Your Drinking Water in Concord and Harrisburg Has Been Contaminated With “Forever Chemicals” — and the City Knew for Years
You turned on the tap this morning. You made coffee. You filled a glass. You cooked with it, brushed your teeth with it, maybe mixed formula with it. And for years — while you were doing all of that — the water coming out of your faucet in Concord or Harrisburg, North Carolina was carrying PFAS, the “forever chemicals” that don’t break down in the environment and don’t leave your body, at levels more than two times what the federal government says is safe.
More than 120,000 water customers have been drinking it. The EPA’s own report confirms it. The Hillgrove Water Treatment Plant in Concord — the facility that treats and distributes the water you pay for — has been pouring out water laced with these chemicals. And Concord’s own Water Resources Director has publicly acknowledged that the city has been “collecting this data for several years.” Several years of data. Several years of knowledge. And the question that burns through every family in Cabarrus County right now is simple: if they knew, why didn’t they tell us?
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial lawyers who take cases in North Carolina and fight for people who were poisoned by the institutions that were supposed to protect them. We are writing this page because you deserve to know what is in your water, what it means for your family’s health, what your legal rights are, and what happens next if you decide to act. This is legal information, not legal advice — but it is information written by lawyers who have spent decades in courtrooms, not by a chatbot or a marketing team. Everything here is specific to Concord, to Cabarrus County, to North Carolina law, and to the PFAS contamination that the EPA has now confirmed in your water supply. If you want to talk to us after you read it, the call is free: 1-888-ATTY-911.
What Happened in Concord: The EPA Report and What It Means
An EPA report — analyzed and made public — reveals that more than 120,000 Concord water customers, including residents of Harrisburg who receive Concord’s water, have been drinking water containing PFAS at levels exceeding two times the EPA’s established limits. The contamination has been traced to local water systems including the Hillgrove Water Treatment Plant in Concord.
The City of Concord has not denied the contamination. In fact, Concord’s Water Resources Director, Jeff Corley, has publicly stated that the city has been “collecting this data for several years” and that the city needed “enough data to understand what the solution to the exact strains of PFAS we were dealing with.” The city has invested $18 million — through your water rates — to construct an activated carbon filtration facility at the Hillgrove plant. Construction was expected to be completed in June, with treated water potentially reaching the public by fall. Full compliance with EPA PFAS requirements is targeted by 2031.
Here is what that timeline means in plain English: the city knew there was a problem for years, studied the problem for years, funded a solution through your utility bills, and is building the fix right now — but the fix will not be fully operational until late 2026 at the earliest, and full federal compliance is nearly five years away. Meanwhile, the water has been flowing the entire time. Every shower. Every glass. Every pot of pasta. Every baby’s bottle.
The city’s director framed Concord as “way ahead of a lot of people in the state, in the country” in responding to the new EPA PFAS regulations. That may be true relative to other municipalities. It does not change what happened to you. Being ahead of other cities does not undo years of exposure to a known carcinogen at levels the federal government says are dangerous. And it does not answer the question that matters most in a courtroom: when the city knew the water was contaminated, why did the people drinking it have to learn it from a news report instead of a letter from the city?
What Are PFAS “Forever Chemicals” — and Why Are They Different From Every Other Contaminant
PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are a family of thousands of synthetic chemicals that have been used since the 1940s in everything from nonstick cookware to stain-resistant carpets to firefighting foam to food packaging to industrial manufacturing processes. They are called “forever chemicals” for a reason that is not marketing — it is chemistry. The carbon-fluorine bond that gives PFAS their useful properties is one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. It does not break down. Not in water. Not in soil. Not in sunlight. Not in your body.
This is what makes PFAS contamination fundamentally different from every other water contaminant a municipality might deal with. Most pollutants eventually degrade. Bacteria are killed by chlorination. Lead can be filtered. Solvents evaporate. PFAS do none of those things. They persist in the environment for effectively forever. They accumulate in the human body — building up in the liver, the kidneys, the blood, the tissues — with every exposure. And they have human half-lives measured in years, meaning that once they are in you, they stay in you for a very long time.
The EPA recognized this reality when it finalized the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for PFAS in 2024. The agency set the Maximum Contaminant Level — the legal limit — for PFOA and PFOS at 4.0 parts per trillion. That is roughly equivalent to four drops of contamination in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. But even more telling is what the EPA set as the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal: zero. The MCLG is the level at which there is no known or expected health risk. The EPA set it at zero because it concluded there is no amount of PFOA or PFOS in drinking water that is safe.
“I don’t know that we can safely say what a safe level is. Right now, we don’t believe that any level is completely safe, but we need to continue to do more research and gather more evidence.”
