//Ill ~·NCMA NORTH CAROLINA MANUFACTURERS ALLIANCE 22 May 2018 Honorable Chuck McGrady, Representative NC House of Representatives 300 N Salisbury Street, Room 304 Raleigh, NC 27603-5925 Dear Representative McGrady: I am writing to express the deep concerns being expressed by members of the North Carolina Manufacturers Alliance about Senate Bill 724 and House Bill 972. NCMA is NOT focused on stopping the legislation. Rather, NCMA would like to see the legislation amended as described below (and in the attached comments and suggestions summary) so that the legislation's significant negative impacts on growth in our manufacturing economy can be diminished. NCMA suggests the following: Remove all references to "Health Goals". Health Goals are developed without any regulatory standards. Unlike Air, Water and Ground Water Standards which are promulgated through rule-making by the Environmental Management Commission, and Federal Drinking Water Standards which are promulgated through rule-making by EPA, there is no opportunity for interested parties, which includes the public, to be heard in the development of "health goals." The General Assembly should not legitimize public health goals; it should demand adoption of standards through long-established administrative processes that insure public involvement and legislative oversight. Limit the Scope/ Keep N.C. Competitive in Manufacturing Expanding North Carolina's focus to all emerging contaminants will put our state out-of-step with the emerging contaminants work being undertaken in other states, as they are focusing their resources almost exclusively on per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances only. No state (nor EPA) has initiated an emerging contaminants program that even remotely resembles the scope of the program proposed in this legislation. The General Assembly should focus the legislation on per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances only. THE Vo1cE OF NoRTH CAROLINA MANUFACTURERS 3901 BARRETT DRIVE, SUITE 103 • RALEIGH, NC 27609 • 919-834-9459 • FAX 919-834-8268 WEBSITE: http://www.myncma.org • E-MAIL: information@myncma.org Clarify Section 12 It is my understanding that almost all of the 80,000+ chemicals that are in commerce today have been assigned a CAS number, but most have no standard method of analysis by which to determine their concentration (or in some cases, even the presence of the chemical) without the use of a non-targeted analysis. Currently we are not aware of any commercial laboratories in the US that have this capability. It is only available through the EPA or the research community. Yet, Section 12 places this burden on the North Carolina regulated community. No other state places such a burden on its NPDES dischargers. NCMA recommends that you direct DEQ to continue to use EPA Standard Form C for industrial discharges and add a requirement that an applicant narratively describe its processes and the chemicals used in those processes that may or may not be present in the final discharge from the facility. Respectfully submitted, A Preston Howard, Jr., P.E. President Comments and Suggestions on Senate Bill 724 Don't Legitimize "Health Goals" You will not find any reference to "health goals" in our current statutes. Health goals are developed in isolation deep within the bowels of DHHS. Unlike standards for surface water, groundwater, and air quality, all of which are promulgated through rule-making by the Environmental Management Commission, there is no opportunity for interested parties nor for the general public to be heard in the development of DHHS health goals. The General Assembly has invested environmental standard-setting authority with the EMC for more than four (4) decades. The EMC follows the rule-making procedures set out in the Administrative Procedures Act in adopting its standards. DHHS does not. No light shines on the DHHS process. In the case of GenX, the staff at DHHS sat in an office and derived a health goal of 140 PPT. They pronounced that goal that now everyone down in Wilmington believes carries the same weight as a regulatory standard adopted by the EMC, and it does not. Further, DEQ is now using that un-adopted goal as a regulatory standard. All regulatory standards at both the federal and state level are required by both federal law and state law to go through a public process, similar to NC's Administrative Procedures Act. So you might ask what would be different if DHHS had subjected their proposed health goal to public review and comment. One point that would certainly have been raised is that DHHS didn't used the correct body weight in deriving its health goal. The EMC's rules (mirrored by long-standing federal policies at EPA) set the body weight for calculating acceptable levels of exposure at 70 kg. DHHS assumed a body weight of 3.6 kg. Had DHHS used the correct 70 kg body weight, the health goal for GenX would have been 2700 PPT, instead of 140 PPT. There are other issues with the work DHHS performed on GenX but I will not go into them here. I will only say that having observed the DHHS toxicologists in responding to questions from very skilled and well-respected