McCrory, aides protest too much in well dispute
Published August 12, 2016
Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, August 12, 2016.
Maybe Gov. Pat McCrory has forgotten the time-tested wisdom about what you do when you find yourself in a hole. For reasons that aren't clear, he's still digging.
And if he hasn't done it already, he's perilously close to hurting himself and his re-election campaign.
McCrory and some of his top lieutenants are in a war of words over his administration's handling of pollution in private wells around some of Duke Energy's coal-ash storage basins. The controversy erupted with the release of a legal deposition by state toxicologist Kenneth Rudo, who said he'd been summoned to the governor's offices over his recommendation for a do-not-drink order for residents whose wells were found to contain hexavalent chromium, a likely carcinogen. The governor, Rudo said, participated in the meeting by phone. McCrory and other top officials deny that.
After she read Williams' and Reeder's charges Tuesday, state epidemiologist Dr. Megan Davies resigned from her position. She had served for eight years at the $188,000-a-year job and was Rudo's immediate supervisor. Like Rudo, she has strong credentials, a former medical epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "I cannot work for a department and administration that deliberately misleads the public," she said, explaining that Rudo's recommendations were the result of considerable scientific collaboration within the department, and an attempt to meet standards in the 2014 Coal Ash Management Act.
On Thursday, McCrory was in Fayetteville, opening a new segment of the Outer Loop and insisting to reporters that this dustup was only a "disagreement among scientists." The governor said that, "We're providing all the information necessary to ensure that we have safe drinking water and the public knows exactly what the value of that drinking water is."
