NEW HANOVER COUNTY — Sen. Michael Lee’s PFAS legislative record is coming under scrutiny amid a recent round of campaign ads touting his efforts to hold polluters accountable.
READ MORE: Rep. Ted Davis pushes PFAS liability bill through committee despite NC Chamber opposition
ALSO: Local firefighters speak against becoming ‘human guinea pigs’ due to PFAS exposure
Environmental issues are a core theme of Sen. Michael Lee’s (R-New Hanover) 2024 reelection campaign. Port City Daily reached out to the senator’s office multiple times in the last week to ask for his response to environmentalists’ recent criticisms of his PFAS record; his team responded with a list of bills and accomplishments.
The senator’s office cited Lee’s leading role appropriating funds for PFAS mitigation in local infrastructure, passing legislation, such as the Water Safety Act of 2018, and providing nearly $50 million to fund academic research through the NC Collaboratory. This is an organization that coordinates with state universities and governments to facilitate research that informs the state’s policy-making process.
Lee’s campaign expanded on his PFAS position in an advertisement that launched last month:
“Senator Michael Lee took action. Holding polluters accountable, protecting us from harmful chemicals. Michael Lee delivered uniting scientists, engineers, and new technologies to clean our water. Pioneering solutions so impressive they’ll be used around the world.”
Alternatively, environmentalist groups including Clean Cape Fear, the Natural Resource Defence Council, the Southern Environmental Law Center and the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters argue Lee’s legislative record contradicts the claims of his campaign.
“The North Carolina General Assembly has yet to enact any legislation that would stop PFAS from getting into our environment in the first place, or to hold polluters responsible for the harm they have caused and continue to cause,” SELC legislative counsel Brooks Pearson told Port City Daily.
Clean Cape Fear — a Wilmington-based nonprofit co-founded by former mayor and state senator Harper Peterson, who competed against Lee in the 2018 and 2020 elections — criticized Lee’s recent PFAS ads in an article earlier this month. The group argued Lee should have leveraged his position as one of the state’s most influential lawmakers to advocate bills creating PFAS regulatory limits and liability.
The Water Safety Act of 2018, introduced by Lee, provided the first $5 million tranche to the North Carolina Collaboratory — Lee’s legislative efforts in 2021 and 2023 brought the total figure to around $50 million — as well as $2 million to help local governments connect residents to water utilities and $450,000 to Cape Fear Public Utility Authority to evaluate PFAS testing and treatment technologies.
The bill also authorized the governor to shut down companies like Chemours if unauthorized pollution does not stop. But critics, including Clean Cape Fear’s co-founder Emily Donovan, Duke University director of Environmental Law Ryke Longest, and the DEQ argue the bill did not actually expand or improve the state’s power to regulate polluters.
“Senate Bill 724 makes existing enforcement against Chemours plant harder, allocates millions of dollars to agencies with no enforcement authority, and creates uncertain liability for intermediaries who have treated wastewater from homes, businesses and military bases,” Longest wrote in a 2018 Fayetteville Observer op-ed.
Clean Cape Fear partnered with Duke University public policy researchers for a December 2023 study — “Examining North Carolina’s Insufficient Response to PFAS Contamination in Water Supplies” — that analyzed recent PFAS legislation and cited local legislators Lee, Rep. Davis Jr. (R-New Hanover), Rep. Frank Iler (R-Brunswick) and Deb Butler (D-New Hanover) among state leaders on the issue.
The study categorized lawmakers that support or detract from PFAS limits in North Carolina. Lawmakers who pushed for bills focused on enforceable PFAS limits and corporate accountability were deemed “supporters”, while those who sponsored “less effective” bills focused on issues such as research grants were regarded as detractors. Lee was put in the latter category.
Donovan emphasized a provision in Senate Bill 658, sponsored by Lee last year, that would have funded a training facility for firefighters using PFAS-containing foam. New Hanover County Professional Firefighters Association president Benjamin Bobzien criticized the bill for turning firefighters “into human guinea pigs.”
“He’s not paying attention,” Donovan said. “He’s just rubber-stamping whatever is handed to him from God knows whoever is handing it to him. And then doing these really beautiful campaign ads, gaslighting our community that he’s a champion for us. No, this is total smoke and mirrors.”
Donovan, Pearson, and other environmentalists lauded scientists involved in the collaboratory for PFAS research and monitoring. However, the Clean Cape Fear co-founder raised concerns about leadership’s influence on research priorities — such as research and development for novel removal technologies that would benefit companies like Chemours — rather than seeking community input to use resources for immediate needs.
