NORTH CAROLINA — The Department of Environmental Quality enacted temporary rules to guide the remediation of PFAS groundwater contamination for eight substances this week.
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The Department of Environmental Quality implemented Interim Maximum Allowable Concentrations Tuesday after receiving a public request from a Greensboro firefighter in July. At least a hundred North Carolina residents sent public comments on the proposed IMAC rules to the Department of Environmental Quality. Nearly all were in support and included leaders of Wilmington-based nonprofits Cape Fear River Watch and Clean Cape Fear.
“Our well water is contaminated with both PFOA and PFOS and we have been forced to purchase reverse osmosis water for over three years now,” Hampstead resident Dave Kurre wrote in a Sept. 4 email to DEQ. “It is a sad state of affairs when we allow the chemical companies, who dump their toxic waste into our aquifers, to get away with this environmental travesty which directly affects the health and welfare of the entire community.”
State groundwater rules allow any citizen to request the Division of Water Resources establish IMACs for compounds that do not have formalized groundwater standards. Residents are required to include toxicological data in their IMAC requests; the proposal cited a Department of Environmental Quality scientific and regulatory impact analysis published in May.
The Department of Environmental Quality has been pushing for PFAS groundwater and surface standards for eight PFAS compounds found in high concentration in North Carolina since November.
The Environmental Management Commission — a 15-member appointed body charged with reviewing and approving DEQ proposals — requested the Department of Environmental Quality amend its fiscal analysis to only include three compounds — PFOS, PFOA, and GenX — before approving the three groundwater compounds to the public comment stage of the rule-making process at the September meeting.
The commission has not taken action to implement surface water standards for the eight compounds, which would limit PFAS discharges released into water bodies. Groundwater standards guide remediation of existing contamination.
The IMACs will effectively act as groundwater standards for one year; DEQ will make a recommendation to the Environmental Management Commission if the IMACs should change or expire within the next 12 months.
Powerful business groups including the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce and the North Carolina Manufacturers Alliance have lobbied the Environmental Management Commission to delay implementation of the standards. Both groups sent public comments to DEQ expressing concerns about the IMACs’ impact on regulatory certainty. The organizations include PFAS manufacturers Chemours and DuPont among their members.
DuPont concealed internal studies showing severe negative health effects of PFOA since at least the 1980s. Its Fayetteville Works facility discharged the substance in the Cape Fear River for decades before replacing it with GenX, which the EPA now believes is potentially even more toxic than its predecessor.
DuPont’s spinoff Chemours took over the Fayetteville Works facility in 2015. Chemours filed a 2019 complaint against DuPont alleging its parent company downplayed liabilities — including PFAS — it intentionally passed on to its spinoff.
Chemours noted DuPont chose not to implement PFAS filtration technology at the Fayetteville Works facility in 2010 despite making over $3 billion in net income that year. The complaint states a “Blue Ribbon Panel” composed of managers, scientists, and engineers found a $60 million investment would end the discharges and a $20 million investment could reduce discharges by 70%.
“Even the Blue Ribbon Panel’s more modest recommended solution was too much for DuPont,” Chemours wrote. “Instead, after installing a $2.3 million gas permeator system that effectively eliminated one wastestream responsible for certain fluorinated compounds, DuPont decided to terminate the rest of the project in late 2013.”
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