Two Swepsonville residents have filed a lawsuit in Alamance County superior court against Alamance County, two municipalities, and six private companies, seeking potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for allegedly disposing of known contaminants that subsequently leached into the groundwater, well water, and soil at their homes.
The plaintiffs currently and previously owned businesses in Graham. Todd Dean, of 3708 Swepsonville- Saxapahaw Road in Graham, owns Dean’s Trucking in Graham. Steve Wall, of 3538 Swepsonville- Saxapahaw Road in Graham, is the former owner of Steve’s Garden Market in Graham.
Wall and Dean filed their suit late last month against the county, the city of Burlington, and the city of Graham, as well as six companies, three of which currently operate manufacturing plants in Alamance County.
The six defendant companies are: Unichem Specialty Chemicals, a chemical supplier based in Greenville, South Carolina that has a plant at 916 West Main Street in Haw River; Elevate Textiles, textile manufacturer that recently announced it will close its plant at 906 Anthony Street in Burlington and lay off 150 employees later this year; Shawmut Park Avenue, a fabric finishing plant at 1821 North Park Avenue in Burlington; Republic Services, a waste collection and recycling company in Greensboro; Synagro Central, a provider of biosolids and residuals with a facility in Mocksville; and EMA Resources, a garbage collection service also located in Mocksville.
In addition to “actual, compensatory, and consequential monetary damages,” the plaintiffs are seeking to force the defendants to remediate their soil and water to “pre-exposure levels” of compounds that have been designated as hazardous substances by the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission. The commission is an appointed board within the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that’s responsible for adopting rules to protect and preserve the state’s air and water resources, according to its website.
Better known as “forever chemicals” due to the body’s inability to easily break down the compounds, exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and two related compounds (PFOA and PFOS) is linked to increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other adverse health effects, the suit asserts.
Contaminants allegedly leached into soil and water via wastewater, landfill, and sewage sludge
The plaintiffs contend that Burlington and Graham, through their respective wastewater treatment plants, “knowingly received PFOA and PFOS containing wastewater,” treated the water, and discharged it back into the Haw River Basin.
“The Haw River Basin provides drinking water to nearly one million people in Greensboro, Burlington, Chapel Hill, Cary, and Durham” and feeds into the Jordan Lake, which feeds into the Cape Fear River Basin, the complaint states.
The plaintiffs further allege that the county’s landfill and Republic Waste’s landfill weren’t properly buffered and lined to prevent these hazardous compounds from leaching into the plaintiffs’ soil and water.
In 2023, the city of Burlington negotiated a settlement with the Haw River Assembly, by which the city agreed to monitor and control industrial PFAS discharges before they enter the city’s treatment plants or the Haw River, the plaintiffs note in their suit. The Southern Environmental Law Center represented the Haw River Assembly for its settlement.
Moreover, “the remaining slurry of residual waste” is extracted from the two municipalities’ wastewater systems for application onto fields in the county, according to the suit. Municipalities often hire contractors to pack the mix into trucks and “spray this highly concentrated PFAS-rich sewage sludge onto fields” in and around the county.
Burlington and Graham operate “spray field operations in partnership with Defendants EMA and Synagro, contaminating the soil of adjacent properties with…hazardous substances,” which are also aerosolized and run off the land, infiltrating the water table and groundwater, the lawsuit alleges.
The city of Graham owns and sprays sewage sludge containing the compounds onto an 83.99-acre field at 3503 Swepsonville-Saxapahaw Road, which is “across the street” from Wall’s and Dean’s homes.
More than 50 years ago, Wall and his wife, Patty Wall, bought their home along Swepsonville-Saxapahaw Road, where they raised horses, had a garden, and raised cattle for “slaughter, butcher, and sale at their grocery store in nearby Graham,” the complaint states. Steve watered his garden with water from his spigot, and not knowing “his garden was contaminated with toxic, persistent PFAS,” shared his homegrown tomatoes, squash, and bushels of pecans with his friends and neighbors.
Subsequent testing revealed that water from Wall’s spigot registered at 10 times the unsafe level for PFOA; and water from the faucet inside his house registered at three times the unsafe level for PFOS, according to the suit. The Walls’ back property line is adjacent to the county landfill, and their property “receives groundwater and surface water from spray field locations and Alamance County landfill.”
Subsequent testing revealed that water from Dean’s kitchen faucet registered at almost 12 times the unsafe level for PFOA.
“Further, the Saxapahaw General Store, a pillar and gathering place of the community,” registered PFOA at nearly five times the unsafe level and PFOS at nearly 15 times the unsafe level,, according to the suit.
Both plaintiffs believe that their soil and water may be contaminated with 1,4-Dioxane, an industrial solvent, the complaint notes.
‘Forever chemicals’ linked to increased risk of cancer and other disease
Animal toxicity testing performed in the 1960s by manufacturers and/or users of PFAS indicated that exposure resulted in toxic effects to the liver and other organs and revealed that the compounds “resisted environmental degradation,” remaining unaltered in water, soil, and organisms. Subsequent research during the 1970s indicated that the compounds “would bind to proteins in the blood of animals and humans exposed to such materials,” allowing the chemicals to accumulate in the body over long periods of time; and by the end of the 1980s PFAS were designated as presumed human carcinogens, the suit asserts.
PFAS have been used to produce a “wide range of industrial and consumer products, including firefighting foam, non-stick cookware, water/stain/grease resistant fabrics, and other textiles, the complaint states. PFAS compounds are also commonly found in food packaging, sewage sludge, and in facilities that produce electronics and consumer products.
The lawsuit doesn’t indicate whether the plaintiffs or their family members have experienced the adverse health effects that have been linked to exposure to forever chemicals.
Plaintiffs seeking class action status
According to the plaintiffs, more than 350 properties adjacent to and nearby “disposal sites” in and around the county have registered similar levels of PFAS contamination, prompting them to seek certification as a class action suit.
The plaintiffs are seeking more than $25,000 in damages against the defendants under each of seven alleged counts, including: violation of the state’s Oil Pollution and Hazardous Substances Control Act; criminal violations of the state’s littering statute; “private nuisance” by virtue of contamination that impedes their ability to raise livestock, cultivate crops, enjoy a private garden, sell their properties; cook without expensive filtered and/or bottled water, among other things; trespass for disposing of hazardous substances that infiltrated their private wells and land; negligence; and unjust enrichment by receiving payment for disposing of hazardous substances that eventually infiltrated the plaintiffs’ soil and water, in addition to allegedly lowering their property values.
The plaintiffs contend that the county, Burlington, and Graham are not shielded from liability by the doctrine of governmental immunity because their alleged conduct constitutes “non-governmental and/or proprietary functions.” The plaintiffs cite two separate rulings by the North Carolina Court of Appeals and N.C. Supreme Court, which established that governments engaged in proprietary functions could be held liable for negligence.
The plaintiffs are being represented by Bryan Brice, Jr., an environmental attorney in Raleigh. His firm is one of four law firms representing more than 500 plaintiffs who claim that they developed cancer and other illnesses after they were exposed to contaminants (polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs) in Poe Hall on the campus of N.C. State University, based on the lawsuit that was filed in Wake County superior court in January 2026.
None of the defendants had filed a response by press time.
