Cumberland County, North Carolina: drinking water report. Cumberland County – Fayetteville – serves about 340,000 residents.
Cumberland County – Fayetteville – serves about 340,000 residents. Fayetteville Public Works Commission draws from the Cape Fear River and the Little River, with treatment at the Hoffer Water Treatment Plant. The county is home to Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg), one of the largest military installations in the world, which dominates the local landscape and economy.
Cumberland County is at the center of North Carolina's PFAS crisis. The Chemours Fayetteville Works facility – a fluorochemical manufacturing plant upstream on the Cape Fear River – has released PFAS compounds including GenX into the river for decades. The contamination was discovered in 2017 and has since become one of the most high-profile industrial PFAS cases in the country.
According to the NC DEQ's 2024 monitoring data, PFAS compounds including GenX have been detected in the Cape Fear River at Fayetteville's intake. Fayetteville PWC has installed granular activated carbon treatment to reduce PFAS levels, but the ongoing discharge from upstream sources means the contamination is persistent. Fort Liberty is also a PFAS source from AFFF use on the installation.
Cumberland County faces a double PFAS threat – industrial GenX from Chemours upstream and military AFFF from Fort Liberty. This combination makes household filtration especially important.
Check your water for the latest PFAS data in your area. Reverse osmosis provides the most comprehensive PFAS removal at the household level. Our water filter guide covers which systems handle GenX and other PFAS compounds. Pull your detailed report, and visit our North Carolina page for statewide data.
Drinking water is one exposure route. These federal datasets also cover Cumberland County, NC.
The EPA places Cumberland County, NC in Zone 3 - the EPA's lowest-risk category, with a predicted average indoor radon level below 2 pCi/L. Zone maps predict an area's radon potential from geology and existing indoor readings; they say nothing about a specific house. Testing is the only way to know your own level.
40% of homes in Cumberland County, NC were built before 1980, and 4% before 1950. Residential lead paint was banned in 1978, so housing age is the strongest available proxy for lead-paint exposure. This describes the county's housing stock, not any one home.
Modelled annual fine-particle pollution (PM2.5) in Cumberland County, NC averages 7.8 µg/m³, within the EPA's annual standard of 9 µg/m³. These are CDC modelled county estimates rather than readings from a specific monitor.
How radon zones work · Air quality by county · Lead exposure guide