Energy providers wasted no time last year asking the Trump administration to rescind 2024 federal standards for coal ash disposal.

Five days before President Donald Trump returned for a second term in the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, 10 power suppliers, including Duke Energy, fired off a letter urging Lee Zeldin, Trump’s then-nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, “decline to defend these unlawful rules.”

Now the EPA is proposing to revise federal regulation for coal ash disposal, a move that would relax the Biden-era national standards for inactive, often unlined basins designed to store a sludgy mix of watered-down fly ash and bottom ash.

Here in North Carolina, where comprehensive coal ash legislation was pioneered, proposed changes at the federal level are not expected to affect, at least for the time being, the state’s robust coal ash management law.

Nor would the proposed federal revisions impact the terms of a 2019 settlement agreement between the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Duke Energy, and public interest groups that set closure schedules and monitoring requirements for the power company’s remaining coal ash basins.

“None of that is going to be changed by what EPA is trying to do now at the federal level,” Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Nick Torrey said.

But Torrey cautioned that sites where coal ash has been removed may still contain residual groundwater contamination.

“The federal regulations require monitoring and corrective action for that pollution,” he said. “If utilities can get exceptions and exemptions from those things, that’s potentially concerning. Fortunately, we do have a state process as well that’s dealing with groundwater issues, but it was never meant to be a substitute for the federal standards. There’s more vulnerability that coal ash contamination could be allowed to persist. So, we’ll have to be watching that very closely as things go forward.”

Coal ash, referred to in regulation and industry as coal combustion residuals, or CCR, is the byproduct created when coal is burned for electricity. It contains toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead and radioactive elements, according to the EPA.

In early February 2014, some 39,000 tons of coal ash slurry discharged from a collapsed pipe at Duke Energy’s retired Dan River Steam Station near Eden into the river. The spill spread as far as 70 miles downstream.

In the fall of that year, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the North Carolina Coal Ash Management Act, or CAMA.

CAMA (not to be confused with the Coastal Area Management Act) initially set deadlines for Duke Energy to close a group of basins at four of its power plants by certain deadlines.

EPA in 2015 finalized the federal CCR rule under the Obama presidency. The Biden administration strengthened those regulations in 2024.

By that time, DEQ had finalized a basin closure schedule for all 14 of Duke Energy’s facilities in North Carolina. Following litigation and a settlement agreement between community and conservation groups, DEQ and Duke Energy, a 2020 consent order was approved to govern the cleanup process for the remaining sites.

Duke Energy anticipates officially fully excavating the 12th of its 32 coal ash basins in North Carolina by year’s end. Both coal ash impoundments at the Sutton Steam Plant in Wilmington were excavated by July 2019.

Duke Energy spokesperson Bill Norton confirmed in an email earlier this week that the excavation of ash at its W.H. Weatherspoon Power Plant in Lumberton is complete, well ahead of schedule. The company is in the process of working through the basin’s clean closure certification, a process expected to be completed later this year, Norton said in the email.

“Not yet counting Weatherspoon, we have completed excavation at 11 North Carolina basins and are making strong progress at the remaining 20, with well over half of our basin ash safely excavated in the states,” he stated. “All sites remain on or ahead of schedule for basin closure deadlines as shown here.”

Norton said the EPA’s proposed rule changes will not impact Duke Energy’s proposed coal retirement dates.

“We continue making progress on coal retirements while balancing our regulatory approvals and increased load growth – regulators have made clear that replacement generation must be online and serving customers prior to further coal plant retirements,” he said. “While the potential EPA CCR rule changes have no impact on our proposed coal retirement dates, we appreciate prior changes to in the federal regulations that provided flexibility for our coal facilities, enabling us to maximize the value of existing generation by extending the operational life of these assets to help meet load growth at the lowest possible cost to consumers. Retirement dates are subject to regulatory approval.”

Coal-fired operations at Belews Creek Steam Station in Stokes County are expected to be shut down no later than Jan. 1, 2040. The retirement of that plant’s coal combustion operations will mark the end of Duke Energy’s coal-fired power generation in the state.

“We are making tremendous progress on meeting all obligations agreed to years ago in our North Carolina settlement with state regulators and environmental groups – that commitment is unchanged, and state regulators have confirmed our plans are protective of public health and the environment,” Norton said.

Beneficial reuse units at the company’s Buck Combined Cycle Plant in Salisbury, Cape Fear plant in Moncure, and H.F. Lee Energy Complex on the banks of the Neuse River in Goldsboro have been reprocessing coal ash at those sites to make it suitable for use in concrete since 2020, he said.

Katherine Lucas, DEQ’s Division of Waste Management public information officer, stated in an email that the agency “is evaluating the proposed changes to determine any potential impacts on ongoing excavation and remediation activities at Duke Energy facilities.”

“In the absence of an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved state permit program, utilities must comply with both federal and state requirements. North Carolina remains a national leader in coal ash management, both in establishing comprehensive regulations and in the scale and pace of closure and remediation efforts. DEQ believes the state’s regulatory framework is at least as protective as federal requirements and does not anticipate that federal changes would reduce existing environmental and public health protections.”

The EPA is accepting public comments on the proposed rule changes through June 12.

The agency is hosting an online public hearing at 9 a.m. on May 28. 

Updates of ongoing work, future cleanup plans, and studies of a former wood treatment plant site in Navassa will be included among topics discussed at an upcoming community meeting.

During the meeting scheduled for 5:30-6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 12, federal and state officials will discuss the recently completed cleanup of contaminated soil and debris in operable unit 2 of the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp – Navassa Superfund Site.

An in-person only drop-in session will be held from 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Officials will also highlight the cleanup plan for operable unit 4 and an ongoing pilot study of that unit evaluating whether injecting oxygen into the aquifer would effectively remediate contamination in subsurface soils and groundwater.

Other topics are to include the feasibility study for operable unit 3, also known as the southern marsh, and an update on the Moze Center land donation and draft conservation easement under review by the Navassa Town Council and mayor.

The meeting, which is being hosted by the Multistate Environmental Response Trust in coordination with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, will be held in-person at the Navassa Community Center, 338 Main St., on Zoom, or by telephone at 301-715-8592, meeting ID 946 584 8922, passcode 664564.

Those who wish to join online may also enter  tinyurl.com/Navassameetings into a browser.

It has been almost two weeks since the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to ax Obama-era carbon emission regulations for new motor vehicles and engines, arguing that the agency didn’t have the authority to impose the science-based standards on the greenhouse gas emissions that the current administration says have only a negligible effect on climate change.

While Republican lawmakers and leaders in the fossil fuel and automotive industries support the move, Democratic Party leaders, health care industry and environmental groups are saying the decision goes against decades of peer-reviewed research that the heat-trapping gases will amplify climate change, and are taking legal action.

President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Feb. 12 that the administration was rescinding its own findings, and, consequently, eliminating the greenhouse gas emission standards, or the legal limits on the amount of pollutants a vehicle can emit, that have been in place for more than 15 years.

“We are officially terminating the so-called Endangerment Finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said during a press conference Feb. 12 at the White House. “Effective immediately, we’re repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emission standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond.”

The agency stated in a release that week that the Obama-era EPA, via section 202 of the Clean Air Act, exceeded its “authority to combat ‘air pollution’ that harms public health and welfare.” The EPA said that a policy decision of this magnitude should be up to Congress, and “even if the U.S. were to eliminate all GHG emissions from all vehicles, there would be no material impact on global climate indicators through 2100. Therefore, maintaining GHG emission standards is not necessary for EPA to fulfill its core mission of protecting human health and the environment, but regardless, is not within the authority Congress entrusted to EPA.”

When the action was announced, there was a torrent of criticism.

“Today, the Trump administration repealed the endangerment finding: the ruling that served as the basis for limits on tailpipe emissions and power plant rules. Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money,” former President Barack Obama said on social media Feb. 12.

Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said that the EPA’s action to repeal the endangerment finding that greenhouse gases threaten the health of all communities undermines decades of science and rulings by federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Instead of protecting the public’s health from the dangerous and deadly effects of air pollution, including greenhouse gases emitted by new cars and trucks, this action will exacerbate the health threats we are already seeing from climate change, including increased heat waves, more air pollution and deadly wildfires,” Benjamin said in a statement.

Dr. Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement that Zeldin “took a chainsaw to the Endangerment Finding, undoing this long-standing, science-based finding on bogus grounds at the expense of our health. Ramming through this unlawful, destructive action at the behest of polluters is an obvious example of what happens when a corrupt administration and fossil fuel interests are allowed to run amok.”

Goldman continued that the science establishing harm to human health and the environment from heat-trapping emissions was clear in 2009.

“More than fifteen years later, the evidence has only mounted as have human suffering and economic damages. Meanwhile, the continued burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming emissions to rise. The science, the facts and the law are unassailable: EPA has the obligation and the authority to regulate this pollution under the Clean Air Act, an act of Congress it’s now blatantly violating,” she said. “The transportation sector is the single largest source of U.S. global heat-trapping emissions. By scrapping vehicle global warming pollution standards today, the Trump administration has co-signed the release of more than 7 billion tons of planet-warming emissions nationally in the decades ahead.”

The “Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act” was published Feb. 18 in the Federal Register.

The same day more than a dozen groups filed a lawsuit in the D.C. circuit against the EPA, “over its illegal determination that it is not responsible for protecting us from climate pollution and its elimination of rules to cut the tailpipe pollution fueling the climate crisis and harming people’s health,” the Environmental Defense Fund announced last week.

“The finding supported commonsense safeguards to cut that pollution, including from cars and trucks. In addition, the agency eliminated the clean vehicle standards, which were set to deliver the single biggest cut to U.S. carbon pollution in history, save lives, and save Americans hard-earned money on gas,” continued the Environmental Defense Fund.

Clean Air Act

The Clean Air Act has given the EPA comprehensive authority to set standards for and regulate motor vehicle pollution since it was signed by President Richard Nixon Dec. 31, 1970.

Section 202(a), states that the administrator “shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”

The act was amended in 1977 and 1990, expanding EPA authority.

In 2004, the agency initiated efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then in 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act.

By December 2009, the EPA had established the backbone for greenhouse gas emission rules with the final “Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act,” or the “endangerment finding.”

The EPA administrator had two conclusions: the “endangerment finding,” and the “cause or contribute finding.”

The endangerment finding that determined the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride — “in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”

The cause or contribute finding is that “the combined emissions of the six “well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that threatens public health and welfare under CAA section 202(a).”

Rescission background

Rescinding the endangerment finding has been in the works for a year. Zeldin said in March 2025, that the agency was going to formally reconsider the 2009 endangerment finding and resulting regulations.

A fact sheet from the EPA explains that the agency was directed to review the legality and applicability of the endangerment finding.

“EPA carefully considered and reevaluated the legal foundation of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the text of the CAA, and the Endangerment Finding’s legality in light of subsequent legal developments and court decisions,” the agency states. “The agency concludes that Section 202(a) of the CAA does not provide EPA statutory authority to prescribe motor vehicle emission standards for the purpose of addressing global climate change concerns. In the absence of such authority, the Endangerment Finding is not valid, and EPA cannot retain the regulations that resulted from it.”

Zeldin reiterated the argument during the Feb. 12 press conference, saying that Congress never voted for the climate mandates in section 202 of the Clean Air Act.

“If Congress wants EPA to regulate the heck out of greenhouse gasses emitted from motor vehicles, then Congress can clearly make that the law, which they haven’t done, for good reason,” Zeldin said at the press conference. “We have now realigned EPA rulemaking to reflect the Clean Air Act exactly as it is written and as Congress intended, not as others might wish it to be, where our predecessors focused on trying to make and please a few fear mongering climate alarmists.”

‘Exhaustive Precedent’

Around the time a public comment period opened on the findings, Dena Adler, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity out of the New York University School of Law, and legal fellow Kate Welty, issued a 19-page brief, “Exhaustive Precedent: EPA’s Requirement to Regulate Motor Vehicle Emissions that Contribute to Dangerous Air Pollution” in July 2025.

They explain that the current administration’s reasons for repealing the emission standards, stating that the “EPA’s suggestion that motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions may not legally ‘contribute’ to climate change because they comprise a small share of global emissions rests on a flawed understanding of Section 202.”

They write that the Clean Air Act controls pollution from both stationary sources such as power plants and factories and mobile sources such as cars and trucks. Section 202 requires EPA to regulate emissions from new motor vehicles “if the Administrator finds that they ‘cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.’”

The provision “authorizes EPA to regulate a variety of air emissions from new ‘motor vehicles,’ which encompasses cars, light-duty trucks (pick-up trucks and SUVs), heavy-duty trucks, buses, and motorcycles. Under this authority, EPA has been regulating air pollution from motor vehicles since the 1970s,” they continue.

With the 1977 revisions to the Clean Air Act, “Congress wanted EPA to consider how each source of emissions contributed to public health dangers, not limit the agency to regulating only source categories that emitted enough pollution to independently cause health harms,” Adler and Welty explain. “Any effort by EPA to now require that greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles independently endanger public health and welfare would contradict the express Congressional intention described in the legislative history.”

Adler and Welty note that, in 2009, when the EPA concluded that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare and that the greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles contribute to climate change, “the agency found that new motor vehicles were responsible for over 23 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and approximately 4 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and concluded that either comparison was sufficient to meet the contribution standard of Section 202(a).”

In the time since, nothing has meaningfully changed to disturb this finding, as motor vehicles remain responsible for more than 23% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles “still make a meaningful contribution to climate change and unquestionably cause substantial damages in and of themselves. They also far surpass the levels of contribution that EPA has consistently recognized as sufficient to justify regulation in the past,” they wrote.

“The scale of greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, EPA’s regulatory precedents under Section 202, and its reasoning under analogous Clean Air Act provisions all demonstrate that emissions from motor vehicles contribute to dangerous air pollution.”

Coastal effects

Southern Environmental Law Center Climate Analyst Jenny Brennan told Coastal Review last week that the lift of the endangerment finding “will almost certainly result in the worsening of climate change impacts that North Carolina communities are already struggling with — meaning sea level rise at faster rates, more rainstorms that drop massive amounts of water in just a few hours, and heatwaves that make it difficult for people to stay safe and healthy.”

Brennan continued that all these impacts will add stress to the already taxed infrastructure, such as roads, drainage systems and housing.

“Extreme heatwaves with even more air pollution, which is likely in the absence of the air regulation policies based on the endangerment finding, pose an even greater health hazard; heat plus air pollution makes it harder for even healthy people to breathe and is especially dangerous to people with asthma, heart conditions, or other medical conditions,” Brennan said.

Reprinted from N.C. Health News

North Carolina’s struggle with PFAS contamination underscores the unintended consequences that can follow widespread chemical use — even as Congress is considering overhauling the nation’s foremost chemical safety law.

That law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, governs how industrial chemicals are reviewed and regulated in the United States. Passed in 1976 and overhauled by a Republican Congress in 2016, the chemical safety law sets standards for the data companies must provide, the timeline federal regulators have to review new chemicals and whether substances can enter commerce.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has defended proposed changes to TSCA as a way to make chemical reviews more predictable and efficient while maintaining safety standards. In announcing the proposal, Zeldin said the agency aims to provide “a clear, predictable, commonsense approach that’s grounded in the law and the science.” He added that reforms are intended to protect health and the environment while allowing American manufacturing to thrive.

Critics say industry interests are driving the push for changes.

“It’s clear that the chemical industry is engaged in a full court press to try to make some amendments to TSCA,” said Stan Meiburg, former acting deputy administrator of the EPA and retired head of The Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University, in an interview with NC Health News.

In North Carolina, contamination from PFAS and other industrial chemicals evaluated under TSCA brought enforcement of the act into sharp public focus.

Often called “forever chemicals,” PFAS persist in the environment and have been linked to such human health issues as elevated cholesterol, immune suppression, developmental effects and certain cancers. Once contamination is discovered, cleanup can take years and cost utilities — and taxpayers — millions.

Much of the current debate in Washington centers on required environmental review of the law’s fee authority, mandated under the 2016 amendments. The law allows EPA to collect fees from chemical manufacturers to help fund safety reviews, and it requires the agency to periodically reassess whether those fees are sufficient. That authority will expire at the end of fiscal year 2026 unless Congress renews it, which raises broader questions about how federal chemical oversight will be funded. 

The disagreement has played out publicly in recent congressional hearings, where lawmakers debated whether the chemical evaluation process should be simplified to accelerate the review process.

Speed vs. safety

That tension surfaced during two January hearings, a Jan. 8 session before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and a Jan. 22 hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment, where lawmakers debated whether to move chemical reviews along more quickly or strengthen oversight under TSCA.

Supporters of overhauling the law said the process needs greater efficiency and clearer timelines, while critics argue that speeding reviews without strengthening scientific capacity could weaken protections.

“EPA is required to complete new chemical reviews within 90 days,” Charlotte Bertrand, a senior director at the American Chemistry Council, said during the Jan. 8 House hearing. “Yet more than 90 percent of active reviews exceed that statutory deadline. Over 60 percent remain pending for more than a year — and some for several years.”

Without changes, she added, delays in chemical approvals could put American manufacturers at a global disadvantage, particularly when compared with China.

Meiburg, who testified at the Jan. 8 hearing, warned against prioritizing speed over scientific rigor.

“Quick decisions do not serve the public if they are not based on the best science, are inconsistent with the law, are unduly influenced by interested parties or not transparent,” Meiburg told lawmakers.

His warning comes as the agency’s scientific capacity has faced reductions. Last year, the Trump administration announced plans to reduce the organization’s funding by 65 percent, a proposal that has resulted in substantial cuts to the Office of Research and Development — the agency’s primary science arm and the division responsible for conducting chemical risk evaluations under TSCA.

At the Jan. 22 House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing, Tracey Woodruff, professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and director of its Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, argued that the proposed reforms would weaken safeguards built into the 2016 amendments.

“The proposed changes would remove public health guardrails and undermine EPA’s ability to protect people from harmful chemicals,” Woodruff said.

Environmental advocates echoed those concerns, arguing that shortening timelines or narrowing data requirements could increase the risk of overlooking potential health and environmental harms — especially if EPA lacks sufficient scientific staffing and resources.

A looming deadline

Beyond the mechanics of fee renewal, former EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the broader issue is whether the agency has the resources to carry out the law as written. While the statute itself remains strong, Congress has not provided funding to match the expanded responsibilities created under the 2016 overhaul, he said.

“When you reduce government the way it has been done over the last year or so, you are actually reducing the ability for TSCA to work the way Congress intended it,” Regan told NC Health News during an interview.

Under TSCA, companies submitting new chemicals pay review fees, while manufacturers of existing chemicals selected for formal risk evaluations share the cost of those more extensive, multi-year assessments. Those fees, which can range from tens of thousands to millions of dollars depending on the type of review, help fund EPA’s scientific staff and risk evaluation work.

That authority is set to expire at the end of fiscal year 2026 unless Congress renews it, giving lawmakers leverage not only to adjust fee levels but also to revisit broader elements of the law.

For North Carolina communities, the stakes are not abstract. PFAS contamination in the Cape Fear River has required costly treatment upgrades and years of regulatory and legal action. Supporters of strong oversight argue that thorough, well-resourced reviews are far less expensive than responding after widespread contamination occurs.

Meiburg said the lesson from decades of chemical regulation is straightforward.

“Preventing pollution is always cheaper than repairing damage later,” he said.

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A preliminary study conducted by the North Carolina Division of Water Resources found PFAS in soil, wastewater and biosolid samples collected at sites across the state.

The study assessing concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in biosolids concludes that a majority of those substances entering wastewater treatment plants are discharged into waterways, “as compared with the amount entering the environment through land application biosolids,” according to a Department of Environmental Quality release.

Biosolids are the nutrient-rich organic material that remains after wastewater has been treated. The material is typically used as a fertilizer.

The study is the first that the division has conducted assessing PFAS concentrations in biosolids across the state.

Division staff began gathering samples in 2023 to evaluate PFAS concentrations in wastewater and biosolids from 37 municipal, industrial and domestic wastewater treatment facilities. Soil samples were also collected from 19 fields regulated under non-discharge permits.

Wastewater treatment facilities can receive PFAS, which are a group of man-made chemicals used to make a host of commercial, industrial and consumer products, from residential, commercial and industrial sources.

“The study represents a first step for DEQ to begin to understand PFAS concentrations in wastewater and biosolids in our state,” Julie Grzyb, the division’s deputy director, stated in a release. “The study was based on a small sample size and was limited in scope, but it underscores the importance of characterizing and controlling PFAS contamination at the source.”

The study did not assess how these chemicals in biosolids move in the environment.

DEQ estimates that 3.5 million North Carolinians drink tap water that contains PFAS levels above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency health-based standard scheduled that was to initially go into effect in 2029.

The Trump administration’s EPA announced last year that it would extend the deadline for public water treatment plants to come into compliance with the federally established limits for two legacy PFAS – PFOA and PFOS to 2031. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced plans to rescind regulations and reconsider regulatory determination for other PFAS, including GenX.

North Carolina does not have state regulatory requirements for PFAS in biosolids.

“The study will inform future study design and identify opportunities for further data collection and analysis,” the release states.

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.

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.

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.

The two agencies that enforce the Clean Water Act have proposed changes to the waterbodies considered jurisdictional, or under federal protection, and the deadline for the public to comment is here.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers published on Nov. 20 in the Federal Register the “Updated Definition of ‘Waters of the United States,’” opening the public comment period that ends 11:59 p.m. Monday, Jan. 5. Information on how to submit comments is on the EPA website.

The agencies said the proposed rule revises “the regulations defining the scope of waters federally covered under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, as amended, also known as the Clean Water Act, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency.”

The agencies argue that their proposed amendments to the “waters of the United States” definition when finalized, will provide clarity and align with the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Sackett case that the “Clean Water Act extends to relatively permanent bodies of water connected to traditional navigable waters and wetlands with a continuous surface connection to those waters ‘so that there is no clear demarcation between “waters” and wetlands.’”

Environmental organizations argue that the proposed changes will gut basic water quality protections, which were already compromised by the 2023 Supreme Court decision on Sackett v. EPA that essentially left nontidal wetlands without protection. Nontidal wetlands are usually in floodplains along rivers and streams, in isolated depressions surrounded by dry land, along the margins of lakes and ponds, and in other low-lying areas where the groundwater intercepts the soil surface or where precipitation sufficiently saturates the soil, according to the EPA.

“When it comes to the definition of ‘waters of the United States,’ EPA has an important responsibility to protect water resources while setting clear and practical rules of the road that accelerate economic growth and opportunity,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a Nov. 17 press release. “EPA is delivering on President Trump’s promise to finalize a revised definition for WOTUS that protects the nation’s navigable waters from pollution, advances cooperative federalism by empowering states, and will result in economic growth across the country.”

Environmental Defense Fund Coasts and Watersheds Science Senior Manager Dr. Adam Gold told Coastal Review that the “proposed rule could increase the pace of wetlands loss and lead to more flooding impacts for communities. Wetlands loss increases downstream flooding impacts, and at the same time, any new infrastructure built in former wetlands is also at increased flood risk.”

Under the agencies’ proposed rule, the term “waters of the United States” would include “(1) traditional navigable waters and the territorial seas; (2) most impoundments of “waters of the United States;” (3) relatively permanent tributaries of traditional navigable waters, the territorial seas, and impoundments; (4) wetlands adjacent (i.e., having a continuous surface connection) to traditional navigable waters, impoundments, and tributaries; and (5) lakes and ponds that are relatively permanent and have a continuous surface connection to a traditional navigable water, the territorial seas, or a tributary.”

The difference between the existing rule and proposed is that the existing rule includes an interstate waters category and the word “interstate” is in front of the lakes and ponds category. The agencies propose deleting both.

The agencies also recommend revising the existing exclusions from the Clean Water Act permitting process for waste treatment systems, prior converted cropland and ditches, and adding an exclusion for groundwater, as well as definitions for “continuous surface connection,” “ditch,” “prior converted cropland,” “relatively permanent,” “tributary,” “and waste treatment system.”

Carolina Wetlands Association Executive Director Rick Savage also has concerns about the flooding that could be unleashed on communities if these proposed changes go through, and the damage to water quality.

He said communities are going to see developers take wetlands without a permit.

“These wetlands are often buffers against flood waters. if they are developed then guess what happens? The flood waters just go inland to the community,” Savage said, adding that water quality could suffer as well, because of the potential for more pollution to pass into streams.”

North Carolina Sierra Club Deputy Director Erin Carey told Coastal Review that ultimately, “the American public should be very concerned that the federal agency tasked with ensuring clean water, clean air, and the protection of our natural environment seems determined to undermine that responsibility. With this proposed change, the EPA claims to seek clarity in regulation, but this rule would serve only to allow industry to profit from environmental destruction, and the ruination of our natural resources.”

Gold said that according to the fund’s analysis published September 2024 in Science that modeled different interpretations of the Sackett decision, the modeled scenario that best aligns with the proposed rule open for public comment now would result in 82 million acres, or 91%, of nontidal wetlands in the contiguous United States estimated to be without Clean Water Act protections. 

About WOTUS, Sackett decision

The Clean Water Act is the revised and restructured Federal Water Pollution Control Act, enacted in 1948 to protect waterways that are used for or could be used for commerce.

“The 1972 amendments to the Clean Water Act established federal jurisdiction over ‘navigable waters,’ defined in the Act as the ‘waters of the United States,’” according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But that’s as far as the definition goes, leaving the two agencies that jointly enforce the regulations to define the term under statute, and have had to determine what geographical features such as wetlands, streams and rivers fall under “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, and, therefore, under federal protection under the Clean Water Act.    

In the decades since, that definition has undergone several amendments, most recently in 2023 to conform to the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision.

The Sacketts are an Idaho couple who were fined by the EPA for backfilling wetlands on their property near Priest Lake. The Sacketts filed a lawsuit asserting that the wetlands were not directly connected to the lake, a navigable body of water protected by the Clean Water Act. Justices ruled in favor of the couple and put parameters on “waters of the United States.”

Justices state in the May 2023 majority opinion that the Clean Water Act’s use of “waters” only refers to geographical features described in everyday language streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes “and to adjacent wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.”

The ruling narrowed the definition of “waters of the United States, stripping away protection under the Clean Water Act for isolated wetlands, or those without an obvious connection to navigable waters.

The two federal agencies, under the Biden administration at the time, had published a revised definition in January 2023 that was then amended that September to conform to Sackett.

Shortly after the second Trump administration took office, the agencies began a campaign to change the amended 2023 WOTUS that it called “overly broad” in a news release Monday and “failing to fully implement the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency.”

Savage explained that the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, was based on relationships with navigable waters. Then in 1977, the Corps of Engineers came up with the wetlands definition manual, which set the process for how wetlands were defined, based on hydrology, hydrophilic vegetation and hydric soils.

“During that time, almost any wetland was protected because you could find some relationship to​ a navigable water, even if it’s over land, but now you know that’s all changing,” he said, and the reason it started changing was because the Supreme Court got involved.

“That was in 2006 and ever since then, it is going around and around and up and down and through. You know, nobody knows what the rules are half the time. I mean, there’s been a couple of times where half the states were under one set of rules and the other half are under another set of rules because of litigation,” Savage said.

On the state level

Savage said regarding the proposed rule change that there’s two ways to look at it: the federal level and the state level.

“Right now, as far as North Carolina is concerned, it’s not looking good, period,” he said, because of the Farm Bill that made state and federal regulations to protect wetlands the same.

During summer 2023, the General Assembly approved language in Senate Bill 582, often called the Farm Bill, to align the state’s definition of wetlands with the federal. The definition reads: “Wetlands are classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by” the Army Corps and EPA.

Savage said he’d heard that a few legislators were starting to reconsider the move, and he said part of it is because the state government is funneling millions of dollars to use nature-based solutions, like wetlands, to mitigate flooding issues. “However, what the heck is this about, not wanting to protect the very resources we need to use to protect our communities? And I think that might be having a little bit of an effect.”

Savage said they’re working with the Southern Environmental Law Center and other groups to make changes, but there’s not a lot that can be done at the state level in North Carolina because of Dillon’s rule, which means that local governments only have as much power as the state specifically allows.

“Anything a locality may want to do to protect wetlands, the state legislature can immediately overturn it” via legislation, Savage said. “So, it’s not a lot that can be done there.”

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mark Sabath told Coastal Review in an earlier interview that, while this proposed rule reduces federal protections, states and tribes still have authority to protect waters, and can fill the void in protecting these resources that the federal government is leaving behind.

Sabath said in some situations, it’s not a possibility because of not having the resources, “and there are examples occasionally of states that do their best to try to fill that gap. But much more often, we see the opposite, like in North Carolina.”

Savage clarified his point in noting that, just because the wetland is not considered protected by the Clean Water Act, it is still a wetland.

“Some people think if it’s not jurisdiction​al, then it’s not a wetland. No, it’s just not a jurisdictional wetland. It’s still a wetland. It meets the Army Corps of Engineers’ definition of a wetland, which is heavily based on science,” Savage said. “I think it’s important to make that distinction. We have jurisdictional wetlands that are protected, and the definition of jurisdictional wetlands is getting tighter and tighter and tighter, so that most of our wetlands are no longer jurisdictional, right? Therefore, they’re not protected, but they’re still wetlands, right? And that’s why we still have to be concerned about them.”

The EPA and Corps committed in a Dec. 22 press release to consider the public input received in developing a final rule.

A Navassa-based chemical processing company has pleaded guilty to discharging pollutants into the Cape Fear River.

American Distillation Inc., or ADI, owner Andrew J. Simmons Jr., also pleaded guilty to failing to pay federal taxes, according to to the Office of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

ADI is guilty of knowingly discharging tert-Butyl alcohol, a highly flammable, colorless, oily liquid, and other pollutants into the Cape Fear River, according to a release published Monday.

The company, which was incorporated in 1992 to make and sell industrial-grade ethyl alcohol, regularly accepts large quantities of tert-Butyl, or TBOH, from its customers, according to information presented in court.

“During distillation, ADI created and stored byproducts in an approximately 250,000-gallon storage tank (known as Tank 14), which regularly stored liquid wastewater that included TBOH, isopropyl alcohol, and acetone mixed with water,” the release states.

From late 2019 through 2024, the company began accepting more TBOH and other chemicals from its customers than it could legally and properly dispose of under the terms of its federally issued permit.

In January, Barry Darnell White, ADI’s former production manager, pleaded guilty to purposely releasing approximately 2,500 gallons of liquid wastewater from Tank 14 five to six times per year between 2020 and 2024.

White discharged the pollutants “by connecting a hose that drained into a nearby pipe” that ran directly to the river, according to a release.

“ADI released TBOH byproduct from Tank 14 into the Cape Fear River to ensure maximum profits without ceasing operations,” the release states. “ADI management had informed some employees that if operations came to a halt, the company would suffer serious financial harm, potentially including dissolution.”

“This was not an accident, and it was not a paperwork violation,” U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle stated in the release. “ADI deliberately decided to dump harmful chemicals into a North Carolina river to increase profits. When corporations choose pollution over safety, we will hold them criminally accountable and enforce the law without hesitation.”

ADI’s “multi-year illegal discharges of industrial waste poses a serious threat to the River’s water quality and is harmful to ecosystems,” Chuck Carfagno, special agent in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal enforcement program in North Carolina, said in the release. “Today’s guilty plea demonstrates that the EPA and its partner agencies are committed to protecting the environment and pursuing those who threaten our natural resources.”

Donald “Trey” Eakins, special agent in charge at the Charlotte Field Office, IRS Criminal Investigations, stated that Simmons “willfully engaged in a long pattern of violations of the internal revenue laws.”

“Tax evasion is not a victimless crime, it affects every American by stealing resources vital to fund schools, maintain public infrastructure, and enhance social welfare,” he said in a release.

The two federal branches that enforce the Clean Water Act last month pitched changes to the “waters of the United States” definition, which establishes the types of waterbodies that are federally protected against pollution, and if these amendments pass as written, conservation groups fear millions of acres of nontidal wetlands will be left vulnerable.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers have for decades had the authority to regulate “navigable waters,” which means “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas,” as written in the 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act. Expanded in the 1970s, the measure is typically referred to as the Clean Water Act.

The EPA explains on its website that the Clean Water Act “establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters.”

One thing the Clean Water Act doesn’t do is clearly define “waters of the United States.” The EPA calls it a “threshold term in the Clean Water Act and establishes the geographic scope of federal jurisdiction under the Act.”

EPA and Army leadership announced Nov. 17 plans to update the definition, which has been the subject of lawsuits and years’ worth of arguments.

The “Updated Definition of ‘’Waters of the United States’’’ was published Nov. 20 in the Federal Register, launching a 45-day comment period on the proposed changes that closes Jan. 5.  A virtual public meeting is scheduled for 12:30 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, with a 2-2:30 p.m. break. Attendees must register online to speak by 5 p.m. Monday. To listen only, register by the start of the meeting.

This latest attempt, which would exclude isolated wetlands, is directly linked to the Supreme Court’s May 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision. The Sacketts are an Idaho couple fined in the late 2000s for backfilling a section of their property that the EPA considered wetlands.

Judges ruled in the final opinion on the case that the “(Clean Water Act)’s use of ‘waters’” only refers to geographical features described in everyday language “as ‘streams, oceans, rivers and lakes’ and to adjacent wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.”

Earlier that year, the EPA had finalized a “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States'” rule that took effect March 20, 2023, and which the Sackett case invalidated. In August 2023, the EPA and Army Corps issued an amendment to align the rule with the Sackett decision.

That final conforming rule is what the EPA and Army Corps leadership are proposing to amend.

The agencies argue that the change “would fully implement” the Supreme Court’s ruling “by ensuring federal jurisdiction is focused on relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water—such as streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes—and wetlands that are connected and indistinguishable from such waterbodies.”

With this proposed rule, the agencies explain in the docket, they “intend to provide greater regulatory certainty and increase Clean Water Act program predictability and consistency by clarifying the definition of ‘waters of the United States.’ This proposed rule is also intended to implement the overall objective of the Clean Water Act to restore and maintain the quality of the Nation’s waters while respecting State and Tribal authority over their own land and water resources.”

Environmental groups argued then, when the Sackett case was ruled, and still maintain that by removing protections from the millions of acres of nontidal wetlands, there will be consequences: Water quality will be jeopardized and flooding will increase, to name just two.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mark Sabath said in an interview that for 50 years, the Clean Water Act has been the strongest and best federal protection for many of the waters and wetlands around the country.

The law does that “by saying you can’t pollute, you can’t fill, you can’t destroy certain features, certain waters, without a permit,” Sabath said, and the permitting process means that there are certain protections and controls you have to apply to minimize the amount of destruction.

Sabath added that a number of features of the Clean Water Act are dependent on the type of water, and, in addressing its critics, not every puddle in the country covered by the act.

“It’s only things that meet the definition of waters of the United States, and that isn’t defined in the statute itself,” Sabath continued. “Congress didn’t define it, so EPA and the Army Corps, in a series of rules over the years, have tried to define exactly what wetlands are and aren’t covered by the Clean Water Act.”

This proposed rule is the latest revision and it is “by far the most narrow, the most extreme definition,” Sabath continued. “It includes the fewest number of streams and wetlands and other waters of any interpretation of ‘waters the United States’ that we’ve seen.”

North Carolina Wildlife Federation Conservation Policy Vice President Manley Fuller told Coastal Review that with this proposed rule, the bottom line is a massive loss of protection of waters of the United States, which are vital habitats for fish and wildlife.

“This will also negatively affect hunting and fishing, which are a significant part of our natural resource-based economy,” he continued. “Wetlands are also buffers for the built environment and help reduce downstream flooding. Protecting clean waters and wetlands is extremely popular with the public for many reasons and we need to strengthen rather than weaken these programs.”

North Carolina Sierra Club Deputy Director Erin Carey told Coastal Review the rule will effectively remove federal protections from at least 80% of wetlands and over 5 million miles of streams across the country.

“This rule will open millions of acres of wetlands to the threat of development, leaving communities already vulnerable to flooding without the frontline protection afforded by these invaluable habitats. Wetlands act as filters for floodwaters and other runoff, making them critical not only to flood mitigation, but to the preservation of clean water resources,” Carey said.

Environmental Defense Fund Coasts and Watersheds Science Senior Manager Dr. Adam Gold pointed out as well that if the proposed rule is implemented as written, nearly all nontidal wetlands and intermittent streams could be without Clean Water Act protections in North Carolina and across the United States.

While there are many changes in the proposed rule, the most notable are to the definitions of “relative permanence” of waters and a “continuous surface connection” for wetlands, Gold said, adding that the proposed language introduces the concept of a “wet season.”

“Under the proposed rule, wetlands and waters would only receive Clean Water Act protections if they have surface water throughout the ‘wet season,’ described in the rule as ‘an extended period where there is continuous surface hydrology resulting from predictable seasonal precipitation patterns year after year,’” Gold said. “This proposed rule would make it easier to drain or develop wetlands that do not meet the ‘wet season’ surface water requirement, putting our wetlands and the benefits they provide at serious risk.”

In North Carolina, the impact of the proposed rule is 3.2 million acres, or about 88%, of nontidal wetlands estimated to be without Clean Water Act protections. “Importantly, this analysis relies on wetland ‘wetness’ during the growing season, but the proposed rule uses the ‘wet season,’” Gold said.

About the wet season, Gold continued, there are “fundamental issues with the proposed rule’s ‘wet season’ dataset.”

He said the classification of the “wet season” comes from the Army Corps of Engineers Antecedent Precipitation Tool, but the underlying data this tool relies on is modeled using the average monthly temperature and precipitation between 1950 and 1999. The modeled dataset was published in 2001 and does not use the best-available methods.

“The agencies proposed ‘wet season’ dataset classifies most of the year, and in some cases the entire year, as ‘wet’ for much of coastal North Carolina. So, under this proposed rule, wetlands or streams in Jacksonville would need to have surface water year-round (the whole year is classified as ‘wet’) to have Clean Water Act protections. For New Bern, the ‘wet season’ is 11 months, and for Wilmington or Brunswick County, the ‘wet season’ is 10 months.”

Gold said the proposed rule “which could essentially remove nontidal wetland and intermittent waters from the Clean Water Act, does not align with the goal of the Clean Water Act to ‘restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.’ Science shows us that all wetlands, regardless of how ‘wet’ they are, clean our water, provide critical wildlife habitat, and reduce downstream flooding impacts.”

The EPA and Corps also asserted the week the proposed changes were announced that the new rules would provide “the regulatory certainty needed to support our nation’s farmers who feed and fuel the world and advance EPA’s Powering the Great American Comeback initiative.”

Sabath noted that the idea that this will have huge benefits for farming and for farmers is a common refrain when they’re restricting the protections of the Clean Water Act, “but the Clean Water Act actually exempts most farming activities from coverage already, so you don’t need to get a permit for doing regular farming activities, even when they would affect a wetland or stream that would otherwise be covered.”

The idea that this is a huge benefit for farmers is a nicer story, “because they don’t want to say, well, this is a huge benefit for large industrial facilities, industrial polluters, developers,” Sabath said.

Carey sees the proposed rule as demonstrating “that the EPA has abdicated its mandated responsibility to protect the environment and the people who depend on it. Even worse, the agency appears eager to sacrifice our natural resources on the altar of corporate greed.”

The public should be “very concerned that the federal agency tasked with ensuring clean water, clean air, and the protection of our natural environment seems determined to undermine that responsibility. With this proposed change, the EPA claims to seek clarity in regulation, but this rule would serve only to allow industry to profit from environmental destruction, and the ruination of our natural resources,” she added.

White Oak Waterkeeper Riley Lewis said in a statement that the EPA’s new definition of Waters of the United States ignores decades of scientific understanding and generations of Indigenous knowledge.

“By redefining wetlands using ambiguous criteria seemingly designed to maximize developable land and reduce regulatory barriers, the agency is turning a blind eye to the very real, very predictable impacts on our communities,” Lewis said. “Water will continue to move beneath our feet through groundwater and across the landscape during storms, regardless of a federal definition or a construction permit. This rule sets Americans up for flooding, damaged infrastructure, and increased pollution in the waters we rely on for our drinking supply, our food, and our way of life.”

So, why does this actually matter to the public? Sabath said it does in a few ways.

In North Carolina, people who hunt, fish and paddle use wetlands directly and those might be impacted by being destroyed or polluted without a permit.

“Anyone who is in a community that floods during extreme weather, and we all know that that’s happening more and more now, or that’s at risk of flooding,” Sabath said. By losing those wetlands, you lose their ability to protect communities from flooding, and that comes more often now from extreme weather.

“It’s a double whammy. You’re losing the benefits that they provide, and you’re probably creating more problems,” and more potential pollution or channels of pollution at the same time by replacing wetlands, natural areas with pavement or developed areas, he said.

With wetlands being a “good natural sponge” that can absorb huge amounts of water, “if anything, we should be trying to expand wetland coverage rather than take it away, Sabath said.

“In short,” Carey with the Sierra Club continued, “communities will watch rivers and streams in their communities fall victim to unchecked pollution. Without federal protections, industry will discharge and develop at will, destroying habitats, water quality, and flood protection measures as they go. The wetlands and streams of this country belong to all people, not just those who seek to exploit them.”

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

Though the holiday season is here — with all the responsibilities it entails — some North Carolinians might consider adding one more thing to their to-do lists: weighing in on an EPA proposal that could reshape how the government collects information about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The agency is taking input during the public comment period, which is open now and closes on Dec. 29.

