By Ted Caddell

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A dispute between North Carolina’s governor and a veteran state scientist over Duke Energy’s coal ash practices has exploded into the public, with the scientist’s boss resigning in protest.

The state epidemiologist, Dr. Megan Davies, resigned Wednesday night, after Assistant Environmental Secretary Tom Reeder and state Health Director Randall Williams posted a statement criticizing her staffer’s concerns. The statement said toxicologist Ken Rudo’s “questionable and inconsistent scientific conclusions” had “created unnecessary fear and confusion among North Carolinians.”

Last year, Rudo balked at putting his name on a letter downplaying the risk of groundwater contamination near Duke power plants, despite being pressured by higher-ups in a meeting that he said included Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican and former Duke Energy executive. McCrory has denied taking part in the meeting.

In her resignation letter, Davies was blunt. “I cannot work for a department and an administration that deliberately misleads the public,” she wrote.

McCrory and his administration have been dogged by the Duke coal ash issue since February 2014, when a dike at a retired Duke plant burst, releasing 39,000 tons of toxin-laden coal ash and 27 million gallons of contaminated water into the Dan River.

The dispute became public this month after a judge released portions of a deposition Rudo gave in a lawsuit by the Sierra Club, the Southern Environmental Law Center and other environmental groups over Duke’s coal ash storage sites. The suit alleges that toxins from coal ash stored on Duke sites are contaminating rivers and other waterways and groundwater. It calls on Duke to safely remove the coal ash and ensure residents living near the plants have clean water.

By the end of the week, Democrats in the state legislature were calling for a probe into the whole affair.

Meeting with the Governor

In his deposition, Rudo testified his office sent a warning to about 400 homeowners near Duke plants in late 2014, telling them their well water wasn’t safe to drink because of pollution from Duke’s coal ash.

Rudo said groundwater samples showed increased levels of hexavalent chromium and vanadium, both cancer-causing agents. As a result, while the issue was still being debated by Duke and other state environmental and health officials, Duke began supplying some of the homeowners with bottled water.

Rudo said that in early 2015, he was called in to a discussion with Reeder and other higher-ups about the wording of the letters. “They wanted language put on there that stated, in essence, we were overreacting in telling people not to drink their water,” Rudo said in the deposition. He said he objected to the wording and told them to take his name off the letter.

“You know, I can’t stand behind that,” he said. “It is just not right. It is going to confuse people. People are not going to really know whether they should drink the water or not,” Rudo testified.

The dispute came to a head, he said, when he was called to another meeting with a McCrory aide in March 2015 in which McCrory briefly took part by phone. “I have never talked to a governor in all of the years I have been here, so I was a little … intimidated,” he said.

Rudo said McCrory and the aide raised concerns about the department warning people not to drink the water.

The language on the letters was changed, and the revised letter was sent out while he was on vacation. “And it was just amazingly misleading and dishonest language,” Rudo said.

In May 2015, EPA fined Duke $102 million for federal Clean Water Act violations; North Carolina added a $6.6 million penalty.

Following public outcry, North Carolina legislators passed legislation calling for Duke to clean up all of its coal ash dumps in the state.

McCrory, who had worked for Duke for almost three decades before becoming governor, vetoed the bill in June 2016. Last month, he signed a compromise bill calling for Duke to begin cleaning up half of its coal storage sites immediately while monitoring the rest.

Deposition Becomes Public

The dispute became public last week after the Southern Environmental Law Center filed Rudo’s redacted deposition in the group’s lawsuit.

The McCrory administration fired back. “We don’t know why Ken Rudo lied under oath, but the governor absolutely did not take part in or request this call or meeting, as he suggests,” said McCrory’s chief of staff during a rare, late-night press conference.

When Rudo stood by his testimony, the administration issued a scathing statement Aug. 9.

“Rudo’s unprofessional approach to this important matter does a disservice to public health and environmental protection in North Carolina,” Reeder and Williams wrote. “It doesn’t help that political special interest groups perpetuate his exaggerations and fuel alarm among citizens for their own purposes.”

The statement was the last straw for Davies, who issued a letter resigning from the Division of Public Health (DPH) on Wednesday night. Davies defended Rudo and claimed her superiors in DPH and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) were fully involved in all decisions.

“The [statement] signed by Randall Williams and Tom Reeder presents a false narrative of a lone scientist … acting independently to set health screening levels and make water use recommendations to well owners,” she wrote. “In fact, and as I briefed you in August 2015, NCDHHS followed a process that engaged DPH and DHHS leadership in all decisions.

“Upon reading the open editorial yesterday evening, I can only conclude that the department’s leadership is fully aware that this document misinforms the public,” she wrote. “I cannot work for a department and an administration that deliberately [mislead] the public.”

McCrory addressed the dispute again while at a ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday.

“We basically have a disagreement among scientists,” McCrory said, according to WRAL. “One group of scientists, which I support, believe the public ought to get all the information about the water, not limited information and one opinion.”

State Democrats, in their continued feud with McCrory and his administration, are calling for an investigation. “There is at least an appearance of pay-to-play politics, and, unlike other incidents of McCrory rewarding his friends and donors with political favors, this insider dealing puts lives at risk,” North Carolina Democratic Party spokesman Dave Miranda told reporters.

It is unclear who would lead such an investigation. The state attorney general, Roy Cooper, is running against McCrory for governor in November.