North Carolinians whose raw drinking water sources are contaminated with chemical compounds will have to wait at least another two months before proposed rules establishing monitoring requirements for dischargers go out for public comment.
The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission’s Water Quality Committee unanimously voted earlier this week to wait to present to the full commission draft rules for monitoring and minimizing discharges of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and 1,4-dioxane into the state’s surface waters.
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Committee members said Wednesday that while they had hoped to present the draft rules to the commission this month, the N.C. Office of State Budget and Management, or OSBM, needs more time to review and approve regulatory impact analyses of those proposed rules. A regulatory impact analysis, or RIA, is an evaluation of the potential costs and benefits associated with a proposed regulation.
“Only yesterday morning did the department receive comments from OSBM on PFAS and didn’t receive anything yet on 1,4,” Committee Chair Steve Keen said Wednesday afternoon. “Though this was launched to the public through the (Department of Environmental Quality) website two weeks ago, nothing from OSBM until yesterday.”
Committee Vice Chair Michael Ellison alluded to staffing issues at DEQ as one possible reason for the lag in the proposed rules being ready.
“We have heard that some of the economic analysis required for an RIA has been impeded because the department lack sufficient staff trained in economics and that there has been an economist on maternity leave, all of which is fine and wonderful, but this has been going on for over a year,” Ellison said.
Ellison suggested the department turn to universities in the state for help.
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“We have had presentation after presentation about the near ubiquitous nature of PFAS in our surface waters statewide and we know they’re there, but we really don’t know all the places that they’re coming from other than Chemours, and we don’t know what tools are available,” he said. “And this draft rule was a step, a critical step, toward this committee, and ultimately the full commission, developing a rule to protect the health and safety and environment of North Carolina and I would hope that the department takes this continuation and makes good use of the time before our next meeting and can get the RIA approved.”
The draft rule for monitoring and minimalizing PFAS targets three chemical compounds: PFOS, PFOA, which are classified as likely carcinogens, and GenX, a compound specific to Chemours Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County.
The chemical manufacturing facility knowingly emitted GenX and a host of other PFAS into the environment, including the Cape Fear River, the ground and air for decades.
But it is hardly the only industrial polluter discharging such chemical compounds into the environment in North Carolina.
Hundreds of industries in the state pay wastewater treatment plants to take their industrial waste. Those treatment plants do not remove PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, which the Environmental Protection Agency also classifies as a likely carcinogen, before discharging their effluent into the environment, including waterways that are the raw drinking water sources for hundreds of thousands of residents.
Downstream drinking water utilities were notified one week ago that elevated levels of 1,4-dixoane had been discharged from the Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant into Hasketts Creek, which drains into the Deep River in the Cape Fear River Basin.
Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Brunswick County, Fayetteville Public Works Commission and the city of Sandford were notified May 3 that the samples the plant collected April 25 from discharge detected a concentration of 826 parts per billion or ppb, according to a DEQ release. The state Division of Water Resources collected a sample that same day with results detecting a concentration of 730 ppb.
“DEQ, using EPA toxicity calculations for lifetime exposure, has determined that the average monthly 1,4-dioxane concentration protective of downstream water supplies is about 22 ppb for the Asheboro discharge,” the release states.
There is growing public outcry among residents, local governments and water utilities downstream of industrial polluters calling for state regulations to stop discharges at the source.
Critics of the proposed rules argue they do not require industries to reduce their PFAS discharges.
During the Water Quality Committee meeting, Keen said the initial game plan was “to create a narrative” on how the state can identify dischargers, what those dischargers are doing, and how they’re doing it, “and minimize it, if not get rid of it.”
“But the foundation was to start by monitoring and minimizing it,” he said. “That was the motion by this committee and that’s where we began officially. We want to get the right numbers for all of the river basins. We want to know what those are. Now, how do we do it? We have to go through OSBM. We have to get the regulatory impact analysis that has the fiscal note and a lot of things tied to it that’s going to give us answers.”
DEQ’s Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers reiterated that staff was under a tight deadline get the rules drafted.
“We will continue to work and hope we can continue to work cooperatively with the committee in this process,” he said.
In comments made early in the full commission’s Thursday meeting, Chair JD Solomon explained to the board that the draft rules were not ready to be put to a vote to go out for public comment because of the RIA.
“Regardless of what did last year or what we’re doing this year, we have to get the cost benefit right,” he said. “I will say everybody did work on it. It is what it is and we just have to resolve to come back in July with the fiscal notes in place and have those debates and whatnot.”
The full commission’s next scheduled meeting is July 10. Committees meet one day prior to the commission.
In an update to the Groundwater and Waste Management Committee on Wednesday morning, DEQ Environmental Program Analyst Jared Wilson said that more than 9,000 homes are expected to be added to those eligible for private water well testing for PFAS.
Well testing has expanded into 10 counties in the vicinity and downstream of Chemours’ plant.
“To date we have not found the edge of contamination,” Wilson said.
State Division of Waste Management Director Michael Scott told committee members that decades of air emissions of PFAS from the Chemours plant infiltrated the ground and migrated to private drinking water wells more than 30 miles away.
“How many plumes do you have in North Carolina that are 35 miles wide?” Solomon asked.
“One,” Scott answered.