On Nov. 10, the EPA announced a proposal to loosen reporting requirements for businesses that make or use PFAS. Agency officials say the changes are intended to make the rules easier for companies to follow and to avoid duplicate or unnecessary paperwork, while still allowing EPA to collect key information about how PFAS are used and what risks they may pose.

Currently PFAS are regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act, a federal law that allows the EPA to require businesses to report, test, track or even ban chemicals that may threaten human health or the environment.

In October 2023, the Biden administration’s EPA finalized a one-time PFAS reporting rule under TSCA’s Section 8. The rule requires companies that manufactured or imported PFAS between 2011 and 2022 to disclose how the chemicals were used and provide available environmental or health data. Industry groups have pushed back, saying the rule is too costly and difficult for small businesses to navigate.

“This Biden-era rule would have imposed crushing regulatory burdens and nearly $1 billion in implementation costs on American businesses,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said when announcing the proposed changes. “Today’s proposal is grounded in common sense and the law, allowing us to collect the information we need to help combat PFAS contamination without placing ridiculous requirements on manufacturers, especially the small businesses that drive our country’s economy.”

But environmental advocates and clean water managers say the proposal would significantly weaken PFAS oversight.

“By EPA’s own estimate, the proposed rule would eliminate more than 97 percent of the information that would have otherwise been generated by the (current) rule,” said Stephanie Schweickert, NC Conservation Network’s director of Environmental Health Campaigns.

“With PFAS and Chemours in North Carolina, we really need more information about PFAS, not less. This (proposal) is very problematic for public health in North Carolina,” Schweickert said. 

Harder-to-detect PFAS raise new concerns

The proposal comes when North Carolina researchers are uncovering PFAS pollution that standard monitoring can’t detect — raising new questions about whether EPA already has blind spots.

Recent Duke University research uncovered a previously unrecognized source of contamination in the Haw River, a tributary of the Cape Fear River: tiny solid PFAS “precursor” particles in industrial wastewater from a Burlington textile manufacturer that entered the local sewer system. These nanoparticles don’t show up in standard PFAS tests, which typically look for dissolved chemicals. But during wastewater treatment processes, the particles break down into better-known PFAS compounds that can contaminate rivers, drinking water sources and agricultural sludge.

At peak discharge, researchers detected precursor-particle levels exceeding 12 million parts per trillion — millions of times higher than EPA’s enforceable drinking-water limits of 4-10 ppt for regulated PFAS. The findings highlight major blind spots in current monitoring and suggest that industries may be releasing far more PFAS (or PFAS precursors) than regulators currently can detect.

“We have some of the most sophisticated instruments in the world for PFAS analysis, and we couldn’t detect these until we dramatically changed our approach,” said lead researcher Lee Ferguson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke, in a release. “Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know, and there is a lesson to be learned about blind spots in our analyses when it comes to looking for new PFAS in the environment.”

In a follow-up email, Ferguson said the findings show why PFAS disclosure rules should be strengthened, not rolled back. “Our work highlights why it is important to increase, not decrease, PFAS waste discharge reporting requirements for industries.”

Downstream utilities feel the impact

A public utility that relies on the Cape Fear River, echoed Ferguson’s concerns.

The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which provides drinking water to more than 200,000 customers in New Hanover County and spent $43 million installing a granular activated carbon filtration system in 2022 to remove PFAS, said weakened reporting would make their job harder.

“We are concerned that these (proposed) exemptions could create additional uncertainty for utilities, such as CFPUA, that are located downstream from known PFAS polluters,” the agency said.

“Utilities rely upon detailed, accurate data from potential and known contamination sources to inform our treatment processes in order to protect the drinking water we provide our customers,” the statement continued. “Rolling back reporting requirements for PFAS manufacturers passes more of the burden of monitoring and testing source water on to utilities and our ratepayers.”

Advocates say the stakes extend beyond utilities.

“The EPA is carving out loopholes under the Toxic Substances Control Act that allow industry to avoid reporting its use of PFAS — current forever chemicals that pose serious risks to people’s health,” a Southern Environmental Law Center spokesperson said in an emailed statement to NC Health News. 

“These exemptions include PFAS produced as byproducts, the very issue at the heart of the Chemours crisis,” the SELC statement said. “For decades, Chemours discharged GenX as a byproduct before intentionally manufacturing it, yet the harm caused by byproduct PFAS is no different from that caused by intentionally produced PFAS. This reality devastated 500,000 North Carolinians who drank—and continue to drink—water contaminated by Chemours’ PFAS pollution, and it remains true for communities across the country today.”

Health risks tied to PFAS exposure

These gaps in monitoring matter because PFAS exposure has been associated with a growing list of health concerns. Often called “forever chemicals” because they break down slowly and accumulate in the body over time, PFAS have been linked to immune system suppression, developmental and reproductive harm, thyroid disruption, elevated cholesterol and certain cancers.

In North Carolina, the GenX Exposure Study has documented elevated PFAS levels in blood samples from people living near the Cape Fear River, along with health markers such as increased cholesterol and changes in liver enzymes that have been associated with PFAS exposure. Researchers say the findings underscore the risks for communities living downstream of industrial PFAS sources.

“Some PFAS are formed as byproducts of chemical manufacturing. These chemicals, even though they aren’t used to make new products, are released into air and water and have been found in the blood of people who rely on downstream drinking water,” said N.C. State University epidemiologist Jane Hoppin, when responding to questions about the new Duke research and the EPA’s proposal.

“In our research, PFMOAA was detected at the highest levels in blood samples collected more than a year before the contamination was publicly identified,” she said. “Other byproducts of PFAS — Nafion byproduct 2 and PFO5DoA — were found in nearly all Wilmington residents tested in 2017 and remain in people’s blood today. We need more, not less, information about chemical byproducts to ensure drinking water safety.”

“The mission of the EPA, in the beginning, was to protect the public and the environment,” said Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University who’s widely regarded as the father of the environmental justice movement. “Anytime you’re relaxing rules that would not only threaten the environment but also compromise public health — that’s the wrong way to go.”

The public comment period is open through Dec. 29. To submit a comment, go to: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/EPA-HQ-OPPT-2020-0549-0311.

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Updated at 8 a.m. Thursday to include the link to the Federal Register, which published the proposed rules Thursday after the story posted, and public comment information.

The two federal agencies with jurisdiction over navigable waterways have published amendments to the existing “waters of the United States” rule that they say will “establish a clear, durable, common-sense definition” of the term, and a public comment period has opened.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army’s changes have heightened worry among conservation groups that federal protections for isolated wetlands might be weakened further than they were soon after the 2023 Supreme Court decision that found wetlands must be connected by surface water to a navigable body of water to fall under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers said in a release Monday that the newly proposed changes were to “fully implement the court’s direction by focusing on relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water—such as streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes—and wetlands that are connected and indistinguishable from such waterbodies.”

As part of the announcement, leadership posted the prepublication notice they planned to submit to the Federal Register, which was published Thursday, starting a 45-day public comment period.

Comments must be submitted by Jan. 5, 2026, and identified by Docket ID No. EPA–HQ– OW–2025–0322, through www.regulations.gov, by email to OW-Docket@epa.gov, or mail to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Water Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460.

Language in the Clean Water Act states that the “term ‘navigable waters’ means the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.” However, the act doesn’t define what “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, actually are, leaving the EPA and Corps to determine the geographic scope of the rule.

Over the last five decades, pushback and litigation have forced the two agencies to revise the definition several times.

The current regulatory definition, according to the EPA, was put in place in September 2023 to align with the May 2023 Supreme Court ruling on the Sackett v EPA lawsuit.

The Sacketts filed the lawsuit after the agency ordered the Idaho couple to restore where they had begun backfilling with dirt the section of their property that the EPA considered to be wetlands of a nearby navigable waterbody. The judges sided with the Sacketts that federally protected wetlands must have an obvious connection to waterbodies like streams, oceans, rivers and lakes.

To conform to the Sackett decision, the EPA and Army amended in September 2023 the latest final rule, which had been put in place that January.

EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle shared with Washington, D.C., lawmakers Monday afternoon an overview of the proposed rules.

“I know that across the country, news of today’s proposal is going to be met with a lot of relief and happiness from farmers, ranchers, other landowners, governments that have been looking for a simple, prescriptive definition that the whole country can operate off of, and would allow individuals to know whether or not there’s a ‘water of the United States’ without having to go hire an attorney or a consultant, having to pay someone to Tell them,” Zeldin said Monday during the announcement livestreamed on the EPA’s YouTube.

The EPA secretary explained that the proposal “includes practical, common-sense revisions that will make a real difference,” and adds definitions for what he called “key terms” such as “’relatively permanent,’ ‘continuous surface connection’ and ‘tributary’ to appropriately limit the scope of what is consistent with” the Sackett case.

“We’re establishing that jurisdictional tributaries must connect to traditional navigable waters, either directly or through other features that provide predictable and consistent flow. We’re adding a new exclusion for groundwater and revising exclusions for certain ditches prior converted cropland and waste treatment systems,” Zeldin continued. “We’re incorporating locally familiar terminology such as wet season to help determine whether a water body qualifies as WOTUS. And we’re strengthening state and tribal decision-making authority by providing clear regulatory guidelines while recognizing their expertise in local land and water resources.”

He explained that the proposed rules were developed based on input from multiple sources, including preproposal recommendations, docket information from nine public listening sessions and consultation comments from states, tribes and local governments.

Telle addressed the audience after Zeldin.

“Since 1972 Americans have struggled to understand what Congress meant when it included the term ‘waters of the United States’ in the Clean Water Act. Did it apply to them? Did it not? The definition of that term has been often abused, sometimes stretched beyond recognition over time, and it’s left Americans uncertain about whether they were complying with the Clean Water Act or not,” he said Monday, adding that “under President Trump’s leadership, the EPA and army Civil Works, which oversees the Corps of Engineers, are kicking off the formal process that will give American certainty about their property once and for all.”

Several Republican officials thanked Zeldin from the podium for initiating the proposed amendments including West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey who said that “for too long there’s been great deal of uncertainty” about the WOTUS rule.

“Unfortunately, it left many people holding the bag. Farmers, contractors, small business owners guessing whether their ephemeral stream or a backyard ditch was going to be classified as a waters of the United States rule and potentially subject them to significant penalties,” he continued.

Alabama Congressman Gary Palmer said he was confident that the rule will prioritize clean water while protecting farmers, ranchers, landowners and businesses alike.

Conservation groups have been vocal about these revisions opening up isolated wetlands to development and degradation since the announcement was made.

“Wetlands are the lifeblood of our coast, and should be held to the highest standards of protection,” North Carolina Coastal Federation Coastal Advocate Kerri Allen explained. “The wetlands most impacted by these proposed rollbacks are the very wetlands that hold water during storms and help protect downstream waters. With the proposed changes, our coast will face irrevocable damage that impacts not only our wildlife and fisheries, but also our coastal economy and communities.” The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mark Sabath said Monday in a statement that this proposed rule, if adopted, “could have catastrophic ramifications for communities already plagued by flooding, water quality concerns, and drinking water shortages. After critical, longstanding protections for clean water and wetlands were drastically narrowed by the Sackett decision, we need stronger protections, not weaker, to safeguard our communities and environment.”

League of Conservation Voters Healthy Communities Program Director Madeleine Foote had a similar reaction.

“The Trump administration’s Polluted Water Rule is another blatant giveaway to big corporate polluters that will jeopardize the waters that our families and communities rely on for drinking, recreation, and fueling our local economies,” Foote said.

“In 2023, the Supreme Court’s devastating Sackett decision stripped federal protections from millions of miles of streams and tens of millions of acres of wetlands, and now corporate polluters are pushing their friends in the administration to go even further in decimating our clean water safeguards. They won’t be happy until the Clean Water Act is nothing more than words on a page and they can pollute our waters with abandon,” Foote continued.

Environmental Defense Fund Associate Vice President Will McDow stated Monday that the new proposed WOTUS rule from the Trump administration that will redefine which wetlands and waters have Clean Water Act Protections. 

“We already spend billions annually responding to disasters that were created by building in risky areas. With today’s proposed WOTUS rule, commercial developers will be allowed to pave over wetlands to build unsafe housing that either floods or increases flooding to neighbors,” he continued. “This rule brings tremendous uncertainty and risk to our nation’s drinking water, flood protections and critical habitats. Based on our peer-reviewed analysis, new requirements for wetland protections could leave nearly all wetlands without Clean Water Act protections. Requirements in the new rule are not based in science, difficult to implement in practice and will create a dangerous lack of clarity.” 

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is currently working on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Port of Wilmington’s plan to deepen the Cape Fear River, with the stated goal of accommodating larger cargo ships. As a retired Corps of Engineers senior project engineer, I feel it’s crucial to raise some serious concerns about this initiative.

The North Carolina State Ports Authority has significantly overlooked other viable alternatives, besides incremental deepening, and failed to assess the extensive infrastructure damage that increased freight traffic could inflict on our roads and bridges. This is particularly evident in major new projects like the replacement of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge and Wilmington’s Rail Realignment Project. Both are billion-dollar investments intended to accommodate the large volume of new truck and rail freight movement. One only need to look at the definition of the secondary effects as defined by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These secondary effects clearly relate to the need to expand the port’s freight-handling capacity.

Deepening the river will only worsen flooding, affecting areas around the downtown Wilmington waterfront and the historically significant North Carolina Battleship site. It will also lead to a substantial loss of vital wetlands and floodplains due to increasing saltwater intrusion, a value the Ports Authority conveniently understates in its Section 203 report required under the Clean Water Act.

From 1980 to 2017, DuPont, and now Chemours, released vast quantities of hazardous PFAS compounds, polluting nearly 100 miles of the Cape Fear River, including the proposed dredging prisms defined in the port’s set of alternatives. This legacy of contamination must be a central part of the EIS evaluation, as it directly challenges the claimed benefits of the project. Additionally, the reverse osmosis water treatment plant in Brunswick County, which aims to remove PFAS from drinking water, will release highly concentrated PFAS-contaminated wastewater 3 miles upstream of the port. This will further complicate the environmental challenges posed by the proposed dredging project, as well as future dredging operations and maintenance requirements, which once again go unaddressed in the port’s Section 203 report.

Why is this a critical oversight? PFAS clings to or settles into fine sediments like silt and clay found in the soil in and around the dredge-soil prism proposed to be dredged. It’s only logical that when these contaminated sediments are dredged, a safe disposal management plan would be an essential requirement for both federal and state regulators. When PFAS is detected in the dredged sediment, our regulators need to determine whether the material is suitable for placement or disposal, especially regarding upland sites or beach renourishment projects.

The Corps’ “Beneficial Use” strategy aims to repurpose the dredged material as a resource. However, this faces significant hurdles within the scope of this proposed project, as regulators decide how to prevent PFAS from being released back into the environment. The Eagles Island disposal area, which predates NEPA and was built on a previously healthy wetland and floodplain, is not an appropriate site for disposing of contaminated dredged soil because it lacks a liner. Furthermore, researchers in North Carolina and across the globe continue to investigate the damage that PFAS is causing to aquatic ecosystems as it transfers from sediment back into the water column during dredging and placement operations.

Without the Corps thoroughly addressing PFAS contamination, there is zero chance of ensuring the health and well-being of those who rely on the river’s resources in the future. This is particularly important when considering deepening options for the beneficial uses of these contaminated sediments. PFAS contamination adds another layer of complexity that will require extensive testing and could significantly impact project costs and feasibility.

There is no question that this proposed dredging project will certainly disturb sediments, releasing PFAS and other contaminants back into the water, which poses risks to aquatic life and human health.

Key issues include the following:

• Contamination — Dedging stirs PFAS, disrupts water quality.
• Aquatic risks — PFAS can bioaccumulate in marine organisms.
• Health concerns — Contaminated fish and drinking water pose human health risks.
• Regulatory challenges — Lack of consistent state or federal guidelines will create confusion for any of the deepening alternatives proposed under the port’s Section 203 study.

To enable the federal and state governments to properly manage PFAS risks related to deepening or maintenance dredging within the navigation channel, increased testing, ongoing research, development of standards, and best management practices are essential.

PFAS contamination is impacting rivers and harbors across our country. Michigan’s Department of Environment now mandates PFAS testing for sediments in harbor dredging, which is causing project delays, such as in Grand Haven, due to unclear safety standards. The Corps warns that this could reduce dredging operations from 24 to only three to five harbors annually due to rising costs — up to 200% higher with resampling — and the lack of precise guidance.

Given these critical issues, taxpayers should be alarmed by a proposed port project that fails to account for its environmental and infrastructural costs. Suppose we don’t consider the long-term implications of the port’s proposed alterations to our river. In that case, we might find ourselves stuck with unsustainable financial and environmental costs, while the economic benefits remain questionable at best.

It is our river, yet it has been treated as a stepchild compared to other, less critical economic priorities. Standard economic models often overlook the real financial value of natural resources and ecological systems like those on the lower Cape Fear River. Since nature’s “goods and services,” such as clean air, fresh water, and fully functioning floodplains and wetlands, are often considered free, they are becoming overused and undervalued. As I’ve tried to explain here, the degradation of our environment directly affects our citizens, taxpayers, and the species that depend on healthy ecosystems.

As the Corps prepares its EIS, it is essential to find more sustainable alternatives than digging us into a deeper hole that we can’t escape.  If not for us, then how about our kids, grandchildren, and their grandchildren?

If you have an opinion or concerns about this project, please submit your comments to:

By Email: WilmingtonHarbor403@usace.army.mil, or by mail to  ATTN: Wilmington Harbor 403, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC 28403, or by comment cards at the public meetings.

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Note: This piece was updated Nov. 3 to correct an erroneous statistic regarding Chemours’ proposed expansion.

One of the state’s most egregious corporate polluters has evaded public accountability for years. Now, the company is seeking to expand its output of toxic chemicals in eastern North Carolina. 

Since the mid 1970s the Chemours chemical manufacturing facility in Fayetteville has been spewing toxic PFAS into the air and water, contaminating the air and drinking water, food and bodies of water of a half-million people in the southeast region. The public was unaware of this until 2017, when researchers at NC State University detected high levels of the chemical GenX in the river’s drinking water. The revelation was so egregious community group Clean Cape Fear engaged the U.N. Human Rights Council to find Chemours and its parent company DuPont had committed business-related human rights abuses and called for accountability. Exposure to PFAS is known to cause certain types of cancers, immune system suppression, and developmental issues. But even after the news broke about this public health crisis in 2017, Chemours continued to produce PFAS and poisoning the Cape Fear River region. 

Beyond polluting the Cape Fear River, which supplies drinking water to more than 500,000 people downstream of Chemours’ discharge pipes, Chemours’ airborne PFAS emissions have poisoned at least 7,000 private drinking water wells across ten counties. This is not just a historical issue – it’s an ongoing crisis. Eight years after learning about GenX in North Carolina’s tap water and state regulators still do not know the full scope of groundwater contamination to the region. 

Despite this legacy of harm across southeastern North Carolina, the company has recently applied to NC DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality) for an air permit to dramatically expand its Fayetteville chemical production operations and increase its PFAS production and waste. Chemours has demonstrated a pattern of corporate misconduct, concealing information about the dangers of its water and air pollution from regulators and the public for decades. The company has violated court orders to curb PFAS pollution. And, earlier this year, the state expanded its PFAS testing zone, ordering Chemours to test for PFAS in an additional 150,000 private wells in six counties – a sign of how far these toxic chemicals have spread across the state.  

This is not a company that can be trusted to expand its operations responsibly, and it is one local example of the  PFAS pollution crisis, which is now a nationwide problem. Thoughtful and common-sense federal solutions were recently put in place, but  are now being rescinded.  

In 2024, the Biden Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restricted six PFAS chemicals (GenX/HFPO-DA, PFBS, PFHxS PFNA, PFOA, and PFOS), under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which the agency estimated could benefit up to 105 million people nationwide. But the Trump administration is now in the process of trying to rescind some of those restrictions that would have helped reduce PFAS pollution in public tap water. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and its partners are opposing the EPA’s proposed rollbacks and have turned to the courts for protection.  

Until federal regulators issue clear guidance and protections for PFAS, it is up to state agencies to protect our health and natural resources. In North Carolina, that means DEQ must reject Chemours’ air permit application and do its job to protect North Carolinians from being further poisoned by this company’s toxic chemical pollution.

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

North Carolinians from cities, towns and communities throughout the Cape Fear River Basin urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to uphold its objection to a municipal wastewater treatment plant’s proposed permit that excludes an effluent discharge limit for 1,4-dioxane into their drinking water sources.

One after another, speakers at a public hearing the EPA hosted last Wednesday night asked the agency to force the state to reissue a permit that will limit discharges of the likely human carcinogen into surface waters that flow into tributaries of the Haw and Deep rivers, which converge to form the Cape Fear River.

Residents from Wilmington northwest to Fayetteville, Sanford, Pittsboro, Siler City, and Asheboro joined representatives of environmental organizations and downstream public water utilities at the hearing at Randolph Community College in Asheboro, the very city that fought to get 1,4-dioxane limits removed from its permit.

“Frankly I’m embarrassed that Asheboro is polluting the drinking water of as many as 900,000 people who live downstream from us,” longtime Asheboro resident Susie Scott said. “The solution, to me, seems simple. Our city should hold the companies producing this pollution to account and insist that they clean up their waste before we accept it into our treatment plant. People living downstream from us deserve safe drinking water.”

In August 2023, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources issued Asheboro a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit limiting the city water treatment plant’s release of 1,4-dioxane.

The city sued, challenging the state’s power to include a water quality standard for the clear, odorless chemical solvent used in manufacturing processes.

In September 2024, the Chief Administrative Law Judge for North Carolina at the time, Donald van der Vaart, ruled in the city’s favor and revoked permit limits of 1,4-dioxane.

In his ruling, van der Vaart said that DEQ officials did not follow the letter of the law written in state statutes when they calculated discharge limits and established an enforceable water quality standard for 1,4-dixoane. He also noted anticipated high costs associated with monitoring and treatment of the chemical compound.

DEQ’s appeal of that ruling is pending in Wake County Superior Court.

Costs to treat 1,4-dioxane will fall on the backs of downstream water utilities customers if the pollutant is not controlled at the source, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup said.

“The presence of 1,4-dioxane in our source water is just the latest example of how gaps in regulation can lead downstream communities exposed to risk,” he said. “1,4-dioxane is a synthetic, highly mobile compound that resists natural degradation and conventional water treatment. Once it enters our watershed, it is persistent and travels far downstream, all the way to our drinking water intakes. Removing 1,4-dioxane from our drinking water requires advanced and very costly treatment technologies. We’re talking millions of dollars in systems and additional millions in operations costs over a period of time.”

Waldroup said DEQ “took appropriate action” when it included 1,4-dioxane limits in Asheboro’s NPDES permit, but that the state Office of Administrative Hearings “inappropriately and inaccurately invalidated that move.”

“EPA is obligated to assume permitting authority if the state fails to comply with federal permits, and EPA must require the state of North Carolina to address this pollutant and protect 900,000 downstream users,” he said.

Public water utilities, including CFPUA, and businesses downstream of Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant were notified by DEQ last January that the plant had discharged substantially high concentrations of 1,4-dioxane into Hasketts Creek, which empties into the Deep River.

Misty Manning, Fayetteville Public Works Commission’s chief operations officer for water resources, recalled to EPA officials last week of the Jan. 24 sampling results reported by the state and Asheboro.

“Asheboro’s own sampling result from that day was 3,520 parts per billion. This is more than 10 times higher than EPA’s calculation of what Asheboro’s discharge should be to protect public health at 22 parts per billion. Without enforceable limits, the city of Asheboro’s pretreatment program has yet to be successful in limiting 1,4-dioxane discharges to levels that meet water quality goals for a pollutant with a reasonable potential to cause or contribute to an excursion above state water quality standards,” Manning said.

She was one of several speakers at the hearing to point out that other municipalities in the state have successfully reduced 1,4-dioxane discharges through industrial pretreatment processes without bearing economic hardship.

“And Asheboro has the responsibility to do likewise, using its permitted authority over their local industrial users,” Manning said. “Downstream communities should not bear the financial burden of treating and removing pollutants introduced by unchecked upstream discharges.”

Last June, the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly against Asheboro and the city’s industrial customer StarPet Inc., to stop their discharges of 1,4-dioxane into the Cape Fear River basin.

“As part of its antiregulatory fight, Asheboro has raised the absurd argument that it should not be the one that has to pay to control the cancer-causing pollution that it dumps upstream of drinking water supplies,” SELC attorney Hannah Nelson said. “I want to be clear. Asheboro could stop this pollution today by requiring its industries to treat for 1,4-dioxane, but it has chosen not to. In making that choice, Asheboro forces us, the families, the drinking water utilities, the local businesses, the schools, all of those who live downstream of the city, choose us to have to pay for their pollution.”

Stephen Bell, an attorney with Cranfill Sumer law firm’s Wilmington office and outside counsel for Asheboro, said that the city he represents believes steps DEQ took in implementing the August 2023 permit “set dangerous precedent with far-reaching implications.”

“Asheboro is not asking for no water regulation. They’re asking for regulation in accordance with the state law. As it stands today, based upon the court’s ruling, there is no water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane. The courts, our environmental rulemaking agency, they’re currently addressing this issue of limits for 1,4-dioxane and the EPA should respect that state-level process,” he said.

Once everyone at the hearing who signed up to speak addressed EPA officials, a member of the audience asked when the agency expects to make a final determination on the permit. The EPA may reaffirm its objection to the permit, require that the state modify the permit, or withdraw its objection of the permit.

Paul Schwartz, associate regional counsel in the Water Law Office at EPA’s Atlanta region office, said there is no statutory or regulatory timeline in which the agency must decide.

“In terms of specifying a date, certain that it would be done by, I don’t think we can do that,” he said. “And it doesn’t make it any easier that we’re operating during a period of government shutdown. But I think we want to give it immediate attention and focus on it so it doesn’t drag on too long.”

If the EPA decides to reaffirm its objection or require the permit to be modified, DEQ will have 30 days to submit a revised draft permit to the agency. If DEQ does not do that, the EPA will become the permitting authority.

The EPA is accepting public comments through Oct. 31 via email to R4NPDESComments@epa.gov or by mail to US EPA, NPDES Permitting Section, Water Division, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA 30303-8960.

An Onslow County-based fishing charter is among this year’s recipients awarded a total of $1.14 million in grants for projects aimed at reducing air pollution from diesel-powered engines.

Nancy Lee III Fishing Charters LLC in Swansboro has been awarded $88,000 to replace two tier-0 1978 model diesel propulsion engines with new tier-3 low-emission diesel engines, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality announced Wednesday.

“This project eliminates 1,100.16 tons of lifetime CO₂ emissions and reduces 1.56 tons of lifetime NOx emissions,” according to a DAQ release.

The fishing charter is among nine recipients of the 2024 Mobile Source Emissions Reduction grants, which are funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Act program. The federal program supports projects designed to significantly reduce diesel emissions.

Projects awarded this year will replace or retrofit 20 older diesel vehicles and equipment with cleaner alternatives, including new electric vehicles.

Other grant winners include:

• Cumberland County: $289,380 to replace an international box truck, crawler dozer and rubber tire dozer with new, modern equipment.
• Delta Air Lines Inc. in Wake County: $268,248 to replace six tier 1 and tier 2 diesel belt loaders with zero-emission electric belt loaders.
• Espinoza Hauling and Trucking Co Inc. in Swain County: $185,991 to replace a 1999 tier 1 cold milling machine with a 2025 CARB-certified tier 4 cold milling machine.
• Fortner Contracting Inc. in Swain County: $62,039 to replace a 1992 tier 0 off-road wheel loader with a 2025 tier 4 rubber tire loader.
• The HMC Paving and Construction Co Inc. in Swain County: $19,913 to replace a 2008 tier 0 diesel truck with a new CARB-certified EPA tier 4 2024 ULSD truck.
• Progress Freight Lines Inc. in Wake County: $100,000 to replace two older diesel Class 8 trucks with new, cleaner technology.
• Carrboro in Orange County: $6,951 to replace a 2005 utility terrain vehicle with an electric model.
• Waste Management of Carolinas, Inc. in Buncombe County: $120,000 to replace four diesel vehicles with heavy duty near-zero emission compressed natural gas vehicles.

Projects that were awarded this year’s grant funding are projected to eliminate more than 3,400 tons of greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetimes and reduce more than 57 tons of nitrogen oxides and 7,700 pounds of fine particulate matter across all projects.

DAQ awards the grants each year to projects that will replace, retrofit or repair diesel-powered mobile sources to reduce emissions.

Projects funded through the 2023 Mobile Sources Emissions Reductions Grant replaced 18 vehicles and reduced more than 43 tones of lifetime NOx emissions and more than 3,000 tons of lifetime CO2 emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency is hosting a public hearing next month on a proposed permit for a municipal wastewater treatment facility that discharges 1,4-dioxane into the drinking water supplies for about 1 million North Carolinians.

Oral or written comments about the federal agency’s specific objection to Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant’s proposed National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit will be accepted at the hearing scheduled from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. Oct. 22.

The hearing follows the EPA’s response to a ruling last year by former Chief Administrative Law Judge Donald van der Vaart that N.C. Department of Environmental Quality officials did not follow state law when they calculated discharge limits and established an enforceable water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane.

That chemical, one that cannot be removed through conventional water treatment methods, is deemed by the EPA as a likely human carcinogen.

The state has appealed the ruling.

The Asheboro Wastewater Treatment Plant has been discharging high levels of 1,4-dioxane upstream of the drinking water supply for several cities and counites, including Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties.

The hearing will be hosted both virtually and in-person at the JB and Claire Davis Corporate Training Center at Randolph Community College, 413 Industrial Park Ave., Asheboro. Doors open at 5 p.m.

Those who plan to attend in-person are encouraged to arrive early and preregister at least 72 hours before the hearing.

Virtual attendees may register online. Instructions are available on how to submit written comments during or after the hearing up until the close of the period for receiving comments. Those who attend virtually will not be able to present oral comments during the hearing.

The hearing will kick off with brief presentations by EPA officials and a neutral process facilitator. Oral comments will be limited to three minutes per person.

The agency does not guarantee that everyone who wishes to speak will get the opportunity to at the hearing, but will accept written comments from anyone who does not.

Written comments will be accepted through Oct. 31 and may be emailed to R4NPDESComments@epa.gov or mailed to US EPA, NPDES Permitting Section, Water Division, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA 30303-8960.

The North Carolina NPDES permit number is NC0026123.

When contractors began cleaning up debris from the grounds of a former wood treatment plant in Navassa last year, they expected they’d be removing old railroad ties, pieces of treated wood and tires.

“We didn’t expect to see a tank there,” Ngozi Ibe said of the underground storage vessel at the property.

The same goes for other unexpected debris contractors found in a section of the former Kerr-McGee federal Superfund site designated as Operable Unit 2, Ibe, senior project manager and environmental justice specialist who manages the Multistate Trust site in Navassa, said in a Thursday night community meeting.

“We just found an extensive amount of material out there,” she said. “It was so much more than we had expected to encounter when we originally planned the work.”

As contractors unearthed the tank, which contained an unknown fluid, bricks coated in an oily sheen, and additional treated timber they did not anticipate finding in the area, it became clear more time would be needed to clean Operable Unit 2, or OU2.

The next round of cleanup is not expected to begin until sometime this fall, with work anticipated to go on for anywhere from six to eight weeks, Ibe said.

OU2 is a 16-acre section of the original 200-acre site where wood was treated for more than 40 years before operations permanently closed in the mid-1970s.

Operations on the land left a legacy of contamination of creosote, a gummy, tar-like substance used to treat wood used for railroad ties and utility poles.

The land was added to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List of federal Superfund sites in 2010.

In order to evaluate the land and get an understanding of the extent of contamination on it to help determine how it may be used in the future, the EPA divided the property into operable units.

The site is comprised of five units, including a 20-acre tract where untreated wood was stored. That unit, or OU1, was removed from the EPA’s National Priorities list in 2021. There are no restrictions on future development of this parcel.

In April 2024, contractors began cleaning up OU2, where both treated and untreated wood were stored, by excavating a little more than 1.5 acres of surface soils contaminated with levels of dioxin and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons considered to pose an unacceptable risk to people and the environment.

Contractors also removed old tires, treated timber, slabs of concrete and other debris discovered through an initial investigation of the unit.

Workers dug down anywhere from one to two feet, in general, to remove contaminated soil. The excavated soil has been placed on temporary storage sites, lined and covered, in Operable Unit 4.

Contaminated soils removed from OU2 and stockpiled in OU4 are being managed and inspected no less frequently than monthly, as well as after every rainfall.

Backfill suitable for residential use has been injected into the trenches dug to remove the contaminated soil from OU2 and vegetation planted on those areas to prevent erosion and runoff.

Wells have been dug in the unit so officials can monitor groundwater.

OU4, the pond and process area of the former wood-treatment plant site, spans about 32 acres.

The EPA has divided OU4 into two sections: north and south.

Erik Spalvins, EPA remedial project manager, said Thursday night that the northern section of OU4 does not have groundwater contamination or creosote and that officials will decide how to address the two stockpiles from OU2.

There is groundwater contamination in the southern section of OU4. And, creosote contamination has been found as deep as 70 feet below the ground’s surface.

Spalvins said he hopes the EPA is ready to issue a proposed plan to address remediation in OU4 in August. The plan, which will be discussed at a public meeting, will go out for public comment on how residents in the area would like to see than land used.

“What we’re trying to do is provide as much flexibility in our decision-making process so that we don’t tie our hands in the future,” Spalvins said. “So, specifically in the feasibility study, we looked at a residential option and industrial commercial option and we are going to put it out for public comment.”

A feasibility study is currently underway for Operable Unit 3, or the marsh area of the site. Spalvins said the hope is that a draft proposed plan for that unit will be released sometime early next year.

The Multistate Trust plans to donate about 30 acres that was not contaminated for the proposed Moze Heritage Center and Nature Park, dedicated to preserving the stories of enslaved Africans who worked the rice plantations along river banks in southeastern North Carolina.

Claire Morgan, director of community partnerships and redevelopment and senior attorney with the Greenfield Environmental Trust Group, explained Thursday night that the 30 acres donated to the town will be included in a conservation easement to ensure it is used for the public good.

The trust has been working with the North Carolina Coastal land Trust to serve as the easement holder, but the town will own the land.

Federal and state representatives will be updating ongoing cleanup work at the former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. – Navassa Superfund Site at a community meeting scheduled for this Thursday.

Multistate Environmental Response Trust, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officials are hosting the meeting to discuss the additional cleanup of contaminated soil and debris expected to occur this fall in a section of the site known as operable unit 2, or OU2.

Other topics to be covered at the meeting include the upcoming issuance of the proposed cleanup plan for the northern part of operable unit 4, ongoing investigations of contamination in units 3-5, and the donation of about 30 acres from the Multistate Trust to Navassa for the proposed Moze Heritage Center and tidal restoration project.

The meeting will be held 6-7 p.m. in person at the Navassa Community Center, 338 Main St., and via Zoom at tinyurl.com/NavassaMeetings.

To join the meeting by phone, call 301-715-8592 and use ID 946 584 8922 and passcode 664564.

The meeting will kick off with a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session.

An in-person only drop-in session, where the public can speak one-on-one to project representatives, will be held from 7-8 p.m.

Aligning North Carolina’s wetlands definition with that of the federal government’s would put the state’s waterways at risk, erase nature’s pollution filtration systems from the land, and increase flooding, speakers at a public hearing said.

More than a dozen people commented during the Thursday night hearing in Raleigh on the revised wetlands definition the North Carolina General Assembly enacted into law two years ago.

In accordance with the 2023 Farm Act, the state’s definition of wetlands must correspond with the federal government’s, which narrows the description of a wetland to having a continuous surface connection to Waters of the United States, or those protected under the Clean Water Act. The federal definition was changed to be consistent with a May 2023 Supreme Court ruling.

In North Carolina, that alignment equates to the loss of protections for an estimated 2.5 million acres of wetlands, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

That agency has been implementing the definition since its approval in June 2023, but the state-appointed Environmental Management Commission, which is responsible for adopting rules that protect, preserve and enhance air and water resources, must go through the rulemaking process to amend the state’s existing wetlands definition.

The law legislators enacted two years ago explicitly directs that the Rules Review Commission cannot challenge the amendment.

Those who spoke at Thursday’s public hearing, a mandated step in the rulemaking process, urged the Environmental Management Commission to work with legislators to rescind the amendment. No one who spoke supported the definition revision.

“I think it’s a shame that the EMC does not have any discretion over what this rule looks like,” said Brooks Rainey, a lobbyist for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Dictating the text of a rule to a rulemaking body takes away the whole point of having a rulemaking body. The North Carolina General Assembly are not experts on wetlands. The Home Builders Association is not an expert on wetlands. The Chamber of Commerce is not an expert on wetlands. But there are many experts on wetlands at DEQ. When rulemaking works as intended, the experts on the subject matter of the rule are involved in crafting the rule. Otherwise, we have ceded environmental rulemaking to political whims and lobby groups.”

Rainey went on to say that the majority party at the General Assembly make “the majority appointments” on the Environmental Management Commission and that the current commission “has greater sway” with this legislature than any in recent memory.

“I urge this EMC to use that influence and ask the General Assembly to stop sending over rules that have been pre-drafted. Take the politics out of rulemaking. Leave it to the experts. It is insulting to this commission, it is insulting to the agency, and it is insulting to the public who are effectively excluded from having any meaningful input at all,” she said.

That lack of input has frustrated residents, environmental advocates and scientists, who argue that ordering a one-size-fits-all definition will be detrimental to a state where wetlands, particularly on the coastal plain, are critical to reducing flooding, cleaning drinking water and supporting fisheries.

“Tying in wetlands protections to federal definitions that change with every administration leaves our communities vulnerable,” said Kerri Allen, a coastal advocate with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. “Why should we hand off our responsibility to protect North Carolina’s natural resources to Washington. Wetlands in North Carolina, like pocosins, Carolina Bays and cypress swamps, deserve to be protected under rules written for our state’s needs, not buried under shifting federal priorities.”

Wetlands provide a host of crucial benefits, said Dr. Adam Gold, coasts and watersheds science manager with the Environmental Defense Fund.

They act as natural flood buffers, provide habitat for recreationally and commercially important wildlife, and filter pollution from waterways.

“Just one acre of wetlands can store up to a million and a half gallons of floodwater,” Gold said.

He cautioned that the federal government may further narrow the definition of wetlands. Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lee Zeldin announced plans to revise the definition of Waters of the United States, also known as WOTUS.

“As someone who has worked in the intersection of environmental policy and coastal resilience for over two decades, I’ve seen firsthand how wetland loss leads to increased flooding, degraded water quality and disappearing fisheries habitat,” said Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider. “These issues are already being impacted and many rural communities and working waterfront communities are already seeing the impact from what’s going on. Stripping protections further will only accelerate harm to ecosystems and the people here in coastal North Carolina.”

Chris Herndon, director of the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club, said rolling back wetlands protections will waste millions of taxpayer dollars in flood recovery and contribute to the loss of the state’s natural resources.

“The revised definition freely gives the decision of which wetlands to protect to the federal government. As a result, our state wetlands protections will be determined by federal officials based on federal priorities without any special consideration of the particular importance of wetlands in our state. North Carolinians should decide which North Carolina wetlands should be protected to the benefit of our local communities and local economies,” he said.

Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney Julie Youngman said that, though the commission has been mandated to pass the rule, there is no deadline in when the rule must be established.

And, since the state’s leading environmental agency is complying with the law, there is “no harm being done to the will of the legislature by slowing it down and working with the legislature to try to fix the mistake that’s been made,” she said.

“It just defies logic that we are putting our fate in the hands of a federal administration that doesn’t seem to care about the same values that we care about here in North Carolina,” Youngman said. “There is not deadline in the statute. Take your time, work with the legislature, see if you can’t come up with a commonsense way to keep the wetland protections that we have in place, in place.”

DEQ will accept public comments through today via email with the subject line “Wetland Definition Amendment” to Sue.Homewood@deq.nc.gov and by mail to Sue Homewood, Division of Water Resources, 1617 Main Service Center, Raleigh NC 27699-1617.

The EMC is anticipated to hear recommendations on the revised rule during its Sept. 11 meeting. The 2023 Farm Act mandates that the rule cannot become effective until after legislative review, which is anticipated to take place during the General Assembly’s 2026 session.

The Environmental Protection Agency has final approval authority over the rule.

Reprinted from our longtime collaborator, North Carolina Health News, to complement our ongoing series on federal budget and staff cuts and the dismantling of programs and services affecting life and lives here on the North Carolina coast.

People who have been struggling to clean up decades of industrial pollution in the lower Cape Fear River basin are expressing their dismay and anger at a federal delay announced Wednesday on a crackdown on so-called forever chemicals that have fouled their drinking water.  

That day, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to extend the timeline for water utilities to reduce the maximum safe levels for human consumption for a select group of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances known as PFAS.

In 2024, under the Biden Administration, the EPA finalized the first-ever enforceable standards for six PFAS compounds: PFOA, PFOS, HFPO-DA (GenX), PFBS, PFNA and PFHxS. At that time, water utilities had until 2029 to comply with the new standards. 

A year later, the Trump Administration’s newly appointed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency would uphold standards set for PFOA and PFOS — legacy PFAS that persist in the environment despite no longer being manufactured. But Zeldin also announced he would rescind and re-evaluate rules for the other four, including GenX. 

GenX is the common name for the substance produced at the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant; it was discharged into the river’s water for decades until researchers revealed their presence in 2017. 

