Published September 13, 2026
North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and the state's Department of Environmental Quality announced on September 10, 2026, a settlement valued at approximately $590 million with DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva over decades of PFAS pollution from the Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County. State officials described it as the largest environmental damages recovery in North Carolina history.
The deal has two parts: $455 million in direct payments to the state and eleven affected local governments and utilities, paid out over the next ten to fifteen years, and a separate $135 million reserve fund that DuPont and Corteva must maintain in case Chemours is ever unable to continue the cleanup work required under a 2019 consent order. Most of the direct payments — about $380 million — go to communities most affected by pollution from the Fayetteville Works site.
The agreement resolves state claims over PFAS and other historical chemical releases tied to Fayetteville Works, as well as separate claims involving PFAS-containing firefighting foam used elsewhere in the state. The cleanup reserve is specifically earmarked for continuing to provide filtration and other clean-water options to families whose private wells were contaminated by pollution from the plant. Combined with prior recoveries, state and local governments in North Carolina have now recovered close to $2 billion in value tied to PFAS contamination.
This is a state-level settlement, separate from the roughly $2.5 billion in nationwide PFAS drinking-water settlements that received final federal court approval earlier in 2026, and separate from the federal Aqueous Film-Forming Foam MDL, which still has more than 15,000 pending cases. It's a reminder that PFAS liability is being resolved on multiple tracks at once — state environmental claims, nationwide public water-system settlements, and individual personal-injury lawsuits — each running on its own timeline.
If you believe you were exposed to PFAS through contaminated drinking water or a workplace and later developed a related illness, see Atumio's PFAS contamination case page for a free eligibility review, or start your case review directly.