As GOP lawmakers shirk water protection, the EPA should step in | Opinion

One of the mysteries of government is why people become public servants when they don’t want to serve the public.

Such people don’t see it that way. They say they work for the government to keep it from inhibiting the public’s freedom – particularly the freedom of giant businesses to operate with minimal taxes and regulation.

This serving the public by not protecting the public mentality is what drives the Republican-controlled state legislature. You may experience the effects in your next glass of water.

Republican state lawmakers are intent on obstructing rules that protect water quality under the federal Clean Water Act. They’ve lifted protections from millions of acres of state wetlands that help to filter stormwater that flows into state waterways. They’ve even stymied the adoption of standards that would keep dangerous chemicals from being discharged into state rivers.

This latter harm through inaction was spelled out by four environmental groups last week. They petitioned the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to step in to protect North Carolina’s water quality.

Currently, the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) enforces federal clean water laws on behalf of the EPA. But Republican lawmakers and their appointees have so hamstrung the state agency through budget cuts and regulatory delays that it can’t take effective action against polluters.

The petition was filed with the EPA by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, Environmental Justice Community Action Network, Haw River Assembly and MountainTrue. It asks that the EPA withdraw from its memorandum of agreement (MOA) that governs how North Carolina controls pollution discharges under the Clean Water Act since DEQ can no longer hold up its end of the deal.

The petition says, “North Carolina families depend on DEQ to control harmful pollution released into the State’s rivers, creeks, and streams. By unlawfully stripping the agency of its ability to control this pollution, the legislature’s actions not only violate the Clean Water Act and the MOA—they threaten hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians who fish, swim, play in, and get their drinking water from North Carolina waters.”

For Republican lawmakers, the undermining of the DEQ represents mission accomplished. For state residents, it means more pollution for state waterways that provide drinking water, recreation, fishing and wildlife habitat.

The most dramatic threat is the continued release of toxic industrial chemicals such as 1,4-Dioxane, a solvent, and synthetic chemicals commonly known as PFAS.

PFAS are used in products to repel water, resist heat and increase durability, but they also do not break down in water and can build up in the human body, a persistence that has earned PFAS the name “forever chemicals.” PFAS discharged by a plant in Fayetteville into the Cape Fear River pose a threat to area wells and especially to Wilmington’s drinking water.

Meanwhile, the petition says, “North Carolinians drink water contaminated with 1,4-Dioxane at levels two to four times higher than the remainder of the country.” In Pittsboro, which takes its water from the Haw River downstream from pollution sources in Reidsville and Greensboro, the petition says 1,4-Dioxane levels have been measured at “more than 320 times the cancer risk level.”

Other pollution sources also go largely unchecked because of DEQ staff shortages and foot dragging by Republican-dominated environmental commissions. In the mountains, for instance, quartz mining and trout farming operations degrade waterways with little intervention from an overwhelmed DEQ.

Gray Jernigan is deputy director and general counsel for MountainTrue, an Asheville-based organization dedicated to protecting forests and waterways in the Southern Blue Ridge. He said MountainTrue joined the petition out of frustration with Republican obstruction of DEQ’s ability to enforce clean water regulations.

“This petition is coming after years of incrementally tying the agency’s hands and its ability to execute actions,” he said.

Ensuring that people have clean water to drink is a fundamental responsibility for elected officials and their appointees. But in North Carolina it has become a fundamental failure. The EPA should declare it so and take back enforcement of the Clean Water Act.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com