That is not our statement. That is from Elizabeth Jensen, the research director for the Center for Planetary Health at Atrium Health — the major hospital system serving Charlotte and the Cabarrus County region. She said it about the water you have been drinking. The federal government’s own health goal agrees with her: zero. No safe level. And your water tested at more than two times the legal limit — a legal limit that is itself a compromise between the ideal (zero) and what is technically achievable.
The Health Risks: What PFAS Exposure Does to the Human Body
The health effects of PFAS exposure are not theoretical. They are documented in peer-reviewed scientific literature, in findings by the world’s leading cancer research authority, and in the conclusions of one of the largest epidemiological studies ever conducted on a specific chemical.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer — the World Health Organization’s cancer agency — classified PFOA as a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning it is carcinogenic to humans. PFOS was classified as Group 2B, possibly carcinogenic to humans. For PFOA, the human evidence was strongest for testicular cancer and renal-cell (kidney) cancer, with the Group 1 classification resting on sufficient animal evidence and strong mechanistic evidence of how the chemical damages cells. This does not mean PFOA caused your specific cancer — specific causation is a separate question that must be proven individually. But it means the world’s top cancer authority has placed PFOA in its highest category of cancer-causing substances, alongside asbestos, benzene, and tobacco.
The C8 Science Panel — an independent group of epidemiologists who studied the health effects of PFOA exposure in a community of approximately 69,000 people who had been exposed through contaminated drinking water — found a “probable link” between PFOA and six medical conditions:
- Kidney cancer
- Testicular cancer
- High cholesterol
- Thyroid disease
- Pregnancy-induced hypertension
- Ulcerative colitis
Elizabeth Jensen of Atrium Health identified additional risks in her public statement about the Concord contamination: evidence that some PFAS may be carcinogenic, cardiometabolic effects including increased blood pressure and elevated lipids (fats in the blood), and effects on the immune system. Birth defects have also been linked to PFAS exposure in scientific literature.
Here is what this means for your family: if you have been drinking Concord or Harrisburg water for years, you have been accumulating PFAS in your body with every glass. The chemicals are in your blood right now. They will be there for years. And the diseases they are associated with — kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy complications, immune dysfunction — are diseases that can take years or decades to develop after exposure begins. You may feel fine today. That does not mean you are unaffected. It means the clock may still be running.
This is why medical monitoring exists as a legal remedy — and why it is one of the most important claims available to the 120,000+ people exposed in this contamination event.
Who Is Responsible: The Defendant Map
A PFAS water contamination case in Concord, North Carolina has multiple potential defendants, and identifying all of them is one of the first and most critical jobs in building the case. This is not a situation where one party is responsible and the others are bystanders. The contamination traveled through a chain — from the companies that made the chemicals, to the industries that discharged them, to the watershed that carried them, to the treatment plant that failed to filter them, to the distribution system that delivered them to your tap. Each link in that chain is a potential source of accountability.
The City of Concord Water Resources Department
The City of Concord operates the Hillgrove Water Treatment Plant that has been identified as distributing PFAS-contaminated water to more than 120,000 customers. The city’s own director has admitted to collecting contamination data “for several years.” In North Carolina, the operation of a municipal water system may be classified as a proprietary function rather than a governmental function — and this distinction is critical because governmental immunity, which protects municipalities from many tort claims, may not apply to proprietary functions. If the water system operation is proprietary, the city can potentially be held liable for negligence, negligent failure to warn, and other tort claims that governmental immunity would otherwise block.
The city’s own statements create a powerful evidentiary foundation. The director said they had been collecting data “for several years.” The city invested $18 million in a filtration system. Those are admissions — admissions that the city knew there was a problem, that the problem was serious enough to spend $18 million fixing, and that the solution was not in place while the water kept flowing. The question for a jury is not whether the city knew. The city has already told us it knew. The question is what the city did with that knowledge — and whether the people drinking the water were given the chance to make their own choices about filtration, alternative water sources, or medical monitoring.
The Town of Harrisburg
Harrisburg receives and distributes water from the Concord system to its residents. As a distributing municipality, Harrisburg may share a duty to test, to warn, and to ensure the delivery of potable water — independent of Concord’s treatment role. The town’s independent duty is a question that must be examined in the specific facts of the inter-municipal water agreement and Harrisburg’s own testing and notification practices.
PFAS Chemical Manufacturers
The companies that designed, manufactured, marketed, and profited from PFAS compounds are the deepest-pocket defendants in any PFAS contamination case. These are the companies that put the chemicals into the stream of commerce knowing — or in positions where they should have known — that their products were persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic at minute concentrations. Claims against manufacturers proceed under strict products liability for design defect and failure to warn, theories that do not require proving the manufacturer was negligent — only that the product was defectively designed or that the manufacturer failed to warn of foreseeable health risks.