private sector, public sector and university sector toxicologists currently serving on the Secretaries' Science Advisory Board, it has become evident to me that the toxicologists at DHHS don't possess the necessary skill sets to perform their work properly, or they just ignore proper and long-established protocols in the performance of their work. I'm sure you will recall the "do not drink the water" public health advisory letters that were sent to over 700 residents around certain coal ash basins a couple of years ago, which were later retracted by the State Health Director. Those letters originated with this same DHHS group. And there are other similarly bad examples of poor quality work originating in this group. I would encourage you to look at abolishing th is function in DHHS and re-creating a similar function in DEQ. Doing this would consolidate all aspects that go into development of permits and establishment of remediation requirements in one agency, and eliminate opportunities for agencies to point fingers at each other as happened in the coal ash example cited above. Limit the Scope of the Bill So that NC Remains Competitive With Other States Possibly the most troubling provision of the bill is the provision that tasks the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory and DEQ with sampling all of the local government water supplies and conducting nontargeted analysis on those samples. I feel comfortable saying with some certainty that this high-resolution analysis will most assuredly reveal that there are many, many chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other consumer products in those waters supplies. Most will be detected at very low levels. But just as was the case with GenX, there will be very little information about the toxicity of those substances, resulting in the same or similar controversies over whether the concentrations pose any significant risk to public health or the environment. The expanded scope does nothing more than open a pandora's box on emerging contaminants. Expanding the focus on emerging contaminants beyond per- and poly- fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) will put NC out-of-step with the emerging contaminants work that is being undertaken in other states around the country (other states are focused only on per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances). I have talked with enough manufacturers to know with some certainty that the regulatory uncertainty caused by such an action will generate a lot of "X's" beside North Carolina's name when major manufacturers seek to site new production facilities or expand existing ones across the US. A better course of action, and one that would keep North Carolina aligned with other states, and keep check-marks beside our state's name, would be to limit the scope of the state-wide sampling and analysis to PFAS compounds. If you expand the scope to include all of NC's water systems you will dilute the focus on GenX and other PFAS in the lower CPF region, which demands the immediate focus. Clarify Section 12 I have discussed this section of the bill with several people and there are several differing understandings of what is being asked for in terms of disclosure. Some read it to require only the chemicals that you listed as present on your original application must be provided again in an electronic format. Others suggest that it requires far more information than DEQ currently requires for an industrial application. I tend to agree with the latter. First let me say that our member companies at NCMA have expressed a willingness to disclose the chemicals that they use in their processes. They have demonstrated no desire to shield such information from the public eye. Further, our members have sought to fully and accurately complete the EPA Standard Form C Application for industrial discharges that DEQ and many other states have adopted and used for many years. Our members will willingly report the concentration or presence/absence of any chemical for which EPA has established a standard method of analysis that commercial laboratories use in determining the concentration of various chemicals. However, there are many chemicals for which a CAS number has been assigned, but for which no standard method of analysis has been developed. Therein lies the problem with this section. The only way to determine if certain chemicals are present would be through non-targeted analysis. Currently there is no commercial lab in the US that can perform non-targeted analysis. Such capability is only present in the research community and at EPA. Surely the General Assembly does not intend to require disclosure of chemicals in NPDES applications that can only be accomplished at the university research level. NO other state places this burden on applicants, and neither does the EPA. One alternative that may be workable would be to have DEQ continue to use its existing application for industrial discharges, and to further require that an applicant narratively describe its processes and the chemicals used in those processes that may or may not be present in the final discharge from the facility.