North Carolina Environmental Regulators at War Over Water Rules for ‘Forever Chemicals’

The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce has privately leaned on the state’s powerful Environmental Management Commission to delay critical PFAS rules, emails obtained under state public records law show, including providing members with the résumé of a scientist who has downplayed the toxicity of the compounds.

At the same time, a crisis involving these “forever chemicals” emerged in rural Randolph County, where drinking water at an elementary school contained the compounds far above federal limits. The school’s groundwater is contaminated, among the issues the proposed rules are meant to address.

North Carolina became one of the nation’s hotspots for the compounds in 2017, when state regulators discovered chemical company Chemours had been discharging a type called GenX into the Cape Fear River, a major drinking water supply. 

More than 300 water systems in North Carolina, serving an estimated 3.4 million people—a third of the state’s population—provide drinking water that contains levels of PFAS above federal limits, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality. These include homes, schools, child care centers and mobile home parks.

Most of the public utilities source their drinking water from groundwater; the rest tap into lakes and rivers.

The drinking water for another 200,000 people who rely on private wells is also contaminated with PFAS at concentrations above the legal limit, DEQ figures show.

Alarmed by the toxicity and pervasiveness of the compounds, DEQ now wants to regulate eight PFAS compounds in surface water and groundwater in hopes of reducing levels before they flow from household taps.

Rulemaking requires several steps, including a public comment period and approval by the EMC before going into effect. The PFAS rules, introduced by DEQ in November, are stuck in an early phase of the process as they await votes from EMC committees.

Members of the public, including managers of downstream water treatment plants, have pleaded with the EMC to make progress. Some conservative EMC members have attributed delays to DEQ. They say the commission’s water quality and groundwater committees haven’t received a full analysis of the rules’ fiscal impacts.

DEQ has given more than a half-dozen presentations to the EMC about the proposal since last year. The agency provided the EMC with a 72-page draft of the fiscal impacts of surface water rules in May. But the final version wasn’t delivered until July and ran 214 pages.

“We want to get the regulatory impact analysis as right as we can before it goes to the full commission and the public,” EMC Chairman J.D. Solomon told Inside Climate News, “so we can get good, meaningful comments back from the public.”

On March 27, Solomon, appointed by GOP House Speaker Tim Moore, spoke to the chamber’s environmental committee. Solomon told Inside Climate News this week that he discussed the EMC’s accomplishments over the past year. The topic of PFAS did come up, Solomon said, but none of the attendees asked for a delay.

“My main message to everybody is, ‘This is coming,’” Solomon said. “‘You’re not going to get out of it. You’re not going to run and hide.’”

Three weeks later, on April 22, the chamber sent a letter to DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser: “It is important that we do not hastily pass regulations without fully accounting for both the positive benefits and potential negative impacts … on the state and its business community.”

Since then, the chamber has provided the EMC with links to talking points about the benefits of PFAS. “This chemical family is essential to mobility, communication, medical treatment, and more,” the chamber wrote on its website, which features the headline: “When it comes to North Carolina’s water, let’s let science dictate our action, not politics.”

In May, Jake Cashion, the chamber’s vice president of government affairs, sent members a résumé for scientist Michael Dourson, who has been retained by chemical companies for studies downplaying the toxicity of the compounds. 

Dourson was also former President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Dourson withdrew his name from consideration after it became clear the U.S. Senate would not confirm him. 

Cashion did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Climate News. Asked via email if the chamber had hired Dourson, and if so, in what capacity, the organization’s spokesperson did not respond.

Solomon said it’s routine for the EMC to “consider different experts” but that he has “not seen anything come to the commission” directly from Dourson.

In June, Dourson wrote an article for the Carolina Journal, a publication of the conservative John Locke Foundation, in which he wrote that North Carolinians faced “little to no risk” from PFAS in their drinking water. 

That contradicts findings by the EPA, federal toxicologists and independent scientists, who have linked PFAS exposure to kidney, prostate, breast, pancreatic and testicular cancer; thyroid and liver disorders; decreased fertility and low birth weight; ulcerative colitis; and a depressed immune system.

