Ron Ross of Gray’s Creek says customers shouldn’t have to pay millions of dollars for the Fayetteville Public Works Commission to protect the public from PFAS.
“My problem is, this is not your problem,” Ross told the board members of the Fayetteville Public Works Commission on Wednesday during a public comment session on the utility’s proposed 2025-26 budgets.
Ross was the only member of the public to offer comment on the proposed budget. After he spoke, the PWC’s commissioners voted 4-0 to approve a $450.1 million general operations budget (2.4% less than the current year), and a capital improvement projects budget of $261 million (up 28.7%).
In the next several years, the PWC anticipates spending tens of millions of dollars to protect the customers from PFAS, a group of chemicals linked to adverse health effects.
The PWC, which the City of Fayetteville owns, provides water, sewer and electricity service to Fayetteville and nearby communities.
The budgets incorporate electricity, water and sewer price increases that took effect May 1.
Some details of the budget:
- $17.7 million toward a multi-year plan to build PFAS filtration systems at the PWC’s drinking water plants. These systems will total nearly $116 million by June 2028.
- $8.6 million for waterlines to Gray’s Creek Elementary and Alderman Road Elementary. The municipal water is to replace the schools’ drinking water wells, which are contaminated with PFAS.
- Two solar projects — just over $9 million for a new solar farm off Ramsey Street on the north side of Fayetteville, and $8.1 million to expand a solar farm near Eastover.
Who should pay for PFAS?
Ross is a former candidate for the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners and a frequent and outspoken community advocate.
Chemours and other companies that contaminated the drinking water should foot the bill for the waterlines and filter systems, Ross said.
PFAS chemicals are found around the world. In southern Cumberland County, the chemicals have been detected in drinking water wells near the Chemours factory off N.C. 87, which used to discharge the chemicals into the atmosphere as well as the Cape Fear River. DuPont built and operated the plant before it created Chemours as a separate company. (The PWC’s drinking water intake on the Cape Fear River is miles upstream of Chemours, so the company’s PFAS discharges into the river would not have reached the PWC’s supplies.)
“I guarantee you, if me and you went down to a PWC water plant right now and dumped some chemicals in the water, we’d be arrested. We’d go to jail,” Ross said. “I think county commissioners in the city should be saying, ‘Hey, folks, somebody should go to jail.’”
The PWC’s operations are paid for by its customers through water, sewer and electricity rates. It would be tough for older residents and working families to afford to pay higher rates for the filter systems and waterlines, Ross said.
The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners has a lawsuit pending against Chemours and DuPont because of PFAS contamination. The trial is scheduled to begin in September.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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