To keep forever chemicals out of surface water, NC may just ask industry to do better - by Adam Wagner in Nov. 2024.
Orange Water and Sewer Authority is testing ion exchange resin and granular activated carbon to reach the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new drinking water standards for several forever chemicals. The NC Environmental Management Commission has indicated to DEQ that it wants to pursue a monitoring and source reduction program rather than a surface water standard.
Instead of developing an enforceable surface water standard that would limit industrial discharge of forever chemicals across the state, the N.C. Environmental Management Commission’s water quality committee is asking regulators to seek industry cooperation via a monitoring and reduction program.
For much of 2024, the committee has expressed skepticism about N.C. Department of Environmental Quality staff’s efforts to craft surface water quality standards for eight forever chemicals. If those rules were implemented, industrial users of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances statewide would need to implement control technologies and shift production lines to remain in compliance with state the rules.
Wednesday, the committee asked DEQ’s Division of Water Resources to develop what is being called a “PFAS Minimization Initiative” — basically a statewide sampling program intended to identify the industrial users that are sending the highest amounts of three forever chemicals into North Carolina’s surface waters.
Under the proposal, regulators would set screening levels for PFOA, PFOS and GenX. Industrial dischargers that hold major and minor permits, as well as those that send their wastewater to publicly owned treatment facilities, would need to monitor for the chemicals and either eliminate or “significantly reduce” discharges within a three-to-five-year period if their discharge exceeded the screening levels for any of the three.
“Over a period of time we want that PFAS to go to zero, ideally, or be minimized as well as they can do it. We’re trying to give the industries the opportunity to work with us at the state to do it on their own ... versus being locked down to some number,” said JD Solomon, the chair of the Environmental Management Commission and an ex officio member of the surface water committee.
The plan is still in its early stages, lacking specifics about how a significant reduction would be defined. And while the informal proposal suggested a screening level for PFOS at 12 parts per trillion, no such level is yet available for either PFOA or GenX.
Jean Zhuang, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the committee is swapping out efforts to enact clear numerical limits with “squishy plans.”
“They’re just blowing smoke here because they are getting pressured to do something on PFAS. They don’t want to do water quality standards on PFAS because they don’t want to see any limits on PFAS so this is how they’ are fooling North Carolinians into thinking they are doing something,” Zhuang said in an interview.
Zhuang also argued that the federal Clean Water Act already gives DEQ the ability to require that dischargers implement the best possible controls to limit PFAS releases. The state used the approach in approving a 2022 permit allowing Chemours to discharge groundwater from underneath its Fayetteville Works facility into the Cape Fear River after 99% of the forever chemicals had been removed from it.
PFAS are a class of man-made chemicals used throughout the economy, from nonstick cookware to stain-resistant carpets to smartphone components. Increased exposure to different PFAS has been linked with health effects such as increased cholesterol, decreases in birth weight or kidney and testicular cancer.
DEQ has some data about which companies and wastewater treatments are discharging PFAS in the Cape Fear River basin, but limited information about use of the chemicals elsewhere in the state.
Specifics on the minimization approach will be discussed at the Surface Water Committee’s January meeting, said Richard Rogers, director of DEQ’s Division of Water Resources. Rogers also said that he expects DEQ will attempt to turn the monitoring and minimization plan into a formal rule.
Steve Keen, the water quality committee’s chairman, told the full commission on Thursday that he intends to have the committee hear a more detailed version of the proposal in January but not vote on it.
“This a process and we’re leaving the dock on this and we’re going to get into some fog but we’re not going to run aground. And we’re going to do it slowly,” Keen said.
Earlier this year, DEQ proposed surface water standards for eight forever chemicals. That included the three addressed by the sampling plan, but also PFBS, PFNA, PFHxS, PFBA and PFHxA.
Using a standard to limit discharges of those chemicals, DEQ argued, would make it cheaper for downstream utilities that rely on surface water to meet strict drinking water standards the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized earlier this year.
In 2022, DEQ found 42 drinking water utilities serving at least 2.7 million people in North Carolina whose treated water contains PFOA or PFOS concentrations above the four parts per trillion level set by the EPA.
A fiscal analysis of the original surface water rule found that complying with it would cost companies and utilities $9.5 billion over the next 36 years but result in almost $10 billion in health savings and preserved property values.
Those figures, particularly the benefits, met significant skepticism from Republican-appointed members of the surface water committee.
If DEQ were to turn the minimization initiative into a rule, it would also need a fiscal analysis.
In September, the Environmental Management Commission voted to send groundwater standards for PFOA, PFOS and GenX to public comment, which is ongoing through the end of the year.
Groundwater standards are primarily used to set cleanup levels for contaminated sites, while surface water standards are used to prevent future contamination of water bodies.
The new DEQ surface water plan is modeled after an approach Michigan regulators have taken to address PFOA and PFOS that were being sent from industrial plants, through public wastewater treatment facilities and then being discharged into surface water like rivers and streams.
In Michigan, public water treatment systems that have certain levels of PFOA or PFOS in their discharge have to work with the companies sending them the waste to cut down on contamination. And if higher levels of chemicals are found in the discharge, the utilities must conduct more frequent testing.
In North Carolina, Greensboro took a similar approach to reducing concentrations of 1,4-dioxane, a likely human carcinogen that companies were sending to its wastewater facility. That was the result of a consent order with the Haw River Assembly and City of Fayetteville.
For the source reduction approach to effectively slash PFAS levels in North Carolina, there must be clear targets, Robin Smith, a former chair and current member of the Environmental Management Commission, said Thursday.
“To make a source reduction program actually effective, we’re going to need some form of a reduction goal and the mechanism for enforcing it,” Smith said.
Michigan, Smith noted, has approved surface water standards for both PFOA and PFOS.
This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program.
A Graham well was contaminated with forever chemicals. It led to a new, temporary rule.