Environmentalists, Cooper pan new EPA plan on GenX-style chemicals

The EPA's plan, Cooper said in a statement, "seems to ignore the urgency of the problem."

Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Southern Environmental Law Center and Food & Water Watch, agreed. The Environmental Working Group said the plan would allow more pollution, not less, and called President Donald Trump "the nation's first pro-cancer president."

EPA leaders on hand for plan announcements, including at the EPA's facility in Research Triangle Park, insisted that the agency is moving as quickly as it can to study and set limits on a large and complex catalog of industrial chemicals called PFAS. Their plan focuses at first on two of the older and better known versions: PFOA and PFOS.

Federal limits on GenX, a related chemical manufactured by Chemours at a facility near the Bladen-Cumberland county line, could be years away.

"It's not that it's been foreclosed upon," Mary Walker, the acting administrator the EPA's Southeast Region, said during a press conference rolling out the plan. "It's simply that we are beginning where we've got the stronger data set."

There are indications that chemicals throughout this family have connections to cancer, liver and thyroid issues, but there are thousands of iterations and many of their health effects are poorly understood. These chemicals don't break down easily, aren't easily removed from drinking water and are massively common.

They're used in Teflon and other nonstick or water-resistant surfaces, fire-fighting foam and food wrappers, among other things. One study found some version of these chemicals in 98 percent of the blood samples tested.

Republican 8th District Congressman Richard Hudson, whose district runs near the Chemours plant, called the plan "a positive step," and he urged the EPA to move toward developing standards for GenX just as it plans to do for PFOA and PFOS.

The EPA also is moving toward listing PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances and said it will issue interim groundwater cleanup recommendations for contaminated sites. It will propose adding PFAS chemicals to a drinking water monitoring program and develop new methods for detecting them in water, soil and groundwater, according to the plan.

Geoff Gisler, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, said the EPA's plan and other ongoing changes to U.S. environmental policy put more burdens on municipal water plants and others downstream from pollution. He said the government should focus more on keeping chemicals out of the water in the first place.

"I think it's a lot of study and not a lot of action," Gisler said of the EPA's plan. "Maybe even not a lot of study. ... This administration seems to have forgotten that EPA also has authority to prevent pollution."

Chemours said in a statement that it was reviewing the EPA's action plan "to determine how best we can contribute to the effort."

"We believe collaboration and transparency are critical," the company said.

Walker and other EPA officials promised the agency would continue to support states and other government entities trying to either keep these chemicals out of or remove them from water supplies. A number of North Carolina entities are working on parallel tracks to study or regulate GenX, and there are lawsuits seeking new restrictions, including one brought by the SELC on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has a public hearing Monday evening on plans to install scrubbers at the Chemours facility to capture GenX and other pollutants from air stacks there. State regulators believe GenX got into the groundwater near the plant because it was released into the air as part of the manufacturing process, then came back to earth in the rain.

That hearing is planned for 6:30 p.m. at the Bladen Community College Auditorium.