NEW HANOVER COUNTY — Chemical industry groups are joining water utility associations in a coordinated effort to strike down federal PFAS drinking water standards. Local advocacy groups filed briefs in the lawsuit to defend the water protections.
READ MORE: Chemours attempts to block internal docs in lawsuit with local utility authorities, governments
The Environmental Protection Agency will respond to a federal lawsuit filed in Washington D.C. Circuit of Appeals by national water utility groups, whose members include CFPUA, and chemical industry associations by Tuesday, April 8.
Two national groups representing thousands of water utilities, consultants, and engineers — the American Water Works Association and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies — contend implementing PFAS filtration technology to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards will pose exorbitant costs. They filed a lawsuit against the EPA to overturn the rules last summer after the agency announced in the spring it was enacting first-time maximum contaminant levels for six PFAS compounds. The rule requires public water utilities to complete a five-year compliance schedule to achieve legally enforceable concentration levels by 2029.
“If the new administration decides not to defend the PFAS drinking water standards,” Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan said during the group’s World Water Day event last month, “We will not have any state-level enforceable PFAS standards. Many North Carolinians on public water supplies will lose those protections even though we have some of the worst PFAS pollution in the nation.”
Clean Cape Fear is serving as an intervenor in the case. Over a dozen environmentalist groups, including Cape Fear River Watch, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Toxic Free NC, also filed briefs in support of the EPA.
“It’s difficult to understand their position given that their mission is to provide clean and safe drinking water,” Earthjustice senior attorney Katherine O’Brien, who is serving as Clean Cape Fear’s legal counsel, said. “They’ve said they don’t want to pay to comply with this rule, and certainly the costs are significant. But as we explained in our briefing, there are very significant financial resources that are already available to support water utilities in complying with the rule.”
CFPUA executive director Kenneth Waldroup is a board member of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies. During Clean Cape Fear’s World Water Day event last month, he said he believes it is important to have a “seat at the table” in utility trade groups to positively influence them, even if CFPUA disagrees with their actions.
“We are part of a number of professional trade organizations that have stances on PFAS and 1,4-dioxane that is 180 degrees away from our position,” he said. “We are part of those organizations because we want to be inside them and tell them the other side.”
CFPUA spokesperson Cammie Bellamy told PCD Friday Waldroup wanted to reiterate his comments from the World Water Day event and note CFPUA shared its concerns with AMWA regarding the organization’s challenge to EPA
Chemours, the American Chemistry Council, and the National Association of Manufacturers are suing the EPA alongside the water utility groups.
“They’re suing jointly to overturn EPA standards,” Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Strategic Director for Health Erik Olson said. “It really is strange because it puts the people charging you for your drinking water in the same boat as the people contaminating your drinking water. It doesn’t add up to us.”
In February, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin requested the Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals grant a 60-day stay on the suit.
“As the court is aware a new administration took office on January 20, 2025,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Russell wrote. “The new leadership is in the process of familiarizing itself with the issues presented in this case and related litigation.”
Port City Daily reached out to the EPA to ask if it plans to defend PFAS maximum contaminant levels and if the agency plans to bring back proposed industrial PFAS discharge rules it withdrew in January.
“In keeping with a longstanding practice, EPA does not comment on any current or pending litigation,” an EPA spokesperson said.
Zeldin recently indicated he was considering weakening the regulations. Trump’s nominee to lead the EPA’s Office of Water, Jessica Kramer, is a former lobbyist for clients including the water utility industry, Duke Energy, and chemical firm LG Chem.
From 2022 to 2023, Kramer’s lobbying firm received $50,000 from the American Water Works Association, $40,000 from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, and $30,000 from the National Rural Water Association. The only issue Kramer listed in her lobbying disclosures for the water utility groups is PFAS.
Water utility trade groups have long been an influential force in the EPA’s Office of Water; America Water Works Association executive director Tracy Mehan led the department for several years in the George W. Bush administration. The AWWA pushed to weaken the Safe Drinking Water Act, lobbied last year to kill a proposed rule that would have prevented water systems from making “false or misleading” statements about their water and compliance with federal standards, and is suing to roll back lead protection rules.
The Clean Water Act requires industrial facilities to pretreat wastewater before discharging it into publicly owned treatment works plants. In North Carolina, POTWs are partially responsible for controlling industrial waste entering its sewage system.
“I’ve often heard these sewage treatment plants call themselves passive receivers,” Olson said. “Yet they’re not passive because they’re getting paid to accept this waste from industrial dischargers dumping it into their system. They really need to use the muscle that the law gives them to crack down on upstream polluters.”
Most municipal water utilities tally revenue and expenses in an enterprise fund, separate from local government’s tax-revenue based general fund. Enterprise funds are independent accounts meant to provide self-sustaining public services through fees, in a similar manner to a private business.
