This now-abandoned shack deep on an overgrown lot covered the Dowdy family's private well, which they now blame for several family members developing cancer. (FOX 5)
ATHENS, Ga. - It’s been a mystery for one Athens neighborhood for more than two decades: Why have so many of their family members and neighbors fallen sick with cancer?
"We’ve always known that there was something wrong with the water – always," said Neffy Davis, who grew up among extended family on Pittard Road from the 1970s to the early 1990s. "Every home had some form of cancer."
Residents on private wells, in a working-class community off Pittard Road and Star Drive, long suspected something spilling over from a former carpet fibers plant through the woods. The plant was owned and operated by DuPont chemical company until 2003.
But in the mid-2000s, water tests by state and federal environmental agencies turned up nothing.
Neffy Davis grew up along Pittard Road from the 1970s to the early 1990s, among her mother's extended Dowdy family. (FOX 5)
It turns out, residents were right all along. The problem is the water. The truth emerged earlier this year after Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz called in outside help – not from the government, but from a nonprofit.
Tests of eight wells found elevated levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, or "forever chemicals."
This browser does not support the Video element.
'Forever chemicals' found in rural Athens
Residents on private wells, in a working-class community off Pittard Road and Star Drive, long suspected something spilling over from a former carpet fibers plant through the woods.
"We found concentrations of those chemicals way higher than the level that (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) says is safe for human consumption," said April Lipscomb, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which hired a consultant to test the wells.
"To give you an example, one of the PFAS – PFOA – the limit is only four parts per trillion," Lipscomb said. "In some wells, we were finding them as high as 20 parts per trillion. So five times higher."
This is what's left of the Dowdy family's private well, on a now-abandoned lot off Pittard Road in Athens. (FOX 5)
The FOX 5 I-Team learned EPA has since tested the wells, too, finding similar results.
"They've been found at a level that is associated with a health risk," EPA Acting Water Division Deputy Director Brian Smith told the I-Team. "When you find that information, it's alarming."
‘Shunted to the side’
For residents, the new findings are bittersweet vindication.
Davis lost an aunt to breast cancer in 2007 and has two uncles with prostate cancer. Her grandmother, she says, died at 88 in 2009 while suffering from breast cancer.
"A lot of people are angry," she said. "Disappointed in the government. We just don’t know what to do from here."
Neffy Davis told the FOX 5 I-Team her late aunt was "devastated" when environmental officials discounted the community's concerns about health hazards. (FOX 5)
After discovering the unsafe contaminants, the city spent $60,000 connecting 15 homes in the neighborhood to public water. That was completed in October.
Davis said the neighborhood wanted that done years ago.
"The city has to take some responsibility in all of this as well," she said.
Pittard Road is in a low-income area of the city. It's offshoot, Star Drive, isn't paved. As the crow flies, the neighborhood is about five miles from Sanford Stadium.
But this is a story of knowing when you're right, even when experts say you’re wrong.
"They were really just sort of shunted to the side," Lipscomb, the attorney said, said of the community.
Neffy Davis's uncles, Michael Dowdy (left) and Rufus Dowdy Jr., say they both have prostate cancer, and they blame Pittard Road's well water. (FOX 5)
For generations living along the rural two-lane, the truth was in their face. Community members have said publicly that they count at least 31 cancer cases throughout the neighborhood.
"I have lost, personally, my great-grandmother. I’ve lost my auntie," a Pittard Road family member, Brendan Kenny, said while addressing the Athens-Clarke County Commission in August 2023. "My mother is a three-time breast cancer survivor. I have my cousin … she’s a breast cancer survivor. (Another) cousin … she suffers from kidney disease."
One of Davis’s uncles with prostate cancer, Michael Dowdy, said he believes chemicals from the former carpet fibers plant traveled underground somehow.
Michael Dowdy, seen here decades ago at the now-abandoned Dowdy family home, has prostate cancer, which he blames on the well water.