The public record of PFAS manufacturer litigation is extensive. National PFAS litigation has produced multi-billion-dollar settlement frameworks — not because the science was easy, but because the internal corporate documents showed decades of industry awareness of health risks that were never communicated to the end users or to the municipalities whose water supplies were contaminated. The manufacturers are the defendants with the resources to fund both individual disease claims and population-wide medical monitoring programs.
Industrial Dischargers Into the Rocky River Watershed
Concord sits in Cabarrus County along the I-85 corridor, approximately 20 miles northeast of Charlotte. The region has a significant industrial and manufacturing presence — automotive components, textiles, plastics production. Cabarrus County draws municipal water from a combination of surface water (the Rocky River watershed) and groundwater sources. Industrial facilities whose PFAS-laden wastewater, stormwater runoff, or groundwater migration contributed to the source-water contamination feeding the Hillgrove plant are potential defendants on negligence, trespass, and nuisance theories.
Identifying these industrial dischargers requires source-tracing discovery — a hydrological investigation that traces the PFAS contamination backward from the treatment plant intake to the specific facilities that discharged it. North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) administers state-level water quality standards and maintains discharge permits and monitoring reports that can identify industrial facilities with PFAS discharge histories. North Carolina has been ground zero for national PFAS contamination concerns, with the Cape Fear River basin contamination representing one of the most widely studied PFAS discharge events in the country. Cabarrus County’s proximity to that watershed system makes source identification a critical early target.
North Carolina Law: What Rights You Have and What Deadlines Apply
The Three-Year Statute of Limitations and the Discovery Rule
North Carolina’s statute of limitations for personal injury actions is three years. But in toxic exposure cases — where the disease may not appear for years or decades after the exposure — the question of when the clock starts is everything. North Carolina applies a discovery rule that may toll (pause) the accrual of the claim until the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known of the injury and its cause.
For PFAS exposure, this is critically important. If you develop kidney cancer ten years after drinking contaminated Concord water, the three-year clock may not start on the date you were exposed — it may start on the date you were diagnosed, or the date you learned (or should have learned) that your disease was caused by PFAS in the water. The EPA report making the contamination public — and the news coverage that followed — may be relevant to when residents “knew or should have known” about the exposure and its potential health consequences.
But the discovery rule has limits, and North Carolina also has a statute of repose that can impose an outer deadline regardless of when the injury was discovered. This is why timing matters — not because you need to file a lawsuit tomorrow, but because the legal window is not infinite, and the evidence that proves your case is already starting to disappear.
If you are concerned about deadlines, the only safe answer is to talk to a lawyer who can evaluate your specific situation. We offer free consultations, and the conversation costs nothing. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.
Pure Contributory Negligence: North Carolina’s Harshest Rule
North Carolina is one of the few remaining pure contributory negligence jurisdictions in the United States. This means that if a defendant can prove that your own negligence contributed to your injury — even one percent — your claim is completely barred. You recover nothing.
In a PFAS water contamination case, defendants may argue contributory negligence in several ways: that you chose to drink tap water instead of bottled water, that you failed to install a home filtration system, that you ignored warnings (if any were ever given), or that your lifestyle choices contributed to your disease. These defenses must be anticipated and rebutted from the outset. You cannot control what you don’t know about. If the city knew the water was contaminated and never told you, you cannot be contributorily negligent for drinking the water you were told was safe. The contributory negligence defense is the defendant’s argument — not your reality — and it must be met with evidence and argument, not conceded.
Municipal Liability: The Proprietary Function Doctrine
North Carolina municipalities enjoy governmental immunity for governmental functions, but may be liable for proprietary functions. Courts in North Carolina have analyzed municipal water system operation under the proprietary function doctrine. If the operation of the Hillgrove Water Treatment Plant and the Concord water distribution system is classified as a proprietary function — as it has been analyzed in North Carolina — the City of Concord may be exposed to tort liability beyond the protections of governmental immunity.
This is one of the most important legal questions in a Concord PFAS case, and it must be analyzed carefully against current North Carolina authority. The distinction between governmental and proprietary functions can determine whether the city is a viable defendant at all.
Damages: No General Cap, but Punitive Damages Are Limited
North Carolina does not impose a general cap on personal injury or wrongful death damages outside of medical malpractice contexts. This means that compensatory damages — both economic (medical costs, lost wages, lost earning capacity) and non-economic (pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of quality of life) — are not statutorily capped in a PFAS contamination case. Punitive damages are available but are subject to statutory limitations tied to the defendant’s gross revenue.
