Forever War, Part 1: This story is published in partnership with The Assembly and with WHQR, a nonprofit radio station and NPR affiliate in Wilmington. It is the first in a series of stories about the PFAS crisis in North Carolina.

Listen to an audio version of this story below.

OAK ISLAND, N.C.—Emily Donovan stood before 100 people in the pews at Ocean View United Methodist Church in a small seaside town in Brunswick County, North Carolina. It was May, the start of beach season. She had invited a scientist to speak about the astronomical levels of PFAS—nicknamed “forever chemicals”—that had been detected in sea foam four miles away.

But before she began her presentation, Donovan, a co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, had to deliver some bad news. That morning, Lee Zeldin, the U.S. Environme

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