The organization’s executive director, Jeffrey Warren, is the former scientific adviser of Sen. Phil Berger. Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford) told NC Newsline in 2016 she could not think of anyone who has had a more negative impact on the state’s environment than the collaboratory leader.
“Academic groups are supposed to be independent of political influence,” Donovan said. “The presence of someone like Jeff Warren does not instill confidence for many of us in the community.”
2015 emails obtained by investigative reporter Lisa Sorg show Warren assured Reidsville and Greensboro officials there would be no action to regulate 1,4-dioxane — another toxic compound highly concentrated in the Cape Fear River Basin — absent a federal mandate. He added regulation of the compound “has the potential to set an improper precedent.”
Warren worked as an adviser on bills including HB 819 in 2012, which banned state agencies from using sea level rise data in coastal development policy until 2016.
“Deny science, and now you’re in charge of the science?” Donovan asked.
The collaboratory paid Thermo Fisher Scientific $3 million for five high resolution spectrometers for PFAS research at universities including UNCW earlier this year. PCD reached out to the collaboratory to ask for details about funding for specific projects and contracts with private sector partners but did not receive an answer by press.
Thermo Fisher is a member of the National Association of Manufacturers. NAM filed a petition with the American Chemistry Council — the nation’s most prominent chemical industry lobbying group — against the EPA’s PFAS water standards in June.
“We need longer-term studies so we understand what we need to regulate and what we need to measure—be it in manufacturing materials or water—before we start regulating more,” Thermo Fisher director of environmental safety and food safety Toby Astil told the National Association of Manufacturers in April.
The North Carolina Manufacturers Alliance — which includes Chemours as a member — is NAM’s state-affiliate. Lee’s 2018 bill included changes requested by the lobbying group including narrowing the drinking water compounds eligible for testing.
Lee’s version of the 2018 Water Safety Act removed a House provision to provide the Department of Environmental Quality funding to purchase a high resolution mass spectrometer and directed DEQ to instead coordinate with the Environmental Policy Agency and the state university system for testing equipment.
The General Assembly ultimately agreed to appropriate $537,000 to purchase a mass spectrometer but mandated it buy a version of the instrument that differed from DEQ’s requested model to provide more narrow, targeted PFAS analysis.
The American Chemical Society noted researchers cannot determine the full extent of PFAS contamination with targeted analysis in a 2019 article. The North Carolina Manufacturers Alliance opposed supplying DEQ with a high resolution instrument that could detect a broader array of contaminants, which were used in other states at the time, such as Minnesota.
Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Corrine Bell criticized the influence of another powerful lobbying group on PFAS policy in connection to Lee: the North Carolina Chamber Commerce. It donated $10,000 to Lee’s campaign throughout his career and has spent a total of $322,600 on advertisements and mailers to support this 2016 and 2018 campaigns.
Publicly-funded utilities currently bear the cost of PFAS remediation. The DEQ has requested PFAS surface and groundwater standards that would require PFAS-dischargers to install filtration technology to address emissions at the source and lower costs for ratepayers and taxpayers. The NC Chamber argues the standards could negatively impact the state’s manufacturing sector and has pushed to delay their implementation.
“Senator Lee, state legislative leadership and their allies at the NC Chamber of Commerce seem happy to let North Carolinians foot the hefty economic and health bills,” Bell wrote in a June blog post.
The NC Chamber noted Lee’s work to address New Hanover County’s water concerns in its 2020 endorsement of the senator. The organization also gave Lee a 100% career average for supporting Chamber-endorsed policies in its 2023 “How They Voted” annual report.
The same report noted Rep. Ted Davis’ PFAS Pollution and Polluter Liability bill was “sidelined by Chamber opposition.”
Davis reintroduced an amended bill this year but it did not move out of the House; Lee told PCD in June he hadn’t yet reviewed the legislation but would follow it closely.
Alternatively, the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters has consistently ranked Lee among the lowest state lawmakers in its annual rankings for environmental policy. NCLCV has cited his support for bills including the Regulatory Reform Act of 2015, which provided legal protection to companies that provide confidential self-audits of environmental violations. A coalition of opposed environmentalist groups dubbed it the “Polluter Protection Act.”
“NCLCV publishes an annual Scorecard and Michael Lee’s record on PFAS and clean water is abysmal,” NCLCV director of governmental relations Dan Crawford told PCD. “He has a lifetime score of 5% and in the 2023 long session he earned a 0.”
Tips or comments? Email journalist Peter Castagno at peter@localdailymedia.com.
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