For wrongful death claims, North Carolina’s wrongful death statute governs who may bring the claim, what damages are recoverable, and how the recovery is distributed. If a family member has died from a PFAS-attributable condition — kidney cancer, testicular cancer, or another disease linked to PFAS exposure — the estate and statutory beneficiaries may have claims under both the survival action and the wrongful death action. The specific allocation of damages between the estate and the beneficiaries is governed by North Carolina law and must be confirmed against current statutes.
The Evidence Clock: What Proof Exists and How Fast It Can Disappear
Every toxic tort case is a race against evidence destruction. The records that prove your exposure, the duration of the contamination, and what the city knew and when it knew it exist right now — but they will not exist forever. Municipal records retention schedules may permit the destruction of water quality testing data after statutory periods. Email retention policies and personnel turnover create gaps. The construction at the Hillgrove plant is ongoing, and contractor documentation and engineering records should be preserved before project closeout.
Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die:
Historical Water Quality Testing Data and PFAS Sampling Results
The Hillgrove Water Treatment Plant and the Concord distribution system have been generating water quality data for years — and the city’s own director has confirmed that PFAS-specific sampling data has been collected “for several years.” This data is the backbone of the case: it establishes the timeline of contamination, the concentration levels, and the duration of exposure. It is held by the City of Concord Water Resources Department. Municipal records retention schedules may permit destruction after statutory periods. A litigation hold letter must be issued immediately to preserve all sampling data, internal communications, and reports.
The EPA Report and Underlying Sampling Data
The EPA report that triggered the public disclosure of the contamination — and the analysis that revealed levels more than two times the EPA limit — is the primary regulatory evidence. It is publicly available, but underlying datasets may be updated or superseded. The specific version cited in the reporting should be downloaded and preserved immediately, before it is revised or replaced.
Internal Communications, Emails, and Memoranda Within Concord Water Resources
The internal emails, memoranda, and communications within the Concord Water Resources Department regarding PFAS detection, consumer notification decisions, and remediation planning are the evidence that proves actual knowledge, the timeline of awareness, and — critically — any deliberate decisions to delay consumer notification. These records establish the failure-to-warn claim and are central to any punitive damages theory. Email retention policies and personnel turnover create a real risk of loss. These must be preserved through public records requests and litigation holds.
NCDEQ Water Quality Permits, Discharge Monitoring Reports, and Inspection Records
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality maintains water quality permits, discharge monitoring reports, and inspection records for industrial facilities in the Rocky River watershed. These records are the source-identification evidence that links industrial PFAS discharges to the watershed contamination feeding the Hillgrove plant’s intake. State agency record retention schedules vary, and permit applications and discharge reports should be requested immediately.
Blood Serum PFAS Testing Results
Blood serum testing can establish your specific exposure and internal dose of PFAS. PFAS serum levels decline slowly — over years — but testing should be conducted promptly to establish a baseline that reflects your exposure during the contamination period. This is not just evidence for a lawsuit; it is medical information you and your doctor need to understand your health risks. If you have been drinking Concord or Harrisburg water, ask your physician about PFAS blood testing.
Construction Records, Contractor Documentation, and Activated Carbon System Specifications at Hillgrove
The $18 million activated carbon filtration system being built at the Hillgrove plant is itself evidence. It is the city’s own acknowledgment that the contamination was severe enough to require a major capital investment. The engineering documents, contractor correspondence, change orders, and system specifications should be preserved before the project closes out and the records are archived or destroyed. Construction completion was expected in June 2026, with treated water potentially reaching the public by fall. The window to preserve construction-phase records is closing.
The preservation letter is the first move. The day you call us, the letter goes out — to the city, to the treatment plant, to the contractors, and to every entity that holds evidence of what happened. That letter creates a legal duty to preserve. If evidence is destroyed after that letter is on file, the consequences in court can be severe — up to an adverse-inference instruction, where the jury is told they may assume the lost evidence was as damaging as the plaintiff says it was.
What Your Case Is Worth: Honest Numbers, Not Promises
We do not promise outcomes. Every case depends on its specific facts, and past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But we can give you honest, experience-based ranges based on the type of harm involved and the framework that has developed in comparable PFAS litigation across the country.
Medical Monitoring Claims ($25,000 – $75,000 per individual, baseline)
For individuals who have been exposed to PFAS-contaminated water but have not yet been diagnosed with a PFAS-attributable disease, the primary compensable claim is medical monitoring. This covers the cost of baseline blood testing for PFAS serum levels, periodic cancer screening appropriate to the exposure (kidney function, thyroid panels, blood pressure monitoring, lipid panels), and immune function assessment. These costs accumulate over decades given the persistence and bioaccumulative nature of PFAS compounds. The monitoring is not theoretical — it is the medical care that a person with documented elevated PFAS exposure needs to catch disease early, when it is treatable.
