Senators to call Hearing into Cooper's Handling of GenX | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post was created by the staff for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

    N.C. senators plan to address Gov. Roy Cooper's handling of the GenX chemical controversy in an upcoming legislative hearing. The senators announced the hearing a day after their deadline for Cooper's administration to respond to a list of more than 20 questions about the issue.

    No date has been set for the hearing.

    Cooper's administration "failed to answer the overwhelming majority of direct questions [senators] posed about inconsistencies in his administration's handling of the discharge of GenX in the Cape Fear River," according to a news release from Senate leader Phil Berger's office.

    The governor also failed to show how his request of an additional $2.58 million to address the GenX issue "would be used to meaningfully improve water quality and public safety in the lower Cape Fear region," according to the release.

    A three-page letter from two Cooper cabinet secretaries addressed the senators' original request. "Our request is for funding for positions that will directly help protect water quality for all North Carolinians, and to cover the expense of test monitoring the presence of GenX and other chemical compounds in the Cape Fear River and other inland waterways as they become known to us," according to the letter from Michael Regan, secretary of environmental quality, and Mandy Cohen, secretary of health and human services. "The additional appropriation would allow us to continue the independent testing that provides the public with the most reliable results."

    The response did not satisfy state senators.

    "Families in the lower Cape Fear region deserve to know that they have clean, safe drinking water, and that they can trust the state agencies responsible for keeping our water safe," said Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover. "We are disappointed in Gov. Cooper's proposed response to this crisis because it does nothing to actually address the immediate problem of GenX in our drinking water."

    "What's worse, when we asked the governor serious questions about how his proposal would truly improve water quality in the region and when his administration knew about the GenX discharge into the Cape Fear River, we were met with an evasive, dismissive, and unserious response," Lee continued.

    Lee suggests he and fellow senators will use legislative oversight responsbilities "to move this process along" in the coming days.

    Seven Republican senators, including Lee, submitted a letter to Cooper last week requesting answers to more than 20 questions about his administration's knowledge of and approach to the GenX controversy. The letter gave the Cooper administration five days to respond. The letter followed Cooper's request for additional funding.