GRAY’S CREEK — Students at two elementary schools in the Gray’s Creek community in southern Cumberland County can drink from the schools’ drinking water fountain for the first time since 2017.
The Cumberland County government has begun installing water filters on the drinking fountains and in the food preparation areas at Gray’s Creek Elementary and Alderman Road Elementary to extract hazardous PFAS “forever chemicals.”
The project costs $39,000, the county communications office told CityView. The county is spending another $23,000 to acquire and install 14 water-bottle filling stations.
Filters are a temporary measure to supply clean drinking water until the county extends a 3.3-mile, $11.82 million water line from the Fayetteville Public Works Commission water system to the schools. Construction is to start in the fall and finish in June 2026. The County Board of Commissioners voted in January to install the filters in the meantime.
PFAS chemicals were detected in the schools’ drinking water, which comes from wells, after it was made public in 2017 that the Chemours Co. chemical plant about 3.5 miles away had been discharging the chemicals into the air and the Cape Fear River for years.
The Environmental Protection Agency has said PFAS may decrease fertility, have several ill effects on children, increase the risk for cancer and cause other health problems. They are known as “forever chemicals” because they are slow to naturally break down in the environment.
In Cumberland County, PFAS chemicals were found in drinking water wells at homes, businesses and other places near the Chemours plant.
The water fountains at Gray’s Creek Elementary and Alderman Road Elementary were shut off in October 2017, The Fayetteville Observer reported then. The school system began sending bottled water to the schools for students and staff.
Chemours is not paying for the filtering equipment, the county said.
Cumberland County is suing Chemours due to the widespread PFAS contamination; the trial is scheduled to start Sept. 29.
Longtime Gray’s Creek community activist Ron Ross said he is glad to see the filters are in place.
“My grandson went to Alderman Elementary School, from the kindergarten to the sixth grade. He never got to drink out of the water fountain,” Ross said.
The fountains had yellow tape around them, Ross said, and his grandson had asked if that was because someone had committed a crime in the school. “I said, ‘No. I said, it’s a crime you can’t drink the water, but nobody committed a crime,’” he told CityView.
He praised the county Board of Commissioners for the filters, specifically citing Chair Kirk deViere and Commissioners Henry Tyson and Pavan Patel, who took office last year.
“I think what they’re doing right now is better than the past county commissioners have done. And I think it’s at least a step in the right direction,” Ross said.
Clean water was one of Patel’s campaign issues.
“This is a good intermediate step to address the needs,” Patel told CityView. “Gray’s Creek [has] obviously been asking for assistance for a long time and kind of gearing, I think the board’s focus, and specifically my focus, on the baseline fundamentals of our community.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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