Diagnosed PFAS-Attributable Conditions ($500,000 – $3,000,000 per individual)
For individuals who have been diagnosed with a condition that the science links to PFAS exposure — kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension — the case value increases substantially. These claims include full personal injury damages: past and future medical care, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and the human cost of living with a disease you did not cause and did not choose. The specific value depends on the severity of the disease, the age and earning history of the plaintiff, the strength of the specific causation evidence (proving that THIS exposure caused THIS disease), and the duration and concentration of the exposure.
Wrongful Death and Catastrophic Disease Cases ($5,000,000 – $15,000,000+)
For families who have lost a loved one to a PFAS-attributable cancer or for individuals facing catastrophic disease with strong specific causation evidence and clear exposure duration, the case value reaches its highest tier. These cases include the full wrongful death and survival damage categories available under North Carolina law: the economic loss to the family (lost financial support, lost services, funeral costs), the conscious pain and suffering of the decedent before death, and the human losses that no spreadsheet can measure.
Aggregate Mass Tort Value Against Manufacturers (Potentially $100,000,000+)
The aggregate value of claims against PFAS manufacturers for the 120,000+ exposed Concord and Harrisburg population is potentially enormous, given the established settlement frameworks in comparable PFAS litigation across the country. The national PFAS litigation against major chemical manufacturers has produced multi-billion-dollar settlement frameworks — not because the science was easy, but because the evidence of corporate knowledge and corporate concealment was overwhelming. The 120,000+ exposed population in Cabarrus County is one of the larger single-system exposure events in the country.
Key Factors That Can Reduce Case Value
We are honest about the deflators because honesty is how we build trust and how we build cases that survive. North Carolina’s pure contributory negligence rule creates individual-case risk — if a defendant can pin any fault on you, the entire claim can be barred. Municipal immunity defenses require careful proprietary-function analysis — if the court rules the water system operation is governmental, the city may be shielded. Specific causation between PFAS exposure and individual disease is scientifically contested and defendant-expert-intensive — PFAS is in nearly everyone’s blood, and defendants argue that you cannot prove their specific contamination caused your specific disease. And the city’s proactive remediation may be framed by defendants as mitigating future harm and undermining the punitive narrative against the municipality.
Each of these deflators has an answer. But the answers require work, evidence, and expertise — which is why the quality of the legal team matters as much as the strength of the facts.
The Insurance and Corporate Playbook: What to Expect and How to Counter It
When a municipality and major chemical companies face contamination claims from 120,000+ people, the response is not improvised. It follows a playbook. Here are the plays you should expect — and how each one is countered.
Play 1: “We’re Already Fixing It”
The city will point to the $18 million filtration system under construction at Hillgrove. They will say they are “way ahead” of other municipalities. They will frame the remediation as evidence of good faith.
The counter: A filter being built in 2026 does not undo years of exposure between the time the city knew and the time the filter comes online. The city’s own director said they had been collecting data “for several years.” The question is not whether the city is fixing it now — it is what happened during the years between knowing and fixing, and why the people drinking the water were not told. Remediation mitigates future harm. It does not erase past injury.
Play 2: “You Can’t Prove Our Water Specifically Caused Your Disease”
PFAS are ubiquitous — they are in the blood of nearly every American. Defendants will argue that you cannot prove your kidney cancer or thyroid disease came from Concord’s water specifically, rather than from background exposure, consumer products, food packaging, or other sources.
The counter: This is the hardest defense, and it is met with dose reconstruction — modeling your specific exposure based on the contamination levels in Concord’s water, the duration of your residence on the Concord/Harrisburg water system, your water consumption patterns, and your blood serum PFAS levels compared to background population levels. Elevated serum PFAS in a resident of a contaminated water district, combined with the dose-response trends in the C8 Science Panel data and the proximity and duration of the exposure, is how specific causation is proven. It is not easy. It requires the right experts. But it is how these cases are won.
Play 3: “Governmental Immunity — You Can’t Sue the City”
The City of Concord will likely assert governmental immunity, arguing that the operation of a water treatment plant is a governmental function shielded from tort liability.
The counter: In North Carolina, municipal water system operation has been analyzed under the proprietary function doctrine — which, if applicable, pierces governmental immunity and exposes the city to tort claims. The proprietary-function analysis is one of the most important threshold legal questions in a Concord PFAS case, and it must be briefed and argued with precision and with the most current North Carolina authority.
Play 4: “Contributory Negligence — You Chose to Drink the Water”
Defendants may argue that residents were contributorily negligent for drinking tap water, for not installing home filtration, or for not seeking alternative water sources.
