Waterkeeper Alliance and Partners Call for Investigation into Safety of North Carolina Drinking Water Wells
By: Pete Harrison
On April 1 the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), under the leadership of Governor Pat McCrory, submitted a report to the North Carolina state legislature entitled Final Report on the Study of Standards and Health Screening Levels for Hexavalent Chromium and Vanadium. In the report, DEQ reveals that it will not act to set critical drinking water standards for dangerous heavy metals found in drinking water wells across the state, saying it will instead hope the federal government may eventually enact standards for hexavalent chromium. The legislature required McCrory’s DEQ to undertake the study last year after testing revealed dangerous levels of heavy metals associated with coal ash, including the carcinogen hexavalent chromium, in hundreds of residential drinking water wells located near Duke Energy’s unlined coal ash disposal pits across the state.
The confusion all began last year the state of North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), another agency under McCrory’s control, advised hundreds of private well owners living near Duke Energy’s unlined coal ash pits not to drink their water. The letters were triggered by the discovery of hexavalent chromium concentrations in the wells above what DHHS determined would amount to a 1:1 million lifetime cancer risk from drinking the water.
Now DHHS is rescinding that advice and telling the well owners they should resume drinking their water, even though DHHS is not questioning its previous risk calculation. For example, DHHS has specifically advised a family with four children that it is safe for them to drink their water, which contains a level of hexavalent chromium more than 300 times higher than the levels the agency has deemed unsafe to drink. Residents are understandably confused by the flip-flop.
Shamefully, Governor McCrory has not once acknowledged the crisis publicly, and he has refused to respond to numerous letters and phone calls from residents with tainted drinking water. Yesterday, Waterkeeper Alliance joined with 14 other environmental and health organizations to deliver a letter to Governor McCrory urging him own up to his failures and to investigate and take immediate action to address the confusion over whether the water is safe to drink.
No one benefits more than Duke Energy from the McCrory administration’s refusal to act on the drinking water crisis that has unfolded around Duke’s leaking coal ash pits. Governor McCrory has turned his back on hundreds of families who are facing a drinking water crisis. After finding dangerously high levels of contaminants in well after well last year, the state toxicologist advised people not to drink their water. Now that toxicologist has been replaced, and the state is telling people their water is safe to drink even though it clearly is not.