Within hours of House Democrats filing HB 968, four more House members, this time all Republicans, put up their own bill, HB 972, which essentially rebuffs any meaningful appropriations for the NC Department of Environmental Quality.

Instead, it appropriates just $2.3 million to DEQ and gives money to just about anyone else who has asked for it: the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority ($450,000), local governments ($2 million), the state health department ($530,000), and the NC Collaboratory ($8 million).

The language in HB 968 resembles the Senate version of the Water Safety Act, introduced during a special session last winter, which seemed almost mean-spirited toward DEQ.

In comparison, Democrats introduced a bill today that would appropriate more than $14 million to DEQ and the state health department to address the GenX crisis.

In Republicans’ HB 972, DEQ is often used as a pass-through for funding. For example, The bill would appropriate $2 million in one-time money to DEQ, which would then disperse funds to local governments to connect households to public water supplies. The polluter would then reimburse the state via a Recovery Fund.

Another $450,000 would go to DEQ for grants to the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority for water sampling and testing new treatment technologies.

The $1.3 million in one-time money to DEQ would be used for temporary staff to conduct water quality sampling for emerging contaminants, to address permitting backlogs, and to sample and analyze GenX in the air, soil and river sediment.

(The funding is being diverted from the dead-on-arrival SePro project. Last year, lawmakers appropriated $1.3 million for the private company to test algae-killing chemicals and other dubious treatments in Jordan Lake. State environmental officials and the US Army Corps of Engineers killed the deal over concerns about potential harm to aquatic organisms and wildlife.)

Another $479,000 would go toward statewide sampling for emerging contaminants, plus $537,000 for a high-resolution mass spectrometer.

DEQ receives no funding to develop a detailed remediation plan for emerging contaminants, as laid out in the bill.

The big winner is the NC Collaboratory, whose research director is Jeffrey Warren, former science adviser to Sen. Phil Berger. The Collaboratory’s one-time $8 million windfall would be used to corral academics to conduct targeted and nontargeted monitoring for emerging contaminants in public water supplies. Money would also be used to buy equipment, pay for research time, study air emissions and to conduct computer modeling for private well contamination and treatment options — all duties usually assumed by DEQ.

The bill also contains a glaring redundancy. It directs the state health department to consult with federal authorities and academics via the Collaboratory to recommend health goals for fluorinated compounds, including GenX. That’s precisely what the Science Advisory Board is doing right now. In fact, it is expected to release its health goal recommendations in June.

The co-sponsors of HB 972 are Republican Reps. Ted Davis Jr., Frank Iler, Bill Brisson and Susan Martin. All but Martin sit on the House River Quality Committee.

HB 972 empowers not only environmental regulators, but also the governor, under certain conditions, to require a facility to “cease all operations and activities” that result in the production of a pollutant.

Neither bill specifically mentions Chemours, but the punitive language in both applies to the company’s conduct in North Carolina.

All of these conditions must be met:

the facility has a NPDES discharge permit

it has received more than one notice of violation from DEQ within a two-year period

the discharge of the fluorinated compounds violates federal drinking water standards or health goals that have been implemented by the state health department

DEQ has been unable to stop the facility from these unauthorized discharges within a year of learning of them

DEQ first learned of Chemours’ GenX discharges in June 2017, almost a year ago.

Polluters would also be require polluters to cover the cost of alternative water supplies for households whose private drinking water wells have been contaminated. More than 100 such wells have been contaminated near Chemours Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County.

The Democrats’ version of the bill focused on forcing polluters, such as Chemours, to pay to clean up public water supplies they had contaminated.