The counter: You cannot be negligent for drinking the water that the city delivers to your home and represents as safe. The city tested the water. The city knew the results. The city did not tell you. A person cannot protect themselves from a danger they do not know exists. Contributory negligence requires knowledge of the risk — and the city’s failure to warn is the very thing that makes the contributory negligence defense circular and, in most cases, beatable.
Play 5: Delay, Deny, and Wait Out the Clock
The most common play in mass toxic tort cases is simple delay. Defendants file motion after motion. They challenge expert witnesses under Daubert. They dispute every element of causation. They stretch discovery over years. They calculate that some plaintiffs will give up, some will get sicker, and some will die before the case reaches trial.
The counter: This is why the preservation letter goes out the day you call. This is why the evidence is frozen before it can be destroyed. This is why the case is built methodically, expert by expert, record by record, from the ground up — so that when the defendant tries to run out the clock, the case is already ready for trial. Delay is a strategy that works against unprepared plaintiffs. It does not work against a case that has been built to fight from day one.
The Proof Story: How a PFAS Water Contamination Case Is Actually Built
Here is how a case like this moves from the day you call to the day a number is on the table:
Week one: The preservation letter goes out to the City of Concord, the Hillgrove Water Treatment Plant, the construction contractors, and every entity that holds evidence of the contamination. The letter creates a legal duty to preserve. From that moment forward, destruction of evidence is sanctionable. Public records requests are filed for water quality testing data, PFAS sampling results, internal communications, and NCDEQ discharge permits.
Weeks two through eight: The EPA report and all underlying sampling data are downloaded and preserved in their current form. Historical water quality records are obtained through public records requests. The contamination timeline is reconstructed — when did PFAS first appear in Concord’s water, at what concentrations, and for how long? The source investigation begins: hydrologists and environmental engineers trace the PFAS contamination backward from the Hillgrove intake to the industrial facilities in the Rocky River watershed whose discharges contributed to the problem.
Months two through six: Expert witnesses are retained. A toxicologist with PFAS-specific expertise addresses general causation — whether PFAS can cause the diseases at issue. An epidemiologist addresses the exposure-disease association in the specific population. A hydrologist models the source identification and the contamination plume. A life-care planner projects the cost of medical monitoring for the exposed population. Blood serum testing is arranged for individual plaintiffs and class representatives to establish specific exposure and internal dose.
Months six through eighteen: Discovery proceeds. The city’s internal PFAS sampling timeline is produced. Any consumer notification decisions are documented. Source-water contamination data is analyzed to identify industrial dischargers for contribution claims. Depositions are taken — of the water resources director, of the treatment plant operators, of the engineers who designed the remediation system, of the industrial facility managers whose discharges may have contributed.
Year two and beyond: The case is positioned for resolution — through mediation informed by the established settlement architecture from prior national PFAS litigation, through bellwether trials if the case proceeds in a consolidated proceeding, or through individual trial preparation if the case remains in Cabarrus County. The number at the end is built from all of it — from the records, from the expert testimony, from the deposition admissions, and from the specific harm to the specific person or family sitting across the table.
What to Do Right Now: Your First Steps
If you live in Concord or Harrisburg and have been drinking the municipal water, here are the steps that protect both your health and your legal rights:
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Talk to your doctor about PFAS blood testing. This is a medical decision first and a legal decision second. Your serum PFAS level is information you and your physician need to understand your health risks and to guide any monitoring or screening you may need. Blood serum testing also creates a baseline record of your exposure that can be important evidence if you later develop a PFAS-associated condition.
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Document your water consumption history. How long have you lived in Concord or Harrisburg? Have you always been on the municipal water system, or did you use a well at any point? Did you drink tap water, or did you use bottled water? Did you have a home filtration system, and if so, what type and when was it installed? These facts determine your exposure dose and are central to your case.
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Compile your medical history. If you have been diagnosed with kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension, high cholesterol, or any other condition potentially linked to PFAS exposure, gather your medical records. The date of diagnosis, the treatment history, and the prognosis are all essential.
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Consider your water filtration options. The EPA and health experts recommend reducing PFAS exposure when possible. An activated carbon or reverse osmosis home filtration system certified for PFAS removal can reduce your ongoing exposure while the municipal system is being upgraded. This is a practical health step, not a legal one — but it also documents that you took reasonable action to protect yourself once you learned of the contamination.
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Call a lawyer. The preservation letter is the first and most important step. The evidence that proves what the city knew, when it knew it, and what it did or did not do to warn you is on a clock. The call is free. The consultation is free. You pay nothing unless we win your case. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the City of Concord for PFAS in my water?
