Emerging water contaminants such as GenX were the focus of back-to-back announcements from state lawmakers Thursday.

A coalition of Republican state House and Senate members representing southeastern North Carolina  said their new plan will address the need for access to safe drinking water, extend efforts to remove GenX pollution from public water supplies and take The Chemours Co. to task. In an announcement earlier Thursday, Democrats in the state House who represent residents of the Cape Fear River Basin filed House Bill 968 "to immediately address the needs of the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Health and Human Services to address Emerging Contaminants in North Carolina."

The Republican announcement said identical bills were filed in the Senate by Sens. Michael Lee (R-New Hanover), Bill Rabon (R-Brunswick) and Wesley Meredith (R-Cumberland) and in the House by Reps. Ted Davis (R-New Hanover), Holly Grange (R-New Hanover), Frank Iler (R-Brunswick) and William Brisson (R-Bladen). 

"The lawmakers’ proposal is the first to hold the company that discharged GenX into the region’s water supply financially responsible for its actions – even authorizing Gov. Roy Cooper to shut down its operations if the state Department of Environmental Quality cannot stop additional pollution from occurring," the news release said.

According to the announcement, the legislation also provides more than $10 million for university scientists and state regulators to continue their research on the amount of GenX and other emerging contaminants in public water supplies, to determine the impact those chemicals could have on public health and safety and to develop a plan to mitigate them statewide.

The plan provides additional funding to the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority to test a technology to treat its groundwater supply and replicate this water treatment technology in other parts of the state, the release stated.

Meanwhile a group of House Democrats -- Reps. Deb Butler (D-New Hanover), William Richardson (D-Cumberland), Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford) and Elmer Floyd (D-Cumberland) -- filed House Bill 968, saying the legislation would accomplish a number of tasks related to the problem and provide more than $14 million in funding.

The announcement stated that the Democrats' bill repeals the Hardison Amendment, "which handcuffs the NC legislature and forbids it from making any rule more stringent than the federal EPA, along with irresponsible cuts to the budgets of the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Heath and Human Services have rendered our waterways and drinking supplies vulnerable. NC knows better how to manage its natural resources and shouldn’t be controlled by a federal authority."  

The bill would allocate $7 million for 39 staff members to analyze data and to conduct sampling across the state and to end a permit backlog; $2.5 million for detection equipment and laboratory upgrades to the Reedy Creek Laboratory; $2.6 million for staff to digitize and transform the state's permitting process "which is still paperbound and antiquated," the release said; $1.8 million for hardware associated with the transformation of the permitting process; and $536,000 to DHHS for a medical risk assessor, a toxicologist, an epidemiologist, and a public health educator.

The Democrats' bill also "forbids any discharge into NC waterways unless a health goal, a health advisory, an effluent standard, or an EPA consent order has been established, and if a standard or standards exist, the permittee must adhere to the most stringent existing standard. Wastewater treatment facilities are exempted," the announcement said, with violations resulting in immediate suspension of permits.

The Republican plan allocates $1.8 million for DEQ to purchase a mass spectrometer and hire additional staff to support water quality sampling and analysis and address its permitting backlog, the release stated.

In a joint statement, the Republican lawmakers said, “We are pleased the House and Senate worked together to come up with a comprehensive plan that will help stop the pollution of our water supply, provide our families, neighbors and constituents access to clean, safe water and finally hold Chemours responsible for its pollution. This plan accomplishes our immediate goal of addressing water quality in southeastern North Carolina and puts the tools in place to help protect North Carolinians from GenX and other emerging compounds going forward.”