On Tuesday, April 21, 2026, at 3:00 PM, the Horry County Solid Waste Authority will hold a public meeting at 1301 Second Ave, Conway, SC 29526. The proposed solution involves expanding the Highway 90 Landfill by incorporating an extra 102.4 acres of swampland, while alternatives such as PFAS incineration and Super Critical Water Oxidation are not being offered.

The question of how to destroy PFAS isn’t academic for Horry County residents. It’s personal.

The Grand Strand Water and Sewer Authority filed suit in August 2024 against Burlington Industries, alleging that the company’s former textile mill in Society Hill released PFAS-contaminated wastewater into the Pee Dee River watershed for decades. That contamination flowed downstream to two treatment plants serving the Myrtle Beach area: the Bucksport facility near Bull Creek, which supplies roughly 115,000 customers, and the Myrtle Beach plant near the Intracoastal Waterway, which serves both Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach.

According to the lawsuit, PFAS levels in the affected water supply exceed what the U.S. EPA deems unsafe for human consumption. The authority’s existing treatment processes cannot remove the chemicals. Health risks cited in the filing include cancer and reproductive harm.

**Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, and Georgetown all opted out of the national $12.1 billion PFAS settlement** — $10.3 billion from 3M and $1.8 billion from DuPont — to preserve the right to file future individual claims. PFAS expert Mike McGill has estimated that national cleanup costs could reach “hundreds of billions of dollars,” citing one client facing a $1.5 billion bill for a single water treatment plant serving roughly one million people.

So when scientists and regulators say they may have found a way to destroy these chemicals through incineration, Horry County residents have earned the right to ask: does it actually work, and at what cost?

Understanding the Impact of PFAS Incineration on Water Safety

## The Science Says It Can Work — Under Specific Conditions

An international research team led by CSIRO Australia, the University of Newcastle, Colorado State University, and China’s National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory published a landmark study in *Science Advances* in March 2025. The paper, authored by researchers including Dr. Wenchao Lu, Professor Eric Kennedy, and Professor Anthony Rappe, was the first to trace the entire chain of chemical reactions as PFAS compounds break down during incineration.

The goal of PFAS incineration is a process called mineralisation — converting the notoriously strong fluorocarbon chains into inorganic compounds: calcium fluoride, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and water. Those byproducts can then be transformed into reusable materials, including industrial chemicals, concrete, fertilisers, and fuels.

The CSIRO team detected short-lived intermediary molecules and free radicals that scientists had only hypothesized before. If those intermediaries escape the combustion chamber before completing the reaction, they become pollutants.

In September 2025, Clean Harbors’ Aragonite Incineration Facility in Utah delivered what Waste Dive described as “the most comprehensive PFAS incineration test to date.” EPA staff, EA Engineering, Focus Environmental, and Eurofins Environment Testing conducted the evaluation across nine PFAS chemicals, including PFOA, PFOS, and GenX. **The facility achieved 99.95% to 99.9999% destruction efficiency.** Products of incomplete destruction, examined using the EPA’s OTM-50 method, were found at or below detection limits.

Those numbers sound reassuring. But the researchers themselves attached a critical caveat: the results are “not intended to be a general recommendation of incineration for the treatment of PFAS.” Performance at one purpose-built hazardous waste facility does not guarantee the same results at every incinerator in the country.

## The Risks Are Real and Measurable

The gap between a controlled test at a state-of-the-art facility and the daily reality of waste incineration is where the danger lives.

A 2025 study published through ScienceDirect examined the environmental impact of incinerating aqueous film-forming foam, one of the most common PFAS-contaminated waste streams. Under complete combustion, the study found roughly two metric tons of CO2 released per ton of AFFF burned. Under worst-case incomplete combustion conditions, that figure exploded to 439 to 537 metric tons of CO2 per ton — a more than 200-fold increase. At that rate, incinerating the estimated 10,007 metric tons of AFFF awaiting disposal would produce emissions equivalent to roughly one million automobiles running for a year, or a coal-fired power plant operating for 3.6 years.

The mechanism is straightforward. Incomplete combustion of fluorosurfactants at low temperatures releases high global-warming-potential waste products, specifically fluoroalkanes. Lower-temperature waste-to-energy plants pose a greater risk than traditional hazardous waste rotary kilns. Diluted AFFF streams create endothermic reactions that depress reactor temperatures, pushing conditions toward exactly the kind of incomplete combustion that generates the worst byproducts.

For Horry County, this distinction matters directly. The question isn’t whether a specialized facility in Utah can destroy PFAS — it’s whether the broader waste management infrastructure can do it safely at scale.

An April 2025 investigation by Undark documented what happens when incineration falls short. A 2023 Swedish study found PFAS emissions in exhaust gases from a plant operating at 850 to 1,100 degrees Celsius — temperatures that should theoretically be sufficient for destruction. Stack emissions included PFHxS, branched PFOS, fluorocarbons, and products of incomplete combustion. Scrubber water and fly ash were also contaminated.