Potentially, yes. In North Carolina, the operation of a municipal water system may be classified as a proprietary function, which can expose the city to tort liability beyond governmental immunity. The city’s own admissions — that it collected contamination data “for several years” and invested $18 million in a filtration system — are powerful evidence of actual knowledge. Whether you can sue the city depends on the specific facts of your exposure, the current state of North Carolina’s proprietary-function doctrine, and the claims you are bringing. A free consultation with a lawyer experienced in toxic tort and municipal liability is the first step to answering this question for your situation.
How long do I have to file a PFAS lawsuit in North Carolina?
North Carolina’s statute of limitations for personal injury actions is generally three years, but a discovery rule may apply in toxic exposure cases — meaning the clock may not start until you knew or reasonably should have known that your injury was caused by the contamination. For PFAS-related diseases that can take years or decades to develop after exposure, the discovery rule can be critically important. However, North Carolina also has a statute of repose that may impose an outer deadline regardless of discovery. The only safe way to know your deadline is to consult a lawyer who can evaluate your specific timeline. Do not assume you have plenty of time — and do not assume you are too late. Call and ask.
What health conditions are linked to PFAS exposure?
The C8 Science Panel — an independent epidemiological study of a community exposed to PFOA through contaminated drinking water — found a “probable link” between PFOA and six conditions: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and ulcerative colitis. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified PFOA as a Group 1 carcinogen (carcinogenic to humans) and PFOS as Group 2B (possibly carcinogenic). Additional research has identified potential effects on the immune system, blood pressure, blood lipids, and birth outcomes. Not everyone exposed to PFAS will develop these conditions, and proving that your specific condition was caused by PFAS exposure requires individualized medical and scientific analysis.
What is medical monitoring and why does it matter?
Medical monitoring is a compensable damage category in toxic exposure litigation that covers the cost of periodic medical surveillance for people who have been exposed to a hazardous substance and face an increased risk of disease as a result. For the 120,000+ Concord and Harrisburg water customers exposed to PFAS, medical monitoring would include baseline blood testing for PFAS serum levels, periodic cancer screening (particularly for kidney and testicular cancer), thyroid function testing, blood pressure and lipid monitoring, and immune function assessment. The cost of this monitoring accumulates over decades because PFAS are persistent and bioaccumulative — the chemicals remain in your body for years, and the diseases they are associated with can take years to develop. Medical monitoring is not a settlement for a disease you don’t have yet. It is the cost of the medical care you need because you were exposed to something dangerous without your knowledge or consent.
What if I feel fine — should I still be concerned?
Yes. PFAS are called “forever chemicals” because they persist in the environment and accumulate in the human body with a half-life measured in years. You may feel fine today and still have elevated PFAS levels in your blood that increase your risk of developing cancer, thyroid disease, or other conditions years or decades from now. The fact that you feel fine does not mean you were not exposed — it means the disease process, if one is going to develop, may not have progressed far enough to produce symptoms yet. This is exactly why medical monitoring exists: to catch disease early, when it is treatable, in people who have documented exposure to a known hazardous substance. Even without a current diagnosis, establishing your baseline PFAS exposure through serum testing and registering in a monitoring program protects both your health and your legal rights.
Will the city’s new filtration system fix the problem?
The activated carbon filtration system being constructed at the Hillgrove Water Treatment Plant is designed to remove PFAS from the treated water, and when it comes online (potentially by fall 2026), it should reduce the PFAS levels in the water going forward. But a filter being installed in 2026 does not address the years of exposure that occurred before the filter was built — the years when the city’s own director says they were “collecting data” and the water was flowing at more than two times the EPA limit. Remediation addresses future harm. It does not undo past exposure. It does not erase the PFAS already in your body. It does not eliminate the need for medical monitoring. And it does not answer the question of why the people drinking the water were not told what was in it.
How much does it cost to hire a lawyer for a PFAS case?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — we do not get paid unless we win your case. Our fee is 33.33% of the recovery before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. The investigation is free. The preservation letters are free. You pay nothing out of pocket. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing for our time. This is not a marketing promise — it is the structure of our practice, and it is how we make sure that every person in Concord and Harrisburg who was exposed to contaminated water has access to the same quality of legal representation, regardless of their ability to pay upfront.
What if my family member died of cancer and we lived in Concord?
If a family member died of kidney cancer, testicular cancer, or another condition potentially linked to PFAS exposure, and they lived in Concord or Harrisburg and drank the municipal water, the estate and the statutory beneficiaries may have claims under North Carolina’s wrongful death and survival statutes. The estate can pursue the claim the decedent would have had — the pain, suffering, and economic loss between injury and death — and the statutory beneficiaries (typically the spouse, children, and parents) can pursue the wrongful death damages for the losses they suffered as a result of the death. The three-year statute of limitations applies, and the discovery rule may be relevant depending on when the connection between the disease and the water contamination was or should have been discovered. If you have lost a family member to cancer and you believe PFAS exposure may have been a factor, call us. The conversation is free, and the deadline may be closer than you think.
