State environmental agency says lack of resources delayed research underpinning safety advisory
Officials with the Department of Environmental Quality said Wednesday that research of toxic chemicals in fish is facing setbacks due in part to stretched staff.
The DEQ has been researching so-called forever chemicals such as per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in fish in segments of the Cape Fear River.
“We got the funding for this and had to act very quickly using all the resources we have available to us, which means the staff that currently work at DEQ and DHHS who have a lot of diverse responsibilities,” said Frannie Nilsen, a DEQ environmental toxicologist, told the Secretaries’ Science Advisory Board on Wednesday.
The DEQ’s overall job vacancy rate is about 15.1%. The vacancy rate for environmental specialists is more than 20% and engineers is more than 23%. Approximately 31% of DEQ employees are eligible to retire within the next five years.
Fish findings and delays
Nilsen said she was surprised to find similar levels of PFAS across more than 250 fish samples in nearly a dozen segments of the middle and lower Cape Fear River.
In a presentation to the Science Advisory Board, a group of 13 experts that consult regulatory agencies and assist in the review of emerging contaminants, she showed findings from fish and water collection research that started last year.
The sampling and analysis of 56 PFAS in fish samples led the state Department of Health and Human Services to issue a fish consumption advisory last month.
“We know that these chemicals can have impacts on people's health, so these advisories are intended to help people understand those risks and to weigh those risks against what we know are some health benefits and positive health effects of catching and eating fish,” said Virginia Guidry, head of the occupational & environmental epidemiology branch at DHHS.
Jamie DeWitt, pharmacy and toxicology professor at East Carolina University and member of the board, raised community concerns about the need for data about PFAS levels in saltwater fish.
Nilsen acknowledged a delay in the testing. “I’m concerned about the saltwater fish as well and I did not mean for it to take so long to get the data,” Nilsen said. “That’s just the way that it happened because I had to be the person to do all of it.”
At the meeting’s public forum, residents asked government agencies for more research to see the extent of PFAS contamination to the ecosystem surrounding Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Plant, where PFAS chemicals were dumped in the Cape Fear River for decades, as well as more contamination testing for waterways, crops and animals across the state.
Sushma Masemore, DEQ’s assistant secretary for environment, says the agency is working to regulate the use of PFAS chemicals that could change permitting and stop pollution before further infiltration into the ecosystem.
“In July, we presented two concepts to Environmental Management Commission committees for setting regulatory standards for surface water discharges and groundwater quality,” Masemore said. “Both of those regulatory efforts are using scientific data [from DEQ] as a feedstock to that.”Statewide issue
Nilsen’s comments come a day after North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall said her office is short-staffed and struggling to process a 70% uptick in filings, joining a string of other state officials expressing similar concerns.
State government is grappling with historic employee retention problems, fueling a push for higher salaries as state lawmakers prepare for final negotiations over the annual state budget.
More than one out of every three people who went to work for state government agencies last year — 36.7% to be exact — left before spending a full year in their role, according to the Office of State Human Resources.
At the start of the last fiscal year, at least 20 state departments, offices and boards were grappling with the highest number of vacant positions in five years, according to data provided to WRAL by the state Office of Human Resources. Vacancies in at least a dozen of those groups were at 10-year highs, including some that saw vacancies increase by more than 1,000 positions since the middle of 2021.
WRAL state government reporters Travis Fain and Paul Specht contributed to this report.
