Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announced last Monday the Biden administration’s plan to address pollution from the man-made “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.
In addition to contamination from 1,4-Dioxane, discovered in the Haw River several years ago, PFAS has been a regular contaminant in Pittsboro’s drinking water since at least 2018 — after the Wilmington StarNews reported in 2017 on an N.C. State study that showed PFAS contamination from the Chemours plant was making its way into the Cape Fear River and then the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of people in southeastern North Carolina.
Both 1,4-Dioxane and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are suspected carcinogens which pose severe health risks if regularly ingested over long periods of time. High exposure is associated with thyroid disease, increased blood cholesterol levels and birth defects, and possible inhibition of the body’s immune system.
Pittsboro Mayor Jim Nass said he’s grateful for the EPA’s new plan.
“This is a problem that is nationwide, in fact, it’s international-wide,” Nass told the News + Record in joint interview with his challenger in the race, former Pittsboro Mayor Cindy Perry. Perry, who has made town staff transparency regarding water issues a large part of her campaign, also supported the EPA plan.
“These chemicals are essentially everywhere,” Nass said. “I listened to the plan that the EPA put out and I’m very, very thankful that they’re addressing this issue.”
PFAS compounds have been detected throughout North Carolina, but earlier this year, Pittsboro’s levels of PFAS concentration led to nonprofit research organization Consumer Reports naming the town’s drinking water as among the worst in the country.
Almost every sample of 120 tested contained measurable levels of PFAS, but Pittsboro’s PFAS concentration was in a league unto itself, the Consumer Reports study found. And this summer, a discharge of 1,4-Dioxane into South Buffalo Creek, a Haw River tributary, led Pittsboro commissioners and town staff to call for national attention to its PFAS troubles. (The preliminary samples of the 1,4-Dioxane discharge in Greensboro indicated levels between 543 parts per billion and 687 parts per billion; Environmental Protection Agency recommends no more than 35 ppb in healthy drinking water.)
“Clearly, the water issues are our primary concern,” Nass said. “I mean, the idea that we have these forever chemicals in the water is certainly a primary concern.”
The EPA’s PFAS plan aims to clean existing contamination, keep additional chemicals from being released and lead to additional research of the thousands of PFAS compounds.
The agency will set an “aggressive” timeline to set drinking water limits, the Raleigh News & Observer reported, and it will designate PFAS as a hazardous substance under federal Superfund laws. The EPA will also work to require PFAS manufacturers to provide toxicity information about categories of the chemicals.
“It would take EPA decades to do this on our own at the expense of American families and the American taxpayer, but instead the polluters who are poisoning our nation’s waterways will be responsible for conducting and paying for this work,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said of the testing effort during an announcement by Lake Raleigh, the N&O reported.
Regan served as secretary of the N.C. Dept. of Environmental Quality from 2017 until earlier this year, when he was confirmed as EPA administrator, so he’s familiar with the state’s PFAS woes. The first orders for toxicity information will be sent in a matter of months, he said last Monday, and he’s “certain” PFAS found in North Carolina will be among the first with mandatory testing.
“These chemicals are impacting communities all across the country, and so as I’ve been traveling all across the country, it’s been chilling to see how many stories mirror the experience we had here in North Carolina,” Regan told the N&O.
In Pittsboro, Nass has two primary concerns with the EPA strategy: time, and how PFAS compounds are classified. The current plan, he said, seems to look at PFAS compounds as individuals, rather than a “whole family category.” There are thousands of compounds and many have not been studied, making regulation a challenge.
“I’m not criticizing the EPA, because I’m so happy that they’re finally taking some action,” he said. “But in looking at the plan, I’m thinking of all the steps that they laid out that they’re going to be doing on testing and so on and so forth, and I think, ‘Good Lord, how long is this going to take?’”
That’s why Nass said the town must continue with its own plan — eliminating and removing PFAS through updating its water filtration systems at the municipal water plant to filter as much as 90% of all PFAS from the drinking supply. It will take at least a year for the system to be completed and operational, and it could cost millions.
Pittsboro and other locations across the state trying to deal with PFAS on their own will then face the problem of what to do with the compounds after removing them. Using a special incinerator to handle such toxic materials, for example, imposes a rather large cost.
As of Monday, the EPA had already released a human health toxicity assessment for GenX (a member of PFAS substances), announced in last week’s EPA plan, that determined the chemical is toxic at much lower levels than the Dept. of Health and Human Services used when setting the target range. Even so, DHHS doesn’t plan to revise it’s health goal for PFAS, but plans to wait until spring 2022 when the EPA is expected to publish a national drinking water advisory level for GenX.
The the Southern Environmental Law Center said in a release Monday that the assessment underscores the importance of regulating PFAS and “the need to stop harmful pollution at its source under existing laws, as the Southern Environmental Law Center did in litigation to stop pollution into the Cape Fear River from a Chemours facility in North Carolina.”
“Today’s toxicity assessment is further confirmation that the more we learn about these chemicals, the more we learn that they must be treated as a class; no community should have to suffer from harmful PFAS as we wait for research to confirm their toxicity,” said Geoff Gisler, senior attorney and leader of the Clean Water Program at the Southern Environmental Law Center who led litigation against Chemours in North Carolina to stop GenX and other PFAS pollution. “This more stringent GenX toxicity assessment is why it’s so vital to our families and communities that DEQ, and state agencies nationwide, must impose stringent limits on PFAS using existing authority when issuing water permits to polluters.”
Without such government mandates limiting manufacturer introduction of PFAS into bodies of water, the root issue will persist despite local leaders’ best efforts. That’s why Nass is so grateful for the newly announced EPA plan, even with a few lingering concerns.
“The good news is that the EPA, federal, is taking this now seriously, and I’m hopeful that the state will do the same kind of thing,” Nass said. “Because this is a statewide issue — I mean, we have these chemicals in the water, pretty much in all of our water streams.”
Reporter Hannah McClellan can be reached at hannah@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @HannerMcClellan.