NC State Epidemiologist Resigns To Protest McCrory's Lies About Coal Ash Water Safety Standards
North Carolina’s state epidemiologist resigned Wednesday to protest her employer’s depiction that “deliberately misleads” how screening standards were created to test private wells near Duke Energy’s power plants. Dr. Megan Davies’ immediate resignation after seven years on the job deepens a rift between Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration and some of the state’s top public health scientists. McCrory is a former Duke employee who is running for a second term as governor.
The millions of tons of coal ash stored at Duke’s power plants has contaminated groundwater under them. State tests last year found that cancer-causing chemicals were present in hundreds of nearby private wells, although Duke denies coal ash is the source. Davies and the state toxicologist, Kenneth Rudo, have testified in sworn depositions that state environmental officials pressured public health scientists to relax temporary limits created to test the private wells for two elements, vanadium and cancer-causing hexavalent chromium.
McCrory’s office forcefully denied last week Rudo’s account that the governor personally talked with him about how well test results were communicated to their owners. Rudo stands by his testimony. On Tuesday the departments of Health and Human Services and Environmental Quality released an editorial that criticized Rudo for temporary standards that it said were far more stringent than those used in other states. “Rudo’s unprofessional approach to this important matter does a disservice to public health and environmental protection in North Carolina,” it read.
Davies, who is Rudo’s boss, struck back Wednesday with her resignation, saying department officials knew that Rudo was only one of several officials who reviewed the screening standards. “I can only conclude that the department’s leadership is fully aware that this document misinforms the public,” Davies wrote in her resignation letter. “I cannot work for a department and administration that deliberately misleads the public.”
Ed. - Emphasis Added
EDIT
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article94899332.html