In his 2019 book Troubled Water, entrepreneur Seth Siegel argued municipalities sometimes use water fees as a source of revenue generation for separate government functions. However, elected officials are incentivized to keep rates from getting too high and angering constituents, making cost containment a priority above expensive investments to filter contaminants.
“That could be a factor,” Olson said. “Also, frankly, just raw politics. If you have a major company that is a big part of the tax base and has some political muscle in local politics, cracking down on that corporation may not be in the cards. Sometimes polluters have a lot of political power and it’s hard for sewage treatment plants to exercise any authority over them.”
The American Water Works Association’s board members include representatives of consulting firms that are also connected to the chemical industry. AWWA’s 2023 technical analysis to EPA challenging the agency’s scientific determination of PFAS toxicity was prepared by AWWA member and global consulting firm Ramboll.
Ramboll has provided PFAS risk and liability services for more than two decades to clients including Chemours, DuPont, 3M, and Honeywell. It contracted with Chemours to provide PFAS testing and compliance services at its Fayetteville Works facility.
The Union of Concerned Scientists and other advocacy groups have criticized Ramboll for downplaying toxic chemical risks on behalf of its clients, including the American Chemistry Council. The Foundation for Chemistry Research and Initiatives — a nonprofit established and funded by the American Chemistry Council — paid Ramboll $445,500 for research 2020. According to 2023 tax filings, the chemical industry-linked nonprofit paid $203,293 to consulting firm Stantec, an AWWA member and platinum sponsor of its recent PFAS conferences, according to tax filings.
The AWWA sent a separate 2023 letter to EPA challenging science undergirding its proposed PFAS water standards citing research by the Alliance for Risk Assessment finding the half-life for PFOA to be significantly lower than previously estimated.
The Alliance for Risk Assessment is an affiliate of Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, a research nonprofit heavily funded by the American Chemistry Council and other industry groups. Trump nominated TERA’s president Michael Dourson to head the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention in 2017, but Dourson withdrew amid scrutiny of his financial ties to industry.
“Over the last several weeks, Senator [Thom] Tillis has done his due diligence in reviewing Mr. Dourson’s body of work,” Tillis’s office told StarNews in 2017. “Senator Tillis still has serious concerns about his record and cannot support his nomination.”
In a 2017 email, Dourson told American Chemistry Council senior director Steve Risotto the Alliance for Risk Assessment’s toxic chemical research provides an “easier argument for industry to make to the EPA” before requesting donations from the lobby group.
Dourson contributed to the PFOA half-life study cited by the Association for Metropolitan Water Agencies. Other authors affiliated with the American Chemistry Council include TERA toxicologist Bernard Gadagbui, Ramboll consultant Harvey Clewell, and Cox Associates president Tony Cox.
The Alliance for Risk Assessment’s PFOA half life study was published in the chemical-industry funded Regulatory Journal of Toxicology and Pharmacology. Dourson is on the journal’s editorial board and is president of its sponsor organization, the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology.
Dourson sent Zeldin a letter last month on behalf of ISRTP urging the EPA administrator to reevaluate PFAS maximum contaminant levels.
“We encourage the agency to convene one or more U.S. and international panels to reach a consensus on how this family of chemicals should be globally regulated and at what level,” ISTRP wrote to Zeldin. “Our society would be happy to assist in identifying panelists.”
Dourson cited a 2023 study his working group produced to support weakened standards.
The North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, American Chemistry Council, and other trade groups sent a September letter to North Carolina’s Environmental Management Commission citing the same study with similar comments from the toxicologist. Multiple EMC members work as utility consultants — a position the Ethics Commission identified as a potential conflict of interest — for clients including AWWA and AMWA members, and several invest in companies lobbying against PFAS regulation.
“The polluters have quite a stranglehold on the EMC,” Waldroup said at the Clean Cape Fear event earlier this month. “That’s just a reality. There was a reconfiguration of the Environmental Management Commission and they have eight members who are highly skeptical of the science of their own staff — but are more receptive of the science brought to them by industrial actors who are paying for their science.”
Last July, Dourson sent an email to his associates requesting donations to assist in a coordinated effort to publish studies aimed at undermining the EPA’s new PFAS regulation. According to the Guardian, the studies would be based in part on presentations given during an October 2023 Alliance for Risk Assessment conference. Its presenters included American Water Works Association director of federal relations Steve Via.
The International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology recently launched a second publication — the Journal of Toxicology and Regulatory Policy — with a first issue focused on PFAS. The January publication includes two studies funded by chemical industry-funded nonprofit the Foundation for Chemistry Research and Initiatives. Authors include American Chemistry Council senior director Jessica Ryman and toxicologists with consulting firm Gradient — Julie Goodman and Lorenz Rhomberg — who’ve also received funding from the lobby group.
Tips or comments? Email journalist Peter Castagno at peter@localdailymedia.com.
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