The North Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, whose members include Chemours, also opposes the draft rules, which don’t prohibit PFAS manufacturing, but only require facilities to keep the chemicals out of water supplies.

“The NCMA would like the State of North Carolina to be consistent in regulating these substances with our neighboring states and the federal rules, so as to not place North Carolina manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage in cost of manufacturing our products and expanding our operations,” the alliance wrote to DEQ and the EMC.

However, no neighboring states have enacted groundwater rules, according to DEQ. Nineteen other states have some type of groundwater guidance in place. 

The EMC in July instructed DEQ to remove five of eight compounds from its proposed groundwater standards. The remaining three, GenX, PFOA and PFOS, will be considered in September.

Solomon said the proposed standards for the removed compounds were more lax than existing ones, which depend on the lowest level a laboratory can detect. Those are known as practical quantitation levels, and can vary among laboratories, whose sensitivities differ. That can create regulatory uncertainty for industries.

Michael Ellison, an environmental consultant and vice-chairman of the EMC’s Water Quality Committee, has downplayed concerns about PFAS contamination—both privately and publicly.

In private, according to the emails obtained under state records law, Ellison dismissed concerns about the delays, telling a concerned resident in late June that “PFAs have been around for several decades, so any potential cost from another month or two to get the regulations right are likely to be incalculably small.”

At an EMC meeting on July 10, Ellison questioned their toxicity. “There is some difference of opinion about safe levels,” Ellison said, reinforcing points made by Dourson. “For decades we’ve been making and discharging this stuff. How many people have died from PFAS poisoning?” 

Contacted by Inside Climate News, Ellison did not elaborate on his comments.

Ellison worked at DEQ under Republican Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration, when the agency weakened many environmental rules. He left the agency in 2017 after Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper was elected. 

GOP Senate leader Phil Berger appointed Ellison to the EMC in 2023.

Biser responded to Carter’s email in a statement provided to Inside Climate News. “It’s my duty as Secretary to protect the health of North Carolina residents and these standards are critical to reducing PFAS in our surface water and groundwater and ensuring residents aren’t paying the entire cost of meeting drinking water standards,” Biser said. 

PFAS in an Elementary School’s Water

Farmer Elementary School near Asheboro, in Randolph County, serves 215 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, about half of them economically disadvantaged. The school sources its drinking water, used to quench the thirst of young children, cook school lunches and make staff coffee, from two wells drilled more than 30 years ago.

In June, DEQ tested the school’s drinking water as part of the agency’s routine assessment to help public water systems comply with EPA limits. The results were stunning. 

Of the 14 types of PFAS detected in Farmer Elementary’s drinking water, two of the most toxic—PFOS and PFOA—were detected at levels 144 and 233 times greater than federal limits, respectively. 

That was driven by contamination in one of the school’s wells, since disconnected. It contained  PFOS at 400 times the proposed state groundwater standards.

A second well on the property also contains several types of PFAS, but only one is above federal limits.

Both the school district and the Randolph County Health Department sent letters to parents and staff about the contamination. DEQ is working with the school on ensuring a new water supply is safe, an agency spokesman said; school starts Aug. 26.

The Office of State Budget and Management found the groundwater rules’ financial impact would yield net benefits of $604,000 to $3.3 million over 10 years.

An analysis of surface water standards released in July by the office shows that by the year 2060, industrial dischargers and publicly owned wastewater treatment plants would spend $9.6 billion to comply with the new rules.

But accounting for the savings—for water treatment plants and private well owners, health costs and property values—benefits would total $9.96 billion over the same time period. This represents a net surplus of $460,000.

Without the standards, according to DEQ, the health impacts across North Carolina through mid-century would equate to 44,925 cases of health harms. Of these cases, the agency estimated 10,279 could result in death. 

Marion Deerhake, a Cooper appointee, has been on the EMC for seven years, as the scope of contamination and dangers of PFAS in North Carolina have become clearer and more urgent.

“How many more meetings before we act?” Deerhake said at the July meeting. “It must be frustrating for people of the state who have suffered for years, having persistent toxic chemicals in their drinking water.”