By Will Atwater
Takeaways
- A legal settlement will compel Dupont spinoff company Chemours to pay $590 million over long-term PFAS contamination.
- Some private-well owners distrust Chemours-installed filtration and still rely on bottled water.
- Expansion of public water lines to affected homes could help, but residents say they’re tired of promises.
Cedar Creek resident Vickie Mullins and her family have dealt with PFAS-contaminated water for years, and she doubts that a new $590 million agreement between the state, affected governments and the chemical companies will make any real difference.
That agreement, announced on Sept. 10 by N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson, involved Chemours, DuPont and Corteva and centered around air and water PFAS contamination tied to the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant.
“When I see some action and I have water coming out of my faucet that I can drink safely, I’ll believe it,” Mullins said. “Until then, I’m not getting my hopes up.”
Mullins said her daughter, Stephanie, died of liver cancer at age of 44 on Aug. 29, 2025. She also believes years of PFAS contamination may have contributed to multiple health problems she has seen in her community.
“For many decades, a chemical plant outside Fayetteville knowingly discharged PFAS, or forever chemicals, into the air and water,” Jackson told a crowd made up mostly of news media and public officials.The releases “led to downstream contamination of drinking water for over half a million people in our state.”
Mullins is among Lower Cape Fear residents who said the settlement brings renewed attention to contamination they have lived with for years. But the announcement does not resolve their questions about safe drinking water, enforcement of Chemours’ existing obligations or the potential health effects of PFAS exposure.
Lack of trust
Jackson was joined in making the announcement by N.C. Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson and Cumberland County officials at the site of the Gray’s Creek Water Project, which is intended to extend public-water service to residents whose private wells have been affected by PFAS contamination.
“Forever chemicals like PFAS, including GenX, pose serious harms to human health,” said Wilson, referring to the form of PFAS found predominantly in Chemours’ discharges. “Roughly 3.5 million North Carolinians currently drink water with PFAS levels above federal health standards in drinking water. That’s one out of every three people in this state. … These are people and families and communities.”
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are called forever chemicals because of their persistence in the environment, are a class of thousands of identified synthetic compounds linked to cancer, reproductive harm and hormone disruption. Prized for their ability to resist water, grease and stains, the compounds are found in a host of products across multiple industries, including cosmetics, clothing and food packaging, even mascara and dental floss.
In 2017, reporting revealed that Chemours, a company spun off from chemical industry giant DuPont, had discharged GenX and other PFAS into the Cape Fear River from the Fayetteville Works plant near the Cumberland-Bladen county line. The companies’ PFAS releases also contaminated air, soil and groundwater in surrounding communities.
Although research has linked exposure to some PFAS with a number of health harms, it is difficult to draw a straight line from PFAS exposure to any individual illness.
After outlining the settlement’s payment structure, Jackson said, “There is nothing more important than ensuring that people have access to drinking water that is clean, and that these companies that polluted it are held accountable.”
Of the new settlement’s $455 million in guaranteed payments, $75 million will go to the state. The remaining $380 million will be divided among the 11 local governments that joined the agreement. Cumberland County will receive $161.5 million.
Residents were not impressed.
“Well, as far as the settlement announcement — it’s a joke,” said Gray’s Creek resident Jamie White. “That should have been in the billions, not this little $500 million.”
Because of the harms they’ve experienced, some drinking well water owners don’t trust filtration systems that were installed by Chemours. Mullins said she only uses water from her well for laundry and washing dishes. Through the consent order, her family receives 36 gallons of bottled water every two weeks, she said.
Out of an abundance of caution, Mullin said her youngest grandson has never experienced what many take for granted each day.
“He doesn’t know what it’s like to drink water from a spigot,” she said. “That’s sad — and he’s not the only one, I know.”
Consent order was supposed to fix things
In February 2019, Chemours, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and Cape Fear River Watch entered into a court-enforceable consent order. It requires Chemours to sample private drinking-water wells, provide replacement drinking water to qualifying properties, reduce PFAS releases to the Cape Fear River, control air emissions and assess and remediate groundwater contamination.
