The Investigative Journal’s weekly review of federal and state environmental enforcement. All items below are drawn from public enforcement records, court filings, and official announcements linked throughout. Settlements are not admissions of liability, and criminal charges are allegations unless a plea or conviction is noted. Companies’ public statements are cited where available; parties were not separately contacted for this digest.
The largest environmental-enforcement dollars of the week moved at the state level, where North Carolina announced a settlement its attorney general values at $590 million with Chemours, DuPont and Corteva over PFAS contamination of the Cape Fear River basin. On the federal side, the Justice Department lodged a $125 million Superfund work agreement for the Lower Passaic River, closed out a guilty plea in a fatal Ohio chemical-plant explosion, and sentenced a Texas couple who ran an online storefront for smuggled pesticides. Below, the week’s notable actions and the patterns behind them.
1. North Carolina reaches $590 million PFAS settlement with Chemours, DuPont and Corteva
On September 10, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson announced a settlement with Chemours, DuPont and Corteva resolving state and local litigation over PFAS discharges from the Fayetteville Works facility on the Cape Fear River. The attorney general’s office describes it as the largest total environmental damages recovery in state history: $455 million in payments over 10 to 15 years, plus a $135 million reserve fund that DuPont and Corteva must establish to guarantee ongoing clean-drinking-water obligations if Chemours cannot pay. Of the guaranteed payments, reporting by NC Newsline indicates $75 million goes to the state — including roughly $55 million earmarked for a PFAS cleanup fund — and $380 million to seven counties and four local entities, including New Hanover and Cumberland counties, that previously sued.
The companies’ joint announcement values the payment stream differently: a net present value of approximately $355 million shared among the three firms, with $18 million of the total attributed to PFAS contamination unrelated to Fayetteville Works, including aqueous film-forming foam claims. DuPont puts the pre-tax present value of its own share at about $126 million, partially reimbursable by spinoff Qnity Electronics; Chemours’ filing indicates it will cover half the payments, a net present value of roughly $180 million. The agreement remains subject to dismissal of the covered lawsuits and, notably, was struck days before the state was scheduled to argue against the companies at the North Carolina Supreme Court. Since GenX and related compounds were identified in the river in 2017, PFAS from Fayetteville Works has been a defining water issue for the more than 500,000 downstream residents who draw drinking water from the Cape Fear, according to NC Newsline.
The state deal lands while EPA’s own proposed settlement with Chemours — announced in late June and reported at $450 million, covering PFAS-related violations at plants in West Virginia, New Jersey and North Carolina — awaits final action. Jackson has publicly criticized that federal proposal, calling it a “backroom deal” negotiated without state input and noting it committed only $90 million to environmental projects across three states. How the state recovery interacts with the pending federal consent decree is now one of the more consequential open questions in PFAS enforcement.
2. DOJ lodges $125 million consent decree to advance Lower Passaic River Superfund cleanup
Also on September 10, the Justice Department, on behalf of EPA, lodged a proposed consent decree with Environmental Resource Holdings LLC (ERH) covering an estimated $125 million in work at the Diamond Alkali Superfund site, which includes the lower 17 miles of the Passaic River in New Jersey. ERH — which DOJ identifies as a potentially responsible party and corporate successor to Occidental Chemical Corporation and Diamond Alkali Company/Diamond Shamrock — would build an upland sediment-processing facility and support infrastructure to enable future dredging and capping, sample the lower 8.3 miles of the river to establish a cleanup baseline, and reimburse EPA’s oversight costs.
“This settlement is a significant step toward cleaning up a site that has been a longstanding priority for EPA,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of DOJ’s Energy and Natural Resources Division. EPA enforcement chief Jeffrey Hall said the agreement reflects the administration’s preference for “expediting work through cooperative engagement and well-tailored agreements.” The proposed decree, filed in the District of New Jersey, is open for a 30-day public comment period; the complaint and decree are posted on DOJ’s consent decree page. It follows the pattern of March’s $668 million Lower Duwamish Waterway agreement in Seattle — large, negotiated cleanup packages with responsible parties rather than penalty-led litigation.
