Top Health Official Resigns Over Perceived Corruption In N.C. Water Oversight

A top public health official in North Carolina resigned this week claiming that the state is deliberately misleading residents amid an escalating fight about drinking water oversight.

The backdrop: “Nearly 400 well owners were advised last year not to drink their water, mostly because of the contaminants vanadium and hexavalent chromium, which causes cancer,” The Charlotte Observer reported.

The advisories were lifted this year. The story heated up against this month when the Associated Press published a piece featuring a statement from Ken Rudo, a toxicologist for the Department of Health and Human Services. In a legal deposition, he criticized the state’s decision to lift the advisory.

“The state health director’s job is to protect public health,” Rudo said, per the AP. “And in this specific instance, the opposite occurred. [The director] knowingly told people that their water was safe when we knew it wasn’t.”

State officials responded to those criticisms by publishing an open letter last week aiming to discredit Rudo, calling him “unprofessional.”

Megan Davies, the state’s epidemiologist, jumped into the fray last week, resigning in protest. She slammed the letter for mischaracterizing Rudo. Here is Grist’s account of her decision, citing her resignation letter:

“The [open letter] signed by Randall Williams and Tom Reeder presents a false narrative of a lone scientist in acting independently to set health screening levels and make water use recommendations to well owners,” Davies wrote in her letter, adding that she had personally briefed the state on the well problem multiple times in 2015.

Davies wrote that resigning from her position is a huge loss, both professionally and personally. But, she continued, “I cannot work for a Department and an Administration that deliberately misleads the public.”

The North Carolina saga dates back to 2014, according to Grist. That’s when the nation’s largest utility, Duke Energy, spilled 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River.

“In the aftermath of the spill, public concern grew over Duke’s 32 coal ash storage sites around the state. Many of them were revealed to be unprotected, sitting in unlined basins — just heaps of coal ash in giant pits, leaching toxic elements and a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium into the water table,” Grist reported.

To read more about coal ash spills visit Water Online’s Source Water Contamination Solutions Center.

Image caption, per USFWS: “Between 50,000 and 82,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of ash pond water waste were released at Duke Energy’s Dan River Steam Station north of Eden, N.C.; Photo by USFWS/Steven Alexander.”