Under the order and subsequent DEQ direction, a private well with GenX concentrations above 10 parts per trillion qualifies a household, business, school or public building for permanent replacement drinking water, usually through a public-water connection or whole-building filtration system. Chemours must offer bottled water while the permanent supply is arranged. Other properties can qualify for up to three under-sink reverse-osmosis systems when a well contains combined levels of certain listed PFAS above 70 ppt or an individual listed PFAS above 10 ppt.
Gray’s Creek Elementary and Alderman Road Elementary schools recently were connected to Fayetteville’s public-water system. Officials said the next phase is to expand water infrastructure so more homes and other properties in the district, including private-well owners, can connect to the system.
“For years, Cumberland County residents have lived with the consequences of contamination they did not create,” said Cumberland County Board of Commissioners Chairman Kirk deViere in a release.
Cedar Creek resident Mike Watters is one of those residents.
In 2019, a blood test showed Watters’ combined PFAS level was 29.2 nanograms per milliliter. That level was above the 20-nanograms-per-milliliter category in National Academies guidance, which associates PFAS blood levels above that amount with an increased risk of adverse health effects and recommends clinical follow-up. The guidance does not determine whether PFAS caused an individual illness.
Watters is being treated for polycythemia vera, a rare blood cancer.
A 2021 Pet and Equine PFAS Exposure Study found PFAS in the blood serum of Watters’ dogs.
Because of the consent order, Watters is among residents who have filtration systems installed on their wells.
The settlement comes even as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has withdrawn guidance that encouraged states and wastewater utilities to use existing Clean Water Act authority to curb PFAS pollution before it reaches rivers and drinking-water sources. The Southern Environmental Law Center said the move could make it harder for states and utilities to press industries to control PFAS at the source, though the group said withdrawing the guidance does not eliminate their underlying authority to do so.
Complaints aired at community meeting
At a Sept. 17 meeting at the Stedman Recreation Center, representatives from the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services briefed local residents on the 2019 consent order with Chemours and its 2020 addendum. DEQ focused on Chemours’ obligations for well sampling, replacement water and PFAS controls at the Fayetteville Works plant, while DHHS discussed the potential health effects of PFAS exposure and how residents and their doctors can get guidance and testing resources.
At that meeting, Watters told officials there’s a problem with how some systems are installed.
According to Watters, many of the granular activated carbon installations did not meet the 2019-approved “Drinking Water Compliance Measures” design or later design updates outlined in the consent order.
He discussed how he solved iron buildup in his system by adding an iron softener and inspecting wells where other users had reported problems.
“I tested four different sites,” he said. “Out of the four different sites, three were horrendous. I would not use my water. I would not even take a bath because there was slime bacteria and all sorts of things.”
His neighbor Jamie White is one of the well owners who had Watters investigate her well. She described her well as technically working but unsafe and improperly plumbed, with bacterial contamination, chemical breakthrough and a configuration that may be sending contaminated water into the house.
“From the day they installed the granular activated carbon filter, I bought bottled water,” she said. “I don’t trust it. We still have chemicals that leak through.” White said she spends as much as $50 per week on bottled water.
Turning of the spigot
The county has launched a project to “provide public water service to 218 existing homes, including 184 properties impacted by PFAS contamination,” according to information provided on the county’s website.
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The remaining $135 million of the $590 million settlement is a reserve fund, financed by DuPont and its sister company Corteva, that the state could use if Chemours cannot meet its long-term obligations under the 2019 N.C. Department of Environmental Quality consent order. Those obligations include providing clean drinking water to families with PFAS-contaminated wells.
Toward the end of the September meeting, Cedar Creek resident Betty Melvin asked state officials, “what are you going to do for us?” She added, “My dog has cancer […] the water is giving us rashes.”
Michael Scott, director of N.C. DEQ’s Division of Waste Management, told those gathered that the agency’s role is, in part, to enforce the consent order. “We’re working to provide solutions for clean, PFAS-free drinking water. That’s through the filters that we talked about tonight, through the granular activated carbon or the reverse osmosis.”
As part of its investigation into problems some well owners are facing, N.C. DEQ has shared its findings with Chemours. The agency told NC Health News that it is still awaiting a response.
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