For a third time, Rep. Ted Davis is pushing for legislation that would make companies pay for the kind of forever chemical contamination that was found in his Wilmington district's drinking water.
Davis, a Wilmington Republican, is one of the primary sponsors of a bill that would force manufacturers of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances to pay for treatment technology if it is necessary to keep levels of specific chemicals below standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The bill is necessary, Davis told members of the House Agriculture and Environment Committee on Tuesday, because ratepayers are footing the costs to keep potentially harmful chemicals out of their drinking water.
Southeastern North Carolina utilities have grappled with the problem of PFAS, often dubbed "forever chemicals" since 2017, when the Wilmington StarNews reported on a NC State University study that had of some compounds in the Cape Fear River. Researchers traced those chemicals back to Chemours' Fayetteville Works plant, which discharged into the river.
The study also demonstrated that utilities drawing from the river were unable to remove PFAS from water they then sent out to hundreds of thousands of taps.
Davis' bill would allow the secretary of the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to determine that Chemours should be responsible for any costs downstream utilities have incurred to remove drinking water since 2017.
"Right now, the ratepayers are responsible for the costs that are incurred by that public utility authority in order to remove the PFAS contamination that was put in there by the polluter," Davis said.
Since 2017, Wilmington-area utilities have spent more than $240 million installing treatment technology to keep forever chemicals out of their finished drinking water.
The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which draws from the Cape Fear River to serve many of its customers in New Hanover County, spent $82.8 million to build and maintain eight granular activated carbon filters. Neighboring Brunswick County has spent $158.7 million to build a reverse osmosis treatment plant that is set to enter use this year.
Similar bills failed
Davis has tried to pass on at least two other occasions, once in 2022 and again in 2024. On both occasions, the in the committee process.
This time, Davis said, he made tweaks to clarify that the legislation is intended to target only the original manufacturer of PFAS, not a company that uses the chemicals as part of a separate manufacturing process.
Jeff Fritz, a lobbyist for Chemours, touted the company's success at cutting down on PFAS discharges into the Cape Fear River and emissions into the surrounding air.
Under a consent order with DEQ and environmental nonprofit Cape Fear River Watch, Chemours took steps, like building a thermal oxidizer to burn PFAS, that would have otherwise been released into the air and a several-story underground wall along the Cape Fear River edge of its property so it could capture and treat groundwater contaminated from decades of PFAS use.
"We respectfully suggest that Chemours should not be made liable for all other PFAS and various contaminants coming down the Cape Fear River, for which new filtration systems have been built to address," Jeff Fritz, a lobbyist for Chemours, told the committee on Wednesday.
While the Brunswick County and Cape Fear Public Utility Authority upgrades are effective at removing other compounds from raw water, Chemours' contamination was the impetus for both projects. Both utilities are suing Chemours in federal court to try to recoup their water filtration expenses.
"Models have shown that the will be very effective at removing Chemours' PFAS compounds in water sourced from the Cape Fear River, reducing GenX close to or at levels where it cannot be detected in treated drinking water," states a document on CFPUA's website.
"Right now, the ratepayers are responsible for the costs that are incurred by that public utility authority in order to remove the PFAS contamination that was put in there by the polluter." — Rep. Ted Davis, R-Wilmington
In an interview later Wednesday, Davis noted that Chemours' Fritz was the only industry representative to publicly oppose the bill, a sharp departure from past appearances where similar legislation has met significant opposition in committees.
"I did not say what I wanted to say and that is, 'You didn't ever do anything until you got caught. So it's not very magnanimous when you stand there and talk about all this stuff you've done after the fact,'" Davis said.
Tied to threatened federal standards?
The North Carolina legislation ties any enforcement measures to EPA drinking water standards.
Last April, the agency announced its first set of such standards. Then-EPA Administrator Michael Regan made the announcement at a Fayetteville Public Works Commission water plant, about 16 miles upstream from the Chemours facility.
Regan's announcement of four parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS and 10 parts per trillion for GenX, PFHxS and PFNA. It also created a hazard index to measure when risks for the latter three chemicals and PFBS is too high.
The with some cancers, increased cholesterol and, in some cases, changes to the liver, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A year after becoming reality, those standards are already under pressure from business interests.
A coalition of 19 national industry groups wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in February calling on the agency to "explore options" to set national drinking water standards for PFOA, PFOS and other PFAS "at workable levels."
Should Davis' proposal become law, loosening of the EPA's rules may impact how much money utilities would be able to recoup and a roll back could render the law moot.
Davis acknowledged the risks of linking the potential North Carolina law to those standards.
"I understand President Trump is kind of pushing back on those. But I've also heard him say that we want to have clean water, so I'm hoping that they'll come forth with a standard soon and put it in effect," Davis said.
After the Agriculture committee approved the bill Wednesday, it was sent to the House Appropriations Committee. It would also need approval from the Rules Committee before a vote in the full chamber and being sent to the Senate.
