NC's Draft Industrial Contaminant "Protection" Plan Denied After Public Protest Over Weak Protections and Missing Cost Analysis

https://www.wral.com/news/local/nc-pfas-plan-critics-slam-may-2025/

Thank you so much to the community members who showed up at the EMC meeting yesterday! The water quality committee did not move forward a draft PFAS minimization plan, or the draft 1,4-dioxane minimization plans. Both of these rules are deeply flawed and would have done nothing to protect public health. The committee members blamed NC DEQ and Office of State Budget Management (OSBM) for failure to provide details on a Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) for the rules, which includes information on how much polluters will pay for this rule. The RIA does not include costs associated with cleaning up the pollution for drinking water downstream. 

The EMC should scrap these draft rules discussed and instead propose standards to curb the discharge of PFAS and 1,4-dioxane into North Carolina's rivers. Currently, the draft plans are scheduled to be reviewed again at the July meeting.