House lawmakers meet on GenX

In a six-hour inaugural meeting, the House Select Committee on River Quality heard presentations from state and local environmental and water regulators, health experts, scientists and advocates.

Department of Environmental Quality Assistant Secretary Sheila Holman was at the podium for more than two hours, explaining the federal and state regulatory framework for water pollution and reporting on the agency's actions so far to manage GenX and other manmade compounds sometimes referred to as emerging contaminants.

Several committee members said they couldn't understand why it had taken so long for GenX contamination in the Cape Fear River to come to the state's attention.

"It's been there 30 years, and we just found it," said Rep. Bill Brisson, D-Bladen. "I know we're a little slow, but we shouldn't be 30 years behind."

Division of Water Quality chief Linda Culpepper explained that the analytical technology to find the compound at such low levels has existed for only a few years.

"When we were told about GenX being manufactured at the plant, we were told it was a closed-loop system. It was not going to enter the water," Culpepper told the committee. "We learned in June of this year that this GenX material is actually a byproduct of a different manufacturing line that's been going on for 30 years. That's when we became aware that it was being discharged into the water."

As a byproduct of the manufacture of a different chemical, GenX was not subject to regulation in the 2009 wastewater permit for Chemours, the DuPont spinoff that dumped the chemical into the Cape Fear River from its Fayetteville Works plant, Holman explained.

Last Nov. 23, North Carolina State University researcher Detlef Knappe sent an email to 19 DEQ staffers, drawing their attention to a paper he and colleagues had published on perfluorinate contamination in the Cape Fear River, including GenX. The list included Holman's predecessor as assistant secretary, Tom Reeder, now on the staff of Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, and several senior staff who remain at the agency.

"I think it would be useful to discuss the results," Knappe said in the email. "A large number of people are exposed to high levels of PFASs through their drinking water!"

Holman, who was not on that email, told WRAL News Thursday that the permitting staff would likely have followed up on the research when they worked on Chemours' permit renewal application. But the renewal review was delayed, one of the 41 percent of applications backlogged at the agency's permitting department.

Asked why no one had followed up sooner, Holman explained that, in November, it wasn't clear that it was an urgent issue.

"There really were no health studies. There were no health advisories. GenX had not made it to EPA’s list on that unregulated contaminant monitoring rule. So, it was – we were having trouble understanding how concerned we should be," she said.

Holman added that, at the time Knappe emailed DEQ, water section staff were more focused on 1,4 dioxane contamination, which "had been categorized as a likely human carcinogen," in the river.

The primary target of lawmakers' criticism Thursday was not DEQ. It was "the news media" that was repeatedly blamed for "sensationalizing" and "misinforming" the public about the GenX problem.

"I don’t think anybody successfully learned how to un-ring a bell. Unfortunately, today, in many cases, the news media is unconcerned with reporting the news. They’re interested in producing the news, and that’s a problem that I think we need to be aware of," Rep. Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, said. "We need ourselves on this committee as well as the public to be as properly informed as possible. If we see instances, whether intentionally or unintentionally, people have been misinformed, I think we need to call the people to task."

"The press is not getting their reliable sources," agreed Brisson. "It's hard for us to sit here and represent the public and make sure the public is getting the true story, and that's the bottom line. It makes our job tough."

Some committee members also spent a good deal of time Thursday asking whether GenX contamination might not be as potentially hazardous as the Department of Health and Human Services' limit of 140 parts per trillion might indicate. Rep. Scott Stone, R-Mecklenburg, questioned State Epidemiologist Dr. Zack Moore for more than half an hour on his choice to set the health goal for GenX so low and the data and methodology DHHS used to make that decision.

"I read in the papers time and time again it’s 'toxic' – do we have any proof?" asked committee Senior Chairman Ted Davis, R-New Hanover. "Is it accurate for the newspapers or anybody else to say that it’s toxic?"

Moore said animal studies appear to indicate toxicity but said the agency had declined to offer a blanket statement on the safety of the levels found in the Cape Fear River because human studies aren't available.

"Are we scaring our folks?" asked Rep. Pat McElraft, R-Carteret, comparing the situation to the state's warning about hexavalent chromium in wells near coal ash ponds in 2015. "I think we need to be more certain before we put these figures out there."

Deputy DHHS Secretary Mark Benton said there are thousands of manmade chemicals in the perfluorinated family alone, and very few have been studied.

"Until the right research is available and we have the ability to analyze it, there’s going to be a lot that we don’t know about the health effects of these compounds," Benton said.

Moore agreed, saying, "Unfortunately, these advances (in creating industrial compounds) have now outpaced our advances in toxicology and our ability to predict health effects."

The contamination and the state's response to it have become highly politicized in recent weeks.

Gov. Roy Cooper asked lawmakers for $2.5 million in emergency funding to pay for additional scientists and testing at DEQ and DHHS, but lawmakers refused, instead earmarking about $500,000 for local water officials and university scientists in the Wilmington area.

Cooper vetoed that funding saying it was insufficient. He and other critics of Republican legislative leaders have pointed to deep budget cuts made at DEQ in recent years.

Dixon said he believed the issue of perfluorinated compounds was brought up at the Environmental Review Commission in "2006, 2007, 2008," when, he said, DEQ "was fully staffed and fully funded and fully capable of the proper regulatory oversight," but that it "fell on deaf ears."

Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, said the ERC discussion was about flame retardants, not perfluorinates, but agreed that her party, which was in charge at the time, had not seen the urgency of the problem.

"I’m going to be very disturbed as a member of this committee if the media or other people, for political purposes, tries to make funding past or present part of this issue," Dixon said. "I, for one, am not going to sit idly by and watch some political ping-pong ball bounce from one side of the table that this is a funding issue."

"Funding is not going to be an issue today," agreed Davis.

"It’s just amazing to me that some people always think that the answer is more money or more staffing, and I can tell you for a fact, that is not the first consideration that we should ever give," Dixon said. "We should talk about efficiency and improving the way we do the business.

"We have a situation that we need to look at as non-politically as possible," he said. "Anybody with the intelligence of a rail-bed rock can understand that there’s an attempt to lay this at the feet of the Republican majority in the General Assembly."

Committee Chairwoman Holly Grange, R-New Hanover, agreed that the issue shouldn't be so politicized.

"My goal is not to make this a party thing. I want us to have an efficient DEQ. I want us to be able to address these issues across the board for the future," Grange told WRAL News. "We obviously can’t change the past. Let’s now look forward, and let’s make some changes so that this doesn’t happen again."

The committee is scheduled to meet again in late October.