Additionally, the new federal timeline gives utilities until 2031 to comply with the standards, extending the original 2029 deadline.

“We are on a path to uphold the agency’s nationwide standards to protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their water,” Zeldin said in a news release. “At the same time, we will work to provide common-sense flexibility in the form of additional time for compliance.”

While Zeldin’s statement appeared aimed at reassuring the public that the EPA is taking control of the situation, to critics, it sounded like a betrayal — signaling, in their view, a retreat from more robust protections from substances that have become known as “forever chemicals” because of their persistence in the environment.

‘Not forward-thinking’

“Overall, PFOA and PFOS are chemicals of the past, though they are still present in drinking water sources. So removing them will get a lot of others,” said N.C. State University epidemiologist Jane Hoppin in an email. “But the other four are chemicals of the future, particularly GenX, so removing these rules would not be forward-looking.”

In 2017, Hoppin headed a team of researchers and launched the GenX Exposure Study, which revealed that most of the people from the Cape Fear River Basin who participated in the research have PFAS in their blood.

There are thousands of unique PFAS in the environment, according to experts. They’re present in multiple products to help make them slippery and resistant to oils, water and solvents, including some cosmetics and apparel, microwave popcorn wrappers, dental floss, firefighting gear and some firefighting foams.

PFAS exposure is associated with a range of adverse health effects, such as increased cholesterol levels, kidney and testicular cancer, pre-eclampsia in pregnant women and decreased vaccine response in children, among other conditions.

“The EPA is caving to chemical industry lobbyists and pressure by the water utilities, and in doing so, it’s sentencing millions of Americans to drink contaminated water for years to come,” said Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook in a statement.

Cook’s organization has worked throughout the country to document environmental problems.

“The cost of PFAS pollution will fall on ordinary people, who will pay in the form of polluted water and more sickness, more suffering and more deaths from PFAS-related diseases,” he said. 

Kelly Moser, senior attorney and leader of the Water Program at the Southern Environmental Law Center, echoed this sentiment. “When this administration talks about deregulation, this is what they mean — allowing toxic chemicals in drinking water at the request of polluters,” she said in a release.

Living with PFAS

It has been a tumultuous eight years for thousands of North Carolinians living in the Cape Fear River Basin since the presence of  the forever chemicals was first announced in 2017. Among those affected are residents whose drinking water wells are contaminated, likely because of PFAS that were incinerated at the Fayetteville Works plant and drifted far and wide in emissions from the factory. 

Despite a 2019 consent order — established among Chemours, Cape Fear River Watch and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality — aimed at assisting residents with PFAS-contaminated wells, living with PFAS is a daunting challenge.

Jamie White, administrator of the Facebook group “Grays Creek Residents United Against PFAS in our Wells and Rivers,” which works to raise awareness about PFAS contamination, expressed the group’s frustration after the EPA’s latest announcement.

“Well, it shocked us all, first off — and when I say all I speak for the group,” White said during a call with NC Health News. “Number one, we have worked for eight years to get the limits lowered, to bring awareness to everybody, because our wells are contaminated.”

“(The EPA) extended the public water facilities another two years (before) having to have the chemicals cleaned out of their water systems — another two years of contaminating the public,” she said.

Jane Jacobs (EagleHeart), a tribal leader of the Tuscarora Nation, an Indigenous community with many members in the Cape Fear River Basin, criticized the lack of action to protect vulnerable communities.

“My children, my grandchildren, need to be protected from all of the poison, not some of the poison,” Jacobs said. “If somebody was pointing a gun at my kid right now, am I going to protect him from one bullet or all of the bullets?”

Jacobs also highlighted the disproportionate impact on her community. 

“Being a bipoc community, we face a lot more environmental hardships than most people do,” she stated. “We have to drink the tap water. We don’t have money for filters, so for the people in my community, this affects us 10 times worse because we don’t have the money to protect ourselves.”

Looking ahead

While many expressed disappointment over the EPA’s decision, the environmental community remains hopeful that more stringent rules could eventually prevail at the state level — though it may take time. 

One significant obstacle is the Environmental Management Commission, which is responsible for developing regulations to safeguard, preserve and improve the state’s air and water resources. Since 2022, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has been working with the commission to establish regulations for PFAS and 1,4 dioxane — a cancer-causing pollutant that’s also been found to be widely discharged by industrial companies and ultimately flow into the Cape Fear River.

However, a series of delays have stalled progress, preventing the process from advancing to the public comment period — the next step toward establishing maximum contaminant levels for PFAS at the state level.

The most recent Environmental Management Commission meeting, on May 7, ended in another delay after the Office of State Budget and Management raised concerns about the proposal’s fiscal analysis.

Possible remedies

Despite the setbacks, several people at the meeting expressed relief, including Haw Riverkeeper Emily Sutton.

“There’s not actually any checks or enforcement to make sure that the plans that are drafted are effective, and so this (plan) doesn’t do anything for our downstream community members,” Sutton said. 

She also criticized the fiscal analysis requested by the Office of State Budget and Management.

“The fiscal analysis that they’ve asked for also is flawed. It doesn’t include information about the financial impacts for downstream communities who are bearing the burden of this pollution. (The fiscal analysis) is looking at how much this is going to cost polluting industries. That’s not our concern. Our concern is the health of our community members.”

Southern Environmental Law Center’s Moser agrees that the commission’s proposal falls short of the outcome environmental groups demand. 

“The EMC is siding with polluters and considering adopting rules that were written by polluters,” Moser said. “That could allow industrial facilities to release PFAs indefinitely into North Carolina’s drinking water sources and even increase the toxic water pollution that they are putting into our waterways.”

Sutton and Moser and their colleagues are closely monitoring Senate Bill S666 — the Water Safety Act — proposed by North Carolina Senate Majority Leader Michael Lee, R-New Hanover. If passed, the bill would deliver the state-level regulatory action environmentalists are pushing for.

“ (The proposed bill) directs the EMC to set regulatory limits on PFAs, and that is what our hope is,” Sutton said. “We don’t trust that this commission will hold polluters accountable, and unfortunately, the Department of Environmental Quality has to abide by what they are directed by the EMC.”

Moser pointed out that a potential remedy exists to address the water pollution problem: “It’s more important than ever that states like North Carolina, EPA and wastewater treatment plants use their current authority under the Clean Water Act to require that industry stops their pollution at the source before discharging it into our waterways.” 

The Environmental Management Commission is scheduled to meet again in July, while the EPA is expected to update federal PFAS standards by late 2025, with finalization anticipated by spring 2026. Amid these ongoing challenges, Jacobs offered a rallying cry to fellow environmentalists: “We just need to keep pushing. We need to keep fighting.”

Part of a series about the effects federal budget and staff cuts and the cancellations of programs and services are having in coastal North Carolina.

This story has been updated to include comments from EMC Chair JD Solomon

Federal and state efforts to limit the public’s exposure to “forever chemicals” through drinking water sources seemed to be gaining traction just a year ago.

In a historic move in April 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency set limits on six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS and HFPO-DA, most commonly referred to as GenX.

About three months after the federal drinking water rules were adopted, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources introduced proposed groundwater and surface water standards on eight PFAS.

Related: Zeldin says PFAS limits may get tougher, downplays layoffs

But, as of this week, the Trump administration says it intends to rescind and reexamine rules on four PFAS, including GenX, and extend the deadline for public water utilities to comply with rules on PFOA and PFOS by two years.

PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 chemicals used in everyday consumer products including food containers, stain-resistant carpet and water-repellant gear. These man-made chemical compounds are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they are persistent in the environment and have been found to accumulate in people and animals. Exposure to these substances has been linked to weakened immune function, reproductive and developmental issues and increased risk of some cancers.

The EPA’s announcement Wednesday of its plans to scale back PFAS limits comes on the heels of a recent decision by members of the state-appointed commission responsible for adopting rules that protect, preserve and enhance air and water resources to again defer moving forward monitoring and minimization discharge plans for PFAS and 1,4-dioxane into the state’s surface waters.

Critics of those proposed plans argue the rules, as written, lack any real subsistence in reducing the releases of chemical compounds into the state’s waterways.

And in a new year with a new administration at the helm of the federal government, the impetus for regulation may turn up the pressure on state governments to limit discharges of “forever chemicals” into drinking water sources.

State Division of Water Resources officials were heading in that direction in July 2024 when they presented water quality standards for eight PFAS to committees of the N.C. Environmental Management Commission.

The standards would be used to limit permitted releases of PFAS into groundwater and surface waters, set health thresholds for providing alternative water supplies to residents on private wells whose drinking water exceeds contamination limits, and establish goals for cleaning contamination.

The commission’s groundwater and waste management committee agreed to recommend groundwater health standards for only three PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS and GenX. That proposal went to public comment later in the year.

The commission’s water quality committee deferred a motion to send the surface water rule package on all eight PFAS to the full commission and, since its July 2024 meeting, has also pared down its focus on PFAS to PFOA, PFOS and GenX.

Based on that committee’s vote earlier this month, the commission isn’t expected to see a proposed draft rule on PFAS or 1,4-dioxane earlier than its July meeting.

In an emailing responding to questions from Coastal Review on Thursday morning, EMC Chair JD Solomon said the commission anticipates receiving the hearing officer’s report on the proposed groundwater rules at that same meeting.

Draft rule ‘doesn’t have sufficient teeth’

The current proposed rules for surface water bear little semblance to those the Division of Water Resources presented last July.

The set of rule drafts presented to the water quality committee in March were largely written from input provided by the North Carolina Water Quality Association, a statewide organization that represents public water, sewer, and stormwater utilities.

The water quality standards included in the initial draft rules the division created last year have since been deleted. Without those standards, the state lacks ability to enforce limits on dischargers of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, critics say.

One of those critics of the current proposed draft rules is Environmental Management Commissioner Robin Smith.

“I think that consistently there has been a concern that, in the absence of a water quality standard, even a minimization plan isn’t enforceable,” Smith told Coastal Review in a telephone interview earlier this week.

Following last week’s commission meeting, Smith raised several concerns in an email that she sent to fellow commissioners.

“My concern is that (the current draft rule) doesn’t have sufficient teeth,” she said. “If you read through the full draft, there’s just nothing there other than the minimization contents, like a table of contents for what the minimization plan would have to be. There are no standards for determining whether what a system submits in their plan is adequate or not.”

In his email, Solomon explained that the regulatory impact analysis, or RIA, which is an evaluation of the potential costs and benefits associated with a proposed regulation, did not sufficiently identify cost-benefits associated with the proposed rules.

Last September, the water quality committee voted to move forward with a proposed monitoring and minimization plan and “continue discussions with federal agencies to make sure the benefits portion of the numeric standard were realistic,” Solomon said.

“The monitoring and minimization approach is seen as a proactive measure by EPA because it addresses potential contamination before it gets into our human and natural systems communities,” he wrote. “Allowing potential contamination into our public water bodies and public sewer systems is also much more costly to clean up.”

But the proposed monitoring and minimization plan would fail to enforce consequences for industries if they increase their pollution, said Southern Environmental Law Center Attorney Hannah Nelson.

“DEQ worked really hard to put together a comprehensive set of water quality standards that would have required polluters to reduce their pollution at the source and they spent a lot of time putting those rules together,” she said. “We don’t see that same thing happening with this set of rules. Instead, the analysis supporting this rule making completely ignored impact to downstream drinking water utilities. They don’t address that because, if they did, we would see that this rule is all about protecting industry and it’s not about protecting the people of North Carolina.”

In an April 17 letter to state environmental officials, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s executive director admonished the revised draft rule for 1,4-dioxane.

“After months of research, our consultants determined, as a matter of law, that there is no legal basis by which to create mandatory, legally enforceable 1,4-dioxane minimization requirements without supporting water quality standards for surface waters,” wrote the utility’s Kenneth Waldroup in the letter addressed to Solomon and Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers.

“Given that the EMC determined many years ago that 1,4-dixoane adversely impacts the protected use of groundwater, we respectfully point out that the EMC neglects its statutory duty to protect surface waters from the same pollutant. Pollution mitigation plans that have no required or enforceable reduction targets will not garner any tangible results but instead be no more than an action in name only providing empty promises to the people of North Carolina,” the letter states.

There are six known 1,4-dioxane polluters upstream of the drinking water supply for Sanford, Fayetteville, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties, and municipalities that buy drinking water from Sanford.

Waldroup has said that the utility will have to invest millions of dollars to remove 1,4-dioxane, a likely carcinogen, from its raw drinking water source: the Cape Fear River.

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority has already spent millions in upgrades and ongoing treatment of PFAS discharged into the Cape Fear River from, among other upstream polluters, Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant.

GenX is specific to the Bladen County facility, which is roughly 74 miles upstream of Wilmington.

Since news broke nearly eight years ago that Chemours had knowingly discharged PFAS directly into the river, air and groundwater for decades, the company has spent millions to reduce its PFAS emissions to comply with a 2019 consent order between the company, DEQ and Cape Fear River Watch.

The Cape Fear utility and other public water utilities in the region are calling for regulations that would ultimately shift the cost of reducing PFAS and 1,4-dioxane discharges to the industries that produce those chemical compounds.

“We seek meaningful regulation that acknowledges and rewards the reductions made to date, prevents backsliding, and requires uncooperative industrial dischargers to mirror the work of dutiful municipal partners,” Waldroup wrote.

The Clean Water Act includes “anti-backsliding” provisions advocates say prohibits repealing or weakening the drinking water standard.

“Unfairly” blamed

Water quality committee members pointed the finger at Division of Water Resources staff as the reason for the latest delay in getting proposed rules out for public comment.

Smith, who is not a member of the water quality committee, took issue with that assertion, saying in her email that committee members were “unfairly blaming” division staff.

“DWR was not responsible for the fact that the Office of State Budget and Management (OSBM) did not approve the Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIAs) for these two sets of rules before the May EMC meeting,” she wrote.

Instead, “significant changes” to the rule drafts and the draft regulatory analyses that were presented to the committee in March “led directly to OSBM questions that delayed approval of the RIAs and remain unresolved.”

Changes to the draft rules were made at the direction of a group of commissioners, including the chair and vice chair of the water quality committee, chair of the groundwater and waste management committee, and Solomon. Solomon did not respond to an email request for comment.

During the water quality committee’s May 7 meeting, Rogers said staff had “been engaged in taking direction from a subcommittee of this committee” over the last month.

“We have taken that direction and applied it directly to the draft rules that y’all have before you today,” Rogers said.

Exactly which commissioners had been meeting with staff had not been made clear until the May 7 meeting, Smith told Coastal Review.

“It’s not necessarily inappropriate to have a subcommittee or a working group, a small group of EMC members who work on something between committee meetings, but one of my concerns about this process has been there’s never been any transparency about the fact that was going on and who was involved,” she said. “I do think we need to reach some common understanding of how we’re working on these rules, but that also clearly affects the public, and I’m also not sure we’re on a path toward making great progress in July, depending on how willing some of these water quality committee members are to making changes to satisfy OSBM.”

Solomon said that DEQ staff “asked for a more collaborative approach” with the commission for the monitoring and minimization draft rule.

“Coordination and communication with DEQ divisions is charged to the chair and vice-chair of the relevant EMC committee, and in this case the WQC chair and vice chair interacted with DWR to move this draft item onto the committee agenda for debate and discussion,” he said. “No action has been taken on the draft monitoring and minimization rule, or the RIA, by the WQC or the EMC. Based on OSBM’s response to the draft RIA, the benefits aspect of the draft rule is the primary issue. My direction as EMC chair is to bring the updated draft documents before the committee in July.”

Part of a series about the effects federal budget and staff cuts and the cancellations of programs and services are having in coastal North Carolina.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, speaking Wednesday during a Senate budget hearing in Washington, D.C., dismissed reports that the agency was weakening standards on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also called “forever chemicals.”

During questioning by the chair and ranking member, respectively, Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told the Senate Appropriations Committee that news reports about the EPA weakening PFAS were inaccurate and that the standards could instead get tougher. Zeldin said expected job cuts at the agency would not impact its work.

The senators said they were concerned about the EPA’s reductions in force, or RIFs, and its ability to meet commitments made earlier this year about tackling the compounds in soils and waters.

Related: Proposed state rules on discharges defanged as EPA retreats

Murkowski noted that the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees EPA funding, frequently discusses PFAS.

“Last month, you announced that EPA will, quote, ‘tackle PFAS from all of EPA’s program offices, advancing research and testing, stopping PFAS from getting into drinking water systems, holding polluters accountable and providing certainty for passive receivers. You said this was just the beginning of the work that EPA is going to do to tackle PFAs,” she said.

She asked Zeldin whether the EPA’s operating plan budget requests “actually reflect this kind of full-forward push on PFAS and whether it includes the $10 billion that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding provided to take on PFAS contamination.”

Zeldin replied that the EPA was “actually adding people” to its Office of Water, which he said does much of the agency’s work on PFAS. But Murkowski pressed further on the announced RIFs deferred resignations and how they would affect EPA’s ability to execute the plan.

“When I was in Congress, I was a member of the PFAS Task Force. I had voted for the PFAS Action Act. When I was a member of the House, I represented the district that had all sorts of different PFAS contamination issues,” said Zeldin.

Merkley did not appear swayed. He said rough counts showed EPA had lost about 400 people, who were fired within their first year, 560 in the first round of deferred resignations, 180  in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility jobs who were RIF’ed. Another 1,129 exited via second round of deferred resignations, with 1,800 of opt-ins.

“Now we’re up to almost 3,000,” Merkley said. “Office of R and D, it’s rumored that would reduce to 500 positions, which would be a loss of 1,300 additional — now we’re at 4,300. I’ll just point out that for two decades, the level of employment at EPA was about 17,000. Right now, it’s about 14,000, so subtracting the numbers I just shared, we’re talking about more than 4,000 reduction from that.”

He said cutting further to the expected number of 10,000 employees “raises doubts” the agency can meet its own goals.

“It sounds like it’s at odds with your commitment to tackling PFAS and I’m concerned about the numbers,” Merkley said to Zeldin.

Zeldin responded that it was apparent that the question was in response to a news story.

“It might not come as a shock to you, but sometimes the news says stuff that’s not accurate,” Zeldin said. “That is not what the agency announced. As it relates to PFOA and PFAS, you said that we were weakening the standards, and that’s actually the opposite of what the agency actually announced.”

Zeldin said “there was an issue” pertaining to four compounds, “and that’s something that we are going to be going through a process, but that doesn’t mean that the that it gets weaker. The (maximum concentration) might end up getting lower, not higher.”

Merkley entered for the record the Washington Post story with the headline: “EPA plans to weaken rule curbing forever chemicals in drinking water.”

Zeldin said he would “encourage the committee to look at the actual announcement from EPA, as opposed to the Washington Post.”

RALEIGH — Historian David Cecelski didn’t mask the grief he felt while telling the “gruesome stories” littering eastern North Carolina’s past, or the mounting dread that those days will return and put the coast’s natural resources at risk of “plunder, pillaging and poisoning.”

“This may not be the kind of keynote address that you’re used to,” the mild-mannered Carteret County native told a crowd of about 150 people during the first morning of the 2025 Coastal Summit. “I’m an historian after all, a storyteller at heart, and you have to expect that I’m going to tell some stories. I’m also going to talk about our coastal history, and how we got here, and what we might learn from the past that might help guide us today.”

The April 8-9 summit, titled “Ripple Effect: Enhancing Oysters, Salt Marsh and Water Quality Together,” was organized by the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. The biennial event brought together elected officials, representatives from local, state and federal governments, conservation organizations, researchers and others invested in maintaining a healthy coast.

Board member for the nonprofit organization Allison Besch introduced Cecelski, who “divides his time between two places that he loves deeply”: Durham, and his ancestral home in Carteret County. A longtime contributor to Coastal Review, the historian has written several award-winning books and hundreds of articles about the history, culture and politics of the North Carolina coast.

“David’s writing focuses passionately on telling stories from his little corner of the world that emanates American history more broadly,” Besch said as she described his work.

Cecelski began his address, “Our Coastal Heritage: Past, Present and Future” with an illustration of the mullet fishing camp on Shackleford Banks where his cousins worked five generations ago. He also displayed photos of himself as a young boy on the family farm that bumps up to the Harlowe Canal west of Beaufort.

“When I stay at the house, like I did the other night, I sleep in the bedroom where my mother was born, and her father and his father and his father,” Cecelski said. “And in our neighborhood, people call our house ‘the new house’ because what they call the family homeplace is about a half-mile down the road on my cousin Henry’s land.”

Cecelski said that when his mother was born in the late 1920s, a New Bedford, Massachusetts, company was still trapping bottlenose dolphins in giant haul seines and slaughtering hundreds and sometimes thousands of them every year on the beach at Hatteras Island.

“The islanders would shut their windows so they would not have to hear the cry of the dolphins on the beach at night. The last haul of the day, they often didn’t have a chance to process so they would leave them alive,” he continued. “When they were old men, and I would go and talk with them, local fishermen who were hired to catch and butcher the dolphins would say they still had nightmares about what they had had to do on those beaches.”

When his grandfather was a young man, New York millinery companies, or ladies’ hatmakers, “were still paying the hunters at Cape Lookout to surround nesting colonies of seabirds and marsh birds — royal turns, oystercatchers, piping clovers, sanderlings, herons, egrets, among others,” he said. The hunters would wait until the eggs started hatching, because that was when the birds were least likely to flee, and then they would start shooting, sometimes killing 10,000,15,000, 20,000, 25,000 birds in a single day.

A century ago, the swans and snow geese did not come for Lake Mattamuskeet, and less than a century ago, sea turtles were being shipped in tin cans to four-star restaurants in New York City. A pulp mill in 1937, “without breaking any laws, began dumping untreated sulfur dioxide into the Roanoke River at a site 4 miles upriver of Plymouth. By the start of the Second World War, that mill’s waste had destroyed America’s largest and oldest herring fisheries, dating back at that site two centuries,” Cecelski continued.

And a century ago, one of North America’s great wetlands that covered hundreds of thousands of acres north and west of the Pongo River disappeared. “It was clear-cut, drained and its waters channeled into the Pamlico River. If there is an acre of it left, I have not found it. It’s ancient white cedar forest. It’s cypress glades and the entire body of the oyster grounds of the upper Pamlico River. All gone,” Cecelski said.

“When it comes to that devastating era in the history of the North Carolina coast, I’m afraid I could go on and on and on,” but everything that is loved about the state’s coast today has come about because of recognizing that path couldn’t continue, he said.

“We learned the hard way that the strength of our coastal communities, strength of our coastal families, the strength of our coastal economy, and the strength of the kind of coastal heritage that I grew up in — our traditions of fishing, of boatbuilding, of living off the land and the water, of oyster roasts and shrimp boils, of pilgrimages to the shore to restore our souls — we learned that they are all as entwined as anything can be with the health of our coastal waters, our coastal wetlands, our fields and forests,” Cecelski continued. “And we learned that we have to work together if we want to keep the North Carolina coast the kind of place that our children and grandchildren will hold as tightly in their hearts as we hold it in our hearts.”

Even though progress has been made over the last century with environmental laws and conservation efforts, “we also know that in a lot of ways, we have just got started, and I know when we see what’s going on in the country now, that things look bleak for much of what draws us and people from around the world to our shores,” he said, and the work taking place to care for the coast may be at risk.

“I know — I’m not naming names — that there are people in high office now who act as if, well, as if they never walked down the Kure Beach fishing pier on a Friday night in the autumn when the spots and bluefish are running and seeing the joy in the children’s faces and how nobody is a stranger and everybody’s helping everybody, and how much it means to all our state’s citizens to be there by the sea,” he said. “And they act as if they’ve never walked the shores of Cape Lookout when the sea is phosphorescent, the dolphins are playing in the waves and the fish are biting, and they act as if they’ve never traipsed along the edges of Currituck Sound and felt the beauty of the marshes stir their soul.”

The shackling of the Environmental Protection Agency “alone foreshadows the breathtaking descent back into the worst days of our coastal past, when our estuaries, our beaches, our fisheries and the sources of our drinking water were a free-for-all, open to plunder, pillaging and poisoning,” he said.

“I wish I had more words of comfort for you, but we all know the road ahead is not going to be easy,” Cecelski said, reminding the audience that the work of organizations like the Coastal Federation and its partners “will never, ever be greater than it is at this moment in our history.”

He closed by telling a story about how, in the Coastal Federation’s infancy, its founder, Todd Miller, recruited Cecelski as the first volunteer.

“I think that I was invited here today, hopefully not just to tell gruesome stories, but I think I was invited here because of my historical work on the North Carolina coast,” he said.

It was the early 1980s and Miller convinced Cecelski to spend a year in Swan Quarter spreading the word about a proposed massive strip-mining project.

“They wanted to mine the peat. A large, multibillion-dollar, extremely well-connected group of investors was planning to strip mine hundreds of thousands of acres of coastal wetlands stretching across Dare, Hyde, Tyrrell, Beaufort and Washington counties,” he said.

Cecelski continued that when he first arrived, he rarely met anyone who knew about the proposed plan and on the few occasions he did, they realized the project would leave their home a wasteland and devastate the region’s oyster beds and fishing grounds.

“Past experience had led them to conclude that nobody cared what they had to say, that nobody would listen to them, and there was nothing they could do about it, because it had always been that way,” he said.

His job was “a very small part of the puzzle” to let people know what was happening, and help their voices be heard.

“At that moment, I would not have bet five bucks on the chance of our success. Everything — money, power, time — was against us, but little by little, people of every background, every race, every political party and every little village, began to speak up. Hope flickered,” he said. People began to come together and believed they could make a difference, and in the end, the people of the North Carolina coast prevailed.

Though Cecelski was young at the time, he said the experience taught him that even when it looks bleak and “if we don’t give up hope, if we hold on to one another, if we look past our differences to what we hold in common, good things will happen, and sometimes even a miracle or two, even in the darkest of times.”

Cecelski said he knows he’s a terribly old-fashioned person and out of step with much of modern times.

“I still believe in the golden rule that we should treat other people the way that we would want them to treat us. I still believe what I was taught in Sunday school, that we are called to be good stewards of God’s creation and good caretakers of our lands and waters and the creatures thereof,” he said. “I still believe, and I will always believe, what I learned growing up on the North Carolina coast, that a neighbor is a neighbor is a neighbor, and we are all in this together. And I believe with all my heart that there are some things worth fighting for, and I believe that the North Carolina coast is one of them.”

The two federal agencies that are to reviewing the definition of “waters of the United States,” often called WOTUS and a distinguishing characteristic under the Clean Water Act, have scheduled the first round of listening sessions for next week.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army, which oversees the Army Corps of Engineers, are holding the public input meetings both virtually and at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced March 12 plans to revise the definition of WOTUS to align with the Supreme Court’s May 2023 decision in the Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency “while eliminating red tape, cutting compliance costs, and reducing the cost of living,” according to the agency. “To achieve this vision, the agencies will develop a proposed rule to revise the 2023 definition of WOTUS.”

Related: EPA targets remaining federal isolated wetlands protections

Participation in the session set for 9:30 a.m. to noon Tuesday, April 29, is limited to state government agencies and member organizations. The listening session for Tribes will be virtually held 1-3:30 p.m. April 30.

From 9:30 p.m. to noon Thursday, May 1, the input session is for industry and agricultural stakeholders and the 1 p.m. that is to follow is for environmental and conservation stakeholders. Registration is required and can be done on the EPA website.

EPA officials said that listening sessions for local governments and the public will be announced.

“The agencies are committed to obtaining targeted input from a full spectrum of co-regulators and stakeholders on key topic areas related to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ in light of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, regarding ‘continuous surface connection,’ ‘relatively permanent,’ and jurisdictional versus non-jurisdictional ditches,” according to the EPA.

EPA’s Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water Peggy Brown and Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds Division Director Stacey Jensen will be joined by Milton Boyd, assistant counsel with the Corps for the sessions.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Morty Gaskill is a member of the North Carolina Coastal Federation Board of Directors. The nonprofit advocacy organization publishes Coastal Review, which remains editorially independent.

In 1976, a North Carolina Sea Grant newsletter sounded the alarm: large-scale land drainage was wiping out wetlands that protect our coastal fisheries. Fishermen saw their livelihoods at risk and 3,000 of them pleaded for action.

“We, the undersigned, being commercial and sport fishermen who use the creeks, rivers, and bays adjacent to Pamlico Sound and the waters of Pamlico Sound, petition the Marine Fisheries Commission and state officials as follows: … to investigate the effect of changing salinity in said waters upon the economy of Pamlico Drainage areas and to initiate proper controls to insure the continued health of commercial and sport fishing in this area.”

They saw it coming. But there was hope — state and federal leaders acted. For decades, farming, forestry, development, and fisheries co-existed under federal and state wetland safeguards — rules that carefully balanced economic growth and environmental protection. These safeguards didn’t create unbearable hardships; they provided stability for all.

Yet here we are again, nearly 50 years later, facing the same crisis — not just for our fisheries, but for our homes, businesses, and communities. Given the changing economic and environmental conditions of many coastal communities across North Carolina, it could not come at a worse time.

This time, the rollback of wetland protections isn’t coming from local drainage operations. It’s happening due to recent federal and state government actions. The Supreme Court’s Sackett v. EPA decision has dramatically narrowed the definition of federally protected wetlands. The North Carolina General Assembly followed suit, choosing to adopt the weaker federal standard instead of maintaining the stronger state level protections that had been in place for years. And now, under new leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is further diluting the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, stripping even more protections from wetlands and streams that feed our coastal estuaries.

The consequences? More wetlands drained. More freshwater rushing unchecked into saltwater nurseries. More flooding. More property damage.

Costly gamble

History has already shown us what happens when we fail to protect our wetlands. In 1976, Rose Bay fisherman Troy W. Mayo spoke out as catches dwindled.

“Twenty-five years ago, I owned a 26-foot shad boat. We used to go out in Rose Bay, two people, for five or six hours and we’d catch 35 to 40 tubs of oysters—that was two men pulling by hand,” said Mayo. “Today you go out in this same area with a power winder and all modern equipment, and I’d be surprised if you catch 10 tubs of oysters.”

Scientists confirmed what fishermen already knew. “Salinity is a major ingredient for survival in the estuaries”; reported the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. Preston Pate, who studied juvenile shrimp in Rose Bay, found that freshwater intrusion “definitely disrupted the salinity of small creeks in the area. The result was a smaller shrimp harvest by fishermen.”

But wetland loss isn’t just bad for fisheries. Wetlands absorb floodwaters, buffer storm surges, and keep pollution out of our waterways. Every acre lost means more homes and businesses at risk.

In North Carolina, our coastal communities have already been battered by hurricanes, rising insurance costs, rising property taxes, lack of affordable housing, and an aging drainage infrastructure that can’t keep up with heavier rains. Weakening wetland protections only adds fuel to the fire. It shifts costs onto property owners, local governments, and taxpayers — many of whom will be left paying for flood damage that could have been prevented.

Commonsense approach to conservation

Those lessons from the 1970s helped shape policies that kept North Carolina’s wetlands intact for decades. But now, history is repeating itself. The rollback of WOTUS protections and the state’s decision to weaken its own rules mean more wetlands will be drained, increasing flooding, pollution, and economic losses.

This shouldn’t be a divisive political issue. Wetland protections aren’t just about environmental policy — they’re about practical economics, public safety, and community well-being. They help prevent costly flood damage, safeguard private property, and support the resilience of coastal economies that depend on fisheries, tourism, and clean water.

Jim Brown of the Division of Marine Fisheries put it best nearly 50 years ago:

“We love beans and beef, and we have a serious need to extend agricultural operations. At the same time, we dearly love shrimp and oysters. There exists a very serious need for imposing compatibility between the two. Can it be done? That’s the question. Or do we just keep plodding along with our fingers crossed?”

If we ignore history, we aren’t just crossing our fingers — we are guaranteeing a grim future for our coastal communities. The fishermen of Rose Bay warned us decades ago. Will we listen this time? Or will we, once again, pay the price for failing to protect the wetlands that sustain our way of life?

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns.

Second in a series

WILMINGTON – Without a state-set limit for 1,4-dioxane, a public utility that serves an estimated 200,000 people here will have to invest millions of dollars to remove the federally deemed “likely carcinogen” from its raw drinking water source.

The projected cost for Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA, to make additional upgrades to its Sweeney Water Treatment Plant is in the area of $17- $24 million, authority Executive Director Kenneth Waldroup said.

Annual additional costs associated with treating the chemical being discharged into the Cape Fear River upstream of the city are between $1 million and $3 million.

Such costs could be avoided if upstream polluters would reduce the amount of 1,4-dioxane from their effluent by 60-65%, Waldroup said.

But prospects that industry will voluntarily reduce discharges of the chemical are slim.

And efforts to get the state’s rule makers – both the North Carolina General Assembly and the Environmental Management Commission – to set a water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane are not making much headway. The commission is charged with adopting rules to protect the state’s air and water resources.

CFPUA will continue advocating for solutions, Waldroup said to a crowd of about 100 people Saturday.

The World Water Day event, hosted by Clean Cape Fear in partnership with St. Andrews-Covenant Presbyterian Church’s women’s ministry team, highlighted ongoing problems downstream water users face from upstream polluters.

It’s an issue that spans the country, where an estimated 6-10% of 66,000 drinking water systems throughout the country must figure out how to treat certain chemical compounds from their raw water sources.

The Cape Fear River is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of residents in the Cape Fear Region, one rocked nearly eight years ago when the public was first informed Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility had been discharging PFAS into the river, air and ground for decades.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 14,000 of these chemical compounds, which are used to make a host of everyday consumer goods from food packaging to water-resistant gear.

PFAS exposure has been linked to a number of adverse health impacts to people, including thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage, and different types of cancers.

More than two years have passed since CFPUA completed a multi-million-dollar upgrade to its Sweeney plant, which included the addition of a filtration system to remove PFAS, including GenX, from its raw water source.

Today, the average CFPUA customer bill includes a $7.50 charge Waldroup referred to Saturday as the “Chemours correction surcharge,” one associated with the utility’s annual operation costs associated with the filtration system upgrade.

That upgrade entailed the installation of eight granular activated carbon filters.

The system effectively removes PFAS for which the EPA in the spring of 2024 made the move to set enforceable limits on nearly a half-dozen individual compounds in public water systems.

The cost the utility incurs each year to remove PFAS is about $4.3 million, Waldroup said. The utility’s legal fees have surpassed $10 million in its ongoing lawsuit against Chemours and parent company Dupont to pay for costs and damages related to the companies’ actions.

A trial is not expected until next year.

CFPUA monitors up to 70 types of PFAS, including GenX and other chemical compounds specific to Chemours. The utility is now looking at ultra-short chain PFAS, Waldroup said. Those are compounds with carbon chain lengths of 3 or fewer carbon atoms in sequence

The utility is able to treat “some” 1,4-dioxane from its raw water source, he said, but the activated carbon system does not remove the chemical.

He explained that there is a debate in the scientific community as to the appropriate exposure rate of 1,4-dioxane, specifically whether that rate is 35 parts per billion, or 0.35 ppb. The federal drinking water health advisory level is 0.35 ppb.

“The difference is a one in 10,000 cancer risk a 70-year lifetime exposure and a one in a million,” Waldroup said. “As the downstream water provider, we think one in a million is the right standard.”

Known polluters

In January, CFPUA and other water utilities, including Pender County Utilities, were notified by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality that a city-operated wastewater treatment plant in Randolph County discharged substantially high levels of 1,4-dixoane into a tributary of the Cape Fear River that month.

The notice came months after a state chief administrative law judge last September revoked 1,4-dioxane limits included in Asheboro’s discharge permit. DEQ appealed the judge’s decision and is awaiting a ruling.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, or SELC, on Wednesday notified Asheboro and its industrial customers, StarPet and Waste Management’s Great Oak Landfill, it plans to sue for failing to stop 1,4-dioxane from “flowing into the drinking water supplies for about 900,000 North Carolinians,” according to a release. The intended lawsuit is being filed on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch and Haw River Assembly.

“Asheboro and cities like it have the ability and responsibility to stop this illegal 1,4-dioxane pollution before it contaminates people’s drinking water,” SELC senior attorney Jean Zhuang stated in the release. “Emboldened by its fight to dismantle North Carolinian’s drinking water protections, Asheboro’s 1,4-dioxane pollution has skyrocketed in recent months. Asheboro’s industries don’t want to pay to treat their own chemical pollution, so the city is protecting their profits over the health and safety of North Carolinians downstream and making their untreated, toxic industrial waste a costly problem for communities who get their drinking water downstream.”

Asheboro discharges upstream of the drinking water supply for Sanford, Fayetteville, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties, and municipalities that buy drinking water from Sanford, according to the release.

Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant is one of six known 1,4-dioxane upstream polluters, Waldroup said. Of those, the Alpek Polyester USA plant just upstream of Chemours is the highest source of 1,4-dixoane release into the Cape Fear River, he said.

In May, the Environmental Management Commission is expected to be presented with a draft rule to establish monitoring and minimization requirements of PFAS dischargers in the state. The proposed rule was written largely from input provided by a utility association, which has drawn backlash from one of its own members – CFPUA – and environmental groups.

Hannah Nelson, a Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney and speaker at Saturday’s event, called the proposed rule “offensive” to residents who live downstream of industry polluters.

“This rule was written by polluters and it shows,” she said. “There is no requirement under this draft rule for polluters to reduce PFAS pollution. Polluters will use this rule to hide behind it.”

The commission has instructed DEQ to put together a similar proposed rule for 1,4-dioxane, Nelson said.

That does not prevent DEQ from requiring industries include pretreatment programs in their discharge permits and placing the burden on the polluters, she said.

And the onus of establishing rules that hold the polluter, not water utilities and their customers, may fall even more on the state under the Trump administration, which recently announced plans to dismantle the EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

The EPA’s Research Triangle Park campus is home to labs that study PFAS contamination, air pollution and industrial emissions.

North Carolina also has a group of academic researchers within the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory’s PFAS Testing Network who specifically perform PFAS-related studies in the state. The General Assembly has appropriated tens of millions of dollars for the Collaboratory.

Dr. Jeffrey Enders, a senior research scholar and research assistant professor with North Carolina State University, shared last Saturday the results of a study he conducted on PFAS in sea foam collected along the state’s southern coastal shorelines.

A majority of the 10 foam samples he studied had been 10,000 – 10 million parts per trillion of total PFAS.

People are advised to avoid contact with sea foam on area beaches.

Next in the series: Polluter asks court to keep records under seal

A federal grant awarded last year to improve drinking water quality in hundreds of rural Brunswick County homes made U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin’s round of funding cuts earlier this month.

But Zeldin’s plan to terminate the nearly $20 million grant awarded in December to The Working Lands Trust Inc. and its community-based nonprofit partner, Democracy Green, has been halted — at least temporarily.

The grant to assist Brunswick County’s unincorporated communities of Supply, Ash and Longwood is mired in an ongoing lawsuit brought by 22 Democratic attorneys general, including North Carolina’s Jeff Jackson, against President Donald Trump’s administration.

The states and the District of Columbia requested a preliminary junction to block the administration from damming the flow of taxpayer dollars to programs previously allocated by Congress.

A federal judge granted the 22 states’ request March 6, two days after the EPA announced Zeldin, assisted by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, canceled 21 grants totaling more than $116 million. The preliminary injunction issued by John J. “Jack” McConnell Jr., chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, applies only to those 22 states.

The administration is seeking an emergency stay pending an appeal to the 1^st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On March 17 the states filed in opposition. At the time this report was published, a hearing date had not been set.

Zeldin casts the grants he terminated as “wasteful federal spending” in a March 4 release announcing the agency’s third round of cuts that “marks more than $287 million taxpayer dollars saved” since he was sworn in Jan. 19.

“At EPA, we are working in partnership with DOGE to fulfill President Trump’s promise to rein in wasteful federal spending,” Zeldin said in the release. “We will not stop until we ensure every taxpayer penny spent is to advance clean air, land, and water and Power our Great American Comeback for all Americans.”

The grant awarded to The Working Lands Trust in mid-December is for the Clean Water is Safe Water Community Initiative in North Carolina and focuses on improving water quality, restoring ecosystems and removing contaminants from local watersheds.

The program entails removing and replacing lead pipes that route drinking water to the taps of some 500 homes in rural areas of the county and restoring wetlands in the Lockwood Folly River watershed.

The Working Lands Trust did not respond to requests for comment.

Democracy Green cofounder La’Meshia Whittington, speaking on behalf of her organization, told Coastal Review in a recent telephone interview that the grant is not tied to clean energy or diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs Trump has targeted.

“Our grant is so much about community,” she said. “It is so explicitly about spending and renovating and remediating and restoring actual community that you can’t make this a political issue and you can’t make it a government ‘oh, this is just wasteful spending.’ It quite actually is water contamination and replacing lead pipes, lead drinking water pies and cleanup of a wetland.”

A little more than 100 organizations received funding through the Community Change Grant Award funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.

The program tapped for Brunswick County was one of three the EPA singled out as exemplifying bringing change to a community, thrusting the project and its funding recipients into the public spotlight.

At the time of the award announcement, elected officials including Republican Frank Iler, who represents District 17 – Brunswick County, lauded the program.

“These areas of Brunswick County that are unincorporated in the Gullah-Geechee corridor of the county can benefit greatly from EPA grants such as this,” Iler said in a Dec. 12 release. “This assistance with infrastructure and water systems will be well utilized in these parts of our county.”

Iler’s office did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

“We had actually planned on not announcing our award to the press,” Whittington said. “We wanted to get the work done and we wanted to prove we could do the work because we knew there would be naysayers.”