Can I join a class action, or do I need an individual case?
PFAS water contamination cases can proceed on multiple tracks. A mass tort action against PFAS manufacturers — the deep-pocket defendants with established liability profiles from prior national settlements — can consolidate the claims of many exposed individuals while preserving each person’s individual damages. Claims against the City of Concord may proceed individually or as a class, depending on the claims and the procedural posture. Medical monitoring claims, in particular, are sometimes well-suited to class treatment because the monitoring protocol is similar for all exposed individuals. Personal injury claims for diagnosed diseases are typically individualized because the damages depend on the specific person’s disease, prognosis, medical history, and economic losses. The right structure for your case depends on your specific circumstances and should be discussed with a lawyer. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 to talk through your options.
Is PFAS contamination just a Concord problem, or is it happening elsewhere?
PFAS contamination is a nationwide problem, but the specific exposure in Concord and Harrisburg — more than 120,000 customers at levels exceeding two times the EPA limit — is one of the larger single-system exposure events in North Carolina. North Carolina has been at the center of national PFAS concerns, with the Cape Fear River basin contamination traced to industrial discharge representing one of the most widely studied PFAS events in the country. The Concord contamination is part of this broader pattern, and the legal frameworks developed in other PFAS cases — including settlement structures with chemical manufacturers and medical monitoring programs for exposed communities — provide a roadmap for how these cases are built and resolved.
Who We Are: The People Who Will Fight for You
Ralph Manginello is our Managing Partner — 27+ years licensed, practicing law since November 1998, admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, a journalist before he was a lawyer, and a competitor who hates losing. He has spent nearly three decades in courtrooms, including federal court, fighting for people who were hurt by institutions that failed them. He leads our toxic tort practice with the same intensity he brings to every case — because the fight against a municipality that knew its water was contaminated and a chemical industry that profited from products that don’t break down is a fight that demands someone who has been doing this for a very long time and still cares. Read more about Ralph Manginello.
Lupe Peña is our Associate Attorney — licensed since 2012, admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, and before he joined our side of the table, he was an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like the residents of Concord and Harrisburg. He knows how claims are valued from the inside — how reserves are set, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is used, and how delay tactics work. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Read more about Lupe Peña.
Together, we are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are based in Houston, Texas, and we take cases in North Carolina, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We do not claim an office in North Carolina. We do not claim a North Carolina bar admission. What we claim is the experience, the resources, and the will to fight for the 120,000+ people in Cabarrus County who were exposed to contaminated water — and to do it with the depth and specificity that a case of this magnitude demands. For families who have lost someone to cancer and believe PFAS may have been a factor, we also handle wrongful death claims with the same intensity.
Why This Matters — and Why It Matters Now
The water in Concord and Harrisburg has been contaminated with “forever chemicals” at more than twice the federal safety limit. More than 120,000 people have been drinking it. The city knew. The city is fixing it now — but the fix does not undo the years of exposure, and it does not answer the question of why the people drinking the water had to learn the truth from a news report instead of a letter from the city.
The chemicals are in your body right now. They will be there for years. The diseases they are associated with — cancer, thyroid disease, immune dysfunction, pregnancy complications — can take years or decades to develop. You may feel fine. You may not feel fine. Either way, the exposure is real, the risk is documented, and your legal rights have a deadline.
The evidence is on a clock. The city’s internal emails about what they knew and when. The water quality testing data from the Hillgrove plant. The NCDEQ discharge records that may identify the industrial sources. The construction records from the $18 million filtration project that is the city’s own admission of the problem. All of this exists today. Some of it may not exist tomorrow — because municipal records retention schedules permit destruction, because email systems purge, because personnel turn over, and because construction projects close out and their records are archived or lost.
The preservation letter goes out the day you call. That is not a marketing line. It is the first, most important step in protecting your rights — because the evidence that proves your case is the same evidence that the defendants might prefer to see disappear.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We do not promise you a specific result. We promise you this: a free consultation, honest answers, a preservation letter sent immediately, and a case built by lawyers who have spent decades fighting for people who were failed by the institutions that were supposed to protect them.
The call is free. The consultation is free. You pay nothing unless we win your case. Hablamos Español.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Or contact us through our website. We are available 24/7 — live staff, not an answering service — because the moment you learn your water has been contaminated is not a moment that keeps business hours.