**No methods currently exist for detecting PFAS in ambient air around these facilities.** Only two limited pilot tests can measure stack emissions for specific PFAS compound types. In Connecticut, 73-year-old dairy farmer Jerry Grabarek, who lives 2.5 miles from an incinerator, tested positive for PFAS blood levels six times higher than the national average, according to the Undark report. Without air monitoring capabilities, establishing a definitive causal link remains difficult — but for residents living near these facilities, the data points are hard to dismiss.

## The Pentagon Reversed Course — and That Should Raise Questions

The Department of Defense published updated interim guidance on March 17, 2026, lifting its previous prohibition on incinerating PFAS-containing materials. The 2023 guidance had recommended disposal in solid waste landfills. The 2026 guidance now allows incineration at permitted hazardous waste facilities meeting specific temperature and environmental requirements.

The reversal was prompted by the EPA’s 2024 finding that solid waste landfills “may release more PFAS to the environment than previously thought,” even when equipped with liners. In other words, the previous disposal method turned out to be leaking too.

Approved facilities under the new guidance include Clean Harbors’ Aragonite plant in Utah and Veolia North America’s facility in Port Arthur, Texas. Roughly 17 commercial carbon reactivation units nationwide have also been approved.

**The DOD is one of the largest holders of PFAS-contaminated materials in the country, largely from decades of firefighting foam use on military bases.** If incineration becomes the default disposal method and the science on incomplete combustion risks proves out, communities near approved facilities bear the environmental exposure while the federal government resolves its liability. Horry County residents watching their own water authority sue over upstream contamination understand this dynamic.

## Alternatives Exist, but None Are Ready at Scale

Incineration isn’t the only destruction technology under development. A 2026 review by R3 Sustainability catalogued several alternatives, each at different stages of readiness.

Supercritical water oxidation, or SCWO, achieves greater than 99% destruction by operating above 374 degrees Celsius and 22 megapascals of pressure with minimal hazardous byproducts. The EPA rates it the most technologically ready alternative for AFFF treatment. Field demonstrations reduced PFAS to below 70 parts per trillion from inlet concentrations as high as 50 parts per million, though capital costs remain high.

Electrochemical oxidation offers greater than 99.9% destruction at room temperature and is modular and scalable. Hydrothermal alkaline treatment achieves high defluorination rates but remains at pilot scale. Non-thermal plasma, sonolysis, and photocatalytic methods show laboratory promise but lack full-scale deployment.

Technologies that could avoid the combustion risks of incineration exist, and some perform well in controlled tests. None has reached the scale or cost profile needed to handle the volume of PFAS waste already produced. For the Grand Strand Water and Sewer Authority, unable to remove PFAS from its treatment processes and facing contamination levels the EPA considers unsafe, the timeline for these alternatives matters as much as their performance.

## What This Means for Horry County

The EPA intends to finalize a rule under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act designating nine PFAS compounds as hazardous constituents, with action expected in April 2026. The agency also announced in May 2025 its intent to revise the PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Rule. South Carolina’s Department of Environmental Services is monitoring these federal developments.

None of this changes the immediate reality for the roughly 115,000 customers served by the Bucksport plant or the residents of Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach whose water flows from a contaminated watershed. The Grand Strand Water and Sewer Authority’s lawsuit against Burlington Industries is the local mechanism for accountability — but lawsuits take years, and people drink water every day.

The science on PFAS incineration is advancing. Under ideal conditions, at purpose-built facilities, with proper temperature controls and monitoring, destruction efficiencies can reach near-total levels. But the gap between laboratory results and real-world implementation remains wide, the monitoring tools to verify safety in ambient air don’t yet exist, and the alternative technologies that could sidestep combustion risks entirely are still years from commercial scale. Horry County residents should watch both the federal regulatory moves and their own water authority’s legal fight — because the decisions made in the next two years on how to destroy these chemicals will determine whether the cleanup creates new problems or finally solves old ones.

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### Further Reading

– “Direct Measurement of Fluorocarbon Radicals in Thermal Destruction of Perfluorohexanoic Acid Using Photoionization Mass Spectrometry,” *Science Advances*, March 2025

– “Clean Harbors PFAS Incineration Test Results,” *Waste Dive*, September 2025

– “Environmental Impact of AFFF Incineration,” *ScienceDirect*, 2025

– “The Trouble with Burning PFAS,” *Undark*, April 2025

– “PFAS Destruction Technologies Review,” R3 Sustainability, 2026

– “Grand Strand Water and Sewer Authority v. Burlington Industries,” filed August 9, 2024

– EPA PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Rule, revision announced May 14, 2025