Democracy Green has been the focus of two stories in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative-leaning publication, “Dedicated to uncovering the stories that the powers that be hope will never see the light of day … Whether it’s exposing cronyism, finding out just who is shaping our domestic and foreign policy and why, or highlighting the threats to American security and peace in a dangerous world, the Free Beacon is committed to serving the public interest by reporting news and information that is not being fully covered by other news organizations.”

The stories put the nonprofit on the defensive with it offering on its website a point-by-point counter to claims ranging from the estimated cost of replacing lead pipes in homes to Democracy Green has no experience with water quality-related projects.

Democracy Green is considering a defamation suit against the publication, Whittington said.

In a letter to Zeldin dated March 6 with the subject line, “Setting the Record Straight – False Attacks on Critical Clean Water Efforts,” Democracy Green Executive Director Sanja Whittington further defended the organization against claims made in the story.

“It is especially troubling that these falsehoods target a predominantly red district – one that turned out in great numbers to vote for President Donald J. Trump – where residents are simply seeking access to safe, lead-free drinking water. This is not a partisan issue. It is a public health necessity, and efforts to undermine it with misinformation do a grave disservice to the people who stand to benefit most.”

These are communities La’Meisha Whittington, Sanja’s daughter, describes as “deeply a melting pot” of the older homeowning class living on land passed from generation to generation. Drinking water in those areas is provided through a mix of private water wells and public utilities.

“Their water has been extremely impacted from legacy contamination. They’ve had years of lead contamination, decades, generations,” Whittington said.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have leached from landfills in these areas and into the environment, including drinking water sources, in these areas, she said.

The wetlands area, which has been under the ownership of Democracy Green, is near the communities where lead pipes will be replaced.

“Us being unable to clean it up the way it needs to be, it will continue to push pollutants into the actual groundwater of these homes and their backyards and community centers and churches that are in these unincorporated areas adjacent to the wetlands,” Whittington said.

Under its agreement with the EPA, the organizations are set to receiving grant funding April 1.

“Once April 1 hits, if our funding isn’t made available and our portal is still suspended, if it’s still that way then we will have to go the legal route to challenge,” Whittington said.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said last week that he plans to make good on a commitment to revise the “waters of the United States” definition, leading conservation groups to worry what will happen to federally protected waters and wetlands.

One advocate says the new administration’s approach turns a blind eye to science showing how all wetlands — most especially those to be erased from federal jurisdiction – serve vital protective functions.

Sworn in Jan. 29 to lead the federal agency with the mission to protect the nation’s human health and environment, Zeldin explained during a press briefing March 12 that while going through the confirmation process, he had spoken with senators who “were passionately advocating on behalf of their farmers, their ranchers and other land owners” about issues concerning waters of the U.S., often called by the acronym WOTUS.

He vowed that as soon as he got into office, he would do everything in his power to fix “WOTUS once and for all” and the agency is “pursuing a definition that is simple, that is durable and it will withstand the test of time,” Zeldin said.

The federal definition has been the focus of a fair number of lawsuits, since it was first approved as part of the Clean Water Act, which is administered by the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers. Enacted in 1972, the act prohibits discharging pollutants without a permit from a point source into “navigable waters,” defined in the statute as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.”

The EPA calls “waters of the United States” a threshold term that “establishes the geographic scope of federal jurisdiction” under the Clean Water Act. The term “waters of the United States” is not defined within the Clean Water Act. Agencies were given the authority at the time to determine what qualifies, and the definition has undergone a few modifications since then.

The most recent change is the result of a May 2023 Supreme Court decision known by the plaintiffs’ surname, Sackett v. EPA. Judges ruled in favor of the Idaho landowners, who argued that the section of their property they were fined for backfilling was not considered “waters of the United States” because the wetlands were not adjacent to navigable waters. The case led to the federal definition of WOTUS being amended to exclude noncontiguous wetlands.

The EPA stated March 12 in a press release that the Sackett case, “which stated that the Clean Water Act’s use of ‘waters’ encompasses only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water forming streams, oceans, rivers and lakes,” will guide the review.

As part of the process, the agencies said in the announcement that there were plans to hold at least six listening sessions over the next few months both virtually and in person. Registration and dates are to be posted on the EPA website.

Zeldin said during the press conference that, “what we’re looking for is to simply follow the guidance from Sackett. It gave us a clear path in determining what waters are waters of the United States. It found that only those wetlands with a quote, ‘continuous surface connection,’ to a relatively permanent water are waters of the United States,” Zeldin said, adding that the court also struck down the long-used “significant nexus test, leaving only those wetlands that abut or are adjacent to waters of the United States as jurisdictional.”

Republican senators and representatives offered their support during the briefing as well as Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall.

“WOTUS has been a pain in the side for our farmers and ranchers. Our farmers and ranchers want to do what’s right; they just want to know what right is,” Duvall said, adding that the last administration had “vague wording like ‘relatively permanent.’ Can anybody define that,” Duvall asked. “We look forward to that clarity.”

In a statement last week, National Association of Home Builders Chairman Buddy Hughes, a home builder and developer from Lexington, said the organization “commends the EPA for moving to make changes to the WOTUS rule that will protect our nation’s waterways and provide builders and developers the clarity and certainty they need in the federal wetlands permitting process to help house America’s citizens.”

Opposition in the week since the announcement has been at least as equally vocal and perhaps more strongly worded.

The Environmental Protection Network, an organization of more than 650 former EPA career staff and political appointees, said in a release that it “strongly condemns” the EPA’s “rollback of federally protected waters and wetlands, coupled with the release of a new guidance that significantly narrows the scope of the Clean Water Act.”

A former EPA office director Betsy Southerland warned in a statement from the network that “The ‘Sackett’ decision excluded about 60% of wetlands and all ephemeral streams from federal protection. With this guidance, Administrator Zeldin is now codifying an even narrower interpretation of ‘relatively permanent waters,’ which could strip protections from countless seasonal and intermittent streams. Scientific evidence is unequivocal: These waters are vital to maintaining the health of major rivers and lakes. Without them, drinking water quality will decline, and the nation’s waters will be further imperiled.”

Adam Gold, Coasts and Watersheds Science manager for the Environmental Defense Fund, told Coastal Review that with the Trump administration’s intention to narrowly implement the 2023 Supreme Court Sackett v. EPA decision was, “to collect public comment on ambiguous terms from the Sackett decision, like a ‘continuous surface connection.’ This process will likely further limit protections for North Carolina’s wetlands.”

Gold said that while it remains to be seen if there will be a new WOTUS rule from this process, the new EPA announcement seems to point toward “a potential wetness test or surface water requirement where wetlands may be excluded from Clean Water Act protections if they dry out, even for part of the year, and therefore do not have a ‘continuous surface connection’ to water bodies.

“This approach ignores the science that clearly shows how all wetlands, especially those that would be most likely to lose protections, provide essential flood reduction, water quality and ecologic benefits.”

On the state level

Around the same time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sacketts, the North Carolina General Assembly directed the state Environmental Management Commission in the 2023 Farm Act to align the state definition of wetlands with the federal definition. This removed any state wetlands protections beyond those meeting the federal definition.

The law required that the commission insert the sentence, “Wetlands classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by” the federal code as it was written into the state’s wetlands definition, and the wording may not be contested by the Rules Review Commission.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality began implementing the definition when the act was passed in June 2023 and the Environmental Management Commission has been going through the steps to codify the rule.

“The EPA guidance confirms that federal protection for wetlands will be limited and millions of wetlands, including coastal wetlands, will be at risk,” Grady O’Brien, water policy manager for the North Carolina Conservation Network, told Coastal Review.

“However, federal jurisdiction has no relationship to North Carolina’s interest in protecting wetlands for flood storage,” he continued. “In fact, the Sackett decision stated that the Supreme Court expected states to protect wetlands independent of federal jurisdiction. Now would be a good time for the North Carolina General Assembly to revisit state wetlands protections to prevent additional flooding.”

Gold, with the Environmental Defense Fund, said that if wetlands must have surface water connections nearly year-round to have Clean Water Act protections, the organization’s research published last year in Science estimates that this could leave up to 3.2 million acres of nontidal wetlands in the state without that layer of federal protection.

“The lack of state-level wetlands protections in North Carolina means that the only layers of protection left could be local protections or ‘protected’ public lands. With forthcoming changes to the WOTUS definition, we can expect increasing wetlands loss and increasing risks to people and homes due to more dangerous flooding, declining water quality and the loss of vital habitat,” Gold said.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Julie Youngman told Coastal Review that Trump’s EPA announced that it intended to roll back federal wetland protections even further, “endangering North Carolinians because the General Assembly has tied us directly to whatever the federal government does, no matter how harmful to North Carolinians. In light of EPA’s malicious actions, the General Assembly must protect North Carolina’s wetlands at the state level, to protect communities from flooding, hurricanes, and harm to our water supplies and seafood industry.”

Related: Commission OKs proposed wetlands rule for public comment

Jessie Ritter, associate vice president of water and coasts with the National Wildlife Federation, told Coastal Review that North Carolina’s wetlands and waterways are essential to the health of our coasts because they buoy our fisheries, support the economy and buffer communities from extreme weather.

“A Supreme Court decision in 2023 left many North Carolina wetlands and streams without federal protection and a state law passed later that year also eliminated state protections for these waters,” Ritter said. “The recent announcement from the EPA suggests the agency plans to remove federal safeguards for even more water bodies. If this happens, coastal communities will see increased development immediately upstream, leading to more flood-prone rivers that carry dirtier water to our bays.”

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider told Coastal Review that as a lifelong coastal North Carolinian, she knows firsthand that wetlands are more than just a word being debated over definitions.

“Wetlands are our first line of defense against flooding, acting like natural sponges that absorb stormwater before it can rush into our communities “One acre of wetland can hold up to 1.5 million gallons of water, reducing flood risks and protecting our homes and businesses. They also filter out pollution and prevent runoff from overwhelming our coastal waters,” Rider said.

The Environmental Management Commission voted to send to public notice and hearing a proposed amendment to “clarify the definition of wetlands” Thursday during its meeting in Raleigh.

Commissioners Yvonne Bailey, Marion Deerhake, Dr. Jackie MacDonald Gibson and Robin Smith all voted against the motion to advance new language that codifies reduced state protections.

The commission, which directs and creates rules for several divisions under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, was ordered close to two years ago in a law called the 2023 Farm Act to insert into the definition of wetlands one sentence that aligns the state’s definition of wetlands to the federal definition, which narrowed Clean Water Act jurisdiction.

The commission’s vote took place the day after Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced plans to revise the definition of “Waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, the acronym given to federally regulation waters.

Sue Homewood, senior branch coordinator with the Division of Water Resources, told the commission Thursday that the law required changing the definition in the state administrative code, “and it specified exactly the language to be changed, that ‘wetlands classified as Waters of the State are restricted to Waters of the United States as defined by’ federal regulations.”

NCDEQ has been implementing the definition since it was approved in June 2023, as directed by the North Carolina General Assembly, while the commission goes through the rulemaking process to add that sentence to the existing definition of “wetlands” in the general statute.

The order contains explicit directions that the amendment had to be included as written and couldn’t be challenged by the Rules Review Commission.

Smith said she was voting in protest against the motion because it was “extremely bad environmental policy to outsource decisions about protection of state waters to the decision of a federal agency about what federal jurisdiction is. So that’s just fundamentally not a good direction.”

Smith said that a process question also comes up, “that the General Assembly unfortunately has gotten into what I think is the very bad habit of doing what they did with this session law, which is to attempt to dictate the wording of an administrative rule and then cause the session law to expire when the rule is adopted, and without ever changing fundamental general statutes that actually do define what state waters are.”

The state already operates under an existing definition of waters in the statute, she said.

Smith said the existing state waters definition includes “any stream, river, brook, swamp, lake, sound, tidal estuary, bay, creek, reservoir, waterway, or other body or accumulation of water, whether surface or underground, public or private, or natural or artificial, that is contained in, flows through, or borders upon any portion of this State, including any portion of the Atlantic Ocean over which the State has jurisdiction.”

This definition in the statute has not been amended by the General Assembly, Smith said, adding that the law expires when the rule is adopted.

“I think it raises questions of whether, looking toward the future, whether the rule will be considered consistent with state law, given the failure of the General Assembly to actually amend the definition of waters in the general statute, and that’s just a bad practice,” Smith said.

She added that she thinks this rule amendment “creates a really unfortunate situation in terms of potential conflict” between Environmental Management Commission rules and the statutes under which the commission operates its water permitting programs. “For that reason, I’m going to vote against. It’s a protest vote. I think it’s just a terrible process legally and administratively.”

Commissioner Steve Keen asked Smith whether she planned “to vote to violate the statute” because the statute directs the rule change.

Smith said she was voting against adoption of the rule, “because I believe the rule will turn out to be inconsistent with a general statute that has not been amended, and the session law that directed the change in the rule will expire as soon as the rule is adopted. That’s in the session law itself.”

Commissioner Kevin Tweedy “completely” agreed with Smith, calling the logic behind the amendment poor in two respects: lost wetlands protections and diminished flood resiliency.

“We’re putting millions and millions of dollars into that,” Tweedy said. “It’s like one thing is fighting the other, and I just don’t think it’s good policy.”

Homewood, with the Division of Water Resources, said that the public comment period for the wetlands definition amendment will likely take place in April, and the public hearing would be between June 2 and June 16, when the comment period is expected to end. After that, a hearing officer’s report will be brought back to the commission in September and if approved, would go to the Office of Administrative Hearings, or OAH.

Related: Commission set to further curb state wetlands protections

Because the law exempts the rule change from Rules Review Commission review, its effective date would be pending a legislative review, she said, and that timing would be with the 2026 session.

“Because these rules are part of the water quality standards and the triennial review, the rule amendment post-legislative approval, would have to go to EPA for final approval,” she said, “so we cannot predict an implementation date. But as I said, we are implementing these right now.”

When the Environmental Management Commission was discussing the motion to amend the definition of wetlands on the state level, there was no mention of the EPA’s intention to overhaul the WOTUS definition.

The EPA and Department of the Army, which oversees the Corps of Engineers, announced Wednesday a joint memorandum issuing guidance to field staff on the implementation of “continuous surface connection” consistent with the Supreme Court’s May 25, 2023, decision in the case of Sackett v. EPA.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sacketts of Idaho who argued that the wetlands they were backfilling on their property did not qualify as jurisdictional wetlands under the federal definition. The EPA adjusted later in 2023 its definition to conform to the Supreme Court decision.

The definition states that wetlands must have a “continuous surface connection” to federally protected waters to qualify as waters of the United States and be protected under the Clean Water Act.

The Clean Water Act was put in place in 1972 and prohibits discharging pollutants from a point source into “navigable waters” unless otherwise authorized. Navigable waters are defined in the Clean Water Act as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.” WOTUS is not defined in the act itself but is in the code of federal regulations.

“We want clean water for all Americans supported by clear and consistent rules for all states, farmers, and small businesses,” Zeldin said in a statement. “The previous Administration’s definition of ‘waters of the United States’ placed unfair burdens on the American people and drove up the cost of doing business. Our goal is to protect America’s water resources consistent with the law of the land while empowering American farmers, landowners, entrepreneurs, and families to help Power the Great American Comeback.”

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is accepting proposals for projects aimed at reducing nonpoint source pollution in impaired waterways.

Eligible impaired waterways are listed as either Category 4 or 5 in the DWR Modeling and Assessment Branch’s latest draft Integrated Reports as well as the 2020 and 2022 Integrated Reports.

Applicants eligible for watershed restoration projects funding include state and local governments, including councils of government, interstate and intrastate agencies, public and private nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and tribal groups with an up-to-date U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved Tribal nonpoint source management program plan.

DEQ expects to be able to award $1.5 million from the EPA in fiscal 2025 for watershed restoration projects through the Clean Water Act-Section 319 (h) Nonpoint Source Grant funding program.

Draft applications may be submitted no later than April 4 for preliminary review and comments from Division of Water Resources staff. Final applications will be accepted until midnight May 30.

Visit DEQ’s 319 grant program website for additional information, including requirements, eligibility, forms and scoring criteria.

For questions, contact Rishi Bastakoti at rishi.bastakoti@deq.nc.gov.

Representatives overseeing the ongoing clean up and remediation of the former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp site in Navassa will be providing an update about the project next week.

Discussions during the meeting set for March 4 will include new work within a portion of the site referred to as operable unit 2, where roughly 1.5 acres of contaminated surface soil is being excavated and removed.

The meeting, which will also be live streamed, is scheduled for 6-7 p.m. in the Navassa Community Center, 338 Main St. To join the meeting by Zoom use the link or enter tinyurl.com/NavassaMeetings in a browser. To join by phone call 301-715-8592. Use meeting ID 946 584 8922 and passcode 66456.

An in-person only drop-in session will follow from 7-8 p.m.

Operable unit 2, or OU2, spans about 16 acres and is an area where treated and untreated wood were stored during operations at the former wood treatment plant site.

The plant was closed in the 1970s, but during the decades in which it operated creosote leached into the ground and marsh in different areas within the 250-acre site.

Officials next week will also preview the proposed plan remediating part of OU4, where at least some of the excavated soil from OU2 is being stockpiled for a period of time.

Natural Resource Trustees will provide an update on restorations projects on the property, redevelopment plans and the future Moze Heritage Center.

For help joining the meeting online or by phone, contact the Multistate Trust at 267-799-3842.

Time is ticking on North Carolina’s environmental agency to reissue a permit that will limit discharges of a likely human carcinogen into the drinking water sources for about 1 million state residents.

The state Department of Environmental Quality was recently notified it has until mid-April to submit to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a proposed revised permit that restricts how much 1,4-dixoane a municipal wastewater treatment plant may discharge into surface waters upstream of the Cape Fear region.

The department is in the midst of an ongoing legal challenge to reinstate the cap it had placed on the amount of the chemical solvent being discharged by the city of Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant.

In a letter to DEQ Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers, the EPA acknowledged the department’s challenge to a Sept. 12, 2024, ruling that revoked permit limits of 1,4-dioxane. The chemical compound is used primarily as a solvent in chemical manufacturing.

DEQ appealed Chief Administrative Law Judge and Direct of the Office of Administrative Hearings Dr. Donald van der Vaart’s decision in Wake County Superior Court.

The court has not yet ruled on the appeal, which “may affect and complicate NC DEQ’s ability to submit a revised permit addressing this objection,” EPA’s letter states.

“However, the time frames applicable to the objection process are mandatory and no extension can be granted for NC DEQ to wait for outcome of an appeal or to otherwise seek relief from the OAH decision,” the letter continues.

DEQ or “any interested person” may request a public hearing on the EPA’s objection to the permit.

A public hearing must be requested within 90 days from when DEQ received the letter.

“If a public hearing is not requested and NC DEQ does not submit a proposed permit that has been revised to meet our specific objection within 90-days of receipt of this letter, exclusive authority to issue the permit passes to the EPA” in accordance with the code of federal regulations, the letter states.

Division of Water Resources Public Information Officer Laura Oleniacz confirmed in an email that the division had received the letter “and it is under review.”

The state Department of Justice does not comment on pending litigation.

In August 2023, DEQ’s Division of Water Resources issued Asheboro a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit limiting the city water treatment plant’s release of 1,4-dioxane.

The city sued, challenging the state’s power to include the 1,4-dioxane water quality standard in the permit and argued the new limits created an excessive financial burden.

The cities of Greensboro and Reidsville joined the lawsuit after both were issued notices of violation for 1,4-dioxane discharges in November 2019 and required to include discharge limits in their draft NPDES permits.

Brunswick County, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority and Fayetteville Public Works Commission intervened in the case, asserting that upstream 1,4-dioxane dischargers placed an undue financial burden on them to sample drinking water sources for the chemical and try and reduce the level of consumption of it to their customers.

In his ruling, van der Vaart said DEQ officials did not follow the letter of the law written in state statutes when they calculated discharge limits and established an enforceable water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane and noted anticipated high costs associated with monitoring and treatment of 1,4-dioxane.

He also wrote that the EPA has not characterized 1,4-dioxane as carcinogenic to humans, but that the agency identifies it as “likely” carcinogenic to people.

In its 2023 draft revised risk determination for 1,4-dioxane as a chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the EPA “proposes that exposure to drinking water sources from surface water that is contaminated by 1,4-dioxane released from industrial facilities contributes to the unreasonable risk” to human health.

Since van der Vaart’s ruling, Asheboro has released “extremely high levels” of the chemical upstream of the drinking water supply for nearly half a dozen cities, including Wilmington, and Brunswick and Pender counties, according to information made available by the Southern Environmental Law Center.

An analysis of Asheboro’s wastewater treatment plant showed 1,4-dioxane discharges exceeded 800 parts per billion, “2,322 times the cancer risk level for the chemical,” the center said in a release.

“DEQ tried to do the right thing and protect North Carolinians from toxic 1,4-dioxane coming from the city of Asheboro, but three cities tried to overturn our water protection laws in an effort to shield their industrial customers rather than people downstream,” SELC Senior Attorney Jean Zhuang state in the release. “EPA’s letter sets the record straight that existing law protects people against pollution, making clear that the North Carolina Administrative Law Judge was wrong in siding with polluters and that DEQ must control toxic 1,4-dioxane pollution. Controlling toxic chemicals at the source is the only way to ensure polluters bear the burden of their pollution, not families and communities downstream. We hope that EPA will stand strong to protect people against toxic water pollution and make sure that the city’s 1,4-dioxane releases are controlled in the future.”

A federal report that tracks industrial releases of chemicals into the environment will include additional PFAS, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday.

Nine per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances have been added to the Toxics Release Inventory, or TRI, a running list of chemicals manufactured and used by certain facilities. 

Industries and federal facilities that manufacture, process or otherwise use TRI-listed chemicals above set quantities are required to report those chemicals to the EPA each year under the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act.

Businesses and facilities must report the quantities of chemicals being released into the environment or managed as waste.

“EPA continues to make strides in getting information on PFAS into the Toxics Release Inventory so the public can see if these chemicals are being released into their communities,” EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Freedhoff said in a release. “People have a right to know when facilities in their backyards are releasing toxic chemicals into the environment and with today’s action, we are providing important information about nine more.”

The nine PFAS were added to the TRI in accordance with the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which provide the guidance for the yearly addition of PFAS to the list. The newly added PFAS are subject to the EPA’s classification that all PFAS reported to the TRI as chemicals of special concern.

The TRI was established to help companies, government agencies, non-governmental organizations and the public make informed decisions.

Reporting is now required for a total of 205 PFAS.

Facilities required to report the chemicals must begin tracking their activities involving these PFAS immediately, according to the release. Reporting forms are due July 1, 2026.

The nine chemical compounds include:

• Ammonium perfluorodecanoate (PFDA NH4) 
• Sodium perfluorodecanoate (PFDA-Na)
• Perfluoro-3-methoxypropanoic acid 
• 6:2 Fluorotelomer sulfonate acid 
• 6:2 Fluorotelomer sulfonate anion
• 6:2 Fluorotelomer sulfonate potassium salt 
• 6:2 Fluorotelomer sulfonate ammonium salt 
• 6:2 Fluorotelomer sulfonate sodium salt 
• Acetic acid, [(γ-ω-perfluoro-C8-10-alkyl)thio] derivs., Bu esters

The TRI reporting data is available online. Information about the addition of these PFAS may be found online.

Progress on the cleanup of an area within the former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp Superfund Site in Navassa will be discussed Tuesday during a community meeting.

Cleanup of contaminated surface soil in the operable unit 2, or OU2, area of the site and the proposed plan for cleaning up parts of operable unit 4 will be shared with attendees of the meeting hosted by the Multistate Environmental Response Trust, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

The in-person and virtual meeting is scheduled for 6-7 p.m. Tuesday in Navassa Community Center, 338 Main St. Join the virtual meeting through Zoom or type into a browser tinyurl.com/NavassaMeetings. To listen by phone call 301-715-8592 and use meeting ID 946 584 8922 and passcode 664564.

A drop-in information session being offered in-person only will follow from 7-8 p.m. at the community center. Attendees of the drop-in session will have the opportunity to speak one-on-one with project team members, ask questions and share concerns.

OU2 includes 16 acres where treated and untreated wood was stored during the plant’s nearly 40-year operation. Soil within the unit contaminated with higher levels of creosote, a tar-like substance used to treat wood, is being excavated and stored on the adjacent OU4 area. Material that cannot be stored on-site will be recycled or sent to an off-site, government-approved location.

Once OU2 is cleaned, the EPA expects to propose deleting it from the National Priorities List of federal Superfund sites.

Representatives of the Multistate Trust, EPA and DEQ also will discuss during the meeting Tuesday investigations of other areas of the site, the proposed sale of the Multistate Trust-owned 87 acres, and the Moze Center land donation.

The state’s environmental regulatory agency has established temporary caps on the amounts of several PFAS that industries will be allowed to release into groundwater.

Until permanent limits are set, interim maximum allowable concentrations introduced by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources allows officials to set cleanup targets for groundwater contaminated with high levels of the chemical compounds.

The division’s announcement last week came on the heels of a study that found per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including some of those for which the state has set interim allowable limits, have remained in groundwater offsite of Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant for up to more than 40 years.

Water resources division Director Richard Rogers will, within a year, recommend to the state Environmental Management Commission, or EMC, whether any of the interim maximum allowable concentrations, or IMACs, should be replaced or terminated.

That 15-member commission, whose role is to adopt rules that protect, preserve and enhance the state’s water and air resources, voted earlier this fall to move forward with a proposed draft rule outlining health standards for three PFAS in groundwater.

The proposed rule includes PFOA and PFOS, which are classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as likely carcinogens, and GenX, a compound specific to Chemours’ plant on the banks of the Cape Fear River.

The Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, announced Monday that public comments on the proposed draft rule will be accepted from Nov. 1 – Dec. 31 by email to GWTriRevComments@deq.nc.gov or by mail to Bridget Shelton, NC DEQ Division of Water Resources, Planning Section 1611 Mail Service Center Raleigh, N.C. 27699-1611. The EMC and DEQ will also host three public hearings on the proposed draft rule beginning next month.

The commission is expected to vote on the draft rule next year. If approved, the rule is anticipated to be effective by mid-2025.

The commission omitted five other compounds state environmental quality officials sought to include in proposed groundwater limits.

Those five – PFBS, PFNA, PFHxS, PFBA and PFHxA – were specifically listed along with PFOA, PFOS and GenX in a July request by an Alamance County couple asking Rogers to establish interim maximum allowable concentrations in groundwater for all eight compounds.

Related: Public may comment on requested interim PFAS limits

State groundwater rules grant any person the right to request the water resources director establish an IMAC for a substance for which a groundwater standard has not been set.

Graham residents Jonathan and Stephanie Gordon wrote that at least a half-dozen drinking water wells in their community tested for “extremely high levels of PFAS.”

“Issuing an IMAC will only be one step towards the relief we need, but it will at least give us greater clarity about the risk we face and the eventual obligations for unknown responsible parties to address the contamination they have visited upon us,” they wrote.

The EMC’s decision to move forward with only three of the eight PFAS recommended by DEQ was met with swift backlash from residents and environmental groups fighting for protections from PFAS for both groundwater and surface water.

Groundwater supports about 50% of drinking water in North Carolina.

Environmental justice organization Democracy Green has launched the campaign “Ban the Eight,” which includes an open petition urging the EMC to include all eight compounds in the draft proposed rule.

“We want all eight because if you’re going to do it for one you do it for all because that reaches more of the 100 counties of North Carolina that are dealing with PFAS, whether it’s from military bases, whether it’s from airports, both small and large, the Haw River all the way down to the Cape Fear,” said Democracy Green cofounder, La’Meshia Whittington. “They’re piecemealing it. People in North Carolina can’t afford that. This is a big deal for DEQ to set this precedence to say we’re going to use the EPA’s fullest authority because EMC keeps dragging their feet.”

The EMC is scheduled to meet Nov. 13-14 in Raleigh. An agenda for that meeting has not been published.

PFAS have been observed in more than 7,000 private drinking water wells within about a 13-mile radius of the Chemours plant, according to DEQ.

The chemistry company and other industries are responsible for emitting PFAS into the environment in the Cape Fear River basin, the largest in the state and one with surface water resources that are the drinking source for about 1.5 million people.

The long, slow purge

A recently published study headed by researchers at N.C. State University found it may take decades before PFAS flushes from groundwater around the Chemours plant and into the Cape Fear River.

Dr. David Genereux, a professor with the university’s Department of Marine, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, and coauthor of the study said PFAS emitted into the environment up to more than 40 years ago were found in groundwater within a test site immediately surrounding Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility in Bladen County.

Researchers collected samples beneath streams, which is where groundwater directly flows into surface waters.

Genereux said that a great deal of work is being done by researchers documenting the current state of PFAS by measuring it in groundwater and defining what’s there now.

“What’s different in this new paper is that we’re looking ahead to the future and not just the way things are right now,” he said. “We’re specifically looking ahead to estimate how long that PFAS would be in groundwater up near Fayetteville Works and how long it would take for that PFAS to flush out of the ground and into streams by the natural flow of the groundwater because that really is its ultimate fate.”

Instead of degrading in the ground, PFAS flows toward streams. Once the compounds make into the streams, they then flow into the Cape Fear River.

Genereux said researchers estimate it will take until about at least 2060 “possibly much longer” for PFAS currently in the ground to flush into tributaries of the Cape Fear. If compounds diffuse into clays, “that would really slow it down,” he said.

“That means that PFAS could continue to affect the river water users downstream for some decades to come,” he said.

PFAS targeted in the study are those released during the so-called high emission years from roughly the 1980s to 2019, the year Chemours, DEQ and Cape Fear River Watch entered into a Consent Order that requires the plant reduce its PFAS emissions into the air, ground and river.

The company has, through various emission controls, reduced the amount of PFAS it releases into the environment in recent years, but not at net-zero, Genereux said.

That means PFAS released into the air and hitting the ground continues to feed into the groundwater.

“There’s no time horizon for when that will flush because that source is still ongoing,” Genereux said.

If PFAS diffuse into and then back out of clays, that can significantly slow the flushing process of a compound through a groundwater system. It’s a phenomenon studied for chemicals in other places, but not the private land and agriculture fields around the Fayetteville Works plant.

Researchers have large proposal pending to try and additional funding to study clay diffusion in that area and other aspects of PFAS, including health outcomes of private well water users exposed to decades of contamination.

They’re also working on a study focusing on a small number of drinking water wells to try and estimate how long PFAS might remain persistent in wells.

“The conclusions we reached in the paper about the groundwater system broadly, as a whole, are not necessarily directly applicable to each individual drinking water well,” Genereux said. “Some drinking water wells might clear up faster than the groundwater systems as a whole, especially shallower wells. But, overall, it could be a problem at individual wells for decades.”

North Carolina’s chief administrative law judge and former head of the state’s environmental regulatory agency has eliminated a state cap on the amount of a chemical solvent some municipal wastewater treatment plants discharge.

Chief Administrative Law Judge and Director of the Office of Administrative Hearings Dr. Donald van der Vaart revoked permit limits of 1,4-dioxane for wastewater treatment plants that discharge the chemical substance, one the federal Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a likely human carcinogen, into the drinking water sources of tens of thousands of people.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officials did not follow the letter of the law written in state statutes when they calculated discharge limits and established an enforceable water quality standard for 1,4-dioxane, van der Vaart ruled. In his Sept. 12 decision, van der Vaart also said DEQ erred by considering the chemical substance a carcinogen.

“The [Environmental Protection Agency] has characterized 1,4-dioxane as ‘likely to be carcinogenic to humans,’” he wrote. “The EPA has not characterized 1,4-dioxane as ‘carcinogenic to humans.’”

DEQ has 30 days to appeal van der Vaart’s decision.

A North Carolina Department of Justice spokesperson said by email Monday state attorneys are reviewing the decision with DEQ.

In its 2023 draft revised risk determination for 1,4-dioxane as a chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the EPA “proposes that exposure to drinking water sources from surface water that is contaminated by 1,4-dioxane released from industrial facilities contributes to the unreasonable risk” to human health.

The compound is used primarily as a solvent in chemical manufacturing.

Wastewater treatments plants operated by the cities of Greensboro, Asheboro and Reidsville receive 1,4-dioxane emitted from textile, chemical and plastics manufacturers. Those wastewater treatment facilities then discharge the chemical into surface waters that flow downstream to the Cape Fear region, an area plagued with drinking water contamination from industrial releases of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

PFAS are widely used, human-made chemicals that can be found in a host of consumer products, including stain-resistant carpets, fast food packaging, and water-resistant apparel. Studies of possible human health effects of PFAS, including those found in the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for tens of thousands of North Carolinians, have found that the chemical substances can cause damage to the liver and immune system, low birth weight, and increase risk of some cancers.

In August 2023, DEQ’s Division of Water Resources issued Asheboro a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit limiting the city wastewater treatment plant’s release of 1,4-dioxane.

The city sued, challenging the state’s power to include the 1,4-dioxane water quality standard in the permit and arguing it faced excessive financial burden because of the new limits.

The cities of Greensboro and Reidsville joined in the lawsuit after both were issued notices of violation for 1,4-dioxane discharges in November 2019 and required to consent by special order to include discharge limits in their draft NPDES permits.

Brunswick County, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority and Fayetteville Public Works Commission intervened in the case, asserting that upstream 1,4-dioxane dischargers placed an undue financial burden on them to sample drinking water sources for the chemical and try and reduce the level of consumption of it to their customers.

In his ruling, van der Vaart noted that a regulatory impact analysis, which assesses possible financial impacts of proposed rules, states that costs associated with controlling discharges of 1,4-dioxane “… are anticipated to be prohibitively expensive for local governments and the citizens served by public utilities,” but acknowledges “ongoing costs benefits associated with the monitoring and treatment of 1,4-dioxane are likely to be considerable.”

Van der Vaart was appointed DEQ secretary in 2015 by then-Gov. Pat McCrory. In 2017, under the leadership of then-Secretary Michael Regan, van der Vaart was placed on administrative leave. Van der Vaart later resigned from DEQ.

Following growing public outcry in recent years, both the EPA, now headed by Regan, and DEQ have begun to address the releases of some of these compounds – there are more than 10,000 – into drinking water sources.

Earlier this year, EPA announced final maximum contaminant levels limiting a half-dozen PFAS in drinking water.

DEQ’s proposed draft rule outlining health standards for PFOA, PFOS and GenX in groundwater is heading for public comment after a unanimous vote of the state’s Environmental Management Commission.

Groundwater supports about half of drinking water supplies in North Carolina.

The commission decided to omit five PFAS initially included in the proposed draft rule.

The board is still hashing out DEQ’s proposal to establish surface water rules for all eight PFAS. Earlier this month, the commission’s water quality committee instructed DEQ to develop a draft rule and regulatory impact analysis that would establish monitoring requirements for every industrial and NPDES permit and require every industrial and significant industrial user to include PFAS source-reduction plans in their municipal pretreatment plans.

The Republican-majority commission has come under fire for what some state officials and environmental groups are calling stall tactics.

In a meeting earlier this month, some commissioners continued to refute those claims, saying that they were committed to addressing 1,4-dioxane discharges into drinking water sources in the state.

Commission members briefly discussed a petition to the EPA asking the agency to strip North Carolina’s authority to administer the NPDES permit program. North Carolina is one of 47 states authorized by the EPA to implement the permit program.

Cape Fear River Watch, Environmental Justice Community Action Network, Haw River Assembly, and MountainTrue filed the petition Aug. 28, arguing that the North Carolina General Assembly had blocked DEQ from “effectively implementing” its NPDES permit program and protecting North Carolinians from water pollution.

The General Assembly has amended laws that dictate who appoints members of the Environmental Management Commission and Rules Review Commission, “such that these commissions have been effectively captured by a supermajority in the legislature that is hostile to environmentally protective regulation,” according to the petition.

Legislators have also enacted laws that give the Office of Administrative Hearings “final decision-making authority over NPDES permits, thereby stripping DEQ and the EMC of the roles assigned them,” the petition states.

The EPA “generally works” with a state and petitioner to resolve issues raised in a petition, according to the agency’s website.

Kelly Moser, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office, confirmed late last week that the EPA is taking the petition under advisement. The EPA’s Atlanta region press office did not respond to a request for comment.

“We’ve had concerns about the legislature control over the EMC and we’re just seeing that playing out in the latest delays that the EMC has created in North Carolina’s attempts to protect people from harmful industrial chemicals,” she said in a telephone interview. “The people of North Carolina deserve to have access to clean water and the actions by the state legislature, the EMC and now ALJ van der Vaart are standing in the way of North Carolinians having access to clean water. We are confident that EPA will take our petition seriously and that the state will hopefully be forced to come into compliance.”

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

Last week, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a suit brought by Chemours. The chemical company, which manufactures GenX (HFPO-DA), a class of a per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, at its Fayetteville Works facility, challenged the health advisory established by the agency in 2022 for GenX in groundwater.

Chemours claimed the EPA set the advisory level too low — at 10 parts per trillion — and relied on faulty research to establish it. However, the three-judge panel ruled that the advisory was not a federal regulation and, therefore, rejected Chemours’ argument the EPA acted unlawfully when issuing a health advisory about the exposure risks of GenX in drinking water.

“Through the years, our community has learned that when companies like Chemours are not actively hiding the science, they are usually attacking it,” said Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear. “This is a win for public health and every resident harmed by GenX exposures. The courts got it right this time.”

In April 2024, the EPA established maximum contaminant levels for six PFAS in drinking water, out of the thousands of PFAS manufactured in the U.S. 

The court’s ruling means a consent order, established in 2019 between Chemours, Cape Fear River Watch, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, will remain intact — at least for now. Chemours vows to mount more court challenges.  

Under the consent order, Chemours is required to carry out specific tasks, such as drinking water well testing, for people who live near the site, including in New Hanover, Brunswick, Pender and Columbus counties.

That includes extending testing to one-quarter mile beyond the closest well with PFAS levels above 10 parts per trillion and annually retesting any wells sampled. Additionally, Chemours is responsible for providing clean drinking water options, such as whole-house filtration systems, to those with wells contaminated with GenX compounds above 10 ppt.

For area homeowners like Wilmington resident and business owner Steve Schnitzler, whose well’s GenX level exceeded the health advisory standard when it was tested in August 2023, the court’s ruling means Chemours must keep providing safe drinking water to his home.

“I have four reverse osmosis systems in my house right now that Chemours paid for and will maintain for the next 20 years so that we can have clean drinking water,” he said.

‘Forever chemicals’

There are roughly 15,000 unique per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) in the environment, according to experts. Because of their persistence in the environment, PFAS are commonly referred to as “forever chemicals.” They are present in multiple products, including cosmetics and apparel, microwave popcorn wrappers, dental floss, firefighting turnout gear and some firefighting foams.

The chemicals are associated with such adverse health effects as increased cholesterol levels, kidney and testicular cancer, dangerously high blood pressure in pregnant women and decreased vaccine response in children.

The two most extensively produced and studied families of compounds, PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid), have been phased out in the U.S. Still, because they don’t break down quickly, they can keep accumulating in the environment and in the human body. GenX or HFPO-DA (hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid) was created as a replacement for PFOA.

PFAS Glossary

PFOA – Perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as C8, is produced and used as an industrial surfactant, which helps things not to stick to one another in chemical processes. It also is a raw material for other forms of PFAS. PFOA was widely manufactured but has largely been phased out of production. 

PFOS – Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid was a key ingredient in Scotchgard before being banned by the European Union and Canada. Several U.S. states have banned the chemical, derivatives of which were also used in cosmetics. The EPA announced in 2021 that it would regulate the presence of PFOS in drinking water.

GenX – is a derivative salt of hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA) and was manufactured by Chemours. It’s the substance initially found contaminating the Cape Fear River in 2017. GenX has been used widely in food wrappings, paints, cleaning products, nonstick coatings and some firefighting foams.  

A win for now?

Chemours plans to continue to press its case against the EPA’s position on forever chemicals and will next look to present arguments in a Washington, D.C., appeals court, according to Reuters. 

Looming in the background of the legal battle between Chemours and the EPA is the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The court ruled that federal agencies such as the EPA would no longer have the authority to use their expertise to interpret ambiguous laws. Instead, judges will assume responsibility for doing so.

The ruling affects the so-called Chevron Doctrine, which emerged from a 1984 Supreme Court case between Chevron Corp. and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The court ruled to defer to the experts at regulatory agencies when federal regulations were ambiguous, so long as the regulators provided a reasonable interpretation.

Could the Supreme Court’s ruling handicap regulators and tip the scales and favor corporations such as Chemours in future cases?

“The repeal of Chevron deference can cut both ways,” said Tom Fox, senior legislative counsel for the Oakland, California-based Center of Environmental Health. 

“After all, Chevron v. [Natural Resources Defense Counsel] in 1984 was a case brought by NRDC challenging the Reagan administration’s deregulatory actions under the Clean Air Act.” Fox said. “It could be argued that Loper Bright may make it easier to challenge deregulatory actions. It also could be argued that the court’s decision did not affect deference to agency scientific judgments. However, we have seen numerous examples of the Roberts court (and lower court judges) ignoring and/or cherry-picking facts, science and history.”

When asked what environmental groups and their supporters can do to prepare for a possible shifting legal landscape, Fox said to do their homework and stay vigilant.

“I would advise public interest organizations to be strategic in bringing cases in appropriate judicial districts,” he said. “In addition, the Loper Bright decision highlights the importance of science and community involvement in agency rulemakings.”

