Read the full article by Benjamin Schachtman

“Duke University Professor Lee Ferguson is an analytic chemist who, along with a consortium of other researchers, helped build the science behind the ‘Safe Water Act.’

Senate Bill 724, sponsored by local state senators Michael Lee and Bill Rabon, would create a state-wide monitoring system.

In a recent editorial, published by the Wilmington Star-News, Ferguson praised legislator, writing that ‘it will serve as a model for how states (and nations) should respond to potential chemical hazards in drinking-water sources.’ …

But Ferguson also acknowledged that the program is not perfect, and it’s not what scientists — or legislators — initially wanted…

Ferguson’s initial plan called for what’s called non-targeted analysis, which is essentially an open-ended approach to water testing; instead of looking for specific substances, the test produces a broad inventory of what’s in the water.

One of the exemplars of this approach is a project in the Rhine River Valley – a complicated scenario where water from watersheds in numerous different nations drain into the same waterway, where the Swiss have set up a real-time monitoring system.

‘Those are very close colleagues of mine who do the Rhine River water monitoring, and interestingly enough that is the model I was presenting to the legislature as the ideal way to do this kind of water protection system,’ Ferguson said.

The white paper produced by Ferguson, along with others – including engineer Detlef Knappe at NC State, and toxicologist Jamie DeWitt at East Carolina University – was ‘completely based on the non-targeted approach,’ according to Ferguson…

But the final plan which emerged from the Senate called for a ‘targeted analysis,’ which looks specifically for certain kinds of substances. The bill’s final version called for testing, but only for polyfluorinated chemicals (PFASs).

The change from a broad non-targeted to a targeted approach dramatically reduced the scope of what the water testing would find. According to a feature piece from Duke University about Ferguson’s work, the study would ignore about 80,000 organic chemicals used industrially in the United States to focus on the several thousand polyfluorinated chemicals in the same family as GenX…

So how did the bill get changed? Lobbyists.

‘My understanding is that there was quite a bit of pushback from industry lobbyists from this,’ Ferguson said. ‘Actually I was quite surprised to find a quote from the North Carolina Manufacturing Alliance, just outright saying they were afraid of opening Pandora’s box.’

The quote comes from A. Preston Howard, president of the North Carolina Manufacturing Alliance (NCMA). Howard has served as NCMA president for nearly 20 years, but before that, he spent 25 years at North Carolina’s Division of Water Quality, serving as director from 1992 to 1999.

Howard wrote the assembly over the summer, claiming open-ended non-targeted analysis would dissuade new business from moving to the state. WRAL reported the story in late May.

Ferguson said that it was his impression that, over the course of the summer, there was a ‘very real chance that the bill would fall apart,’ and that nothing would come of the efforts – so the language was changed…

As an outsider to the legislative process, Ferguson said he was unaware from whom, specifically, political pressure to give in to lobbyists demands came from. Senator Lee and Ferguson both declined to comment on the record about the reaction to the changes…

‘Perfect is the enemy of good,’ Ferguson said, quoting the sentiment often attributed to either Voltaire or Confucius.

‘It’s hard to say that the program as implemented was a bad idea in its own right. I think that it’s not perfect. But I think that it actually makes a very, very good start. The way we look at this is, it’s a start. It’s a way to start assessing emerging contaminants in water,’ Ferguson said.”