"It got in the well water," Dowdy, 70, said. "Back then, that’s the only choice we had, them wells. We didn’t have no other way to drink water."
However, it’s not clear where exactly the forever chemicals came from.
Among other products, PFAS is used in food wrapping, non-stick cookware and stain-resistant carpeting.
PFAS has been linked to liver damage, thyroid problems, reproductive problems and various forms of cancer.
April Lipscomb, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the next step for Pittard Road residents is determining where the toxic chemicals came from. (FOX 5)
"We do suspect that the PFAS came from that facility," the SELC attorney said. "But again, we don't yet have enough data to actually show that that is the case."
"The next step, at least for this community, is trying to figure out where these chemicals come from," she said. "And are they spreading somewhere else?"
Dupont sold the former carpet fibers plant in 2003, and it's since gone through two separate owners. But a nearby pond is still called DuPont Lake. (FOX 5)
The factory has gone through two separate owners since DuPont sold it in 2003. No longer producing carpet fibers, it's now run by an entirely different company, RWDC Industries, which makes biodegradable polymers.
The I-Team reached out to DuPont for this story, but a spokesman said not to bring the company into this. He said after a series of mergers, sales and rebrandings, DuPont isn't the same company anymore that once operated the Athens plant.
"To implicate DuPont de Nemours in these issues disregards the movement of product lines and personnel that now exist with entirely different companies," the spokesman said in an email.
PFAS wasn’t considered
In the 2000s, multiple state and federal agencies looked into their claims, which generated a flurry of local press coverage.
Among the agencies involved: EPA and the Georgia Division of Public Health. There were water tests checking for chemicals and metals. Air in residents’ homes was even tested. The state did a cancer cluster study.
Everything came up empty.
Residents around the intersection of Pittard Road and Star Drive claimed for decades they were being poisoned, garnering a flurry of press coverage in the mid-2000s. (FOX 5)
"Without a doubt, that water is clean," a state Public Health official told The Athens Banner-Herald in 2003.
A report by Georgia Public Health in 2006 stated in bold lettering: "No apparent public health hazard."
That report was produced in cooperation with the Atlanta-based Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also stated, "No cancer cluster exists in the area."
"We were devastated," Davis said. "My aunt, she was devastated. She was like, ‘They gotta’ do it again. They missed something.’"
According to her niece, Glenda Crumbly died of breast cancer in 2007, at age 55.
At that time, though, forever chemicals weren’t on regulators’ radar as a major health threat.
Federal regulations on the substances weren’t adopted until the 2010s, and the EPA didn’t have drinking water standards until earlier this year.
The Dowdy family has abandoned their two homes along Pittard Road. Family member Neffy Davis said they were too concerned about water or soil contamination. (FOX 5)
Three years ago, the city commissioned its own study, which relied on prior research and came to the same conclusion.
"This investigation did not to find any data or evidence that environmentally harmful or toxic releases have taken place within the Pittard Road Area of Interest," the report, issued in 2023, stated.
A public outcry
That prompted about a dozen Pittard Road residents and family members to speak out in a public meeting, demanding the government keep investigating.
"As of today, have you asked anyone to test those wells?" Jayana Flint asked the county commission.
Pittard Road residents might still be in the dark about forever chemicals in their well water, had Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz not called in outside help. (FOX 5)
Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz would do just that.
"I benefited from having a friend who, at one point, had worked for the Southern Environmental Law Center," Girtz told the I-Team. "And so I reached out to him to say, ‘Hey, we have something of a dead end in terms of our local competency, as well as our regulatory authority.’"
The Athens-Clarke County government paid $60,000 to connect 15 homes in the Pittard Road community to public water. (FOX 5)
True to their name, forever chemicals are believed to take centuries to break down naturally. The city declared a public emergency to connect homes to public water. For those residents, the first six months of water service are free.
"While it's painful to know that for over two decades people were drinking contaminated water," Mayor Girtz said, "what's good is that at least we've ended that."