As a business owner, Schnitzler posed a question for those who place business interests above public health.

“This general ‘business can do no wrong, and we have to keep allowing [corporations] to do horrible things because otherwise we’ll stifle innovation and will stifle growth,’ at what cost?” he asked.

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

SUPPLY – Tens of thousands of acres of wetlands and hundreds of acres of salt marshes will be restored and protected in the state with funding from a multimillion-dollar federal grant recently awarded to a coalition of states, including North Carolina.

The $421 million Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, will also result in the addition of 3,000 acres to North Carolina’s state parks system, reforestation of 55,000 acres, the initiation of an urban tree planting program, and “so much more,” Gov. Roy Cooper said.

Against the backdrop and under the canopy of towering longleaf pines rising from sandy peat soil and wiregrass covering the forest bed of the Green Swamp Preserve in Brunswick County, Cooper, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel, and others on a balmy Tuesday afternoon touted how the funding will be used to reduce carbon emissions, boost the economy, and help communities become more resilient to natural hazards.

Related: EPA awards $421 million to multistate-nonprofit coalition

“You think about what this money will do — fight climate change to protect communities from flooding, put money in the pockets of North Carolina families to boost our tourism industry,” Cooper said. “We know that nature itself can play a significant role in carbon reduction. Renewable energy and the power sector and (electric vehicles) on the road get most of the headlines and attention when we’re talking about carbon reduction and it’s important for us to keep doing those things. But, it’s estimated that this grant will have the equivalent carbon reduction of taking six million gas powered cars off the road.”

The EPA announced last week that the Atlantic Conservation Coalition, which includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and The Nature Conservancy, are to receive the funds that will be used to work in conjunction with nonprofit organizations for conservation and restoration projects.

In all, there are 21 proposed projects that are estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 28 million metric tons by 2050.

“The peatlands here in the Green Swamp Preserve have existed for millennia, remaining natural and undrained the way a peatland is supposed to be,” Regan said. “Peatlands like this cover around one-third of the Earth’s surface and store twice as much carbon as all of the world’s forests. Because these swamps contain vast amounts of carbon, when they’re drained or burned, they release huge quantities of climate pollution and can no longer serve as natural buffers for flooding and wildfires, not only threatening biological diversity and ecological health, but also threatening the health of the surrounding community.”

The Biden administration has made the largest investment ever to tackle climate change, he said, including initiating what he referred to as the most innovative and exciting programs – the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program.

The program aims to help implement community-driven solutions to reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice and help accelerate the country’s transition to clean energy.

North Carolina’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources applied for the grant in April as part of the multi-state coalition, one that is “focused on the protection and restoration of over 200,000 acres of coastal habitat, forest and farmland,” Regan said.

Department of Cultural and Natural Resources Secretary Reid Wilson focused on two major benefits of the grant, the first of which is conserving and restoring degraded streams, forests and wetlands that will pull carbon out of the sky and reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the air.

“And then, second, these preserved and restored natural lands and waterways will make our state more resilient to the increasingly frequent and intense storms and other devastating effects from climate change,” he said. “Our department is really excited about this.”

Regan later said that all four states have signed a memorandum of agreement, well before the deadline set by the EPA.

Congressman Nickels called the grant an “incredible investment.”

“By making these important investments we’re ensuring a sustainable future, not only for our environment, but for our economy as well,” he said. “It’s essential that we maintain this for generations to come.”

This story has been updated.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a $421 million grant for a coalition of North Carolina and three other states working with nonprofit organizations for conservation and restoration projects that reduce carbon emissions and make communities more resilient to natural hazards.

The 21 proposed projects are estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 28 million metric tons by 2050. The grant includes roughly $30 million over five years for the Newport-based North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

North Carolina, via its Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, had applied for the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program funding in April as part of a partnership called the Atlantic Conservation Coalition with South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and The Nature Conservancy.

The coalition plans to use the federal money for conservation and restoration projects for peatland wetlands, coastal habitats, and forests across all four states.

The projects proposed include salt marsh restoration, farmland preservation, conservation of land for outdoor recreation, construction of living shorelines. Cost assistance could be provided to small forest landowners, trees planted in cities and reforestation work.

The coalition has identified nearly 600 tracts as both low-income or disadvantaged communities that could benefit from the funding.

The nearly $30 million grant to the North Carolina Coastal Federation will be used in several key areas with an overall goal of protecting and restoring approximately 595 acres of coastal habitats in North Carolina, the organization said.

“The Federation is honored to be part of this historic award,” said Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis. “This grant will enable us to undertake major projects over the next five years by first identifying the most endangered coastal habitats, and then protecting and restoring at least 600 acres. We will also engage world-class scientists to determine the long-term fate of the carbon stored by these projects, which would otherwise contribute to sea level rise if lost to the atmosphere. By preserving these invaluable habitats, we are also supporting healthy fisheries, improving water quality, and reducing damaging flooding.”

The Coastal Federation said the funding would play a critical role in protecting and restoring coastal habitats that can store vast amounts of carbon. “These vital habitats face threats from persistent erosion, adverse land usage, and increased sea levels. By preserving these vital ecosystems, the initiative ensures that the stored carbon remains sequestered, preventing it from being released into the atmosphere and exacerbating global warming,” the organization said in a statement.

“Coastal habitats are some of the most efficient natural carbon sinks on the planet,” said Davis. “This funding will enable us to protect these critical areas and enhance their ability to sequester carbon, which is an important component in our fight against climate change.”

Jacob Boyd, the Coastal Federation’s salt marsh program director, noted that the collaboration among federal agencies, state governments and nonprofits sets a precedent for climate action.

“This is a model for not only how we can use natural infrastructure to help achieve our climate goals but how we can have a much greater impact through partnerships and collaboration,” said Boyd.

Boyd said the funding includes money for Duke University in both the coalition’s budget and in money marked for the Coastal Federation for assistance with project and research management.

He said a $350,000 contract with a company called Natrx will result in real-time satellite imagery-based analysis for evaluations and selections of project sites and for monitoring.

A $1.5 million contract with the U.S. Geological Survey is for advanced research to closely monitor carbon sequestration and storage results realized by the projects. “Project consultants include specialized experts to help with project development, site selection, management, and other specialized services that are needed to complete project tasks,” Boyd said.

$4.3 billion in grants

The funding is part of more than $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis, reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition, EPA said.

Gov. Roy Cooper released a statement Monday, noting that the grant was one of the largest grants the EPA has awarded and the largest for nature-based climate solutions.

The statement also noted the grant’s fit with the directives in Cooper’s Executive Order 305, which set goals to conserve and restore natural and working lands by 2040, and the North Carolina Natural and Working Lands Action Plan, which the Department of Environmental Quality published in 2020.

“Protecting our natural lands for future generations is not only critical to our fight against climate change but also our state’s economy and tourism industries,” said Cooper. “This major award from the Biden-Harris administration will strengthen our bipartisan partnership to conserve and restore public and private lands across state lines.”

Each of the four states will receive $50 million for “shovel-ready” projects. An additional $200 million will be allocated to The Nature Conservancy for additional high carbon-sequestering forest and wetland restoration projects across the entire coalition region, which will be implemented in collaboration with respective states and local partners. The 21 projects identified by the coalition will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 28 million metric tons of CO2e by 2050. These projects include salt marsh restoration, conserving land for outdoor recreation, building living shorelines, cost-assistance to small forest landowners, urban tree planting, farmland preservation, and reforestation among other activities.

The 25 selected applications will fund projects in 30 states, including one Tribe, that target reducing greenhouse gas pollution from six sectors: transportation, electric power, commercial and residential buildings, industry, agriculture/ natural and working lands, and waste and materials management.

The EPA said it plans to announce up to an additional $300 million in selections under the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program for Tribes, Tribal consortia, and territories later this summer.

EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan was set to announce the awards Monday in Pittsburgh.

“President Biden believes in the power of community-driven solutions to fight climate change, protect public health, and grow our economy. Thanks to his leadership, the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program will deliver unprecedented resources to states, local governments, and Tribes to fund the solutions that work best in their communities,” Regan said in a statement. “Selected recipients have put forward ambitious plans to advance sustainable agriculture, deploy clean industrial technologies, cut emissions and energy costs in homes and commercial buildings, and provide cost- and energy-efficient heating and cooling to communities, creating economic and workforce development opportunities along the way.”

Members of the commission charged with adopting rules to protect the state’s air and water resources voted this week to pursue health-based standards for only three PFAS prevalent in North Carolina drinking water sources.

The Environmental Management Commission’s groundwater and waste management committee Wednesday afternoon declined to recommend to the full commission all eight per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances included in proposed rules set forth by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ.

The commission’s water quality committee also voted Wednesday to defer a motion to send the surface water rule package on all eight PFAS to the commission for action in its full meeting on Thursday.

The decisions of both committees this week further delay the rulemaking process for the chemical compounds, two of which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified as likely carcinogens.

The earliest the full commission could take action on each committees’ recommendations is at its next meeting in September. The commission can either accept the groundwater committee’s recommendation or put a public notice of standards for all eight PFAS.

The committees’ votes this week frustrated proponents, residents, DEQ officials and some commissioners.

But others on the commission continue to defend their decisions, with those on the water quality committee arguing that they need more time to review revisions to a fiscal analysis associated with the proposed surface water standards.

Groundwater and waste management committee Chair Joe Reardon said that the members on Wednesday agreed to recommend groundwater health standards for the three PFAS because two – PFOA and PFOS – have been identified by the federal government as likely carcinogens. The third, GenX, which had been discharged into the Cape Fear River directly from Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility, was included he said, “because obviously the citizens of this state have struggled with (it).”

The committee agreed not to advance PFBS, PFNA, PFHxS, PFBA and PFHxA.

“The science is evolving in this dynamic and I believe the work of this committee was respectful and very pragmatic,” Reardon said.

Groundwater standards would be used to limit permitted releases of PFAS to groundwater, set the health threshold for providing alternative water supplies to residents whose drinking water exceeds contamination limits, and used to establish goals for cleaning contamination in groundwater.

Commissioner Marion Deerhake was one of two water quality committee members who voted Wednesday to recommend the commission take action on the proposed health-based standards for surface water. Fish consumption also is taken into consideration of surface water standards.

She cautioned fellow committee members during their meeting Wednesday against delaying a vote.

Commissioner and Water Allocation Committee Vice-Chair Robin Smith and Thursday during the full commission meeting that she was disappointed in the groundwater committee’s discussion and decision.

“I sat through the entire (groundwater) committee meeting and didn’t hear any substantive flaw identified in the calculation of those standards,” Smith said. “There was no contradiction of the bottom-line conclusion of the regulatory impact analysis. The adoption of all eight standards would impose no new cost on the state, or the citizens of the state, and, to the contrary, would actually reduce regulatory burden. If we can’t adopt standards in that set of circumstances it is hopeless to consider adopting standards in the much more common circumstance we’re going to be looking at in the surface water standards where there are going to be costs.”

DEQ Assistant Secretary Sushma Masemore asked water quality committee members at their meeting Wednesday to consider three points: whether or not the public accepts the science behind the health impacts of the eight compounds; the presence of the eight PFAS in drinking water sources in the state; and how the state wants to protect public health.

“We’re not saying thousands of PFAS out there, but these eight specific chemicals for which multiple federal agencies, credible academia, scientists and experts around the country and the world have put together in their consensus documentations and peer reviewed reports,” Masemore said. “We’ve shown in the many presentations, data, monitoring information, not only from us, but also third party, the permittees, that shows the presence of these PFAS at different levels. And we have articulated here, the best way to acknowledge the cost and the impact to the regulated community, because in the absence of that, the ratepayers, the everyday North Carolinian is going to have to pay for that to clean up that drinking water. They may have to pay for that through their health outcomes over a lifetime.”

The department estimates the tap water of some 3.4 million residents comes from systems that contain at least one compound exceeding new federal contamination limits on several PFAS.

More than 300 municipal and small water systems in North Carolina sampled in 2022 had PFAS detections above newly established federal maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs. Utilities that have drinking water contaminated with PFAS exceeding the MCLs have five years to integrate technology to bring them into compliance.

The costs associated with upgrading systems are by and large getting passed down to customers.

DEQ officials have been discussing proposed health standards with the commission since last November.

In April, the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce asked DEQ to postpone its pursuit of surface and groundwater standards for PFAS, arguing that further research is needed to understand the economic impacts of the proposed regulations.

Commission members continue to be accused of stalling the rulemaking process in order to protect industry.

During a virtual press conference hosted Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, speakers, including residents, business owners and elected officials in the lower Cape Fear region, reiterated those claims.

“The EMC’s mandate is to protect, preserve and enhance the state’s air and water resources and it’s time for them to fulfill this responsibility,” Wilmington City Councilwoman Salette Andrews said Tuesday. “I predict they will once again fail to act in the best interest of North Carolinians. The EMC should work for the people, not the Chamber of Commerce. The chamber has its own lobbyists and doesn’t need to commission in order to do their bidding.”

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent specifically called out newer commission members appointed last year by the Republican-controlled legislature, saying those members “have made it clear that they care more about the cost to heavy industry and the Chamber of Commerce’s values, which are also heavy industry.”

“They’re waiting for the Clean Water Act to be basically opened up by potentially a new EPA,” she said, referring to the November presidential election.

Cori Bell, a NRDC senior attorney for environmental health, said the commission has had months to ask questions of DEQ.

“There have been multiple opportunities to get more information and I don’t think that it’s a lack of information and DEC has also said publicly that it’s not a lack of information on the financial analysis here,” Bell said. “It’s really, I think, a result of chamber pressure and outside pressure.”

Commission Chair J.D. Solomon assured commission members at the close of their Thursday meeting that they’re going to “work this thing down the middle.”

“This is a long game,” he said. “We made some progress yesterday. We just have to find the balance.”

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision announced Friday, overturned a 40-year precedent that allowed federal agencies to interpret vague laws as part of their regulatory powers.

The ruling encompassed two cases, Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, that had been brought by commercial herring fishing companies, each represented at no charge by antiregulation legal groups. While the cases challenging a National Marine Fisheries Service rule dealt specifically with fisheries management, a broad swath of environmental, consumer and public safety advocates were quick to condemn the ruling and its broader implications.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, held that “the Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling overturned long-standing precedent, taking decision-making out of the hands of scientists and experts at federal agencies, said the National Wildlife Federation.

“The experience and expertise of experts — scientists, biologists, toxicologists, and others — are essential to implementing our foundational wildlife, public health, and environmental laws. The Supreme Court’s decision sidelines experts at the moment we need them to help safeguard and steward our wildlife, clean air and water, public health, and the environment,” said National Wildlife Federation President and CEO Collin O’Mara. “This ruling overturns long-standing precedent and will limit agencies’ ability to protect public health, address pollution, protect our waters and our ecosystems.”

The 40-year-old Chevron deference, a legal precedent under which courts have been required to defer to agency interpretations of the laws those agencies administer, “even when a reviewing court reads the statute differently,” according to the decision.

Roberts wrote that Chevron was fundamentally misguided, unworkable and had not fostered meaningful reliance.

“Given the Court’s constant tinkering with and eventual turn away from Chevron, it is hard to see how anyone could reasonably expect a court to rely on Chevron in any particular case or expect it to produce readily foreseeable outcomes. And rather than safeguarding reliance interests, Chevron affirmatively destroys them by allowing agencies to change course even when Congress has given them no power to do so,” Roberts wrote.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neal Gorsuch each wrote concurring opinions.

Justice Elena Kagan, with whom Justice Sonia Sotomayor and in part, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined in the dissent, wrote that the Supreme Court had long understood Chevron deference to reflect legislative intent.

“Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes. It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other actor will have to fill. And it would usually prefer that actor to be the responsible agency, not a court. Some interpretive issues arising in the regulatory context involve scientific or technical subject matter. Agencies have expertise in those areas; courts do not,” Kagan wrote.

Jackson was recused from part of the case.

Advocacy groups said the decision makes it easier for big business to block pollution regulations.

The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, a national advocacy organization composed of consumer, labor, scientific, research, faith, public health and environmental groups, said the court sided again with big corporations that seek to weaken agencies’ regulatory authority.

“The Supreme Court today overturned a decades-old legal precedent that will significantly undermine government experts trying to protect consumers, workers, the environment, and the public’s health and safety,” said Coalition for Sensible Safeguards Executive Director Rachel Weintraub. “The public expects our government to protect us from dangerous products, polluted air and water, unsafe workplaces, and fraudulent markets. This decision will harm all of us for as long as it stands.”

The group said the decision does not remove or weaken federal agencies’ legal authority to protect the public with new and updated rules. It said regulatory inaction would be inexcusable and agencies “must continue to do their jobs protecting consumers, workers, civil rights, our environment, and the public.”

Congressman Greg Murphy, R-N.C., spoke in favor of the decision Friday. He said that that the Supreme Court “dealt a historic blow to Washington bureaucracy by striking down the Chevron deference. In doing so, our courts will now be required to defer to the intent of Congress.”

North Carolina environmental organizations are celebrating a recent decision in a coastal North Carolina man’s challenge to remaining federal wetland protections under the Clean Water Act.

The case is ongoing.

Robert White of Pasquotank County, who operates various businesses in area, brought the case in March, challenging what he contends are illegal provisions in Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers rulings and seeking “to restore his own right to make use of his own land.” White seeks to operate a sand mine adjacent to Big Flatty Creek and near the Pasquotank River.

The Southern Environmental Law Center intervened in the case on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. Those nonprofit groups say White seeks to virtually eliminate federal protection of wetlands, after the U.S. Supreme Court nearly gutted existing protections last year in its Sackett v. EPA decision.

In January 2023, the EPA brought a civil enforcement action against White after he allegedly discharged pollutants into jurisdictional waters without a permit when he built and filled bulkheads in open water and wetlands, both marsh and forested, at his parcels on the Pasquotank River and Big Flatty Creek. This enforcement action is ongoing. Last fall, White asked the court to stay an enforcement action pending against him. When that failed, White turned from defense to offense, as Boyle noted in his ruling.

White in April asked the court to preliminary enjoin federal agencies from enforcing Clean Water Act regulations as they pertain to him and his properties.

Related: Wildlife groups seek to intervene in Pasquotank man’s case

But Judge Terrence W. Boyle on June 17 issued a scathing decision for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina denying White’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

“White has failed to show that he is likely to succeed on the merits of either of his claims,” Boyle ruled.

“We are disappointed with the court’s ruling,” said Paige Gilliard, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing White in the case . “The Supreme Court was clear in Sackett that federal jurisdiction over wetlands requires both a continuous surface connection and indistinguishability from jurisdictional waters. The CWA regulates navigable waters, not land, so indistinguishability is a critical part of the Sackett test. The Amended Rule’s lip service to continuous surface connection is not enough under Sackett.”

The Pacific Legal Foundation represents challengers to environmental laws free of charge and “defends Americans’ liberties when threatened by government overreach and abuse,” according to its website.

White had alleged that the “adjacent” wetlands provision in the new federal rule is inconsistent with the Sackett test for jurisdiction over wetlands. He asked the court to find the new rule unlawful and set it aside as “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion.” White contended for those same reasons that the new regulations exceeded the agencies’ statutory authority and must be set aside.

Boyle ruled that White failed to show that he was likely to suffer irreparable harm without a preliminary injunction, “that the balance of the equities tip in his favor; and that an injunction would be in the public interest. Boyle called that failure “fatal to his motion.”

Boyle ruled that “White’s challenge to the waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule that resulted from the Sackett decision, “smacks up against the Rule’s fidelity to ‘waters of the United States’ and Sackett’s test to determine when an adjacent wetland meets that definition.”

White faltered, Boyle ruled, by isolating a phrase in the Sackett decision “from its logical connection to the remainder of the opinion.” Boyle referenced the words of former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., applying his “familiar admonition to a different context: White is thinking words not things. The thing that makes a wetland practically indistinguishable from an adjacent ‘water of the United States’ is the presence of a continuous surface connection. Thus, the Amended Rule faithfully conforms to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ as interpreted by Sackett.”

Michael and Chantell Sackett, the people behind the case name, had purchased property in Idaho and began backfilling their lot so they could build a house. The EPA informed the Sacketts that their property included wetlands and they needed a permit because they were discharging pollutants into “waters of the United States.” The Sacketts sued, and after nearly 15 years their case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they prevailed.

In its 5-4 decision, the nation’s highest court ruled that “waters of the United States,” pertains to only wetlands that have “continuous surface connection.”

Advocates said the revised rule leaves water quality in North Carolina unprotected and increases the chance of flooding.

The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters said in May that White’s case “could finish killing off federal rules protecting wetlands.”

The Multistate Trust along with federal and state agencies are hosting a meeting later this month to update Navassa residents and stakeholders on cleanup operations within former Kerr-McGee Superfund site.

A community meeting will be held June 27 by the Multistate Trust, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, during which officials will share information about ongoing cleanup of operable unit 2, redevelopment planning, and other site updates.

A drop-in session will also be held in which members of the community will have the opportunity speak one-on-one with representatives about the site.

The meeting will be held in-person and virtually from 6 – 7 p.m. in the Navassa Community Center, 338 Main St.

The drop-in session will follow from 7-8 p.m. and will be in-person only.

To join the meeting online, use this Zoom link or enter tinyurl.com/NavassaMettings into your browser.

To join the meeting by phone call (301) 715-8592 and use meeting ID 946 584 8922# and passcode 664564# 

For more information visit this link.

Additional information may be found at the Multistate Trust’s website  and the EPA’s website.

The March 2024 community meeting presentation is available here.

CHAPEL HILL — Wildlife advocates, citing the threat to migratory birds, have filed a challenge in federal court to block the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from allowing an experimental algaecide treatment of Lake Mattamuskeet.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, filed the lawsuit Monday in the Eastern District of North Carolina. The groups seek to block the plan in Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge until the Fish and Wildlife Service performs a more thorough analysis that “takes a hard look at the toxic algaecide’s harms and the available alternatives.”

The groups point to the product’s former Environmental Protection Agency labeling showing it as toxic to birds. They note that shallow Lake Mattamuskeet is important habitat for more than 250 bird species including swans, ducks and geese. 

Related: State issues certificate for Lake Mattamuskeet treatment

“A bird sanctuary is no place to experiment with a chemical that is toxic to birds,” said Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Ramona McGee, who is leader of the law center’s Wildlife Program. “We’re asking the Fish and Wildlife Service to put the mission and purpose of this wildlife refuge first, and not turn wild birds into lab rats when there are much better ways available to maintain the health of the lake.”

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality said Thursday its Division of Water Resources had approved a certificate of coverage to allow BlueGreen Water Technologies to begin the pilot study to treat for cyanobacteria in select parts of the freshwater lake June 1.

Fish and Wildlife is collaborating on the proposed treatment with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences.

Officials say the pelleted product is safe after it’s dissolved in water. Advocates disagree.

Related: USFWS plans to chemically treat part of Lake Mattamuskeet

“It might seem reasonable to assume that the federal government would refrain from using a national bird sanctuary to test a private company’s experimental algaecide, particularly one that reads ‘toxic to birds’ on the label, and yet here we are,” said Erin Carey, acting director, N.C. Chapter of Sierra Club. “The North Carolina Sierra Club is proud to stand between the delicate and irreplaceable beauty of Lake Mattamuskeet and the casual disregard of corporate interest.” 

“The Fish and Wildlife Service should do everything in its power to conserve this important bird sanctuary,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. “Instead, FWS is giving the green light for a private company to turn a wild sanctuary into a laboratory for experimental, unproven treatments with known dangers to the very wildlife the refuge is intended to protect.”

CHAPEL HILL — Environmental organizations are seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by a North Carolina commercial seafood business operator that they contend seeks to virtually eliminate remaining federal wetlands protections that were dramatically scaled back last year.

The Southern Environmental Law Center said Wednesday it had filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina a motion to intervene and memorandum in the case, which it says could strip provisions that protect waterways that support fishing, hunting and outdoor recreation and undermine their related economies. The law center is representing the National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation.

The case was brought in March by Robert White of Pasquotank County. White is challenging what he contends are illegal provisions in Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers rulings “to restore his own right to make use of his own land,” according to his attorneys, and to ensure both agencies comply with — and courts apply — the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that dramatically narrowed Clean Water Act protections.

Pacific Legal Foundation, which specializes in property rights cases, is representing White, who plans to operate a sand mine on river-adjacent land he owns. Pacific Legal said the Supreme Court’s decision requires that wetlands must be indistinguishable from navigable waters to be regulated. “Land such as Robert’s, which does not bear this connection to the two waterways — cannot be subject to federal regulation under the Clean Water Act.”

The nonprofit law firm known for property rights advocacy contends that the high court’s 5-4 majority opinion in Sackett v. EPA held that the Clean Water Act extends to only wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are “waters of the United States.” Pacific Legal lawyers had successfully represented Chantell and Mike Sackett in their dispute with the EPA.

“Last term in Sackett the Supreme Court made clear that the Clean Water Act forbids the type of wetlands regulation at issue in Mr. White’s case,” Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Charles Yates said in a statement in response to Coastal Review’s query. “That the Clean Water Act only authorizes the regulation of wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from covered waters, is beyond dispute. Yet rather than adhering to Sackett’s rule, the Agencies have doubled down and are transparently seeking to evade the judgment of the highest court in the land. All Mr. White seeks is a declaration that, per Sackett, the Agencies may no longer regulate his property. The interveners in this case are unsatisfied with the statute Congress actually passed and the Supreme Court’s ruling insisting that it means what it says; the proper audience for their complaints is the legislative branch.”

Pacific Legal said that White owns “low-lying,” flood-prone land on Big Flatty Creek and the Pasquotank River. Seeking to make improvements to minimize flooding and for business endeavors including agriculture and sand mining, White became engaged in permitting disputes with the EPA and the Corps regarding the “navigable waters” provision in the Clean Water Act.

He faces “crushing civil enforcement action,” according to Pacific Legal.

The Southern Environmental Law Center said the relief the plaintiff seeks would effectively write most wetlands out of the Clean Water Act.

“A ruling adopting this extreme view could have devastating effects on waters in North Carolina and throughout the nation,” said Mark Sabath, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Wetlands are vital to help protect drinking water supplies, wildlife and fisheries, and our communities from flooding. If the wetlands along our coastal waters like the Albemarle Sound are developed and destroyed, communities will be wrecked by job loss, wildlife loss, and flooding.”

The National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation say that the ruling stands to have large economic repercussions. They say healthy fish and wildlife depend on clean water, and that valuable waterways threatened by the lawsuit support fishing, hunting, and outdoor recreation, as well as the jobs these activities sustain. They contend that the clean water that hunters, anglers and other outdoor enthusiasts expect is a pillar in a $788 billion outdoor recreation industry.

“We care about the water quality and wetlands of North Carolina for both people and wildlife,” said Tim Gestwicki, CEO of the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. “We cannot protect fisheries if the wetlands and streams flowing into estuaries are polluted or destroyed. We cannot ensure that critical wildlife habitat is preserved for fishing, hunting, birdwatching, and outdoor recreation if wetland protections are weakened.”

The groups say nearly all of the commercial catch and over half of the recreational harvest in the Southeast are fish and shellfish that depend on wetlands, and wetlands provide important flood protection for communities.

“What the plaintiff in this case is seeking could make it more difficult to protect wetlands and other waters that are critical to fish, waterfowl, shellfish, and other wildlife, and allow widespread destruction and degradation of those critically important waters along with pollution and flooding downstream,” said Jim Murphy, senior director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation. “Strong Clean Water Act protections safeguard critical wetlands and other waters that sustain our nation’s wildlife and people.” 

White is currently facing a separate federal enforcement action for building and filling a bulkhead on wetlands without a permit on his property on the Pasquotank River and Big Flatty Creek. His attorney did not respond to questions pertaining to that case.

Two Wilmington firms are among the recipients of grants for projects to reduce air pollution from diesel-powered vehicles and other mobile equipment.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality announced Monday that its Division of Air Quality had awarded a total of $1.11 million in grants, including $40,000 to Waste Management of Carolinas Inc. and $97,933 to Southeast Crescent Shipping Co., both of New Hanover County.

The division awards Mobile Source Emissions Reduction Grants yearly for projects to replace, retrofit or repair diesel vehicles and reduce emissions. It said the awards this year would replace 18 older diesel vehicles with what it called “cleaner alternatives,” with the majority, more than $866,000, going toward new electric vehicles.

In total, the awards this year will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 3,000 tons over their lifetimes. They will also eliminate more than 43 tons of nitrogen oxide and 4 tons of particulate matter, officials said.

Waste Management is to use the grant money to replace two diesel freight refuse haulers with two low-nitrogen oxide compressed natural gas refuse haulers. The agency said this project reduces 0.49 tons of lifetime nitrogen oxide emissions associated with diesel combustion engines.

Southeast Crescent Shipping Co.’s grant is for replacing four diesel port forklifts with new, cleaner technology, a move that will cut lifetime nitrogen oxide emissions by 5.33 tons.

Applications for the 2023 Mobile Source Emissions Reduction grants closed in February. Electrification projects, projects in historically under-resourced counties or environmental justice communities, and projects submitted by minority-owned or women-owned businesses received bonus points during the scoring of applications, officials said.

The grants are funded by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, or DERA, program, which supports projects designed to achieve significant diesel emissions reductions. This year, EPA prioritized funding for goods-movement facilities, environmental justice and disadvantaged communities, project resilience to climate impacts and workforce development.

DEQ said diesel engines, particularly older equipment, emit pollution that can contribute to health conditions including asthma and heart and lung disease. The agency also cited damage to crops and other vegetation, formation of acid rain, impaired visibility, and further climate change and global warming as risks of diesel emissions.

For more information about the Mobile Sources Emissions Reduction grant program, visit the division’s website.

WILMINGTON – President Joe Biden announced Thursday afternoon millions of federal dollars coming to North Carolina to replace lead drinking water service lines.

“These lead lines are tough, durable, and they don’t rust, but we’ve long since learned that they lead to poisonous toxins in our water. The science is clear, lead service lines pose severe health risks, damaging the brain and kidneys, to children especially, they stunt growth and learning and cause lasting brain damage. We know we can stop it. We know how to do it,” Biden said.

Biden’s remarks to an invitation-only crowd in the Wilmington Convention Center were met with applause, cheers and shouts of affirmation from audience members yelling “That’s right” and “Yes!”

Across the country, nine million lead service lines connect water mains to homes, schools, daycare centers and businesses, he said. There are some 300,000 of these lead pipes disbursing drinking water in North Carolina.

“The cost to replace them is consequential,” Biden said. “Too many families only learn the threat to their children after they get sick. You know, this is, for some time, why I’m determined to fix it. Until the United States of America, God love us, deals with this, how can we say we’re a leading nation of the world for God’s sake. There’s no safe level of lead exposure.”

The only way to connect all Americans to clean water is to replace every lead service line, he said.

Biden talked about his landmark Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, one where a record $15 billion has been dedicated to fund lead pipe replacement.

“Today we’re releasing a third installment of that funding, an additional $3 billion dollars nationwide, which will bring the total to $250 million to North Carolina so far,” he said.

The president said the issue is not only one of safety, but about basic fairness to communities across the country. Nearly half of the funding has been directed to disadvantaged communities that have “borne the brunt of lead poisoning,” he said, adding that tribal lands are also receiving funds.

“Studies show communities of color have been hardest hit,” Biden said. “We have to make things right. Clean water, healthier communities, peace of mind, and jobs befitting those communities, jobs of plumbers, pipe fitters, laborers, engineers. Good paying jobs you can make a serious living with without a college degree to raise a family on.”

Protecting people from lead contamination is just one of the nation’s most ambitious agendas, he said.

The federal government is funneling $9 billion to upgrade filtration systems of public water systems found to have elevated levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

“They’re very dangerous chemicals that shouldn’t be in our water supply,” Biden said.

Wilmington has become ground-zero for PFAS contamination after scientists discovered several years ago a number of these chemical compounds in the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for tens of thousands in the region.

Biden touted his infrastructure law as the most significant investment in the nation’s roads, bridges, ports, airports and public transportation, including passenger rail from Raleigh to Richmond, Virginia.

More than 50,000 projects in more than 4,000 communities have been announced to receive funding.

“To date this has dedicated over $9 billion dollars to North Carolina alone,” Biden said.

As his roughly 20-minute address neared its end, Biden spoke more like an incumbent on a campaign trail, touching on everything from job growth and rising wages to lower prescription drug costs, and taking verbal shots at his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Biden chastised the Republicans who voted against the infrastructure law, narrowing in on Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., whom the president said called the infrastructure law fatally flawed and “a liberal trojan horse for the socialist agenda.”

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t think ensuring kids can drink clean water to avoid brain damage is a socialist agenda,” Biden said. “You may recall that my predecessor promised infrastructure every single week for four years. Didn’t build a damn thing.”

Instead, he said, the Trump administration rolled back wetland protections, gave mining companies leeway to contaminate groundwater and slashed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s budget.

Biden promised to “be a president for all Americans, whether you vote for me or not.”

“I believe doing what’s always worked best for this country, investing in all Americans.” He said. “I’ve never been more optimistic about our nation’s future. Let’s get out and work together and get this done and may God bless you all and protect our troops.”

Wilmington was Biden’s second and final stop in North Carolina Thursday.

He opened his remarks in the Port City by naming the four law enforcement officers killed Monday in a shootout in a Charlotte neighborhood, asking for prayers for the victims’ loved ones.

Biden visited privately with families of the victims in Charlotte before boarding Air Force One and heading to the coast.

He was accompanied by EPA Administrator and former North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Michael Regan and Gov. Roy Cooper, both of whom took the podium before a standing-room only crowd anxious to see the president.

Seats for the invitation-only event were filled two hours before Biden’s arrival, prompting event volunteers to fill any open spaces with chairs inside a room of makeshift walls of blue fabric.

Erin Carey, acting director of the North Carolina chapter of Sierra Club, was among the crowd invited to attend the event.

“We are grateful to the Biden administration for their determination to bring about the bipartisan infrastructure bill, an effort that has brought significant advancements in water quality initiatives, giving communities hope that the fear of drinking water contamination might one day be in the past,” she said in an email following the event. “It is comforting to know that our leaders are prioritizing the health of children and families, as well as the environment, as they put our tax dollars to good use – removing lead pipes from our service lines and PFAS from our drinking water.”

A group of pro-Palestinian protestors were gathered about a block away from the convention center shouting, “Free, free, free Palestine” and waving Palestinian flags. Trump supporters also showed their support for the former president.

Biden’s remarks Thursday afternoon came on the heels of a number of new federal environmental regulatory rollouts announced in recent weeks, including enforceable limits on PFAS in public water systems, a ban on most uses of methylene chloride, and a suite of rules addressing pollution from fossil-fueled power plants.

The day before Biden’s visit, NCDEQ announced a new state-implemented human health risk assessment for 1,4-dioxane in drinking water.

The health risk assessment was directed by the North Carolina General Assembly last year to examine the risk of exposure to the chemical, which is used primarily as a solvent in manufacturing processes, in drinking water. There are currently no federal drinking water standards for 1,4-dioxane.

North Carolina has the third highest measured concentration of 1,4-dioxane in drinking water in the country, exposing residents in the state to concentrations of the chemical that may be more than double the national average in drinking water and as much as four times the average in surface and groundwater, according to DEQ.

The Cape Fear River Basin has been found to have the most detections of the chemical in the state.

The EPA, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and International Agency for Research on Cancer classify 1,4-dioxane as a likely carcinogen.

Earlier Thursday, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, or CFPUA announced it is close to wrapping up an inventory of its 70,000 water service lines. None of the lines checked so far are made of lead, according to the authority.

The utility will forward its inventory check to state regulators by mid-October.

DEQ recently tapped the utility to receive $4.16 million in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, money that will be used to replace about 300 galvanized service lines believed to have lead connectors.

These lines and connectors are coated to prevent lead from getting into drinking water.

Environmental Protection Agency officials have labeled two per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that people are most likely exposed to through drinking water as “hazardous substances” under the Superfund law.

The final rule designates perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS, as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or CERCLA, also known as Superfund.

PFAS are human-made chemicals linked to cancers, impacts to the liver and heart, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children, the agency said.

PFOA and PFOS meet the statutory criteria for designation as hazardous substances under CERCLA. This designation will allow the EPA to investigate and cleanup of these chemicals and ensure that leaks, spills, and other releases are reported, the agency announced Friday.

“Designating these chemicals under our Superfund authority will allow EPA to address more contaminated sites, take earlier action, and expedite cleanups, all while ensuring polluters pay for the costs to clean up pollution threatening the health of communities,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. Regan was North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality secretary from January 2017 until he joined the EPA in March 2021.

The EPA said the rule will be effective 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register.

In addition to the final rule, the EPA is issuing a separate enforcement discretion policy that details how the agency will hold responsible the entities that “significantly contributed to the release of PFAS contamination into the environment, including parties that have manufactured PFAS or used PFAS in the manufacturing process, federal facilities, and other industrial parties.”

Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director for health with the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, said in a statement that millions of families across the country are being exposed to toxic “forever chemicals” from living near contaminated sites that threaten their health.

“It is time for polluters to pay to clean up the toxic soup they’ve dumped into the environment,” he said. “We all learned in kindergarten that if we make a mess, we should clean it up. The Biden Administration’s Superfund rule is a big step in the right direction for holding polluters accountable for cleaning up decades of contamination.”  

Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan said that since learning about extreme levels of PFAS in the Wilmington-area tap water, “we’ve been forced to live with water we don’t feel safe using while also enduring rate hikes to clean up a crisis we didn’t create. Chemical companies like DuPont and Chemours profited off of PFAS for decades at our expense. Finally, the Biden EPA is beginning to hold PFAS polluters accountable. While there is no price tag big enough to bring back all the lives cut short or traumatized by decades of PFAS exposures – this is a step in the right direction.”

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it has set federally enforceable limits on nearly a half-dozen individual PFAS in public water systems.

The historic move also limits any combination of two or more of four per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and starts the countdown for thousands of public water suppliers throughout the country to monitor for those chemicals and report their findings to their customers.

An estimated 6 to 10% of 66,000 drinking water systems throughout the country have three years to comply. In North Carolina, a combined more than 300 municipal and small water systems sampled in 2022 had PFAS detections above the newly established maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, according to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Utilities that have drinking water contaminated with PFAS exceeding the MCLs will be given five years to integrate technology at their facilities to reduce the amounts of the chemical compounds flowing from their customers’ taps.

The EPA’s much-anticipated final rule was hailed as a first step by a host of North Carolina environmental and advocacy organizations that have been calling for federal and state regulators to ultimately clamp down on industries that release PFAS into the environment.

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 contaminators including industrial manufacturers, landfills and firefighting facilities.

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said in a statement that while the organization applauds the EPA’s decision, the federal government has for nearly 30 years known about the health hazards of PFAS.

“And even now, they refuse to regulate the corporations directly by requiring them to stop the pollution at the source, but instead put the burden on utilities to either filter this dangerous filth, or do the government’s job to pressure companies to stop discharging it. So, while we thank the EPA for this work, we implore them and our legislators and environmental regulators to recognize that decades of their entities’ negligence, and support of corporate greed, has caused the illnesses and deaths of thousands of Americans and the degradation to our ecosystems, including that of the Cape Fear River,” the statement reads.

The Cape Fear region has been ground zero for PFAS contamination in the state after researchers several years ago discovered a number of the chemical compounds in the river, a drinking water source for more than a half-million North Carolinians.

The revelation that the Chemours Co. Fayetteville Works facility, located more than 70 miles upstream of Wilmington, had been discharging PFAS into the river, air and ground for decades ignited a fury of lawsuits and state-supported investigative studies on everything from effective PFAS filtration methods and source detections to human health studies.

Chemours, which now operates under a consent order that resulted from a legal challenge by Cape Fear River Watch and DEQ has reduced the amount of PFAS it emits into the environment through various measures. These include the construction of a mile-long, underground barrier to keep PFAS-contaminated groundwater from seeping to the Cape Fear.

One of the EPA’s now regulated individual chemical compounds known commercially as GenX has been discharged specifically from the Chemours plant in Bladen County.

Shortly after the EPA in June 2022 revised the GenX health level advisory to 10 parts per trillion, Chemours sued, arguing the agency failed to use the best available science when making its determination.

The case was argued earlier this year in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Chemours’ headquarters. A decision has not been rendered in that case.

The new federal regulatory limit on GenX is 10 parts per trillion, or ppt.

Other maximum limits on individual PFAS include the following:

• Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, at 4 ppt.
• Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, at 4 ppt.
• Perfluorononoanoic acid, or PFNA, at 10 ppt.
• Perfluorohexane sulfonate, or PFHxS, at 10 ppt.

Any mixture of two or more of GenX, PFNA, PFHxS, and perfluorobutane sulfonate, or PFBS, may not exceed a hazard index of 1. The hazard index is made up of a sum of fractions used to calculate humans’ exposure to levels where health effects are not anticipated to occur.

PFOA and PFOS are two of the most widely studied PFAS.

Health studies on other PFAS, including GenX, are ongoing, though the number of compounds being studied pale in comparison to the number of PFAS identified in the EPA’s registry – 15,000.

Current studies suggest PFAS affect pregnant women and developing babies, immune systems, increase the risk of certain types of cancers, and may result in elevated cholesterol levels, which increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Government leaders in various states, including North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, on Wednesday lauded the EPA’s final rule.

Cooper thanked EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who headed DEQ before taking the helm at the federal agency, for “taking this action to protect drinking water in North Carolina and across the country.”

