A recent Supreme Court decision severely limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, Chemours, which is blamed for contaminating the Cape Fear River basin with a PFAS chemical called GenX, is challenging the EPA’s ability to make rules about pollution in drinking water.

What You Need To Know

  • Chemours is challenging an EPA rule on GenX in drinking water, saying the rule is unconstitutional

  • GenX is a PFAS chemical, known as a "forever chemical." A Chemours plant in Fayetteville is responsible for polluting the Cape Fear River with GenX

  • Chemours challenges the new EPA rule in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the dispute could eventually end up before the Supreme Court

  • The Supreme Court recently ruled against the EPA, limiting how much the agency could regulate greenhouse gas emissions

“That’s where the power of the Clean Water Act is. The goal of the act is not to keep toxic chemicals at a quote, unquote ‘safe level’ but to keep them out altogether. That’s what the settlement was built around,” said Geoff Gisler, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who sued Chemours over GenX pollution.

Last month, the EPA issued new rules limiting GenX in drinking water, which are separate from the state’s actions to cut pollution from the Chemours plant in Fayetteville.

A yearslong state investigation found the Chemours plant was polluting the Cape Fear River and groundwater with GenX, part of a family of chemicals known as PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.”

RELATED: 5 things to know: What are PFAS and what is North Carolina doing about the pollution?

The Cape Fear River provides drinking water for Bladen, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties.

The southeast corner of North Carolina made national headlines after researchers realized how much GenX was in the drinking water for people in Wilmington and other communities along the river.

GenX effects on the human body are still something of a mystery, according to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. But studies in animals have shown low levels of GenX can affect the liver, and high levels can cause liver, pancreatic and testicular cancer.

In a 2019 consent order with the state, Chemours agreed to buy whole-house water filters for homes around the Cape Fear River with well water contaminated with GenX. The state set that limit at 140 parts per trillion in 2018.

The new EPA rule cuts that limit down even more, to 10 parts per trillion in drinking water. And that’s what this new legal action is over.

In a letter dated Thursday, North Carolina environmental officials told Chemours that they expect the company to provide water filtration systems and “replacement drinking water supplies” in accordance with the EPA’s new limit. That could potentially mean the company will have to provide water filters for a lot more homes in southeastern North Carolina.

The June 30 Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. EPA found the agency does not have the power to cap emissions from power plants.

Just weeks after that decision, Chemours filed a motion with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing, “The Safe Drinking Water Act’s delegation of authority to EPA to issue health advisories is therefore unconstitutional.”

“It’s not surprising but it’s disappointing. I think where the West Virginia case was presented in some circles as limited because it focused on climate change, greenhouse gases and new uses of the Clean Air Act,” Gisler said.

“What we see here is a very clear duty of the EPA to go in and evaluate toxic chemicals that are in people’s drinking water, very clearly given to the EPA as a responsibility by Congress. Seeing something that basic attacked as beyond the scope of what they should be doing is a real threat,” he said.

Gisler said the new legal battle over the EPA’s authority to regulate water pollution shouldn’t have an impact on what North Carolina is doing to stop GenX pollution.

The consent order on Chemours’ Fayetteville plan focuses on rules limiting how much PFAS the company can discharge into the Cape Fear River.

The Clean Water Act says that if companies can remove chemicals from water, they have to, before they discharge it back into the river. Gisler said the latest petition from Chemours doesn’t question that part of the Clean Water Act.

The petition, Gisler said, goes further than the Supreme Court’s ruling against the EPA. It attacks the EPA’s power to keep water clean, he said. With the conservative turn on the court and this latest ruling against the EPA, companies will likely start trying to challenge other environmental laws.

“I am comfortable that the EPA has the authority to continue to do what it is planning to do for PFAS and I think ultimately this health advisory will be upheld. But we will see this argument over and over again,” he said.