Proposed rules that would require hundreds of industrial manufacturers and public sewer plants across the state to test the wastewater they discharge into rivers, creeks and streams for three types of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane will go out for public comment next month.
The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission last Thursday voted to push proposed monitoring and minimization rules for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances PFOA, PFOS and GenX, and for 1,4-dixoane, an industrial solvent, to the public in February.
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Commission Chair JD Solomon indicated that more than one public hearing will be scheduled during the comment period, which is to be held through April. As of publication, neither specific dates for the comment period, nor dates and locations for hearings, had been announced.
Solomon told fellow commissioners he anticipates the state will receive thousands of comments on the proposed rules packages, which do not set specific discharge limits or penalties for violations.
Those omissions from the proposed rules were the basis of lengthy, at times contentious, discussion among members of the commission.
A majority of commissioners ultimately rejected Commissioner Robin Smith’s motion to inject federally enforceable limits on a half-dozen individual chemical compounds and a mixture of those compounds into the proposed rules package for PFAS.
Amending the rules to include the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforceable levels of PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS and GenX, Solomon said, would substantially change the proposed rule, triggering the need for a new regulatory impact analysis to examine projected costs associated with the rule.
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PFAS are a mixture of chemicals used in a host of consumer products from nonstick cookware and food packaging to stain-resistant carpets, water-repellant attire, and makeup.
These chemicals have been found in a number of drinking water sources in North Carolina through discharges from industrial manufacturers, landfills, firefighting facilities and publicly owned treatment works, or POTWs, that accept industry effluent.
Ongoing research into human health effects of PFAS, of which there are upwards of 15,000 related compounds, continues. Some of the more well-studied substances, including PFOA and PFOS, have been linked to health issues including weakened immune response, liver damage, increased cholesterol, high blood pressure, lower infant birth weights, and higher risks of certain cancers.
The Trump administration’s EPA announced last year that it would retain current National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for PFOA and PFOS and extend deadlines for public water treatment plants to come into compliance with the federally established limits for those PFAS.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced plans to rescind regulations and reconsider regulatory determinations for the other PFAS, including GenX.
Solomon said the commission will start talking about legally enforceable limits, also known as numeric standards, for PFAS at its March meeting.
“That is the intention and that will continue to be the intention,” he said, later adding, “Everybody on this panel wants a numeric standard. The question is more, what level are those numeric standards and for what compounds. That’s what we’re going to talk about when we get to the numeric standard part.”
The Environmental Management Commission voted 10-3 to move the proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules package to public comment and hearing.
60-day deadline
Under the proposed rules, industrial manufacturers and publicly owned treatment works, which officials call POTWs, will be contacted by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources and given 60 days to conduct baseline sampling for the three PFAS from the time the rules become effective.
Testing would be done quarterly for one year, with results reported to the division. Division officials would then determine whether ongoing sampling is needed based on practical quantitation limits, which are considered the base line in testing laboratories.
The division would decide whether a business or POTW has to develop a minimization plan, one that would take about 2.5 years to be implemented.
When asked how minimization would be measured, Division of Water Resources Deputy Director Julie Grzyb said, “There is nothing in the rule that defines a set level or set goal in the particular case. So, there is some left up to who is reviewing it.”
Minimization, she said, is determined by a number of things, including training and education equipment and seeing whether one product could be substituted for another.
“However, usually we have a water quality standard that we are shooting to meet and that defines the minimization much more clearly. I’ll leave it at that,” Grzyb said.
The proposed rule also does not specify what best management practices a facility must follow or how that facility must reach minimization.
Smith, who voted against moving the proposed rule to public comment, warned the rule may not pass the Rules Review Commission because, among other things, it lacks such standards.
“I think that one of the concerns is this could be an ongoing perpetual monitoring machine that doesn’t result in significant reductions,” she said, adding that a rule should not be sent out for public comment that “has basic drafting problems and gaps in essential decisions.”
“I cannot vote for this motion to be sent to public notice and comment the rule as it currently stands because I think there are too many issues that need to be resolved,” Smith said.
Commissioner Michael Ellison, who seconded the motion to move the rules to public comment, argued that the rules “help us as a state, statewide, reduce our uncertainty as to where the problems are and how bad they are while science continues to advance, while EPA continues whatever research they’re going to do and whatever standards they’re going to promulgate.”
After the vote to move the proposed rules on PFAS to public comment, the commission also agreed to ask for comments on whether industrial businesses and sewage plants should report to the division all 40 PFAS they are required to test for under federal requirements.
Smith made similar arguments against the proposed 1,4-dioxane monitoring and minimization rule that the commission voted 7-6 to move to public comment.
She said that while the proposed rule pertaining to 1,4-dioxane is a “pretty good monitoring rule,” it is “not a good minimization rule.”
“What I don’t want to do is create an impression out there that we have a serious minimization program if we don’t have any teeth in it. I think we need to be honest with the public about what this rule does. I’m not for something that calls itself a minimization rule that doesn’t have any enforceable attachment to it,” she said.
Early in what turned out to be a more than two-hour discussion leading up to their vote on the proposed PFAS monitoring and minimization rules, Solomon reminded commissioners that the votes they cast Thursday would not be their final, saying that getting the rules out for public comment is an incremental step in a process aimed at ultimately reducing PFAS discharges.
