Overview:
• The trial was supposed to start Tuesday, but was canceled.
• Details of the settlement are being kept secret for now.
• The Board of Commissioners is scheduled to discuss the case again Tuesday.
Cumberland County is close to a financial settlement in its lawsuit against the Chemours Co. and DuPont over the widespread PFAS forever chemicals contamination of drinking water wells in the Gray’s Creek area near Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant.
“It’s in our favor,” Veronica Jones, the vice chair of the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners, told CityView on Friday. “I feel like the community would be pleased with what the settlement is going to be, as fair as it could be.”
Jones declined to provide details of the settlement and said that for now, they are confidential. Board Chair Kirk deViere and other commissioners declined to comment. By law, final terms would have to be approved in a public vote of the commissioners.
Commissioners met behind closed doors on Monday and Thursday to discuss the Chemours lawsuit, and are scheduled to discuss the lawsuit again at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
A 16-to-20 day trial in the lawsuit was supposed to start Tuesday, but it’s now canceled, according to Superior Court records. Cumberland County Trial Court Administrator Sarah Larson said the court was told Thursday that the parties are settling.
Jurors would have been asked to calculate how much Chemours and DuPont should pay the county for polluting residents’ water and how they should abate the nuisance they caused.
The question of whether the companies contaminated the water was decided in September 2025. Superior Court Judge Michael O’Foghludha ruled that DuPont and Chemours caused a public nuisance and trespassed with emissions of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—commonly referred to as PFAS forever chemicals—from the Fayetteville Works plant.
The plant, built and run by DuPont for many years, and now operated by Chemours, is in northern Bladen County off N.C. 87 at the Cumberland County line. The plant emitted PFAS into the air and discharged it into the Cape Fear River. The pollutant got into drinking water wells in Gray’s Creek in southern Cumberland County, and into the drinking water supplies of communities in southeastern North Carolina, including Wilmington and surrounding areas at the coast.
PFAS chemicals have been used for decades in consumer, commercial, and industrial products. Research has connected PFAS to health problems, such as infertility, cancer, weakened immunity, cholesterol, and obesity, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. They are called forever chemicals because they are slow to break down naturally in the environment.
The Fayetteville Works emissions were made public when the Wilmington StarNews reported them in June 2017. The contaminants were then found in drinking water wells in Gray’s Creek in the next several months. Cumberland commissioners filed suit in 2022.
State taxpayers this past year paid $12 million to extend public water to two Cumberland County elementary schools in Gray’s Creek because their drinking water wells were tainted with PFAS.
Chemours and DuPont have faced multiple lawsuits because of the contamination.
Litigation between Chermours and 2,658 residents, including people in Gray’s Creek, was settled out of court before that trial was supposed to start in federal court on July 13.
In a similar lawsuit in federal court, a judge on August 24 ruled that Chemours had tresspassed against 180,000 people in southeastern North Carolina who get their drinking water from the Cape Fear River and from wells downstream from the Fayetteville Works plant. That trial is scheduled to start March 4.
And a lawsuit between the state of North Carolina and Chemours is scheduled for arguments before the North Carolina Supreme Court on September 15.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