“We asked for this because we know science-based standards for PFAS and other compounds are desperately needed,” Cooper said in a release.

DEQ has sampled 50 municipal and county water systems and more than 530 small public water systems since 2022, according to the agency.

“DEQ has already worked with water systems to measure for PFAS in advance of this rule, so they are well prepared to utilize the funding available now to take action and protect the people of North Carolina,” DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser said in a release.

Biser was referring to funding through the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a bipartisan bill that President Joe Biden signed into law in late 2021. That measure set aside $9 billion to help communities upgrade drinking water systems with technologies that remove PFAS.

Currently though, there are no federal safeguards in place for private well owners.

DEQ has required Chemours to test thousands of private water wells in New Hanover, Brunswick, Columbus and Pender counties and identify residents who may be eligible for replacement drinking water at the cost of the company.

The agency more recently introduced a statewide program to aid residents whose well water is found to have PFAS at or above health advisory levels. The program targets PFAS contamination of private wells in areas where there is not a designated responsible part to provide alternative drinking water.

Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, said in a release she is grateful that the EPA “heard our pleas and kept its promise to the American people.”

“We will keep fighting until all exposures to PFAS end and the chemical companies responsible for business-related human rights abuses are held fully accountable,” she stated.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Jean Zhuang said the EPA’s new drinking water standards are “a welcome backstop” and called for federal, state and municipal leaders to stop PFAS pollution at the source.

“The Clean Water Act already provides the tools necessary for agencies to stop PFAS pollution through the permitting process before it gets into drinking water sources,” Zhaung said in a release. “If existing laws are enforced, as they should be, they will keep PFAS pollution out of our waterways and downstream drinking water.”   

N.C. Conservation Network Environmental Health Campaigns Manager Stephanie Schweikert expressed similar sentiments in a statement to the media.

“EPA’s historic and protective new drinking water standards for PFAS will go a long way toward protecting North Carolinians from the adverse health impacts of forever chemicals exposure – particularly when paired with existing federal investments available to upgrade water utilities,” she stated. “North Carolina leaders must now take steps to address industrial discharges and turn off the tape of PFAS pollution at the source.”

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its statutory authority when it ordered a Texas-based company to stop creating long-lasting toxic chemicals while manufacturing plastic containers.

The three judges for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans filed their unanimous decision Thursday, vacating the two orders the EPA had issued Dec. 1, 2023.

The orders under the authority of the Toxic Substances Control Act, Section 5, directed Inhance Technologies LLC in Houston not to create per-and-polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, as a byproduct during production of fluorinated high-density polyethylene, or HDPE, plastic containers. The containers are used to store products such as pesticides, fuel and automotive liquids.

The EPA argued that the PFAS in the plastic containers can seep into the liquid products and lead to potential exposure, like seeping into groundwater or through fish ingestion.

Inhance has been using the same fluorination process since 1983 to create “a barrier that keeps dangerous substances from leaching out of their containers, and keeps outside substances from permeating in,” the ruling states.

The EPA used its authority under Section 5, which allows the agency to determine and regulate new substances, rather than Section 6, which is broader and includes all chemicals but also has more requirements.

“Inhance argues that the EPA exceeded its statutory authority by issuing orders under Section 5 instead of Section 6 because Inhance’s forty-year-old fluorination process is not a ‘significant new use’ under TSCA. We agree,” Circuit Judge Cory Wilson writes in the ruling.

“I am exceedingly pleased with the ruling and grateful to our customers and employees for their resilience, dedication, and support,” Inhance Technologies President and CEO Andrew Thompson said in a release.

Jeff Landis in the EPA’s media office told Coastal Review Monday that the agency “is reviewing the decision.”

The EPA began looking into Inhance after being notified by an environmental group in September 2020 that PFAS contamination was present in a mosquitocide stored in one of the company’s fluorinated containers, the agency said.

The EPA determined that when Inhance products go through the fluorination process, numerous types of PFAS are manufactured. These chemicals leach into the product.

The agency argued that the “fluorination process was subject to a significant new use rule regarding long-chain perfluoroalkyls (PFAS),” and issued Inhance a notice of violation in March 2022 for failing to notify the agency before it began manufacturing PFAS.

“Inhance had five years from the proposal of EPA’s long-chain PFAS significant new use rule in 2015 to when it was finalized in 2020 to inform EPA that it was manufacturing long-chain PFAS as part of its process,” the EPA said. After the notice, the agency found that Inhance continued to manufacture the regulated PFAS and intended to continue with its fluorination process and the Department of Justice filed suit on behalf of EPA against Inhance in December 2022.

The notice directed Inhance to either change its fluorination process so it no longer manufactured PFAS, or to temporarily halt the fluorination of any products that resulted in the creation of PFAS, the ruling states. Instead, Inhance submitted significant new use notices for the nine PFAS it manufactures to EPA for review on Dec. 30, 2022.

The EPA requires significant new use notices under Section 5. If the EPA finds that there is not enough evidence to determine the effects of the substance or presents an unreasonable risk of injury, then the agency must issue an order prohibiting or limiting the manufacture of the substance.

The EPA announced Dec. 1, 2023, that after reviewing the significant new use notices from Inhance and consistent with the “Framework for Addressing new PFAS and New Uses of PFAS,” the agency had determined that three of the PFAS “are highly toxic and present unreasonable risks that cannot be prevented other than through prohibition of manufacture.”

The agency also determined that the other six of the nine PFAS chemicals manufactured by the company may present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, and under the Toxic Substances Control Act, “is requiring the company to cease manufacture of these chemicals, and to perform additional testing if it intends to restart production,” the Dec. 1, 2023, press release explains.

“PFAS should not be in the plastic containers people use every day, period,” Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Assistant Administrator Michal Freedhoff said in the Dec. 1, 2023, release. “EPA’s action today is one more way we are furthering the Biden-Harris Administration’s Strategic Roadmap to combat PFAS pollution.”

A week later, on Dec. 8, 2023, Inhance announced plans to seek review by the 5th Circuit, “to stop the one-sided orders” issued by the EPA.

“If allowed to take effect, the orders will force Inhance Technologies to shut down its 11 barrier technology facilities across the U.S., disrupting downstream industries and related supply chains that rely on the company’s environmentally critical technology,” the company said.

As a result of the EPA learning about PFAS in mosquitocide through this type of container in September 2020, the agency announced Feb. 15 a new method to serve as an additional tool for its staff and for industries that use HDPE containers to identify PFAS contamination.

Inhance has fluorinated up to 200 million containers annually, “which is more containers than there are households in America. The release of 2.2 Kg (kilograms or 4.85 pounds) of these 9 PFAS could cause significant contamination of drinking water supplies leading to risks of adverse health effects in millions of people,” according to the EPA.

“For example, EPA recently proposed a Maximum Contaminant Level of 4 parts per trillion for PFOA in drinking water. Additionally, EPA has also proposed that there is no level of PFOA in drinking water that is without risk of adverse health effects. If 2.2 Kg of PFOA were released to drinking water sources, it would contaminate more than 145 billion gallons of water to levels that would exceed this proposed enforceable level. This corresponds to almost three years’ worth of water use in the City of New Orleans,” the EPA continued.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, and the Center for Environmental Health, or CEH, responded Friday, announcing jointly that the organizations were “deeply disappointed and alarmed” by the 5th Circuit’s “flawed decision.”

The groups said Inhance Technologies’ fluorination process “results in hundreds of millions of plastic containers leaching toxic PFAS chemicals into food, cosmetics, cleaning supplies, fuels, and other household products.” The public health danger must be addressed, they said.

“Significantly, Inhance’s customers are now unquestionably on notice that their products contain several PFAS that EPA has determined are harmful to health. They should consider alternatives to fluorination that are PFAS-free,” PEER said.

The two organizations and the EPA are plaintiffs in a December 2023 suit in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to enforce Toxic Substances Control Act requirements against Inhance.

“PEER and CEH will now pursue that case in addition to any other remedies that are available to abate this significant and unreasonable danger to public health, and will urge the government to do so as well,” they said.

A manufacturing plant in Duplin County would have to monitor, but not limit, chemical compounds it discharges from its wastewater treatment system into the Northeast Cape Fear River under the terms of a draft permit being reviewed by state and federal agencies.

Automotive textile and technology manufacturer Lear Corp.’s draft National Pollutant Discharge Eliminations System, or NPDES, permit renewal includes a special condition that the company monitor for per- and polyfluoroalkyl, or PFAS, emitted from its treated industrial wastewater into the river quarterly.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources also would require the company to monitor its outtake of 1,4-dioxane, which is primarily used in as a solvent in manufacturing.

The state’s proposal to let the company monitor, and not curb, man-made chemicals the plant discharges is a slap in the face of residents already living in and downstream of an area where water quality is affected by a heavy concentration of large hog and poultry operations, opponents say.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to the water resources division’s water quality permitting section chief on March 5, one month after the draft permit was received by the agency, notifying the state it was invoking a 60-day extension to review the permit.

“The EPA will complete the review of this permit as expeditiously as possible prior to the end of the 90-day period on May 6, 2024,” the letter from EPA Region 4’s Water Quality Branch Acting Manager Christopher Thomas states.

DEQ had received by early March more than 400 emails calling for the state to require Lears cap the amount of PFAS it releases into the river, Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said.

The state agency has since pushed back its public comment period deadline on the draft permit to March 28.

Lear declined to answer specific questions about its draft permit application, instead offering an emailed statement, saying in part that the company is working with DEQ on a permit renewal “that adheres strictly to state regulatory guidelines and standards governing the use and disposal of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).”

“We conduct rigorous monitoring of our wastewater discharge to ensure compliance with the NCDEQ regulatory requirements and have reformulated the majority of our products to eliminate the use of PFAS,” the statement continues. “We are working to transition our remaining products to a PFAS-free solution as soon as reasonably practical. We are committed to continuing to work with NCDEQ and to take appropriate environmental stewardship actions. Our highest priorities are the health and safety of people, local communities, and the environment.”

The state issued Lear’s current permit in 2018, about a year after news broke that the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for tens of thousands of people, had been the dumping site of a host of PFAS emitted from the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works facility for decades.

Under a 2019 consent order, the company had to add to its Bladen County plant various controllers, including a thermal oxidizer to trap PFAS from being released into the air and an underground retainer wall to prevent PFAS-contaminated groundwater from getting into the river.

There are well over 10,000 different PFAS being used in the manufacturing of a wide-range of consumer goods. PFAS are used in the making of everything from stain-resistant carpets and waterproof gear to nonstick cookware and disposable food containers.

Potential health effects from exposure to PFAS include changes in cholesterol, low birth weight in newborns, changes in human immune response, increased risk of high blood pressure in pregnant women and increased risk of certain cancers such as kidney and testicular cancer.

The technology Chemours is using to reduce the amount of PFAS it discharges to near non-detectable levels prove that other manufacturers can and should do the same, Sargent said.

“The DEQ is required to enforce these on these other industrial polluters and they’re not,” she said. “This is a federal law. This is the Clean Water Act. DEQ has the full authority to regulate this facility and limit their PFAS dischargers. It’s pretty clear from where we sit it’s obviously ridiculous that DEQ would be allowing any known PFAS dischargers to continue to discharge after all we’ve learned over the last seven years. They should be sticking to their mission, protecting human health and the environment.”

Under the draft permit, Lear would be required to implement the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines on PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, which the agency has classified as a likely human carcinogen.

The EPA’s final rule in a proposal to set limits on six PFAS is expected to be released any day now. The proposed rule limits the maximum allowable amount of a combination of four chemical compounds, including GenX, a PFAS specific to Chemours’ plant in Bladen County.

EPA also proposes to set maximum contaminant levels on what have been two of the most used PFAS compounds – perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS – at 4 parts per trillion.

Public comments may be emailed with the subject line “Lear Corp.” to publiccomments@deq.nc.gov.

Once the public comment period ends, Division of Water Resources Director Richard Rogers will decide whether to hold a public hearing. A hearing would be held following a 30-day public notice.

With a sizable cargo ship docked Wednesday at the N.C. Port at Wilmington on the Cape Fear River in the background, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announced the launch of a federal program to improve air quality at U.S. ports.

Regan was joined by Gov. Roy Cooper, Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo and North Carolina State Ports Authority Board of Directors Chair Susan Rabon at the morning press conference to announce the $3 billion Clean Ports program.

“Ports like this one right here in Wilmington are essential for commerce and are vital to our nation’s economic growth and supply chain infrastructure,” Regan said, adding that at the same time, many people residing near and around the nation’s ports are exposed to unhealthy air.

“So today, we’re proving once again,” Regan continued, that environmental protection and economic prosperity can go hand in hand. “And that’s why I’m excited to announce that EPA is launching our $3 billion Clean Ports Program.”

The funding through the Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022, “will advance environmental justice by reducing diesel pollution from U.S. ports in surrounding communities, while creating good-paying jobs,” according to the EPA.

Regan said the money will go to purchase zero-emissions port equipment and infrastructure upgrades, while supporting both climate and air pollution-reduction strategies at all U.S. Ports.

“This program will lay the groundwork for transformational change by encouraging a transition to zero-emissions operations and reducing diesel pollution in and around our poor communities,” he said.

Regan said the EPA is releasing two notices of funding opportunities. The first pot of money includes $2.8 billion to facilitate the transition to zero-emissions equipment and infrastructure to reduce emissions nationwide. The second is close to $150 million for climate and air quality planning activities at ports to help build capacity for the ongoing transition to zero-emission port operations.

The announcement is more than just an investment in the economy, Regan said, “it’s an investment in President Biden’s pledge and commitment to environmental justice.”

Through the president’s investments “we are ensuring that those who live near ports can finally breath cleaner, healthier air. We are reimagining clean technology, and revolutionizing our nation’s port infrastructure, while addressing climate and environmental justice concerns.”

Before Regan spoke, Rabon of the ports authority board said the facility in Wilmington, the deep-water port in Morehead City and the inland operation in Charlotte, combined to support more than 88,000 direct and indirect jobs, and the work at the authority contributes $660 million annually to local and state tax revenues.

“Businesses need access to the global markets where their products are sold, and where their resources are found,” she said. “The authority provides that access making North Carolina ports are a key factor in our state’s phenomenal economic growth.”

Rabon added that while the ports authority is focused on growing business, “we’re committed to doing so in an environmentally conscious manner that preserves this area we are fortunate enough to call home.”

Gov. Cooper, during his remarks, described the Biden administration’s infrastructure policies as “generational.”

“We’ve been waiting for them for decades and now they’re finally here,” he said of the federal funding for roads, bridges, airports, rail and public transportation, high-speed internet, clean water systems and clean energy jobs. “And of course, our ports, will improve our state for decades and generations to come.”

The funding announced Wednesday means a cleaner work environment for those working at ports, will help make the communities around the ports cleaner and “will help us further our goals of environmental justice,” Cooper said.

Regan said after the announcement that the administration wants to get the money out as quickly as possible. “I feel very strongly that one $3 billion is a lot of money. There’s enough to go around. We’re going to see strong applications all across the country.”

EPA officials said the Clean Ports Program will help advance the Justice40 Initiative, which has a goal for “40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments in climate, clean energy, and other areas flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”

The agency said it has strived to ensure that near-port community engagement and equity considerations are program priorities. That focus has included evaluating applications on the extent and quality of community engagement efforts.

The nearly $2.8 billion Zero-Emission Technology Deployment Competition will directly fund zero-emission port equipment and infrastructure to reduce mobile source emissions at U.S. ports, according to the EPA.

Eligible uses of the funding include human-operated and maintained zero-emission cargo handling equipment, harbor craft and other vessels, electric charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure, and a number of other technology investments. Applications are to be evaluated under multiple tiers in order to ensure that funds are distributed across ports of different sizes and types, and to ensure funding for ports serving Tribal communities, officials said.

The approximately $150 million Climate and Air Quality Planning Competition will fund climate and air quality planning activities at U.S. ports, including emissions inventories, strategy analysis, community engagement, and resiliency measure identification.

“Together, these opportunities will advance next-generation, clean technologies that will more safely and efficiently drive the movement of goods and passengers at our nation’s ports, a critical part of America’s supply chain infrastructure while reducing pollution and advancing environmental justice,” the EPA said in its announcement.

According to the Sierra Club, research has shown that diesel pollution contains more than 40 cancer-causing substances, including benzene and formaldehyde. The group cited links to asthma, heart disease and premature death. 

“We continue to see vast clean transportation benefits moving out of the Inflation Reduction Act. Ports are a lesser talked about topic within the transportation sector – cleaning them up is crucial work,” Katherine García, director of Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All campaign, said in a statement. “This EPA program builds on the Department of Transportation’s ports program with necessary zero-emission investments that will bring significant health and air quality benefits.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to add nine per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, including GenX, to its list of chemicals that should be treated as hazardous waste.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan signed the proposal Wednesday to modify the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA, to include the nine PFAS, their salts, and their structural isomers, according to a release.

PFAS are manmade chemical compounds that are resistant to heat, water and grease and used to make a host of consumer products, including stain-resistant carpet, carpet cleaning products, food packaging, furnishings, cosmetics, outdoor gear, clothing, adhesives and sealants, firefighting foam and nonstick cookware.

A number of these chemicals can be found in drinking water sources in the state, including the Cape Fear River.

The Cape Fear is the drinking water source for tens of thousands in the region. Residents in that area were made aware six years ago that the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant more than 70 miles upriver of Wilmington had been discharging PFAS into the river for decades.

The EPA has evaluated toxicity and epidemiology information on the nine PFAS and determined that the chemical compounds meet the criteria to be listed as RCRA hazardous constituents, or those that are subject to treatment, according to the release.

“This change would facilitate additional corrective action to address releases of these specific PFAS at RCRA hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities,” the release states. “It would not require the suite of cradle to grave management controls that are associated with a RCRA hazardous waste.”

Those PFAS include the following: 

• perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA.
• perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS.
• perfluorobutanesulfonic acid, or PFBS.
• perfluorononanoic acid, or PFNA.
• perfluorohexanesulfonic acid, or PFHxS.
• perfluorodecanoic acid, or PFDA.
• perfluorohexanoic acid, or PFHxA.
• perfluorobutanoic acid, or PFBA.
• hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid, or HFPO-DA, more commonly referred to as GenX.

GenX is specific to the Chemours plant in Bladen County.

GenX does not remain long – three days tops – in the human bloodstream, but its health effects continue to be studied.

In 2022, more than 1,000 residents in the Cape Fear River Basin, including Wilmington, Fayetteville and Pittsboro, volunteered to have their blood sampled.

Nearly every one of those who volunteered were found to have PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS and PFNA in their blood streams.

Those synthetic chemicals get into the Cape Fear River from several different sources, including textile and furniture manufacturers, sludge from wastewater treatment plants used as fertilizer, and firefighting foams used at airports.

Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group senior vice president for government affairs, applauded the move.

“Today’s announcement by the EPA will ensure that quick action can be taken to clean up PFAS and will send a powerful signal to industry to be good stewards of their PFAS wastes,” Faber said in a statement.

The EPA will open the proposed changes to the RCRA for public comment once it is published in the Federal Register.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officials are interested in ideas from low-income, disadvantaged communities and communities experiencing environmental justice concerns to help guide its application for the federal Climate Pollution Reduction Grant.

As part of the federal Inflation Reduction Act, the grant program, awarded through the Environmental Protection Agency, provides states, local governments, territories and tribes with funds to develop and implement plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollutants.

NCDEQ is the lead for the interagency North Carolina Climate Pollution Reduction Grant project. The state anticipates receiving $3 million this year for planning activities and is eligible to compete for the $4.6 billion that EPA will award starting next year, officials said.

As part of the program, the state is to develop two plans. The priority climate action plan is to identify the highest priority greenhouse gas reduction measures and determine the method for ensuring equitable implementation. The comprehensive climate action plan is to update and expand the state’s existing climate strategies to be inline with the most recent available science, modeling and best practices. 

NCDEQ officials are asking any individual or group to submit ideas on projects and greenhouse gas reduction measures to implement through the program. Responses will help the agency identify opportunities to collaborate on new or existing projects. To submit a project idea, fill out this form.

The department also is accepting comments and suggestions via email at cprg@deq.nc.gov and at the coming public information sessions in January. These sessions are in addition to three held earlier this year.

Attendees will hear about the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant and will help NCDEQ determine priorities for the application and funding if awarded. Participants will learn about the types of projects that qualify for the grant funding and will be asked to describe eligible projects that would be most useful in their communities.

The first session is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 4. Information is online on how to receive a reminder and to join the meeting, or use this link. The webinar number is 2434 444 8544 and the password is S5153pr7, or 75153777 from phones and video systems. To join by phone, dial 415-655-0003 or 904-900-2303 and use access code 243 444 48544.

The next session is to take place at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 9. Attendees can register online to receive a meeting reminder and information on how to join, or use this link and webinar number 2438 976 9622 with password MMqmV5hrn77, or 66768547 from phones and video systems. to join by phone, use 415-655-0003 or 904-900-2303 with access code 243 897 69622.

More information about the grant program and material from previous information sessions available online.

If you need this information in Spanish or another language, call 919-609-2189 or send an email to Guadalupe.Jimenez@deq.nc.gov.

Federal and state officials will discuss the upcoming cleanup of an area of the Navassa Superfund site during a community meeting Thursday night.

Work that is set to begin soon on removing contaminated soil within about a 16-acre area known as operable unit 2, or OU2, and hiring and training opportunities for residents and businesses will be among the topics to be discussed at the meeting.

Officials will also share information about the upcoming sale of about 87 acres of the property owned by the Multistate Trust, which, along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, is hosting the meeting.

OU2 is part of a former wood-treatment site where, after closing operations in the mid-1970s, left a legacy of contamination of creosote on the land. Creosote is a gummy, tar-like substance used to treat wood utilized for railroad ties and utility poles.

The land was added to the EPA’s National Priorities List of federal Superfund sites in 2010.

Treated and untreated wood was stored in areas of OU2. Nearly 3,000 cubic yards of soils contaminated with creosote in that unit will be dug up, removed from the site and temporarily stored within another unit of the site.

The work is expected to take three to four months to complete and, when finished, the land will be available for unrestricted use.

Stockpiled soils will either be reused or consolidated into the cleanup of OU4, according to a release.

The meeting will be held 6-7 p.m. in person and virtually. An in-person, drop-in session will be held immediately following the meeting at the Navassa Community Center, 338 Main St.

To join online use this Zoom link or enter tinyurl.com/NavassaMeetings. To join by phone call 301-715-8592. Use meeting ID 946 584 8922 and passcode 664564.

For additional information visit the Multistate Trust website, the EPA website or DEQ.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reversed its approval for Chemours to import GenX into North Carolina.

The agency announced its decision today, prompting quick responses from both state officials and the company.

“It’s good that the EPA reversed this decision and I’m grateful for their quick response,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement. “We have been working for years in North Carolina to force the cleanup of forever chemicals to help ensure clean water, and companies like Chemours have made this effort more difficult.”

Chemours in a release this afternoon said it does not discharge GenX into the Cape Fear River through its recycling process at its Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County and that a “calculation error” had incorrectly identified the amount the company wants to import.

“Our reclamation and recycling process for [GenX] is circular and more environmentally friendly than manufacturing larger quantities of new compound,” the release states. “We identified and acknowledged a calculation error in the applications to the Dutch ILT that we proactively disclosed to US regulators. The amount being imported is in fact far below the levels approved by EPA in the original permit. We are working to correct the information and will continue to engage with authorities on the path forward.”

The EPA’s decision in October to sign off on Chemours importing as much as 4 million pounds of GenX from its plant in the Netherlands sparked outrage from state and local officials.

GenX is one of thousands of manmade chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and is specific to Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant.

Chemours is under a Consent Order with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the nonprofit Cape Fear River Watch to drastically reduce the amount of PFAS it discharges into the environment, including the Cape Fear River, which is the drinking water source for tens of thousands of people. The company is also being held responsible for PFAS contamination in private wells throughout the Cape Fear region, which includes at least eight counties.

The EPA made its decision to reverse course based on information provided by DEQ, according to a department release.

“We appreciate that the EPA heard the concerns shared by the Governor and the residents directly affected by PFAS contamination from Chemours,” NCDEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser said in a statement. “North Carolina is committed to reducing PFAS pollution and today’s reversal aligns with that goal.”

The company stated that it had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in emissions controls at its Fayetteville plant. “Chemours responsibly manufactures critical products that support national and Biden Administration priorities like American manufacturing of semiconductors and decarbonizing the energy sector. Our products and our actions promote a more sustainable future, and we will continue to deliver on our commitment to reduce our environmental footprint.”

In September, experts appointed to the United Nations sent letters to Chemours, Corteva and DuPont de Nemours criticizing their use of PFAS.

Those UN experts said the companies likely violated the human rights of residents in the Cape Fear region.

Letters were also sent to the governments of the Netherlands and the United States accusing regulators of failing to protect human health and the environment.

Interested in working a job to restore land that was once part of a wood-treatment facility in Navassa?

Local contractors Carl & Sons Construction Co. Inc. and SR&R Environmental Inc. are seeking area companies and Navassa residents to work as either employees or subcontractors on a portion of the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. Superfund Site.

Those companies are hosting a hiring outreach event Tuesday from 4-6 p.m. at the Navassa Community Center, 338 Main St.

Individuals with experience as truck drivers, flaggers, heavy equipment operators, and field technicians are of particular interest to the contractors. Training opportunities for those who wish to work but do not have experience will be made available on an as-needed basis.

Work will take place in an area of the site the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency refers to as operable unit 2, or OU2.

A little more than 1.5 acres of surface soils within the 16-acre area are contaminated with levels of dioxin and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons considered to pose an unacceptable risk to people and the environment.

Nearly 3,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil will be dug up from the area and moved to another portion of the Superfund Site and temporarily stored.

The land was added to the EPA’s National Priorities List of federal Superfund sites in 2010 after creosote contamination was discovered in the soil, marsh and groundwater in various portions of the site.

More than 40 years of wood-treatment operations occurred on the site before the plant was shut down for good in the mid-1970s.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday against the Environmental Protection Agency in a longstanding case that will narrow what defines a wetland.

In its decision, the nation’s highest court ruled that the definition, “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, applies only to wetlands that have “continuous surface connection.”

The ruling ends a more-than-15-year battle brought on by Idaho couple Michael and Chantell Sackett, who were ordered by the EPA to restore land they had backfilled on their lot to build a home.

EPA officials at the time notified the Sacketts that they were in violation of the Clean Water Act because wetlands on the property were near a ditch, which feeds into a creek that runs into Priest Lake.

The Sacketts sued, initiating a case that ultimately challenged the legality of the testing method used for determining wetlands as “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act.

The court’s ruling Thursday is hailed as a victory for property owners, but environmentalists have argued such a decision will have far-reaching implications for wetlands protections.

“In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. EPA, the only thing now protecting many North Carolina communities from being flooded in the coming years is the state’s existing ban on paving over wetlands without a permit. The NC General Assembly should not remove that protection – it is literally protecting lives and property,” said Grady McCallie, policy director with the North Carolina Conservation Network.

North Carolina legislators are considering a law that limits the state to use the WOTUS rule to identify wetlands.

The N.C. Farm Act of 2023 would strip the state’s ability to fill in gaps to protect federally nonjurisdictional wetlands, including isolated wetlands, which are those not directly connected to any body of water, but are hydrologically and ecologically valuable, environmentalists say.

The U.S. House last week failed to override President Joe Biden’s recent veto of a resolution that would have rolled back federal clean water regulations, but the future for those rules remains cloudy as the Supreme Court weighs a case that could restrict the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate ephemeral waters and streams.

House Republicans had sought to reverse the administration’s new waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule that included regulations that the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers’ reinstated in January. The protections apply to millions of acres of North Carolina wetlands and were repealed by the Trump administration.

The GOP last week fell short of the two-thirds majority required to override Biden’s veto of the resolution sponsored by Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo.

Related: NC farm bill would restrict how state defines wetlands

The 227-196 vote included all seven North Carolina House Republicans and 1^st District Democratic Rep. Don Davis voting in favor of the veto override and Democratic Reps. Alma Adams, Kathy Manning, Wiley Nickel, Valerie Foushee and Jeff Jackson opposed. Second District Rep. Deborah Ross, a Democrat, did not vote.

“The Biden Administration’s waters of the United States rule is one of the most damaging in history, with the potential to devastate production agriculture, derail infrastructure projects and harm our economy,” Rouzer, who represents North Carolina’s 7^th District, said Tuesday in a press release. “Congress spoke with a loud bipartisan voice and voted against this overreach, but without enough votes from the other side of the aisle to override the President’s veto. We will continue to work to push back against and defang this onerous rule at every available opportunity.”

Rouzer had previously said that rule expands the federal government’s regulatory control, “cloaked under the guise of clean water.”

Clean water advocates, including the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, were opposed to the WOTUS rule repeal, saying in 2019 that the rollbacks would “cause significant damage to coastal natural resources and economy” and reverse efforts to protect and enhance thousands of acres of wetlands, hundreds of miles of coastal marshes and thousands of acres of estuarine waters.

Environmental justice groups, such as GreenLatinos, say there has been an ongoing campaign to create confusion around the purpose of the Clean Water Act and who is “burdened by regulations.” The group had urged the April 6 veto that was only Biden’s second.

“With this vote, all present Republicans and some Democrats have aligned with corporate interests and ignored the reality that if we truly value water as a human right, then our waters need to be better protected so that our communities have access to clean, healthy, reliable and affordable water,” GreenLatinos Director of Strategic Initiatives Mariana Del Valle Prieto Cervantes said in a March 29 statement released after the Senate’s 53-43 vote for a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, in which a simple majority is sufficient to pass.

The House had also voted 227-198 to reject the rule under the Congressional Review Act.

The Obama administration finalized the controversial WOTUS rule in 2015, expanding its definition and prompting legal challenges backed by agriculture, construction and coal industries.

The Trump administration replaced the WOTUS rule with the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which Biden vowed to repeal via executive order upon taking office.

The Biden administration’s revised WOTUS rule was itself dubbed a compromise that included acknowledgement of recent court decisions and a reversion to some Reagan-era policies.

“The 2023 revised definition of ‘Waters of the United States’ carefully sets the bounds for which bodies of water are protected under the Clean Water Act. It provides clear rules of the road that will help advance infrastructure projects, economic investments, and agricultural activities — all while protecting water quality and public health,” according to Biden’s veto message to the House.

Biden said the loss of a clear WOTUS definition would threaten economic growth, including for agriculture, local economies and downstream communities. He said the veto override would have also negatively affected tens of millions of U.S. households that depend on healthy wetlands and streams.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in North Dakota halted implementation of the Biden administration’s WOTUS rule in 24 Republican-led states, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, pending the outcome of a lawsuit. Another recent injunction had blocked implementation in Idaho and Texas.

Elsewhere, the rule took effect March 20.

The Supreme Court is currently considering the case of Sackett v. EPA, to determine whether a federal appeals court set forth the proper test for determining whether wetlands are “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. The case involves an Idaho couple whose home construction violated the Clean Water Act because their lot contains wetlands that qualify as regulated “navigable waters.”

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit that would have forced Chemours to pay for health studies on dozens of chemical compounds manufactured at its Fayetteville plant.

Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II on Friday released his decision to dismiss the suit, ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted a petition to the organizations requesting testing on 54 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

The core question before Myers was whether the organizations filed under Section 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, a single petition for all 54 substances or individual petitions for each substance within a single document.

Myers ruled that the court lacked the authority to review the EPA’s decision to grant the petition.

The EPA initially denied the Oct. 14, 2020, request from the Center for Environmental Health, Clean Cape Fear, Cape Fear River Watch, Democracy Green, NC Black Alliance and Toxic Free NC to require Chemours fund comprehensive health and environmental effects testing on PFAS.

The organizations in March 2021 asked EPA to reconsider its decision and grant the petition. The EPA received letters of support for the petition request from 120 nonprofit groups, nearly 50 scientists, the city of Wilmington, New Hanover County and Cape Fear Public Utility Authority. Several members of the North Carolina congressional delegation also wrote EPA Administrator Michael Regan supporting the petition.

The agency overturned its decision in late December 2021 and granted a petition to study the PFAS largely as a category of substances.

The organizations said the petition was effectively a denial because it refused to require testing for 47 of the 54 PFAS.

The groups argue the 54 PFAS meet TSCA testing criteria because little to no information about their health effects currently exist and that people and wildlife in the Cape Fear watershed are at higher risk because they are exposed to a combination of these chemicals through drinking water and air.

The Cape Fear River, a raw drinking water sources for tens of thousands of people, has been contaminated for decades by PFAS discharged from Chemours Fayetteville Works plant nestled off the river’s bank in Bladen County.

Researchers continue to scratch the surface of potential health effects these chemical compounds may pose to people and the environment. Studies on some of the substances – there are more than 10,000 PFAS – indicate effects on immune systems and increased risks for everything from certain types of cancer to low birth weight to heart attack and stroke.

In his ruling, Myers wrote the EPA, “reasonably construed the Plaintiffs’ petition as a single petition asking EPA to initiate proceedings to test 54 PFAS. EPA granted the petition to test those 54 substances as a category — PFAS — and has initiated testing on that category of substances.

“EPA has initiated proceedings to determine the rules and orders it will issue to test PFAS. The Plaintiffs cannot dictate the testing program, rules, or orders EPA must issue,” the judge ruled. “As such, their petition was granted, and EPA has initiated proceedings for the category of substances requested in the petition. Section 21 of the TSCA does not empower this court to review EPA’s grant of a petition. This court lacks jurisdiction.”

Clean Cape Fear released a statement after the ruling was released last week, saying that the dismissal “has created a dangerous precedent for future EPA administrations to publicly grant citizen TSCA petitions while internally failing to do the work requested. We are considering an appeal to this disappointing decision that serves no one but the chemical companies who continue to hold hostage our regulatory institutions at the expense of our health and wellbeing.”

On Monday, Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan in a telephone interview said the EPA could have let the case play out in the courts rather than ask for a dismissal.

“That is really upsetting,” she said. “We haven’t been able to sit together and talk through this. One of the things we are considering is an appeal. I don’t know the time frame. It would have to be something that we decide on quickly.”

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said she would “definitely like” for the organizations to appeal because there needs to be an epidemiological study in the Cape Fear region.

“Health studies are necessary,” she said. “This is one of the biggest questions we get. What is this stuff doing to us? There’s no way to answer it. We have to fight it. There’s nothing else we can do but fight it. I really wish the EPA would turn around and go, you know what, let’s stop this. For me, we’re wasting our time and our money on lawyers as is the EPA to fight for something that I think the EPA at its core knows is the right thing to do.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that between 3,400 to more than 6,000 public water systems across the country contain at least one toxic chemical compound that exceeds newly announced proposed limits in drinking water.

“Safe drinking water is fundamental to healthy people and thriving communities. We all rely on water from the moment that we wake up to make a cup of coffee to when we brush our teeth at night. Every person should have access to clean and safe drinking,” said Jennifer McLain, director of the EPA’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water.

In what has been called an unprecedented move, the agency last week announced a plan to set limits on six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in public water systems.

Under the proposed rules, public water providers would have to monitor for those PFAS and report the results of sampling to the public if any level of PFAS exceed the proposed regulatory standards.

Water utilities found to have one or more of the chemicals above the proposed limits would have to reduce the levels of PFAS, a requirement that EPA officials acknowledged in a public webinar last week will equate to substantial costs, but one that would spare the expense to human health.

“We understand that reducing PFAS in drinking water will likely require investments in water infrastructure and we recognize that that could be a concern for many,” McLain said during the March 16 online meeting. “At the federal level, we’ve been making unprecedented investments in infrastructure and, specifically, for emerging compounds.”

Billions of dollars are available through the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a bipartisan bill that President Joe Biden signed into law Nov. 21, 2021.

McLain said $9 billion is available to help communities upgrade drinking water systems with technologies that remove PFAS.

Public water systems would have three years to comply with the new regulation after it is finalized.

Water bills of Cape Fear Public Utility Authority customers have increased as a result of a multi-million-dollar filtration system upgrade at the authority’s Sweeney plant in downtown Wilmington.

The authority last year installed a granular activated carbon, or GAC, system designed to filter out on average 90% of PFAS from its raw water source, the Cape Fear River. Brunswick County Public Utilities is also spending millions in upgrades to install a low-pressure reverse-osmosis system to remove PFAS.

Nearly six years have passed since the news broke that the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works plant had for decades discharged PFAS directly into the river, the drinking water source for more than a quarter-million people.

Among the chemical compounds released into the river, ground and air from the plant some 75 miles upriver from Wilmington, is GenX, the common name for hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, or HFPO-DA.

GenX is one of four chemical compounds the EPA is proposing to limit in combination with perfluoronanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS), and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS).

Alex Lan of the EPA’s Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water and technical lead for the rulemaking effort explained that the agency is looking at the combined toxicity of those four chemical compounds through something called a hazard index.

The hazard index is made up of a sum of fractions used to calculate humans’ exposure to levels where health effects are not anticipated to occur.

“To assist in the calculation of these values, the agency is developing a calculator tool to easily determine your hazard index results,” Lan said.

Nationally, the anticipated benefits to establishing contamination limits on PFAS would lead to reduced cases of kidney cancer, strokes and heart attacks, and developmental effects in children, including low birth weight.

The EPA proposes to set maximum contaminant levels, or MCLs, on perfluooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, two of the most widely studied PFAS.

The agency proposed to set MCLs for each of those PFAS at 4 parts-per-trillion, or ppt.

Current scientific and available evidence shows PFAS affect pregnant women and developing babies, immune systems, increase the risk of certain types of cancers, and may result in elevated cholesterol levels, which increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.

“The science is clear,” McLain said. “Long-term exposure to certain PFAS is linked to significant health risks. If finalized this new rule will significantly result in less PFAS in drinking water across the United States.”

The EPA last year set a final health advisory for GenX at 10 ppt and PFBS at 2,000 ppt.

PFBS has not been found in significant concentrations in samples collected in North Carolina, but high levels of GenX have been found in the Cape Fear River.

Chemours, a spinoff of DuPont, is pushing back on the EPA’s GenX health advisory. The company has sued the agency, arguing that the EPA failed to use the best available science when making its determination.

Last week’s webinar was the first of two the EPA is hosting.

A March 29 webinar will be held to directly address water utilities and water professionals, Lan said.

An online public hearing will be held May 4. You must register by April 28 to make a comment during the public hearing.

A 60-day public comment period will open after the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register.

The proposed regulation is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday proposed limits for a half-dozen chemical compounds, including GenX, in drinking water.

The list of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS), perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS) and hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, or HFPO-DA, commonly known as GenX.

The proposed maximum contaminant levels for PFOA and PFOS is 4 parts per trillion, or ppt, which is the current limit of detection for these chemicals. The EPA would establish what it calls a hazard index to address combined levels of the other four chemical compounds.

These are the first federal proposed drinking water limits for PFAS.

The announcement comes months after the EPA set a final health advisory for GenX at 10 ppt and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS, at 2,000 ppt.

While PFBS has not been found in significant concentrations in samples in North Carolina, high levels of GenX have been found in the Cape Fear River, a drinking water source for tens of thousands of people.

GenX is one of many compounds Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County discharged into the river, the air and ground for decades.

Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group senior vice president for government affairs, called the EPA’s proposals “historic progress.”

“More than 200 million Americans could have PFAS in their tap water,” Faber said in a news release. “Americans have been drinking contaminated water for decades. This proposal is a critical step toward getting these toxic poisons out of our water. The EPA’s proposed limits also serve as a stark reminder of just how toxic these chemicals are to human health at very low levels.”

The EPA is hosting this month two webinars, the first on Thursday and the second March 29, about the proposed National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for the six PFAS.

To register visit the following links:

• 2-3 p.m. March 16 webinar registration: General Overview of Proposed PFAS NPDWR.
• 2-3 p.m. March 29 webinar registration: Technical Overview of Proposed PFAS NPDWR

Recordings of and materials presented during the webinars will be available to the public after the meetings. Questions about the webinars may be directed to PFASNPDWR@epa.gov. 

The agency will also host a public hearing on May 4. Registration to attend that virtual meeting. Anyone wishing to make a comment at that meeting must register by April 28. To register visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/proposed-pfas-npdwr-public-hearing-tickets-549335536377

Once the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, a public comment period will open. Public comments may be made at www.regulations.gov under Docket ID: EPA-HQ-OW-2022-0114.

The proposed regulation is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.

Once the rule is finalized, public water utilities will have three years to comply with the new regulation.

In anticipation of the proposed regulation, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, has been working with public water utilities to identify, reduce and remediate PFAS contaminants, according to an agency news release.

Last June, DEQ released an Action Strategy for PFAS.

“North Carolina has been leading efforts to address forever chemicals in our drinking water and today’s EPA announcement provides additional federal support and a roadmap for the public water systems in our state,” DEQ Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser said in the release. “Having clear direction on national drinking water standards supports DEQ’s work with public water systems to protect the people of North Carolina.”

States now have direction from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on using the clean water permitting program to protect against per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

A memorandum announced Tuesday from EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox is to align wastewater and stormwater pollutant discharge permits and pretreatment program implementation activities with the goals in EPA’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap released October 2021, officials said.

“EPA is following through on its commitment to empower states and communities across the nation to address known or suspected discharges of PFAS,” Fox said in a statement. “Today’s action builds upon successful and innovative efforts already used by several states to safeguard communities by using our Clean Water Act permitting program to identify and reduce sources of PFAS pollution before they enter our waters.”

