North Carolina is known for many fine food products — the world’s best barbecue, hush puppies and collard sandwiches come to mind immediately. What could be better than a big ol’ collard sandwich washed down with a frosty glass of iced tea seasoned with a tasty chemical called GenX?

GenX is thoughtfully provided by DuPont & Chemours Fayetteville Works nestled beside the Cape Fear River. Remember what happened when your mother got angry with you? If she called out your full name, you were toast. When GenX’s momma gets mad at GenX, she yells out GenX’s full name, which is Perflouro-2-Propxypropanic Acid.

It turns out the public didn’t know until this month that GenX has been swimming in the Cape Fear River since 1980. Through one of those Catch-22 loopholes that the federal regulators create to help favored industries, GenX did not have to meet any clean drinking water standards. Because GenX was produced as a byproduct of another chemical and not made intentionally, the Feds didn’t have any requirements to keep it out of your children’s drinking water. There is some indication that drinking GenX-infused water might not be good for you from a health standpoint. But, since it got into drinking water legally, no harm, no foul.

The North Carolina General Assembly just passed House Bill 576, which is better known as the Garbage Juice bill. This is an appetizing concept the Landfill Lobby sold the legislature.

Let’s say you own a dump. Dumps ooze nasty cootie-filled liquids called leachate as the garbage rots. If you own the dump, you can’t just let the garbage juice run off into the local creek. Those soreheads in charge of clean water make you either keep your garbage juice on-site or haul it off to be disposed of in some poverty-stricken locale that lacks the political clout to keep it out. Either of these options is expensive. Can the General Assembly help the dump owners? Why sure.

Instead of hauling the garbage juice off, let’s just spray it into the air with giant fans called aerosolizers. In theory, the wind will carry away the suddenly clean water, and the solid cooties will just fall like toxic snowflakes back into the dump. What could go wrong? The inventor of the giant fans contributed $5,000 to State Senator Trudy Wade, the main sponsor of the Garbage Juice Bill. Of course, this $5,000 had nothing to do with Senator’s Wade’s sponsoring the Garbage Juice Bill. The bill requires the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to approve the use of the giant spray fans. Some soreheads think the garbage juice sprayed into the air will drift off-site and deposit cootie-filled water droplets on neighbors, cats, dogs and children.

Some sissies think the GenX and Garbage Juice will make North Carolina a less attractive place to live. Fortunately, Sterling Cooper has come up with an ad campaign to make North Carolina pollution hip.

Here are some of the slogans:  Wow! I could have had a Garbage Juice. Garbage Juice, good to the last drop. If it tasted any better, it would still be in the dump. I’d like to buy the world a Garbage Juice. Things go better with Garbage Juice. Garbage Juice — the pause that refreshes. Have a Garbage Juice and a tumor. Behold the power of Garbage Juice. Garbage Juice — something special in the air. Garbage Juice — the fabric of our lives and the lining of our stomachs. Garbage Juice is forever. Every kiss begins with Garbage Juice. Garbage Juice— it’s magically delicious. Garbage Juice — melts in your liver, not in your hands. The Champagne of bottled Garbage Juice. All the Garbage Juice that’s fit to drink. Garbage Juice hits the spot. Silly rabbit, Garbage Juice is for kids. Garbage Juice tastes good like dump leachate should.

As John Lennon once sang, “Garbage Juice is all you need.” Drink up and don’t complain. The government knows best.