3. Yenkin-Majestic pleads guilty in fatal Columbus plant explosion
The Justice Department announced September 4 that Yenkin Majestic Paint Corporation pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Ohio to negligent endangerment under the Clean Air Act for the April 2021 explosion at its Columbus coatings and resin plant, which killed one employee and severely injured several others. According to the government’s account, the company installed a fabricated kettle door without pressure-testing it, kept the leaking vessel in service with a gasket it wrongly believed was Teflon, and had flammable-gas detectors that were not configured to sound an audible alarm — so when vaporized solvent found an ignition source at 12:04 a.m. on April 8, 2021, workers had no warning.
The case was investigated by EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division alongside Ohio authorities, with OSHA support. Sentencing terms were not announced in the release. The charge is a misdemeanor-level offense, but the case is a marker: worker-death prosecutions under the Clean Air Act’s negligent-endangerment provisions have continued under this administration, with DOJ’s environmental division stating its hope that “other manufacturers will vigilantly protect the safety of their workers.”
4. Texas couple sentenced over website selling smuggled pesticides
On September 8, Thao Duong and Lam Mai of Garland, Texas were sentenced in federal court for operating a website that sold veterinary drugs and pesticides smuggled from Mexico. Duong received three months in prison, two years of supervised release, and forfeiture of more than $1.5 million; Mai received two years of probation. The couple had pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy charges tied to unregistered pesticides and misbranded veterinary drugs.
5. FIFRA smuggling charge at Otay Mesa border crossing
Federal prosecutors in San Diego charged Juan Velderrain Perez in early September with smuggling banned pesticides after Customs and Border Protection officers at the Otay Mesa port of entry allegedly found 24 liters of Taktic — an amitraz-based pesticide barred from U.S. use — concealed under floor mats and in the trunk of his vehicle. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the chemical poses reproductive, developmental, neurological and long-term cancer risks. The charges are allegations; Velderrain Perez is presumed innocent unless convicted.
6. Shipping companies fined $1.75 million for concealed oily discharges; engineer’s sentencing followed this week
In a case that carried into this week, MSC Shipmanagement Limited and vessel owner Hong Kong Spirit Shipping and Trading Limited were sentenced August 28 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to a combined $1.75 million fine and four years of probation after pleading guilty to violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships. Crew aboard the MSC Samira III pumped oily bilge water through the sewage system’s overboard valve, tricked the oil-water separator by running fresh water past its monitor, and presented a false oil record book to the Coast Guard in Philadelphia. The vessel’s second engineer, who pleaded guilty earlier, was scheduled for sentencing September 10 — an outcome TIJ will track.
Patterns: border pesticide cases climb; the biggest checks are negotiated, not litigated
Two trends stand out in the data. First, pesticide-smuggling enforcement keeps accelerating. EPA’s 2026 criminal enforcement log now shows three FIFRA smuggling prosecutions this year — one of which has now reached sentencing — consistent with the agency’s “Multi-Media Border Security” national enforcement initiative. EPA reported in March that it blocked over 1.6 million pounds of illegal pesticides from entering the country in the administration’s first year — a claimed 70 percent increase — while assessing nearly $1.16 billion in civil penalties, criminal fines and court-ordered relief and concluding more than 2,300 civil enforcement cases.
Second, the largest sums continue to move through negotiated agreements and state-court litigation rather than federal penalty actions: this week’s $590 million North Carolina PFAS recovery and $125 million Passaic work agreement dwarf the week’s federal fines, and both follow EPA’s stated preference for cooperative settlement structures. Records suggest state attorneys general are increasingly setting the pace on PFAS dollars — a dynamic worth watching as EPA’s proposed $450 million Chemours decree moves toward a ruling. Enforcement case-level data for all facilities is searchable in EPA’s ECHO database.
What TIJ is watching
Four threads warrant deeper reporting. First, whether the North Carolina settlement alters the terms or court reception of EPA’s pending federal Chemours consent decree, and what the public comment record shows. Second, Environmental Resource Holdings’ financial capacity to deliver $125 million in Passaic work — successor-liability structures at Diamond Alkali have a long and contested history, and filings during the 30-day comment window may illuminate who ultimately pays. Third, the sentence Yenkin-Majestic receives, and whether it approaches statutory maximums for a corporate defendant in a worker-death case. Fourth, the outcome of the MSC Samira III engineer’s September 10 sentencing, and whether ocean-dumping prosecutions maintain their recent cadence. Tips on any of these matters can be sent through TIJ’s contact channels.