The EPA will work with state-authorized permitting authorities to leverage the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program to restrict the discharge of PFAS at their sources, Fox explains in the memo. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program was established by the Clean Water Act to help address water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants to waters of the United States.

EPA officials note that several states have had success with its state-administered National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program to identify and reduce sources of PFAS including Michigan, which is partnering with municipal wastewater treatment facilities to develop monitoring approaches to help identify upstream sources of PFAS. North Carolina has used the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program to develop facility-specific, technology-based effluent limits for known industrial dischargers of PFAS.

In addition to reducing PFAS discharges, the program is to enable EPA and the states to obtain comprehensive information on the sources and quantities of PFAS discharges, which can be used to inform appropriate next steps to limit the discharges of PFAS, Fox writes.

The memo builds on the EPA’s April memo to its regions by expanding the audience to states, and includes new recommendations related to biosolids, permit limits and coordination across relevant state agencies, officials said.

The memo provides recommendations to National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit writers and pretreatment coordinators on monitoring provisions, analytical methods, the use of pollution prevention and best management practices. These provisions were included to help reduce PFAS pollution in surface waters as the EPA works to promote effluent guidelines, finalize multi-laboratory validated analytical methods and publish water quality criteria that address PFAS compounds, officials continued.

“This EPA guidance is a pivotal moment in the fight against toxic PFAS pollution for communities nationwide, and makes clear that states must act now using existing law to protect people and their drinking water,” said Geoff Gisler, senior attorney and leader of the Clean Water Program at the Southern Environmental Law Center who leads litigation to stop PFAS pollution, in a statement. “Our work in North Carolina against Chemours is proof that PFAS polluters can be held accountable under current law. Families and communities nearby and downstream should not continue to be exposed to toxic PFAS.”

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, filed lawsuits in 2018, after learning in 2017 about the PFAS contamination from Chemours Fayetteville Works facility detected in the Cape Fear River. The river is the drinking water for about 350,000 people in the Wilmington area.

The law center negotiated a consent order with the state and Chemours requiring the company to stop PFAS pollution from its Fayetteville Works Facility, provide clean drinking water to residents with contaminated drinking water wells, and ensure the Cape Fear River is safe for downstream communities.

Stopping PFAS pollution at its source will prevent more people suffering more harmful exposure and make polluters bear the burden and cost of the pollution, not communities nearby and downstream, according to the law center.

East Carolina University and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality are among 32 recipients across the country that are to receive more than $9 million in pollution prevention, or P2, grants from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The grants allow states and tribes to provide businesses with technical assistance to prevent or reduce pollution before it is created, while also reducing costs, the EPA said in its announcement Thursday.

The grants are in addition to $12 million in P2 grants that were announced in September and made possible by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s $100 million program investment in the EPA P2 program.

“For more than 30 years, EPA’s P2 grants have helped businesses implement best practices to reduce dangerous pollution in communities, including those that are overburdened and vulnerable,” said EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pollution Prevention Jennie Romer in a statement. “Preventing pollution before it starts is an important step in our work to deliver on President Biden’s ambitious environmental agenda, tackle the climate crisis and advance environmental justice.”

The EPA said many proposed projects center on communities with environmental justice concerns.

Both rounds of grants are part of the president’s initiative that aims to deliver 40% of the overall benefits of climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, clean water, and other investments to disadvantaged communities. The agency anticipates most grants will successfully direct at least 40% of their environmental and human health benefits onto disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.

The United States produces billions of pounds of pollution each year and spends billions of dollars per year controlling this pollution. Preventing pollution at the source, which the EPA said is also known as P2 or source reduction, rather than managing waste after it is produced is an important part of advancing a sustainable economic and environmental infrastructure. P2 can lessen exposure to toxic chemicals, conserve natural resources, and reduce financial costs for businesses, particularly costs associated with waste management, disposal and cleanup, the EPA said. These practices are essential for protecting health, improving environmental conditions in and around disadvantaged communities, and preserving natural resources like wetlands, groundwater sources, and other critical ecosystems.

Selected grantees are to, if awarded, document and share P2 best practices that they identify and develop through these grants, so that others can replicate these practices and outcomes. Each selected grantee will address at least one of six National Emphasis Areas, or NEAs, which were established to focus resources to achieve measurable results and to create opportunities to share information among P2 grantees and businesses affiliated with similar NEAs. Each selected grantee is to also develop at least one case study during the grant period on P2 practices that are new or not widely known or adopted, or where detailed information on the P2 practices could benefit other businesses or P2 technical assistance providers.

The agency anticipates that it will award the grants once all legal and administrative requirements are satisfied. Grants supported will be incrementally funded at the time grants are awarded.

A small, predominantly Black community protesting a contaminated landfill in Warren County 40 years ago this month is credited with sparking the environmental justice movement. 

Many who fought for themselves and their neighbors in Warren County, along with environmental justice and civil rights leaders gathered Saturday, Sept. 24, to hear Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan announce a new national office charged with advancing environmental justice and civil rights. 

Environmental justice means fair treatment, or that no group should carry a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies, and meaningful involvement of all regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies, according to the EPA.

The new Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights will oversee a $3 billion climate and environmental justice grant program created under the Inflation Reduction Act. The office is to be led by a Senate-confirmed assistant administrator yet to be nominated.

“I could not be prouder or more excited to announce today that EPA is creating a new national office charged with advancing environmental justice and civil rights,” Regan said Saturday. “We are elevating environmental justice and external civil rights to the highest levels of EPA, placing this critical work on equal structural footing with the Office of Air, Office of Water, and all of EPA’s other national program offices.”

Regan previously served as the state Department of Environmental Quality secretary before the Biden-Harris administration appointed him EPA administrator. 

The new office will dedicate more than 200 EPA staff to focus on environmental justice and civil rights. The staff will administer the environmental justice grants to “communities that have not had access, who have not had a seat at the table, who haven’t had the infrastructure in place to apply for these dollars, and who have been underserved for far too long,” Regan said. 

Activist Dollie B. Burwell, a leader in the protest 40 years ago in Warren County, addressed the crowd Saturday before Regan made his announcement. She said the community just concluded a commemoration of the birth of the environmental justice movement there. 

Raleigh-based Ward Transformer Co. paid a trucking company in the summer of 1978 to drive along rural North Carolina roads at night while discharging liquid contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, onto the shoulders of roads. PCBs are industrial products or chemicals. This Toxic Substance Control Act violation contaminated soil along 240 miles of roadside in 14 counties, according to the state archives. 

The state, responsible for the cleanup, bought land from a distressed Warren County farmer in December 1978 to build a landfill to bury the toxic waste. The rural county had the highest percentage of African American residents in the state and was one of the poorest. Though civil rights activists and residents began protesting the landfill — around 500 were arrested – the landfill was still put in place. This protest marked the first time that opponents of a hazardous waste facility were detained for civil disobedience.

Burwell said Saturday many courageous and dedicated women, men and children of all races joined in their struggle. They stayed committed until the landfill was cleaned up and detoxified by the federal government in 2004.

Burwell told Regan they were grateful Warren County was chosen to make the announcement. 

“You have acknowledged and recognized the work, the tremendous sacrifice and the legacy of Warren County citizens and the many leaders across this country that started the environmental justice movement and to continue to fight for environmental justice,” she said. “We hope that with this announcement and the policies that it will yield great fruit and that these communities and other communities throughout this nation will be able to accomplish more of their environmental justice goals such as culturally sensitive, environmental health studies.”

Professor La’Meshia Whittington, principal and CEO of Whittington & Staley Consulting Group, is deputy director for Advance Carolina and the North Carolina Black Alliance, co-convener of the NC Black & Brown Policy Network and member of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board.

“Today we honor the labor of the birth of the environmental justice movement that gave us a banner under which we could unify and amplify our collective struggles to push back against the intentional targeting of our communities by dirty corporations. The same corporations who target our neighborhoods nationally are the same corporations causing global warming across the world,” she said. “Honoring the legacy and current impact of those leading the struggle while still being in their struggle is critical to solve the issues and save our nation. And, in turn, save the world because environmental justice is a global movement from our beautiful coastlines, to the scenic mountains, the powerful, rural and urban communities of the United States South and across the nation.”

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, said it had been a long struggle and there remains a long way to go.

“We know that environmental injustice, environmental racism kills. Seven hundred people die every day in this country from poverty, 250,000 die every year from the effects of poverty as it relates to health care, the lack of wages and environmental injustice. We are being called to stop that form of policy murder,” he said. 

Barber said it was time to ensure equal protection under the law, by a person with the full power of the government and $3 billion to protect minority and low-wealth communities that have suffered too long from corporations thinking nobody would stop them. 

Gov. Roy Cooper applauded the effort. 

“For too long, our underserved communities have been disproportionately impacted by climate change and unfair environmental impacts. That’s why we’re focused on moving North Carolina toward a more equitable, clean energy future for all, and this new office will help our state and country get there even sooner,” he said in a statement.

The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights Office was created by merging the Office of Environmental Justice, External Civil Rights Compliance Office, and Conflict Prevention and Resolution Center, existing programs at the agency. 

Officials said the new office will improve and enhance the agency’s ability to infuse equity, civil rights, and environmental justice principles and priorities into all EPA practices, policies, and programs; support the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies regardless of race, color, national origin, or income; engage communities with environmental justice concerns and increase support for community-led action through grants and technical assistance; and enforce federal civil rights laws that, together, prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin, sex, disability or age by applicants for and recipients of federal financial assistance from EPA.

Provide services and expertise in alternative dispute resolution, environmental conflict resolution, consensus-building, and collaborative problem solving.

Regan closed his comments Saturday with, “My brothers and sisters, this is essential work. It’s the work I came to this administration to do, and it’s the work that all of you have been demanding for generations. So, together, that is what we will do. Let’s go.”

The state Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board will meet at 10 a.m. Monday, Aug. 1, online via WebEx.

In addition to updates from Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services staff, DEQ staff will present information regarding the EPA’s reference doses for PFOA, PFOS, GenX and PFBS, bioaccumulation factors and their
potential use, as well as the status of the consent order toxicity studies and this summer’s fish and water collection efforts. For details, see the agenda.

The public is invited to attend the meeting online or by phone at 1-415-655-0003, access code 2420 026 5211. Organizers ask those dialing in to mute their phone upon entering.

To speak during the meeting, register online by 5 p.m. Friday, July 29.

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board is made up of 13 experts in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering and other related fields that assist the state’s environmental and health and human services departments by recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, acting as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and helping the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be studied further.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to address climate change will not stop North Carolina’s law that requires power-generating facilities to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

But the highest court’s ruling has broader national implications that will be felt most certainly in the Tar Heel State, environmental law experts say.

In a 6 to 3 ruling last month in the case of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court found Congress did not give the agency authority to cap carbon dioxide, or CO2, emissions to the point that it would force electric utilities to shut down coal-fired power plants and move to renewable energy alternatives, including wind and solar.

The authority that the ruling stripped from EPA was granted to the North Carolina Utilities Commission last year under House Bill 951.

The measure, which Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law in October 2021, requires the North Carolina Utilities Commission “take all reasonable steps” to reduce CO2 emissions emitted in the state from electricity-generating facilities owned or operated by electric public utilities from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

The law allows the commission, at a minimum, to consider power generation, transmission distribution, grid modernization, storage energy efficiency measures and technology breakthroughs to achieve compliance.

The legislation gives the commission a wide variety of ways to achieve emissions reductions, explained Ryke Longest, clinical professor of law at Duke University School of Law and co-director of the Environmental Law and Policy Clinic.

“That section of that bill is doing a lot of work that was objected to by the majority of the Supreme Court opinion of West Virginia versus EPA,” he said. “That includes things like moving from coal fire to solar and saying that you’re going to have to retire some coal plants and you’re going to have to increase solar. That’s all authorized under this law.”

The commission has until Dec. 31 to develop a plan to achieve those CO2-reduction goals.

Don Hornstein, law professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Law in Chapel Hill, responded in an email saying the Supreme Court’s decision does not affect the EPA’s ability to continue regulating coal- and gas-fired power plant emissions of conventional pollutants.

“These power plants are incredibly dirty, forgetting about GHG (greenhouse gases) altogether,” he wrote.

Hornstein referenced the 2006 public nuisance lawsuit then-N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper brought against the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, which owned coal-fired power plants in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama.

Cooper filed the lawsuit after EPA denied the state’s petition to use the Clean Air Act to force the utility to reduce its air pollution.

A federal judge in North Carolina in 2009 ruled that emissions from three of TVA’s plants in Tennessee and one in Alabama were public nuisances. TVA appealed, and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit.

North Carolina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the appellate court’s decision, but withdrew the petition for review after TVA agreed to settlement with the EPA in 2011.

The settlement required the company to invest in pollution controls at 11 of its coal-fired plants and $350 million in clean energy and efficiency projects.

“Although that lawsuit was based largely on nuisance law, EPA has huge amounts of power to continue to regulate fossil-fuel plants’ emission of mercury, particulates, other ‘criteria’ and toxic emissions and my understanding is that EPA is already well along that path of forcing such power plants to comply with the existing law, all of which will only increase the price of power from such plants and amplify the cost savings that come from a utility’s switch to solar, wind, and possibly other non-GHG sources of electricity,” Hornstein said. “There’s also nothing in the Court’s opinion that impedes more and more North Carolinians taking a second look at rooftop solar themselves, a round of second-looks that recent changes in NC law has only underscored.”

But the North Carolina law, in Longest’s view, falls short because it does not take into account environmental justice, particularly when it comes to the public participation process.

“The process itself needs to be inclusive and intentionally inclusive and the process the utilities commission uses is none of those things,” he said. “It’s a secure docket that you have to register with the state to have the opportunity to participate on. The orders are written in fairly complicated legalese. You basically have to be a lawyer with some expertise in utilities law even to be able to understand what’s going on, and so I think there is a problem from an environmental justice standpoint, which is that the process itself is not in line with environmental justice in mind.”

In a Jan. 24 letter to the North Carolina Department of Administration, Longest and William Barber, III, a board member of the Department of Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board and director of climate and environmental justice at The Climate Reality Project, noted that 17 people had signed up to the docket since it was opened in October 2021.

Those who signed up were either state officials, electricity producers or large industrial users, according to the letter.

“It is absurd and circular logic to solicit people’s feedback about involvement using a subscription-based docket mechanism,” the letter states. “The only folks who got notice of this request for feedback about the process were those few who were already subscribed.”

Longest said he does not believe the letter has had much of an impact in the process.

Whatever plan the Utilities Commission devises to reach the state’s carbon emission reductions goal, the state cannot avoid the effects of climate change on a broader scale.

Hornstein concluded his email stating that, for North Carolina, “at the coast especially, on the front lines of climate change, our continued vulnerability to unprecedented rainfall storms, hurricanes, sea-level rise, will remain, after West Va v. EPA, only as good as the GHG-reduction efforts of OTHER states, no matter how successful we are within our own borders at GHG reductions. That is the real handicap that West Va v EPA imposed on everyone.”

The Chemours Company is suing the Environmental Protection Agency for its recent health advisory for GenX, one of the contaminants discharged for years into the Cape Fear River from the company’s plant in Fayetteville.

Chemours is challenging the EPA’s review of the agency’s health advisory for hexafluoropropylene oxide dime acid, or HFPO-DA (GenX), arguing the agency failed to use the best available science when making its determination.

“Nationally recognized toxicologists and other leading scientific experts across a range of disciplines have evaluated the EPA’s underlying analysis and concluded that it is fundamentally flawed,” according to a Chemours release. “EPA’s own peer reviewer called aspects of EPA’s toxicity assessment (which serves as the basis for the health advisory) ‘extreme’ and ‘excessive.’ The agency disregarded relevant data and incorporated grossly incorrect and overstated exposure assumptions in devising the health advisory. The EPA’s failure to use the best-available-science and follow its own standards are contrary to this administration’s commitment to scientific integrity, and we believe unlawful.”

The suit filed Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia specifically names EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who is also former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Chemours warned it might take legal action against the EPA after the agency’s assistant administrator for water, Radhika Fox, announced the final health advisory June 15.

Fox made the announcement at the third National PFAS Conference held in downtown Wilmington, a city and surrounding region thrust into the national spotlight five years ago when the news broke that Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility had for decades been discharging per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances into the Cape Fear River, air and ground.

Related: Health advisories for GenX, PFAS announced at conference

The EPA’s final health advisory for GenX is 10 parts per trillion, or ppt and, for perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS, at 2,000 ppt. PFBS has not been found in significant concentrations in samples in North Carolina, according to DEQ.

The agency also issued updated interim health advisories for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS.

GenX was created to replace PFOA, which was voluntarily phased out of production more than 10 years ago in the U.S.

Chemours states in its news release that HFPO-DA is not a commercial product and does not pose human health or environmental risks “when used for its intended purpose.”

Health studies of animals that ingested GenX show health effects in the kidneys, blood, immune system, liver and developing fetuses, according to the EPA’s toxicity assessment.

Chemours argues that the GenX toxicity assessment issued October 2021 was “materially different” from a draft assessment published in November 2018 and that the EPA did not provide public notice or allow for public comment on the new assessment.

“Upon review of the October 2021 Toxicity Assessment, Chemours and external experts identified numerous material scientific flaws, including its failure to incorporate available, highly relevant peer-reviewed studies and that it significantly overstates the potential for risk associated with HFPO-DA,” according to the release.

The EPA did not respond to an email request for comment Wednesday.

EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator Benita Best-Wong defended the GenX toxicity assessment in a letter to a law firm representing six North Carolina health and environmental groups, stating the assessment “was subject to two rigorous independent peer reviews by scientists who were screened for conflicts of interest in 2018 and 2021.”

Best-Wong went on to write that the agency asked the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences National Toxicology Program to conduct an independent review of the liver histopathology slides from two studies.

The agency published detailed responses to comments from both peer reviews and the assessment was put out for public review and comment for 60 days, she wrote.

That letter was in response to the groups’ call for the EPA to order Chemours to conduct health studies on 54 PFAS. Those groups, including Cape Fear River Watch, Center for Environmental Health, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, the NC Black Alliance and Toxic Free NC, filed a lawsuit against the EPA for failing to require Chemours to conduct the studies.

The EPA’s health advisory for GenX replaces the state’s 2018 provisional drinking water health goal of 140 ppt.

A consent order between DEQ, Cape Fear River Watch and Chemours requires the company to provide whole house filtration for households that rely on private water wells where GenX concentrations are above the health advisory.

“We expect Chemours to meet their obligations under the Consent Order and to the communities impacted by the PFAS contamination,” Sharon Martin, DEQ deputy secretary for public affairs, said in an email Wednesday.

Cape Fear River Watch Executive Director Dana Sargent said in a telephone interview she was “shaken” by the lawsuit.

“This is going to be seriously infuriating for the community to hear this news and to still be looking at commercials and this nonsense saying (Chemours) are good neighbors,” she said. “I think Chemours needs to recognize that they can’t continue to claim that they’re good neighbors while suing the nation’s regulatory agency based on their assessment of the GenX toxicity level, which was done under strict calculations based on available science on the health impacts of GenX. The science is science.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to excavate contaminated soil from portions of a more than 15-acre tract where chemically treated wood was once stored on the Navassa Superfund site.

During a meeting Tuesday evening, officials discussed the agency’s preference to have about 2,800 cubic yards of surface and subsurface soils dug up and removed from an area referred to as operable unit 2. The contaminated soils would then be disposed of at an EPA-approved landfill.

About 1.6 acres of operable unit 2, or OU-2, contains soil that pose unacceptable risk to human health, according to the EPA’s findings, which are based on numerous soil samples. About 14 acres of the 15.6-acre site do not pose unacceptable risk to human health.

The EPA is proposing to have a little more than 2,500 cubic yards of surface soil at a depth of up to 1 foot excavated and taken off the site. About 295 cubic yards of subsurface soils 1 to 2 feet below the ground’s surface would be removed.

This is one of four site remediation alternatives the EPA has considered for the site. Other alternatives include the following:

• Taking no action.
• Excavating contaminated soil and possibly stockpiling the soil on a different operable unit to eventually use as backfill. If it is determined that the soil cannot be reused it would be taken to an EPA-approved landfill.
• Covering contaminated soil with 1 foot of clean fill material and planting clean dirt with ground cover such as local grasses to prevent erosion. The vegetated soil would have to be monitored every five years.

Charles King, EPA interim remedial project manager, explained Tuesday that, though the agency’s preferred alternative is the most expensive – $1,578,000 – it would not require long-term maintenance.

Removing contaminated soil from the site would allow for unlimited use and unrestricted exposure to the land, making it suitable for residential development.

Navassa residents have expressed a particular interest in having at least some of the Superfund site used for housing.

The former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. site includes more than 254 acres where a wood-treating facility was operated for nearly 40 years.

The land was added to the National Priorities List of federal Superfund sites in 2010 because creosote, a tar-like substance made of hundreds of chemicals and used as a wood preservative, has been found in the groundwater, soil and sediment on portions of the site.

Since 2016, the EPA, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the Multistate Environmental Response Trust have hosted more than 20 community meetings in Navassa to update residents on the process and receive their feedback.

The EPA, in consultation with DEQ, oversees the Multistate Environmental Response Trust, which is court appointed to own the Superfund site and take responsibility for managing the remediation of the property.

The site has been broken down into five operable units.

OU-1, which includes the northernmost 20.2 acres of the property, was deleted from the National Priorities List last September. The land is also being eyed for residential use.

Operable units 3-5 will be addressed in future proposed plans.

OU-3 includes about 30 acres of marsh.

The 36 acres within OU-4 include a pond, process area and storage area for treated wood.

OU-5 includes groundwater affected by wood-treatment operations.

OU-1 is adjacent to 82 acres known as the eastern upland area, which is free of contamination and not part of the Superfund site.

Town officials hope that area will become the site for the proposed Moze Heritage Center and Nature Park. This would be the first cultural heritage center in the state dedicated to preserving the stories of enslaved Africans who worked the rice plantations along river banks in southeastern North Carolina.

After King’s presentation Tuesday at the meeting, which was held in person and virtually, a handful of attendees asked questions about the proposed remediation plans for OU-2. No one spoke in favor of or against the EPA’s preferred alternative to get the land ready for residential use.

The EPA’s public comment period on the proposed remediation of OU-2 ends June 30.

King said all comments will be reviewed after the deadline and, if those comments are generally acceptable of the EPA’s preferred alternative, that would shorten the time it takes the agency to release its record of decision.

If the preferred alternative is selected, officials anticipate work would begin on the site in early to mid-September and take two to three months to complete.

Comments may be submitted by telephone or email to EPA Remedial Project Manager Erik Spalvins, 404-562-8938, Spalvins.erik@epa.gov; or EPA Community Involvement Coordinator L’Tonya Spencer-Harvey, 404-562-8463, Spencer.latonya@epa.gov; or by mail to U.S. EPA Region 4, 61 Forsyth Street, S.W., 11^th Floor, Atlanta, GA  30303-8960.

WILMINGTON – New and updated federal drinking water health advisories have been issued for four chemical compounds, including GenX, a contaminant that for years has been discharged into the Cape Fear River.

Shortly after the announcement was made Wednesday morning at the third National PFAS Conference, the company responsible for releasing chemical contaminants into the river for decades pushed back on the new advisory for GenX, hinting it might fight the matter in court.

Radhika Fox, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s assistant administrator for water, told the more than 100 at the conference that the agency is setting final health advisories for GenX at 10 parts per trillion, or ppt, and perfluorobutane sulfonic acid, or PFBS, at 2,000 ppt.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality stated in a press release Wednesday that PFBS has, to date, not been found in significant concentrations in samples taken in the state.

EPA is also issuing updated interim health advisories for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS. The 2016 federal health advisories for PFOA and PFOS were set at 70 ppts.

“The updated advisory levels are based on new science including more than 400 recent studies which indicate that negative health effects may occur at extremely low levels, much lower than previously understood for both PFOA and PFOS. Based on that peer-reviewed science we are setting interim health advisory levels for PFOA at 0.04 parts per trillion and for PFOS 0.02 parts per trillion, so near zero,” Fox said, her statement followed by applause.

These synthetic compounds are a tiny fraction of the thousands of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that exist today.

The Cape Fear region has been cast in the national spotlight since the public was first made aware that the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works Facility had been discharging PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River, the raw drinking water source for more than a quarter-million people, for decades.

PFAS are also being released into the air and groundwater around the plant some 75 miles upriver from Wilmington.

“Our new interim health advisories are important milestones to help protect the public while EPA works to finalize our drinking water standards,” Fox said. “I hope you see that these four health advisories demonstrate EPA’s commitment to following the science to protect public health.”

A short time after Fox concluded her comments at the conference, Chemours released a statement saying that it supports government regulation, “based on the best available science” and that the EPA did not use that science to establish its health advisory on GenX.

“Nationally recognized toxicologists and other leading scientific experts across a range of disciplines have evaluated the EPA’s underlying analysis and concluded that it is fundamentally flawed,” the company stated. “The agency disregarded relevant data and issued a health advisory contrary to the agency’s own standards and this administration’s commitment to scientific integrity.”

The statement goes on to explain the company GenX, or hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid, HFPO-DA, is not a commercial product and that the company uses it and its ammonium in manufacturing processes for four fluoropolymers, which are used to produce semiconductors, cellular phones, hospital ventilators and other products.

“It is not broadly used like older generations of PFAS, such as PFOA,” according to Chemours. “HFPO-DA does not break down to form PFOA or any other PFAS in the environment.”

“We are already using state-of-the-art technologies at our sites to abate emissions and remediate historical releases. We are evaluating our next steps, including potential legal action, to address the EPA’s scientifically unsound action,” the company stated.

GenX was created to replace PFOA, which was voluntarily phased out of production more than 10 years ago in the U.S.

Health studies of animals that ingested GenX show health effects in the kidneys, blood, immune system, liver and developing fetuses, according to the EPA’s toxicity assessment.

Studies on PFBS show health effects in the thyroid, reproductive organs and tissues, kidneys and developing fetuses.

“We are moving with all haste in the development of a national drinking water standard for PFOA, PFOS and I will say that we are developing the options for this rulemaking to see if we can include other PFAS, not just those two,” Fox said.

DEQ and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services “are moving quickly to evaluate the state’s drinking water supplies based on these health advisories and determine appropriate next steps to assess and reduce exposure risks,” according to the DEQ news release.

The EPA’s health advisory for GenX will replace the state’s provisional drinking water health goal of 140 ppt developed in 2018.

Under a consent order among DEQ, Cape Fear River Watch and Chemours, the company is required to provide whole house filtration for households that rely on private water wells where GenX concentrations are above the health advisory.

DEQ estimates that more than 1,700 additional private well users will be eligible for whole house filtration or connection to a public water supply based on EPA’s new health advisory.

“DEQ is directing Chemours to proceed with the implementation of the health advisory and additional information will be provided to residents about their options and next steps as soon as possible,” according to the release.

North Carolina stands to receive additional federal funding to address PFAS in the state.

Fox also announced Wednesday that $1 billion in grant funding through President Joe Biden’s $108 billion bipartisan infrastructure law will help small and disadvantaged communities to address PFAS and other emerging contaminants. The funds will be the first installment in monies dedicated to addressing PFAS.

“Because of this investment for the first time ever we have $10 billion available to support cleanup, testing, monitoring for PFAS and other emerging contaminants,” Fox said to a group of reporters following a tour of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant.

DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser said the state anticipates receiving about $28 million a year.

“This additional billion for small and disadvantaged communities will be on top of that. That is great,” she said.

The state will need to continue working with federal partners to identify additional funds for addressing PFAS-related issues.

Fox and Biser were given a tour Wednesday of the $43 million addition currently under construction at the Sweeney plant in downtown Wilmington after Fox spoke at the PFAS National Conference.

The plant is being upgraded with the addition of a granular activated carbon, or GAC, system expected to filter out on average 90% of PFAS from its raw water source, the Cape Fear River.

Following the tour, Brunswick County Public Utilities Director John Nichols made a presentation to Fox and Biser about what that utility’s multi-million-dollar upgrade to a low-pressure reverse-osmosis system to remove PFAS.

Both utilities have had to pass down the costs of removing PFAS from drinking water to their water customers.

Proposed legislation would require companies responsible for releasing PFAS above health thresholds to pay costs public utilities incur to remove chemicals from their raw drinking water sources.

House Bill 1095 would authorize the Environmental Management Commission to adopt maximum contaminant levels for chemical compounds.

DEQ is in the process of establishing maximum contaminant levels for 10 to 15 compounds specific to North Carolina. The department will implement drinking water standards through its permitting program.

The lower Neuse River is known for many things, including sportfishing and magnificent and serene views from homesites, campgrounds and parks, but increasingly often during this time of year, a foul stench begins arising from its waters.

Harmful algal blooms and fish kills can affect recreation, business and property values, and create unsafe and undesirable environmental effects.

“The last five summers there’s been quite a few blooms that have really worried people enough to where property values are starting to be at risk because of summertime blooms, or people can’t enjoy swimming off their dock,” Dr. Nathan Hall of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences recently told Coastal Review.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality submits a biennial list of the state’s impaired waters to the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act. The draft impaired waters list for North Carolina released for public comment earlier this year is part of an effort to address poor water quality conditions across the state, but it also prompts questions about how to best carry out any restoration work and which water bodies should be listed.

The public comment period on the draft ended in April.

Once a water body has been listed as impaired, the state must develop a restoration plan that includes standards for reducing pollution — a path to improved water quality.

Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are found naturally in ecosystems, but when overly abundant in waterways, they can create algal blooms that, in turn, can reduce the amount of oxygen in the water and cause loss of marine life, including fish kills.

Areas experiencing an excessive growth of microscopic and macroscopic vegetation are known as nutrient sensitive waters. Waters classified as nutrient sensitive waters in North Carolina include the Neuse, Tar-Pamlico and Chowan River basins, the New River watershed in the White Oak River basin, and the Haw River watershed.

Waterways not listed

EPA guidance suggests that nutrient sensitive waters are at least “expected not to meet standards,” and are impaired for designated uses due to excessive nutrients. This means that pollution may make the waters unsuitable for recreational use, public water supply usage or consumption of its fish or shellfish. However, some waterways, such as the Chowan River and Albemarle Sound often experience large algal blooms and are not listed as impaired by nutrients on the North Carolina impaired waters list even though they are showing visual evidence of nutrient overloading. These waterways have been experiencing algal blooms in recent years to an extent not seen since the 1970s.

“I think right now that Chowan and Albemarle Sound are areas that need a lot of attention pretty quickly, because there’s some pretty massive harmful algal blooms,” said Dr. Jud Kenworthy, a former research biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Kenworthy explained that the budgeting and scientific monitoring issues “can’t be separated. They go hand in hand.”

“The state government just doesn’t spend enough money and that’s the problem. And so, trying to adopt some sort of criteria or standard in our estuaries is going to require vastly increasing the money we spend on the people and the infrastructure to actually do the monitoring,” he said.

Excessive algal growth occurs in a setting of abundant nitrogen and phosphorus coupled with conditions of warm temperatures, plentiful sunlight and still waters. Water quality standards for nitrogen and phosphorus are not in place in North Carolina. Instead, North Carolina uses chlorophyll a as an indirect indicator of the amount of algae that is growing in the water. As Coastal Review reported last week, this brings into question the efficacy of current standards and tools used to identify potentially nutrient sensitive waters.

Related: NC water quality thresholds may leave seagrass vulnerable

Sound Rivers Tar-Pamlico Riverkeeper Jillian Howell told Coastal Review that the organization often does water quality sampling to detect both organic and inorganic forms of nitrogen, as well as phosphorus.

“We see high or elevated levels of these nutrients. But there’s no standard to compare that to,” she said. “So even though we know that these levels are not naturally occurring because they’re too elevated and it is from like inputs. Whether it be the sources such as stormwater or septic or sanitary or human waste or from animal runoff, the levels are elevated and are too high, but again, there are no standards.”

Public health

The presence of these excess nutrients is not only a problem for the ecosystem, “it can also be a public health-related issue,” noted Howell.

Exposure to harmful algal blooms can cause serious health problems including rashes, stomach or liver illness, respiratory problems and neurological effects. Toxic water conditions create unsafe conditions for pets and livestock as well. Exposure can lead to illness in animals or death.

Fish kills are the visual evidence of impaired waterways but also a blind spot.

“It feels like lots of folks are kind of desensitized to this because it is a regularly occurring thing now that we see,” Howell said. “But just because it happens frequently, that doesn’t mean it’s normal. That’s a sign that waters are in distress and that the nutrient burden is too much for our waterways.”

Dead zones

Nutrient pollution can create areas with little or no oxygen known as dead zones. Once the harmful algae die, they are decomposed by bacteria, which removes dissolved oxygen from surrounding water. One prominent example of a dead zone in the United States is in the Gulf of Mexico. Kenworthy explained that in the late 1990s and early 2000s there was a substantial effort to educate farmers that people across numerous states were contributing to the pollution of the Mississippi River watershed, which stretches all the way from northern Minnesota down to Texas.

There is a possibility of dead zones developing in North Carolina waterways. Kenworthy said, “What people need to understand from inland areas and the Piedmont is that if you’re in a watershed that’s delivering surface water to an estuary, the impact is going to have a really wide scope.”

Thick, murky algal blooms also block sunlight from reaching the bottom of the waterway preventing the growth of underwater vegetation.

“There were a few fairly large-sized seagrass beds along the northern shore of Albemarle Sound in the Edenton area. Five or six years ago, they were pretty expansive, and now they’re gone,” Hall said. The loss of underwater vegetation creates shoreline loss and changes in the marine environment.

Pollution sources

The sources of the nutrient pollution include agricultural and urban runoff, wastewater treatment plant discharges and air pollution.

Stormwater runoff can carry nutrients from urban or agricultural lands and they accumulate in surface waters and groundwater. Wastewater treatment plants, home septic systems and animal waste also are primary sources of excessive nitrogen and phosphorus in waterways.

Fossil fuels emit large amounts of nitrogen into the atmosphere that can slowly infiltrate waterways.

Hall explained that everyone is contributing to the problem and that it’s going to take people being aware that it’s not just agricultural fields and big point sources, but also things like lawns.

“There are things people can do, and if everybody did it, it would probably make a difference” in restoring and protecting North Carolina waterways, he said.

One way reduce your nutrient footprint is to apply fertilizers only when necessary, avoid application before windy or rainy days, use the recommended amount and avoid fertilizing close to waterways. Chemical fertilizers contain nitrates and phosphates that make their way into watersheds mainly due to stormwater runoff.

Other ways individuals can control the amount of nutrients leached into the environment include properly maintaining septic systems, properly disposing of pet waste, planting native plants and using water and energy more efficiently.

Stewardship, along with community awareness and involvement, aids the health of North Carolina waterways. Howell, the riverkeeper, also stressed the importance of paying attention to what’s happening in your local community and being engaged and showing up to public meetings.

“All of these water systems are stressed but they’re not dead,” said Hall of UNC. “They’re still really nice places to visit and canoe and fish and swim.”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials announced last week three steps they say will better protect communities from pollutants that are often called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment or in our bodies.

The federal agency detailed plans to improve methods to detect per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in water, reduce PFAS discharges into the country’s waterways, and protect fish and aquatic ecosystems from PFAS. 

PFAS are a large group of man-made chemicals resistant to heat, oils, stains, grease and water that have been used in consumer products and industrial processes since the 1940s. Research shows that exposure to some PFAS may be linked to harmful health effects in humans and animals.

Many in the state have been keeping close tabs on action being taken to stop PFAS pollution since news broke five years ago that the chemicals were detected in the Cape Fear River, a source of drinking water for many in the Wilmington area.

The Wilmington StarNews first reported in June 2017 that a North Carolina State University-led study had detected a compound called GenX and other PFAS in the Cape Fear River. Chemours’ Fayetteville Works facility was found to be the source of the chemicals in the waterway.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, litigated a 2019 consent order requiring Chemours to stop at least 99% of PFAS pollution. During all this, EPA Administrator Michael Regan was secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

Regan put out a statement Thursday on the latest actions, which follow the administration’s plan announced last fall to combat PFAS pollution and complement the $10 billion in spending to address PFAS and emerging contaminants in the $1 trillion infrastructure legislation passed last year.

“EPA is using all available tools to address PFAS contamination as part of a broader, whole of government effort to protect communities across the country from these chemicals,” Regan said. “This is why we put a Strategic Roadmap in place, and why President Biden fought for billions in funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to tackle this challenge. Today’s actions help protect the health of all Americans as we deliver on our commitment to research, restrict, and remediate PFAS.”

New testing method

PFAS and non-PFAS fluorinated compounds such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals are a common source of organofluorines, or molecules with a carbon-fluorine bond, found in wastewater, according to the EPA.

EPA’s Draft Method 1621 announced Thursday detects organofluorines, which do not often occur naturally. When used in conjunction with methods that target individual PFAS, the new method can broadly screen for the presence of PFAS at the parts-per-billion level in wastewater. It’s still in testing and officials intend to publish an updated version later this year. 

Dana Sargent, executive director with Cape Fear River Watch, responded to Coastal Review in an email Friday, saying that the new method would add to, but should not replace, the current method, mass spectrometry using targeted analysis. She said current the method alone only provides insight on a tiny subset of the PFAS known to be out there. 

“The nontargeted analysis the consent order required Chemours conduct showed 257 ‘unknown’ PFAS being discharged from this one facility, yet regular sampling by the state, utilities and others only provides concentrations for about 20-30 PFAS,” she said. “Neither the public nor our decision makers are getting an accurate view of the extent of the issue when relying solely on testing for specific PFAS. This new method will not provide specifics on which types of PFAS or how much of each is in a given sample, but will give us that big picture view to inform more detailed sampling.”

New permitting direction

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permitting program, created in 1972 by the Clean Water Act, helps address water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants to waters of the United States.

EPA officials propose to use existing NPDES authorities to reduce discharges at the source and obtain more comprehensive information through monitoring on sources of PFAS.

The agency on Thursday issued the memo, Addressing PFAS Discharges in EPA-Issued NPDES Permits and Expectations Where EPA is the Pretreatment Control Authority, which provides instructions for monitoring provisions, analytical methods, the use of pollution prevention, and best management practices to address discharges of PFAS. 

EPA also plans to issue new guidance to state permitting authorities to address PFAS in NPDES permits in a future action.

Sargent noted that the instructions for federally issued NPDES permits would not apply to permits issued by states, “So we look forward to even stronger recommendations from EPA to the states.”

Protecting aquatic life

EPA officials are also proposing the first Clean Water Act aquatic life criteria for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, to protect aquatic life from short-term and long-term toxic effects of these chemicals, which are two of the most studied PFAS.

The agency published Monday in the Federal Register the “Draft Recommended Aquatic Life Ambient Water Quality Criteria for Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)” and “Draft Recommended Aquatic Life Ambient Water Quality Criteria for Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid (PFOS)” for a 30-day public comment period ending June 2. 

Following the comment period, the EPA intends to issue final PFOA and PFOS recommended criteria. States and Tribes may consider adopting the final criteria into their water quality standards or can adopt other scientifically defensible criteria that are based on local or site-specific conditions. 

In the Cape Fear area, advocates say many depend on subsistence fishing. They say standards for aquatic life are important for those who consume it.

Veronica Carter is a member of DEQ’s 16-member Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board, Leland town council member and longtime board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review. She is among those who have called for safeguards for people who consume fish they catch in the river. She said the potential exposure to contaminants is an environmental justice issue. 

It’s a source of protein for those who can’t afford to buy food, Carter says in a video made last summer for the Stop, Check, and Enjoy! campaign, a collaborative effort that encourages eating and preparing fish in ways to limit exposure to chemical contaminants found in those caught in the Cape Fear River. 

“It’s an environmental justice issue because it is not their fault that the river is impaired. We have polluted the environment, our Cape Fear River,” Carter says in the video. 

Carter said it’s great that there’s a new way to detect PFAS levels, but “what are we doing about getting rid of PFAS?”

“I don’t want to reduce, I want to eliminate,” she said.

‘Well past time’

Sargent said in an interview that there needs to be requirements and reminders by the EPA that state regulators adhere to the Clean Water Act and include technology-based effluent limits within their permits, rather than rely on best management practices after the fact. 

States should not be permitted to wait for a permit to expire, but should have the authority to revise current permits to stop the ongoing contamination by PFAS polluters across this country now, she said.

“Polluters have been given carte blanche to dump their toxic chemicals into our environment and our bodies for decades; it is well past time for our regulators to protect people and the environment instead of the corporate polluters,” she added.

The Southern Environmental Law Center’s Geoff Gisler, senior attorney who represented Cape Fear River Watch against Chemours in North Carolina, said in a statement Thursday that the EPA’s action is the beginning of a significant step forward in protecting communities from PFAS. 

The groups’ lawsuit resulted in a consent order with DEQ, Riverwatch and Chemours to stop the GenX and other PFAS pollution at its source.

Related: Chemours asks to build barrier wall to slow PFAS

“The agency recognizes that existing law requires all sources to disclose their pollution and that EPA has the responsibility to reduce or eliminate those discharges through the permitting process,” he said. “Now, the agency must put monitoring requirements and pollution controls into action. We encourage EPA to use its full authority under the Clean Water Act to eliminate PFAS contamination by modifying its permits as fast as possible.”  

Carter said one of her concerns is that low-income families downriver are paying for water they can’t drink and can’t afford to buy bottled water. Particularly school-aged children who are receiving free breakfast and lunch, “what do they do about water? The water fountains are closed off and they can’t afford to buy bottled water for the kids.”

