MountainTrue joins environmental groups in petitioning EPA to take over water protection in North Carolina

The blame falls squarely on the actions of the North Carolina General Assembly, which has systematically captured the regulatory process, underfunded state regulators, and sought to undermine public participation in permitting decisions. They’ve shown that they can’t be trusted to stand up to corporate polluters and special interests, and now we’re forced to ask the EPA to intervene.

The Southern Environmental Law Center today filed a petition on behalf of community groups with the Environmental Protection Agency asking it to take back North Carolina’s authority to regulate water pollution because the state legislature is crippling the state’s ability to protect its waterways, drinking water sources, and communities from harmful pollution. SELC filed the petition on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, Environmental Justice Community Action Network, MountainTrue, and the Haw River Assembly.

“The people of North Carolina deserve clean water, yet the state legislature is preventing the state from limiting toxic pollution of our waterways and drinking water,” said Mary Maclean Asbill, director of the North Carolina Offices at the Southern Environmental Law Center which represents the conservation organizations. “Legislative-induced failure is not an option when it comes to protecting North Carolina’s water and communities, so we are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to step in.”

As with most states, EPA delegated authority to North Carolina to regulate pollution from industry and wastewater treatment plants into rivers, lakes, and other waters through the “National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System” program. This means the state took on EPA’s legal duty to issue water pollution permits that protect North Carolina waters and include participation from the public, and to enforce against any polluters that violate water quality laws.

The petition documents how the North Carolina General Assembly has systematically undermined the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Management Commission to the point that the state can no longer effectively protect its waters, including through the following actions.

• Supermajority controlled commissions block DEQ efforts to protect North Carolinians from toxic chemical pollution, including from PFAS and 1,4-dioxane. Laws passed by the General Assembly have ensured that the state Rules Review Commission and Environmental Management Commission effectively are controlled by a supermajority in the General Assembly that is hostile to environmental protections. North Carolina waterways like the Cape Fear River Basin, including the Haw River, have among the highest levels of toxic pollutants like PFAS and 1,4-dioxane in the United States. But these increasingly partisan commissions are blocking development of important water quality standards for these toxic chemicals and harming the state’s ability to protect communities from them.

• New laws enacted by the General Assembly give a free pass to polluters by mandating weak state permits for fish farms and certain wastewater treatment plants.These new laws force the state to allow many polluters, including fish farms and certain wastewater treatment plants, to release pollution into the state’s waters and drinking water sources. The laws mandate weak permits that only control a short list of pollutants hand-picked by legislators, cutting experts and scientists at DEQ and the public out of the permitting process. In doing so, the General Assembly prevents DEQ from using its expertise to evaluate and control other potential pollutants, including toxic PFAS, 1,4-dioxane, mercury, and arsenic.

• The General Assembly’s decade-long failure to properly fund DEQ endangers North Carolinians by sabotaging the state’s ability to protect communities from harmful pollution. For years, the state budget enacted by the General Assembly has systematically underfunded DEQ as compared to other state agencies. Because the agency is severely understaffed as a result of the legislature’s actions, at least one fourth of the state’s polluters are releasing their pollution under expired permits. This means that North Carolinians are deprived of permits that incorporate available treatment technologies that protect the health of communities, wildlife and water quality, and that comply with the law.

• The North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings is preventing the state from complying with the Clean Water Act.The state legislature modified state law to give the Office of Administrative Hearings final authority over water pollution permits, cutting the public out of the permitting process. Now, the chief administrative law judge is poised to strip DEQ’s authority to control toxic 1,4-dioxane pollution in these permits. The chief administrative law judge also recently ordered DEQ to pay nearly one million dollars in attorneys’ fees, penalizing the agency for doing its job and paralyzing it from issuing permits that polluters are likely to challenge.

Petitions typically lead to EPA investigations of issues raised. EPA may work with the state and petitioners to resolve the concerns, deny or grant the petition.