need to be held accountable.”

More than two years ago, in August 2023, the city fenced off the stream after Brenntag detected high levels of acetone, toluene and ethanol in water at its property edge. The findings prompted the city to prohibit Brenntag from discharging any runoff or other water from the site. 

Brenntag collects the runoff in basins, then pays a company to haul it away. Since contaminants continue to flow into the stream, company contractors believe contaminated groundwater is circumventing the treatment system and entering the waterway.

To try to isolate the source of the contamination the company turned off the treatment system two years ago, with DEQ permission, state records show. As recently as November, Arcadis, a contractor for the company, told DEQ in an email that it had repaired recovery wells on plant property, but that Brenntag had not given them approval to restart the system.

For more than a century, polluting industries have been built near and in residential neighborhoods in East Durham, abetted by county and city zoning ordinances. “My expectation was that each of these companies would act with respect and dignity to their neighbors,” said Ortiz, a long-time resident. “To find out that that has not been the case, and that schools, homes, churches and community groups have to endure the contamination is really disturbing. I just feel like East Durham can’t seem to catch a break.”