“At least the EPA is talking about PFAS, and I give Regan credit for that. One of the things I said to him when he left DEQ was not to forget us, and he hasn’t,” Carter said. “It is going to take state law and permit changes to protect us better from pollution.”

She said action needs to come from the federal government as well.

“Pollution doesn’t recognize state boundaries.”

State officials recently announced that $1.3 million in federal funding is available for watershed restoration projects.

Local governments, agencies, nonprofits, educational institutions and communities in areas with a state-approved watershed restoration plan have a little more than a month to get their application together for the grant to help improve and protect water quality.

The funding is provided for in Section 319(h) of the federal Clean Water Act, a provision typically called the 319 Grant Program. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency funds projects designed to reduce nonpoint source pollution, such as stormwater, and the Division of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources selects the qualifying applicants that have an approved restoration plan for a water body listed by as impaired.

“The 319 Grant Program allows governments and organizations to actively engage in protecting North Carolina’s water resources,” said Richard W. Gannon, supervisor of the division’s Nonpoint Source Planning Branch, in a statement. “Projects that incorporate climate change adaptation or benefit historically underserved communities are encouraged to apply for this funding.” 

Nonpoint source pollution usually comes from land runoff, rain and snow, from the atmosphere, drainage, seepage or hydrologic modification, according to the EPA. When rainfall or snowmelt moves over and through the ground it collects and carries away natural and human-made pollutants, eventually depositing the pollutants into lakes, rivers, wetlands, coastal waters and ground water.

The application deadline is midnight May 4. An interagency workgroup is to review the proposals and schedule interviews for eligible candidates in June. Awards are to be announced this summer.

About 10 projects have been awarded each year since the program began in 2005. The nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, has worked on 17 projects funded through the 319 program, federation Deputy Director Lauren Kolodij said.

Kolodij explained that intense rainstorms cause flooding and water quality degradation as the runoff funnels pollutants to coastal waters. “It is the greatest polluter of our creeks, rivers and sounds,” she said, adding that “increased flooding from the greater frequency, intensity and duration of heavy rain events is plaguing the coast and the state. Altered hydrology from land use is contributing to the severity and impact of storms.”  

The EPA section 319 grant is a source of funding that communities across the state depend on to develop, design and construct restoration projects in jurisdictions with an approved watershed restoration plan, she said, adding that the funding is invaluable for communities that want to use hydrologic restoration at a watershed scale to become more flood-resilient.

The federation works with communities, researchers, local governments and state agencies to address flooding and water quality problems and priorities. Recent projects include the Bradley and Hewletts Creek watershed restoration plans in Wilmington, a watershed restoration plan in Pine Knoll Shores, a project to reduce stormwater runoff at the Swansboro Municipal Complex, and work to reduce stormwater volume on the University of North Carolina Wilmington campus, as well as in Beaufort and Swansboro.

“The plans developed by the federation and partners all share a strategy for watershed restoration that is based on maintaining or mimicking the natural hydrology of the landscape and a key component of stakeholder involvement,” Kolodij said. “The plans have resulted in the use of cost-effective nature-based stormwater strategies to mimic the natural capacity of the landscape to manage billions of gallons of water, built community buy-in for a watershed approach, and provided a foundation for securing federal, state and local funding for plan implementation.”

She said that science demonstrates that there are fewer flooding incidents and better water quality in watersheds where natural hydrology is protected, restored or mimicked.

The Coastal Federation has “embraced a watershed restoration framework built on the key benefits of hydrologic matching and has been implementing the framework across the coast,” she added.

Dr. Bill Hunt, a William Neal Reynolds distinguished university professor and extension specialist in North Carolina State University’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, told Coastal Review that he had worked on five or six 319 projects, mostly in Wilmington focusing on Bradley, Hewletts, and Burnt Mill creeks.

Nonpoint source pollution impacts many things that people who live, or visit, the coast care about such as swimming. “When we devise potentially inexpensive ways to keep pathogens out of our creeks, we open up the opportunity for currently restricted water-based activities to be enjoyed again by lots of people,” he said.

He said he most recently worked on a now-complete 319 project in Jacksonville, and about 18 years ago, he worked on a project focusing on the White Oak watershed, leading to projects in both Carteret and Onslow counties.

“Much of what we have examined has been to trial practices that we know will work, but maybe not know exactly how well — and then monitor them as part of the project. The monitoring helps us determine the exact benefit these treatments can have,” Hunt said.

One recent accomplishment was evaluating how well shallow media depth, shallow water table bioretention cells worked, both in Jacksonville and Wilmington.

A bioretention cell, one of many nature-based, stormwater management strategies, is an area that has been dug out and then filled with media, or specific soils, plants or grass, and is designed to temporarily hold and filter stormwater. Current state standards require no less than 2 feet of soil or plants, depending on the plant, and the lowest point of the bioretention cell must be a minimum of 2 feet above the seasonal high water table.

Hunt said that while the type of bioretention cell they used does not currently meet current state standards, the “style” of coastal-specific bioretention did well removing residual water treatment, or WTR, pollutants of both pathogens and nutrients.

 The success of this bioretention cell is leading N.C. State to recommend to the Department of Environmental Quality to consider the new design for the coast, he added.

There are benefits from putting these best management practices in the ground, Hunt said. “People can see and touch their tax dollars at work. Beautifying a parking lot or creating simple infiltration zones can lead others to want to copy. That’s what we are hoping for.”

One of the best parts of working in coastal North Carolina are the town staff and officials. N.C. State cannot do these projects alone, and by working with staff at the city of Jacksonville or Wilmington, lots of improvement is possible, he said.

Applications must include an approved watershed restoration plan for a water body named on the 303(d) Impaired Water list as described in the Clean Water Act, division officials said. Instructions to create a plan and case studies are available on the DEQ website. 

The Nonpoint Source Planning Branch approves the watershed plans required to apply for a 319 grant, after review by appropriate Division of Water Resources staff and any needed revisions to meet EPA’s nine elements to develop a watershed plan.

The division can wholly fund, partially fund or not fund any proposal or any component of any Section 319 grant proposal. Availability of grant funds, amounts and award schedules are conditioned on Congressional Approval of the EPA budget and subsequent allocation to the state of Section 319 funds.

Six eastern North Carolina environmental justice and community groups that sued the Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 seeking EPA-required health studies in communities affected by dozens of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances have revived a lawsuit originally filed during the Trump administration after the agency’s action on their petition fell short of their demands.

The groups, the Center for Environmental Health, Cape Fear River Watch, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, the NC Black Alliance and Toxic Free NC, announced Thursday that they were reactivating their lawsuit against the EPA. The groups said the agency failed to grant their petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act seeking to require Chemours Co., the manufacturer of a compound known as GenX and based near Fayetteville, to conduct critical health studies on 54 substances that the groups say are putting hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents at risk.

In a statement, Bob Sussman, the petitioners’ counsel and a former senior EPA official, said that “We are returning to court to exercise our right under TSCA to challenge EPA’s disappointing refusal to hold Chemours accountable for studies that EPA had the clear authority to require. We are confident that the court will direct EPA to assure that Chemours pays for essential testing on chemicals that are in the drinking water and blood of hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians.”    

The groups’ petition, filed Oct. 14, 2020, asked EPA to require that Chemours fund a comprehensive research program addressing residents’ concerns in communities along the Cape Fear River.

Related: Brunswick, New Hanover County chairs blast Chemours ads

The EPA on Dec. 28, 2021, announced it was granting the petition but stopped short of meeting the groups’ demands, agreeing to require limited testing on only seven of the 54 PFAS that it had announced in October would be conducted under its general PFAS testing strategy. The agency also refused to require an epidemiological study of contaminated communities or testing of PFAS mixtures present in drinking water and in residents’ blood, which the groups said were the most important studies in understanding how PFAS pollution has affected the health of exposed populations.

The groups say residents have been exposed for decades to numerous PFAS in their drinking water, air, food and soil because of pollution from the Chemours facility. 

“For decades, our communities have suffered silently from PFAS contaminated water. All the while, polluting corporations have continued to profit from our pain. Our dedicated team of community advocates, legal counsel, and scientists have provided EPA with the tools to clearly and swiftly act to save our communities. If EPA is unwilling to use these tools, we will look to our legal remedies to make sure the agency holds Chemours accountable ” said La’Meshia Whittington, NC Black Alliance, in a statement.

Researchers detected the compound GenX in the river downstream from Chemours nearly 10 years ago and subsequently in the river-drawn drinking water supply for the Wilmington area. State health officials in 2017 were notified of the contamination, which also included other related substances. As recently as last year, the state fined Chemours over air emissions of PFAS and required to take additional actions to address contamination, including that of private wells.

A spokesperson for Chemours declined Coastal Review’s request for comment for this report.

Updated to include comments from the EPA

John Nicholson, previously chief deputy secretary with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, is now chief of staff in the Office of the Regional Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 4 in Atlanta.

In addition to North Carolina, Region 4 serves Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and six tribal nations.

The office of the regional administrator, or ORA, supervises the region and serves as the primary regional representative to the Office of the Administrator at headquarters on national initiatives and administration priorities. ORA works with tribal partners to implement environmental programs. The office also administers key programs that support the agency’s mission of protecting human health and the environment, EPA states on the website.

Allison Wise, chief of Public and Governmental Affairs for EPA Region 4 explained in an email response that Nicholson’s first day with the EPA was Jan. 10. In his new role, he will assist the regional administrator in the day-to-day management of the region and coordinate closely with the regional division directors and Headquarters on implementation of the Administration’s environmental goals and priorities, she said.

Friday was Nicholson’s last day with NCDEQ. The agency said it will announce his replacement once chosen.

“While we are all sad to see him leave DEQ, his new role is an exciting opportunity,” Sharon Martin, Department of Environmental Quality Deputy Secretary for Public Affairs, told Coastal Review Wednesday.

Nicholson, who served as chief deputy secretary for NCDEQ since 2017, led and coordinated efforts of the department and the senior staff to execute the department’s mission, goals and objectives, according to the state.

A retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, he was active duty for 28 years, and was the the military affairs adviser to two North Carolina governors.

Nicholson earned a master’s in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College, a master’s in military studies from the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College and a bachelor’s in political science from San Diego State University.

Nicholson has experience in advanced strategic planning, policy development and workforce analysis while leading high-performance teams. He advanced programs in energy efficiency and environmental conservation while serving his country, according to NCDEQ.

NAVASSA – Excavation, investigations and reuse planning associated with the site formerly home to the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp.’s creosote-based wood-treatment facility are to be discussed Tuesday during online meetings.

Representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the Multistate Environmental Response Trust are holding two virtual community meetings about the Superfund site and adjacent property, 4 p.m.-5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Meeting topics will include the upcoming Operable Unit 2 excavation and related work, ongoing investigations and reuse planning and property transfer.

Operable Unit 2 includes about 80 acres free of contamination and not part of the Superfund site.

In September, officials deleted the 20.2-acre Operable Unit 1 area of the site from the National Priorities List.

The meetings are online only, and the two times are offered to allow greater participation. Both meetings will begin with the same presentation, and a question-and-answer period will follow, officials said.

To join the meetings by phone, call 301-715-8592, and use meeting ID 946 584 8922# and passcode 664564#.

To join online, visit this Zoom link or enter tinyurl.com/NavassaMeetings into your browser.

Key members of the project team include:

• Multistate Trust Director of Environmental Justice Policies and Programs Claire Woods.
• Multistate Trust Senior Project Manager Ngozi Ibe.
• Multistate Trust Director of Construction Services Richard Elliott.
• EPA Region 4 Remedial Project Manager Erik Spalvins.
• EPA Region 4 Community Involvement Coordinator L’Tonya Spencer-Harvey.
• North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Superfund Section Environmental Engineer Dave Mattison.

The Multistate Trust is to post presentation materials at https://navassa.greenfieldenvironmental.com following the meetings.

Wood treating operations took place from 1936 to 1974 on about 70 acres of the 246-acre former Kerr-McGee Property on the Brunswick River at Sturgeon Creek. The company had dismantled the wood-treatment buildings and facilities by 1980.

In 2010, groundwater, soil, and sediment contamination by creosote-related chemicals led EPA to add the former Kerr-McGee Property to the National Priorities List of federal Superfund sites. Officials said site contamination does not currently threaten people living or working near the Superfund site.

In 2005, the former Kerr-McGee Property was conveyed to Tronox, a Kerr-McGee spinoff that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009. In 2011, the Multistate Trust acquired about 152 acres of the former Kerr-McGee Property as a court-appointed trustee as part of the Tronox bankruptcy settlement. In 2016, the Multistate Trust purchased an additional 2 acres.

The Multistate Trust is working with the EPA and NCDEQ on site investigation, remediation and facilitating safe, beneficial future reuse.

Learn more

• Presentation from Sept. 21 community meeting
• Presentation from Sept. 22 contractor information session.
• The Multistate Trust website: Navassa.GreenfieldEnvironmental.com
• The EPA website: www.epa.gov/superfund/kerr-mcgee-chemical-corp

The state Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board will meet next week to hear an update on the Environmental Protection Agency’s per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, Roadmap and how it relates to North Carolina’s efforts.

The public is invited to attend the 10 a.m. Dec. 6 meeting being online or by phone at 1-415-655-0003, access code 2433 061 1831. Organizers ask that participants mute their phone upon joining the call.

“The roadmap sets timelines by which EPA plans to take specific actions and commits to bolder new policies to safeguard public health, protect the environment, and hold polluters accountable,” according to the EPA.

Sushma Masemore, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s assistant secretary for the Environment, will present the EPA’s PFAS Roadmap update. There will also be a presentation on recommendations for other forever chemicals, DEQ’s related regulatory efforts as well as a summary of the GenX toxicity assessment.

To speak during the meeting, register by 5 p.m. Dec. 3 using the registration form. 

The Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board includes 16 experts in toxicology, public health, ecology, engineering and other related fields. Their expertise assists the state departments of Environmental Quality and Health and Human Services by recommending reviews and evaluations of contaminants, acting as consultants on DEQ’s determinations to regulate contaminants, and helping the agencies identify contaminants of concern and determine which contaminants should be studied further.

The Environmental Protection Agency has asked its science advisory board to review new data that suggest certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, can cause negative health effects at lower levels of exposure than initially thought and one in particular is likely carcinogenic.

Officials said Tuesday that the agency is committed to science-based approaches to protect public health from exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, including updating drinking water health advisories with new peer-reviewed approaches and developing national primary drinking water regulations for these contaminants.

“Under our new PFAS Strategic Roadmap, EPA is moving aggressively on clear, robust, and science-based actions to protect communities suffering from legacy PFOA and PFOS contamination,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in a statement. “This action will ensure a rigorous review from experienced scientists to strengthen our understanding of this preliminary information as the agency works toward developing revised health advisories for PFOA and PFOS, and soon establishing regulations that protect communities from these contaminants.”

The science advisory board is to review four draft documents with recent scientific data and new analyses that indicate negative health effects may occur at much lower levels of exposure to PFOA and PFOS than previously understood and that PFOA is a likely carcinogen. The draft documents present EPA’s initial analysis and findings with respect to this new information.

After the peer review, this information will be used to inform health advisories and the development of maximum contaminant level goals and a National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for PFOA and PFOS. EPA is now seeking independent scientific review of these documents. EPA is making these draft documents available to the public to ensure a transparent and robust evaluation of the available information.

“EPA will not wait to take action to protect the public from PFAS exposure. The agency will be actively engaging with its partners regarding PFOA and PFOS in drinking water, including supporting their monitoring and remediation efforts,” officials said.

The bipartisan infrastructure law President Biden signed Monday invests $10 billion to help communities test for and clean up PFAS and other emerging contaminants in drinking water and wastewater, and can be used to support projects in disadvantaged communities.

EPA officials said they will work as quickly as possible to issue updated health advisories for PFOA and PFOS that reflect this new science and input from the advisory board. The EPA said it would also continue developing a proposed PFAS national primary drinking water regulation for publication next fall.

This is a developing story.

The Army Corps of Engineers, citing a recent court decision in California throwing out Trump-era regulatory changes affecting water quality certifications under section 401 of the Clean Water Act, has put a hold on permitting decisions under its nationwide permit program.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Oct. 21 remanded and vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2020 401 Water Quality Certification rule that became effective Sept. 11, 2020. Judge William Alsup’s decision applies nationwide.

The Corps has not formally announced the suspension of its nationwide permit program that provides more expedited Clean Water Act Section 401 approval for a wide range of projects including stormwater management projects, renewable energy, pipelines and other infrastructure as well as residential and commercial development and agriculture projects.  But while it doesn’t appear that the Corps has issued a formal public notice, a blurb under the “Latest News” heading on the Corps’ Sacramento District’s website noted Nov. 4 that final permit decisions that rely on a Section 401 water quality certification or waiver under the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2020 rule would not be made “at this time.”

“The Corps is working to provide more refined guidance that provides a way forward that allows us to finalize permit decisions,” according to the post.

The EPA notes on its website that the order requires a temporary return to a 1971 rule until the agency can finalize a new certification rule. The agency said its own review of the 2020 rule “identified substantial concerns with a number of provisions that relate to cooperative federalism principles and CWA section 401’s goal of ensuring that states and Tribes are empowered to protect water resources that are essential to public health, ecosystems, and economic opportunity. The agency has already begun working on a regulatory effort to address those concerns.”

According to a Nov. 5 blog post published by the law firm Troutman Pepper, which represents developers, landowners and permit applicants, had received an email notification last week saying that the Corps would not be processing their requests for coverage under a variety of Clean Water Act Section 404 Nationwide Permits. These are general permits for activities that “will cause only minimal adverse environmental effects when performed separately, and will have only minimal cumulative adverse effects on the environment,” the blog’s authors noted, citing the Clean Water Act’s Section 404.

The post notes that the notification on the Sacramento District’s website was on the day that the Senate confirmed Michael Connor as the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, but adds that It was unclear whether Connor ordered the halt in permitting.

North Carolina Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis, asked Wednesday during the Coastal Resources Commission meeting in Atlantic Beach what the action could mean for projects in the state’s coastal counties, responded that state officials had the same question.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday an approach to address pollution nationwide from the types of toxic “forever chemicals” that have been plaguing southeastern North Carolina for decades, a plan that includes listing certain of these substances as hazardous under the Superfund Act.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced the three-year “PFAS Strategic Roadmap: EPA’s Commitments to Action 2021-2024” Monday to a handful gathered at North Carolina State University’s Lake Raleigh Fishing Pier in Raleigh. Gov. Roy Cooper, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Elizabeth Biser and Congresswoman Deborah Ross, D-North Carolina, joined Regan for the announcement. The event was streamed live on YouTube, but technical issues frequently interrupted the program for viewers.

The strategic roadmap, the result of work by the EPA Council on PFAS that Regan put in place in April, focuses on three strategies: increase investments in research, leverage authorities to act now to restrict PFAS chemicals from being released into the environment, and accelerate the cleanup of PFAS contamination, EPA officials said.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including GenX, are a group of man-made chemicals used in industry and consumer products since the 1940s. Research suggests that PFAS breaks down slowly and can accumulate in people, animals and the environment, which can lead to adverse health outcomes, according to the EPA.

Regan has long been entrenched in managing PFAS. He was serving as the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality secretary when news broke June 7, 2017, that the Chemours Fayetteville Works facility had for years released PFAS into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water source for the Wilmington area. President Joe Biden selected Regan earlier this year to serve as the EPA administrator.

Regan said that moving to designate certain PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund program would allow the agency to clean up contaminated sites and hold the responsible parties accountable by either having them perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-led cleanup work.

“The Superfund program has successfully protected American communities by requiring polluters to pay to clean up the hazardous waste and pollution that they themselves have released in our environment,” he explained. “This strategy will leverage EPA existing authority to take bold action to restrict chemicals from entering the land, the air, the water, and land at all levels that are harmful to public health and the environment.”

Regan said that the EPA will immediately broaden and accelerate the cleanup of PFAS contamination. When the agency becomes aware of a situation where PFAS poses a serious threat to the health of a community, “we will not hesitate to take swift action, strong enforcement to address the threat and hold polluters accountable, all across the country.”

This strategy means EPA will work with other agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Defense Department to identify facilities where PFAS have been used and are known to be a source of contamination.

Other actions include a final toxicity assessment of the substance known as GenX, “which will ensure that no other community has to go through what the Cape Fear River communities had to endure,” Regan said.

Biden has called for more than $10 billion in funding to help address PFAS contamination through the Build Back Better Agenda. “These critical resources will enable EPA and other federal agencies to scale up the research and work, so that they’re commiserate with the scale of the challenges that we all face together,” Regan said.

Regan highlighted work taking place in North Carolina, noting that Biser, the DEQ secretary, had recently issued a $300,000 fine to Chemours for failing to meet its obligation to protect state residents.

“Secretary Biser is setting the standard, this is the kind of accountability that we want to see all over the country, and that we will work with states to achieve,” Regan said.

He noted that across the country, lessons have been learned that can be shared and that every level of government will need to step up to protect the public. He also highlighted the need for continued partnerships with advocacy groups and community activists.

Regan said that some may question trust in the EPA because “so many communities have been let down before, time and time again,” adding that the public needs to see action. “I believe that the national strategy that we’re laying out shows and demonstrates strong and forceful action from EPA, a willingness to use all of our authority, all of our tools, all of our talent to tackle PFAS.”

He said the EPA pledges to “hold the polluters accountable for the decades of unchecked devastation that they’ve caused.”

According to the EPA, the roadmap also includes the following:

• Aggressive timelines to set enforceable drinking water limits under the Safe Drinking Water Act to ensure water is safe to drink in every community.
• A hazardous substance designation under Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, also known as Superfund, to strengthen the ability to hold polluters financially accountable.
• Timelines for action, whether it is data collection or rulemaking, on Effluent Guideline Limitations under the Clean Water Act for nine industrial categories.
• A review of past actions on PFAS taken under the Toxic Substances Control Act to address those that are insufficiently protective.
• Increased monitoring, data collection and research so that the agency can identify what actions are needed and when to take them.
• A final toxicity assessment for GenX, which can be used to develop health advisories that will help communities make informed decisions to better protect human health and ecological wellness.
• Continued efforts to build the technical foundation needed on PFAS air emissions to inform future actions under the Clean Air Act. 

Cooper introduced Regan Monday afternoon, highlighting North Carolina’s and the nation’s need for the plan.

“This roadmap commits the EPA to quickly setting enforceable drinking water limits for these chemicals, as well as giving us stronger tools, and giving them to communities, to protect people’s health and our environment. As we continue partnering with EPA on this and other important efforts. It’s critical that Congress pass the bipartisan infrastructure deal, and the larger budget resolution that includes funding to tackle PFAS contamination,” Cooper said.

Biser pledged state cooperation.

“We all have a lot of work ahead but with coordination at all levels of government, with our elected officials and our public servants, we can protect the communities and the residents throughout North Carolina, and across the nation,” she said.

Advocates react

The Southern Environmental Law Center has been at the forefront of litigation on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch against Chemours in North Carolina to stop GenX and other PFAS pollution.

“SELC’s litigation under existing laws led to a consent order among Cape Fear River Watch, the state and Chemours to stop at least 99% of PFAS pollution that contaminated drinking water supplies for about 300,000 people in communities along the Cape Fear River,” the law center said in a statement.

Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney with the law center and leader of its Clean Water Program, said in a statement that the roadmap charts a course to important new protections while using existing authority to protect families and communities plagued by PFAS pollution.

“We have seen in North Carolina that when permitting agencies require industrial polluters to comply with existing laws, PFAS water pollution can be stopped at the source. EPA’s Roadmap pairs a plan for the future with the tools it currently has to stop ongoing contamination as the agency develops new standards,” Gisler said. “This roadmap, when fully implemented, could change the landscape in our efforts to protect communities from PFAS pollution. On this anniversary of the Clean Water Act, we’re a step closer to achieving its goals. While the roads to standards identified by EPA are necessarily long; the route to stopping ongoing pollution of our streams and rivers can and should be short.” 

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del, issued a statement that he was encouraged by the EPA’s urgency in dealing with a public health threat.

“This is truly a soup-to-nuts plan — one that commits to cleaning up PFAS in our environment while also putting protections in place to prevent more of these forever chemicals from finding their way into our lives. After the previous administration failed to follow through on its plan to address PFAS contamination, EPA’s new leadership promised action. I look forward to working with them on living up to this commitment.”

Ken Cook, president of the national nonprofit Environmental Working Group, said that communities contaminated by PFAS had waited decades for action.

“So, it’s good news that Administrator Regan will fulfill President Biden’s pledge to take quick action to reduce PFOA and PFOS in tap water, to restrict industrial releases of PFAS into the air and water, and to designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances to hold polluters accountable,” Cook said in a statement. “It’s been more than 20 years since EPA and EWG first learned that these toxic forever chemicals were building up in our blood and increasing our likelihood of cancer and other health harms. It’s time for action, not more plans, and that’s what this Administrator will deliver. As significant as these actions are, they are just the first of many actions needed to protect us from PFAS, as the Administrator has said.”

Environmental Working Group Senior Vice President for Government Affairs Scott Faber said that no one should have to worry about toxic chemicals in their tap water. “We’re grateful that Administrator Regan will fulfill President Biden’s pledge to address PFOA and PFOS in our tap water and will begin to turn off the tap of industrial PFAS pollution.”

The Environmental Protection Network is an organization composed of nearly 550 former EPA career staff and political appointees from across the country. The organization’s Betsy Southerland, former director of the Office of Science and Technology in EPA’s Office of Water, called EPA’s approach to restrict or ban current PFAS uses a critical piece of the plan.

“The actions detailed in the roadmap are essential first steps in reducing people’s exposure to these extremely dangerous chemicals, especially in communities already disproportionately impacted by pollution,” Southerland said. “While EPA will identify initial PFAS classes in the National Testing Strategy, the agency set tight deadlines for regulating individual PFAS chemicals in air, water, and waste, which will begin to drive stringent treatment requirements. EPA’s success in turning the roadmap into action will require the swift passage of a robust budget to give the agency adequate funding and staffing to get the job done.”

Plan name, headline corrected

Despite a steady decline in the number of permits issued for human-related impacts to wetlands in North Carolina over the past 30 years, tens of thousands of wetlands in the state’s coastal plain have been destroyed by the changing climate and nonpermitted human activities.

That information is included in the newly updated, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved North Carolina Wetland Program Plan, or WPP, 2021-2025, one encouraged by the federal agency to guide wetland-related work by states and tribes.

“The WPP is not a regulatory document, so it does not make any changes to rules regarding wetlands in the state,” Kristie Gianopulos said in an email response. “It is intended to be a guide for wetland-related projects and work by state agencies, in the areas of monitoring/assessment, regulation, voluntary restoration/protection, water quality standards, and outreach and education. The newly approved plan for 2021-2025 outlines objectives for the (North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality) in these areas.”

Gianopulos is a senior environmental specialist and wetlands ecologist with the department’s Division of Water Resources’ Water Sciences Section.

“This plan also serves as a communication tool, providing a unified vision and priorities for guiding wetland work in North Carolina, as well as establishing a network of partners and stakeholders in accomplishing that work,” she said.

The EPA’s stamp of approval of the plan ensures that the state, tribe or other grant applicant is eligible for program development grant funds from the federal agency.

The state Wetland Program Plan was initiated in 2012 through a group of stakeholders — an array of representatives from government offices, professional organizations, nonprofits, and universities — whose goal was to enhance the state wetland program.

The stakeholder group reconvened last year to update the original five-year plan with a focus on DEQ’s projected wetland work through 2025, said Amanda Mueller the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science, or KIETS, climate leaders program manager and coastal resilience and sustainability initiative coordinator at North Carolina State University and author of the plan and subsequent update.

“The original N.C. WPP addressed the functions and services of wetlands and listed goals and activities needed to further understand and manage North Carolina’s wetlands,” Mueller stated in an email. “The original list of activities was extensive and provided guidance for anyone pursuing wetland projects in the state.”

Some of the projects conducted since the state Wetland Program Plan was first adopted in October 2015 include the following:

• Assessing state wetlands through the EPA’s 2016 National Wetland Conditions Assessment.
• Identifying and designating strategic habitat areas for marine and coastal fishery species in the Cape Fear River Basin.
• Assessing 16 long-term wetland monitoring sites; evaluating the accuracy of National Wetland Inventory maps, or NWI, for the state.
• Developing and testing wetland hydrology performance criteria for restoration sites.

North Carolina has 3.9 million acres and 16 types of wetlands, including basin, bog, bottomland hardwood forest, estuarine woody wetland, floodplain pool, hardwood flat, headwater forest, nonriverine swamp forest, nontidal freshwater marsh, pine flat, pine savanna, pocosins, riverine swamp forest, salt/brackish marsh, seep and tidal freshwater marsh.

Between Jan. 1, 1990, and Dec. 31, 2019, there were 12,386 permits issued with an impact to nearly 18,000 acres of wetlands.

Since 1990, most permitted impacts to wetlands have occurred in the state’s coastal plain partly because this part of the state has a majority of and the largest wetlands, according to the Wetland Program Plan.

Large permitted impacts in Beaufort, Carteret, Lenoir and Wilson counties were related to activities such as mining, aquafarming, industrial and commercial development, and reservoir creation.

Permit applicants in those instances were required to mitigate wetland impacts through a variety of ways, including preservation, restoration, creation, or in-lieu fees.

Wetland impacts from human activity that does not have to be permitted and impacts from climate change have resulted in the loss of nearly 135,000 acres of nontidal, freshwater wetlands in the coastal plain between 1996 and 2016, according to aerial imagery collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal Change Analysis Program.

The greatest loss has been forested wetlands.

According to that same data, there has been a loss of 144 acres of estuarine wetlands since 2006.

The loss of those wetlands was initially attributed to the conversion of wetlands to agriculture, uplands and development, “but are more recently due to conversions to unconsolidated shorelines (2006-2016) and open water (2011-2016), most likely caused by sea level rise, erosion from increasingly frequent and intense storms, and water quality degradation,” according to information provided by DEQ.

The updated Wetland Program Plan includes goals and future directives to monitor the impacts of human-induced and natural events on wetlands to evaluate trends in the number of wetlands and the quality of those wetlands.

The plan also focuses on voluntary restoration and protection of wetlands through state-provided project guidance, low-interest loans and grant funding for proposed projects.

A federal judge has thrown out the Trump administration’s rule that gutted water quality protections put in place during the Obama administration.

The Trump administration replaced a 2015 rule revising language defining “waters of the United States” that established federal authority under the Clean Water Act. The Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule was replaced in 2020 by the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which removed protections for ephemeral bodies of water, such as creeks or streams that dry up during certain times of the year.

Judge Rosemary Márquez of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on Monday vacated Trump’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule saying the rule contained “fundamental, substantive flaws that cannot be cured without revising or replacing the NWPR’s definition of ‘waters of the United States.’”

The ruling comes as the Biden administration moves forward with plans to create a “durable definition” of WOTUS based on rules in place prior to the Obama administration’s rule, which was fiercely opposed by agricultural interests. In July, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans for community engagement meetings to inform efforts to revise the WOTUS definition.

“We are committed to crafting an enduring definition of WOTUS by listening to all sides so that we can build on an inclusive foundation,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Uncertainty over the definition of WOTUS has harmed our waters and the stakeholders and communities that rely on them. I look forward to engaging all parties as we move forward to provide the certainty that’s needed to protect our precious natural water resources.”

The challenge of the Trump rule was brought by six Native American tribes, who were represented by Earthjustice.

“The court recognized that the serious legal and scientific errors of the Dirty Water Rule were causing irreparable damage to our nation’s waters and would continue to do so unless that Rule was vacated,” said Janette Brimmer, Earthjustice attorney. “This sensible ruling allows the Clean Water Act to continue to protect all of our waters while the Biden administration develops a replacement rule.”

Earthjustice represented the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Tohono O’odham Nation, Quinault Indian Nation, Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in the lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.

This report has been updated to include comments from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration announced Wednesday it will reverse a Trump-era rollback of wetlands and water quality protections.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army said they intend to revise the definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, or regulated streams and wetlands under the Clean Water Act, “to better protect our nation’s vital water resources that support public health, environmental protection, agricultural activity, and economic growth.”

The EPA said the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule has led to destructive effects on critical water bodies. The revised definition removed protections for an estimated 18% of streams and 51% of wetlands in the U.S., according to the U.S. Geological Survey data.

“After reviewing the Navigable Waters Protection Rule as directed by President Biden, the EPA and Department of the Army have determined that this rule is leading to significant environmental degradation,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “We are committed to establishing a durable definition of ‘waters of the United States’ based on Supreme Court precedent and drawing from the lessons learned from the current and previous regulations, as well as input from a wide array of stakeholders, so we can better protect our nation’s waters, foster economic growth, and support thriving communities.”

The agencies said its review of the rule, including stakeholder input, found significantly reduced clean water protections, particularly in arid states including New Mexico and Arizona, where nearly all of more than 1,500 assessed streams were found to be outside of federal regulation. The agencies determined that 333 projects that would have required federal Clean Water Act permitting prior to the Navigable Waters Protection Rule no longer do.

The revised definition of “waters of the United States” has resulted in a 25% reduction in determinations of waters that would otherwise be afforded protection, said Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Jaime A. Pinkham.

“Together, the Department of the Army and EPA will develop a rule that is informed by our technical expertise, is straightforward to implement by our agencies and our state and Tribal co-regulators, and is shaped by the lived experience of local communities,” Pinkham said.

Officials said, the Department of Justice is filing a motion requesting remand of the rule. The agencies will then begin a new rulemaking process to restore protections previously in place.

The Southern Environmental Law Center is challenging the Trump rule on behalf of a number of environmental groups including the North Carolina Coastal Federation. That case is pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.

“No administration can allow the interests of industrial polluters to trump the sole objective of the Clean Water Act: to restore and maintain the integrity of our nation’s waters, so that they are safe for fishing, swimming, and as sources of drinking water for our families and communities,” said Kelly Moser, senior attorney and leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Clean Water Defense Initiative. “The Biden administration must act quickly to restore clean water protections because the current rule lets developers, industry, or anyone else pollute, fill, or pave over these waters without federal permit. Every day the rule remains in place means that more streams, wetlands, lakes, and drinking water sources—protected under every other administration—can be destroyed. The administration must make this a priority, and we will hold their feet to the fire.”

The agencies said the new regulatory effort will be guided by protections consistent with the Clean Water Act, the latest science and the effects of climate change, considerations for state and tribal partners and input from landowners, farmers, local governments, community organizations, environmental groups and disadvantaged communities with environmental justice concerns.

The action is part of a review of Trump-era regulatory changes set forth in President Biden’s Executive Order 13990.

The U.S. Senate in a bipartisan vote Wednesday confirmed Michael Regan as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Regan, who had served as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality since 2017, was confirmed in a 66-34 vote, with 16 Republicans voting in his favor. North Carolina Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis were among the Republicans voting to confirm.

Regan, 45, becomes the first African American male to lead the agency, which is seen as central to President Biden’s agenda.

Regan previously served as Southeast regional director of the Environmental Defense Fund and in the EPA’s air quality and energy programs during the Clinton and Bush administrations.

The Southern Environmental Law Center released Wednesday before the expected vote a statement by Derb Carter, its North Carolina director, expressing desire to continue working with Regan on issues such as coal ash cleanup, wetlands protection and emerging contaminants such as GenX and related per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances found in North Carolina’s drinking water supplies.

The law center cited the past four years working with Regan’s DEQ to address pollution and challenging the Trump EPA’s rollback of Clean Water Act protections.

“Just as we worked with the state agency under Regan’s leadership to secure cleanups of coal ash and PFAS pollution in North Carolina, we look forward to tackling the serious problems facing our communities across our nation with a rejuvenated EPA under his leadership,” Carter said.

Gov. Roy Cooper has named Dionne Delli-Gatti, director of regulatory and legislative affairs for Environmental Defense Fund’s Southeast Climate & Energy, to succeed Regan at DEQ.

A half-dozen public health, environmental and environmental justice groups are demanding a federal response to alleged corporation negligence in handling chemical compounds that they say are poisoning residents of the Cape Fear region.

The Center for Environmental Health, Cape Fear River Watch, Clean Cape Fear, NC Black Alliance, Democracy Green and Toxic Free NC filed Wednesday a petition demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, pollution in communities downstream of the Chemours Co.’s Fayetteville Works site along the Cape Fear River.

The organizations urge in the petition that the EPA require Chemours to fund comprehensive health and environmental effects testing on 54 substances manufactured at the company’s Fayetteville Works facility.

The EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act has authority to order manufacturers like Chemours to determine the safety of their products and processes. Under the act, EPA has 90 days to respond to the petition. If the petition is denied, the law allows the groups to take EPA to court.

“All people have the right to clean air, clean water, pollution-free, and thriving vibrant communities. At NC Black Alliance, we are standing as plaintiffs in this case because we know the grave impact it has held on communities-of-color,” La’Meshia Whittington, campaigns director with the NC Black Alliance, said in a statement.

Whittington said the effects are apparent in that 56% of residents living within a 2-mile radius of toxic waste facilities are people of color and that the cumulative impact and dangers of PFAS on low-wealth communities and communities of color are immeasurable.

“These same neighborhoods that face major hurricanes and other storm systems, are the same neighborhoods facing the direct impact of health disparities exacerbated by PFAS, not to mention, this pandemic,” Whittington said.

A Chemours spokesperson said Wednesday that the company continues to act to decrease the amount of PFAS reaching the Cape Fear River.

“A new system to capture and treat one of the pathways at the site began operation on September 30, 2020, and under the agreed Consent Order Addendum, we will take a number of measures to address PFAS loadings from other pathways, including onsite groundwater to the Cape Fear River. We encourage all other sources of PFAS in the State of North Carolina to take similar actions to improve river quality,” Lisa Randall of Chemours said in a statement.

The groups said their petition builds on existing scientific understanding of the properties of PFAS. The proposed testing includes studies in laboratory animals as well as research into the relationship between health outcomes and PFAS exposure among people in Cape Fear communities. Studies to determine effects on fish and how the PFAS behave in the environment would also be conducted.

“CEH believes that chemical manufacturers should be required to test their products for safety, make that data public, and choose safer alternatives. For many years, Chemours was allowed to release PFAS chemicals into the air and water from its Fayetteville facility, without being required to test for safety. As a result, people who live adjacent to and downstream from the plant have been exposed to a mixture of these toxic PFAS chemicals. The community has the right to know what adverse effects these chemicals may be having on their families’ health. This petition will hold Chemours accountable for the risks it took with human health and the environment,” said Michael Green, Chief Executive Officer, Center for Environmental Health, in a statement.

The chemicals have been found in human blood, drinking water, groundwater, soil, air and locally produced food adjacent to and downstream of the plant as a result of emissions and discharges spanning decades and take centuries to break down.

“As a toxicologist who tries to understand how PFAS exposure affects the immune system, it’s surprising to me that more data aren’t available on their health effects. PFAS have been produced and used for decades but the data we have are limited to just a handful of the thousands of PFAS that we know are in the environment, in drinking water, and in our bodies. PFAS don’t break down, they move from place to place, they accumulate in living organisms, and the ones we’ve studied show adverse health effects. Additional testing is essential to understand if the health of people who have been exposed to PFAS emitted by the Chemours facility is being affected,” said Jamie DeWitt, associate professor, Pharmacology & Toxicology, East Carolina University.

“We should have had test data on these 54 PFAS before they could be used – now they are in our environment and in us and we do not know if they are safe,” Linda S. Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program and scholar in residence at Duke University, said in a statement.

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is rolling back Obama-era environmental rules regulating the fossil fuel industry, shifting to states power to regulate disposal of toxic coal ash.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed the changes Thursday, saying they would provide savings of up to $100 million per year for electric utilities.

“Today’s coal ash proposal embodies EPA’s commitment to our state partners by providing them with the ability to incorporate flexibilities into their coal ash permit programs based on the needs of their states,” said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in a statement. “We are also providing clarification and an opportunity for public comment – something that is much-needed following the public reaction to the 2015 coal ash rule.”

The proposal includes more than a dozen changes to the 2015 rule that set minimum national standards regulating the location, design and operation of existing and new coal ash landfills and surface impoundments at more than 400 coal-fired power plants nationwide. That rule, which was put in place after Duke Energy spilled up to 82,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River near Eden in 2014 and another spill in Tennessee in 2008, remains subject to litigation pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The proposal would allow alternative performance standards for coal ash disposal units with operating permits issued under an approved state or federal coal ash permit program. The proposal also requests comment on whether a regulated facility could develop and implement similar alternative standards that would be subject to oversight and enforcement by EPA.

The proposal includes changes to allow a state regulatory program to establish alternative risk-based groundwater protection standards where there’s not an established maximum contaminant level, rather than the use of background levels that are currently required. It seeks to change location restrictions and associated deadlines concerning construction or operation of a coal ash landfill or surface impoundment in certain areas.

It would allow states to establish alternative requirements for how facilities respond to and remediate releases from coal ash landfills and surface impoundments and allow states to determine whether to take corrective action when an unlined surface impoundment is leaking, rather than being forced to stop receiving coal ash and close. It would also change provisions to allow the use of coal ash during the closure process and to allow non-coal ash waste to continue to be placed in a surface impoundment that is subject to closure.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality announced in February draft rules regulating coal ash disposal and recycling.

EPA will be accepting public comment on the proposed changes for 45 days after publication in the Federal Register and plans to hold a public hearing to receive additional feedback on the proposal during the public comment period.

EPA also plans to propose additional changes to the coal ash rule later this year.

Learn More

• Information on the proposal and how to comment