FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WNCN) – Mike Watters said it seemed like too much of a coincidence. In the last couple of years, he’s lost a bird, and his dog developed tumors. His son and he also developed digestive issues. Finally, they noticed their eyes would burn after showering or when they washed their faces.

“23 years in Special Forces, an enemy couldn’t kill me, but my well is going to,” the Fayetteville homeowner siad

Watters said he and his wife bought the Point East Drive home back in 2012. Soon after, they installed a water purification system. But he said he it’s not enough.

“We’d always noticed, you take a shower, your eyes burn 15, 20 minutes after taking a shower,” Watters said.

So they no longer shower in their own home. They either go to Fort Bragg, where Watters, works or use a trailer.

“We basically fill it up with water. We’ll take showers in there instead of driving every night into Fort Bragg,” Watters said.

He said he’s noticed a difference in his dog, Zeus.

“Until we started them on bottled water he laid around all day long,” he said.

Watters told CBS North Carolina that in September, Chemours came to his home to test his well for the chemical GenX. He lives about a mile from the global chemical company’s Fayetteville location.

He wanted to double check the numbers, so he contacted the state, he said.

“Knowing it took me 11 days fighting to get them to test it, I went ahead and paid Gel Labs. I pulled water one hour before the state pulled it,” Watters said.

Watters said he paid $800 and had the lab test for every chemical it could. He showed CBS North Carolina the 19-page report.

“It totals 508 nanograms of contaminants in my well,” Watters said.

Next, he said, he reached out to the researchers who originally found GenX in the Cape Fear River.

“He goes, ‘Yeah, I’d be concerned.’ He goes, ‘There’s things in your well we didn’t see in the river,'” Watters said.

A forum on GenX will be held tomorrow evening at UNC Wilmington. The Eastern North Carolina Section of the American Chemical Society is hosting it. It starts at 6:30pm at the Warwick Center.