The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to delay the rollout of new regulations for some “forever chemicals” like GenX. The move comes as the Trump administration moves quickly to reduce the size and the regulatory scope of the EPA, an agency that many Republicans think is a shackle on businesses and impedes economic growth.
But the decision has hit many in the Cape Fear region hard, considering Southeastern North Carolina has been the epicenter of the national pollution crisis since the StarNews first reported in 2017 the presence of manmade chemicals in municipal drinking water systems and groundwater wells that couldn’t be filtered out. Decades of uncontrolled dumping of the chemical compounds into the environment, including into waterways and groundwater that serve as drinking sources for millions, and their widespread use, including in fire-fighting foam, has seen contamination and health concerns from the per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), including GenX, proliferate across the country. The substances are often called forever chemicals because they do not easily break down in nature or the human body.
The resulting outrage set the stage for Michael Regan, then EPA administrator and North Carolina’s former top environmental regulator, in April 2024 to announce in Fayetteville its first-ever drinking water standards to protect people against the toxic chemicals.
Spin forward a year and with a new administration in the White House, the application and efficiency of those proposed rules now seems murky.
What is the EPA now proposing?
The EPA in mid-May announced that it would uphold standards announced by the Biden administration last year for two manmade chemicals, but re-evaluate rules − including at what levels PFAS producers can safely release the contaminants into the environment − for four others, including GenX, the substance produced at the Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant about 75 miles upstream from Wilmington.
The new proposal also gives utilities an extra two years, until 2031, to comply with the federal standards to reduce the amount of manmade chemicals in their water supplies to what are considered levels safe for human consumption.
“We are on a path to uphold the agency’s nationwide standards to protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their water,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated in a May 14 release announcing the changes. “At the same time, we will work to provide common-sense flexibility in the form of additional time for compliance.”
The Trump administration’s move received support from some industry groups like the American Chemistry Council, which had questioned the science the Biden administration had used to make the initial rules and the costs it could impose on local communities and utilities.
“The question is not whether to regulate specific substances but how to best do so in a manner that is consistent with the state of the science and focuses on the most pressing drinking water priorities for local communities,” the group said in a release. “We will continue working with EPA and other policymakers on strong, science-based regulations that protect our health and environment while supporting the needs of local water systems.”
How have the proposed changes been received?
Clean water activists and environmentalists see the changes as another giveaway by the Trump administration to its business backers, in this case the chemical industry, and an attempt to shift the burden of PFAS contamination, needed clean-up efforts, and current and future health risks from industry to local utilities and the general public.
“The EPA is caving to chemical industry lobbyists and pressure by the water utilities, and in doing so, it’s sentencing millions of Americans to drink contaminated water for years to come,” said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, in a release. “The cost of PFAS pollution will fall on ordinary people, who will pay in the form of polluted water and more sickness, more suffering and more deaths from PFAS-related diseases.
“The EPA is pulling the rug out from communities that have already waited decades for protection and for clean drinking water.”
The nonprofit, non-partisan environmental group has estimated that there could be up to 30,000 polluters dumping PFAS into the environment, including into many water sources used for drinking water, across the country. In the Wilmington area, the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority and H2GO, which serves customers in Brunswick County, have spent millions installing filters and other upgrades to remove PFAS from their water supplies − costs that the utilities have had to pass on to ratepayers.
Kelly Moser is a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has helped many North Carolina groups, residents and municipalities go after the businesses that have polluted their water supplies.
“When this administration talks about deregulation, this is what they mean − allowing toxic chemicals in drinking water at the request of polluters,” she said in a release.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan speaks at a press conference announcing the first-ever national, legally enforceable drinking water standard for PFAS chemicals on Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Fayetteville. The Trump administration is now trying to delay those regulations taking effect.
What happens now?
While more stringent PFAS requirements appear to be stuck in mud at the federal level, activists are still hopeful they can be expanded through action in Raleigh. Federal standards are generally considered the bare minimum state’s need to comply with and do not limit more stringent rules being adopted by state regulators, something California has done numerous times when it comes to environmental concerns.
But N.C.’s Environmental Management Commission, which develops the state’s environmental regulations, has been slow-footing a push by first Gov. Roy Cooper’s and now Gov. Josh Stein’s administration to adopt new rules regarding maximum discharge limits for PFAS and 1,4 dioxane, another worrisome carcinogen that’s been found in the Cape Fear River.
Action by the N.C. General Assembly to address the contaminants is another option, with state Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover and the Senate majority leader, sponsoring the “Water Safety Act” that would force the state to adopt safe drinking water standards and discharge limits for major PFAS dischargers and users. It also would include funds to reimburse public utilities for their costs in filtering out the forever chemicals.
State Rep. Ted Davis Jr., R-New Hanover, also has sponsored a bill in the House that would hold companies that make PFAS from scratch, like Chemours, responsible to pay for upgrades implemented by public water utilities to filter out the manmade compounds.
Reporter Gareth McGrath can be reached at GMcGrath@Gannett.com or @GarethMcGrathSN on X/Twitter. This story was produced with financial support from the Green South Foundation and the Prentice Foundation. The USA TODAY Network maintains full editorial control of the work.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: What the EPA’s rollback of ‘forever chemical’ rules means for NC