Georgia carpet empire’s forever chemicals polluted Alabama drinking water

In 2016, Gadsden’s water board became the first public utility to sue carpet companies operating across the border in Dalton, Georgia, alleging that the companies discharged the chemicals that ended up in the Coosa River, which supplies drinking water to cities along the east side of Alabama.

Today, the drinking water in Gadsden still has high levels of PFAS despite a filtration system to address the contamination. The tap water struggles in the city show how slow, complicated and expensive it can be to clean up forever chemicals.

Contamination from some types of PFAS has been linked to increased risk of kidney cancer, thyroid dysfunction, fertility issues and developmental delays in infants. The chemicals can take decades or longer to break down in the environment and can linger in our bodies, earning them the moniker forever chemicals. And, according to the EPA, no amount of the two common forever chemicals found in Gadsden’s drinking water is considered safe.

The chemicals have been and still are used in a wide variety of other consumer products.

For decades, PFAS compounds were applied to carpets to make them stain resistant. The carpet companies, in written statements in response to detailed questions, noted that they did not create or manufacture the chemicals. They said the chemical manufacturers concealed the health and environmental risks associated with PFAS and said the chemicals were safe. The carpet companies also said that they stopped using forever chemicals in their manufacturing process in 2019.

“Not all PFAS found downriver from Dalton are attributable to the carpet industry, or even to other industries in the State of Georgia,” says a statement from Shaw Industries, one of the world’s largest carpet companies.

Mohawk Industries, Inc., also among the world’s largest carpet companies, noted it is suing the companies that manufactured the chemicals.

“Along with the chemical manufacturers and other carpet companies, Mohawk has been named in a number of lawsuits in recent years, including lawsuits brought by certain municipalities and landowners, which allege PFAS contamination of drinking water and land,” the company said in a statement. “Mohawk is seeking to recover any sums paid to resolve those lawsuits from the chemical manufacturers, which are the parties that should ultimately be held responsible for issues related to their own products.”

Home to about 33,000 people near the base of the Appalachians, Gadsden is a shrinking city of both astounding natural beauty and industrial decay. The park at Noccalula Falls draws visitors to the ledge of Lookout Mountain, but the loss of the tire plant that was once the largest in the world left an economic void that has yet to be filled. There are more people living in poverty in Gadsden than there are with college degrees. Its population has fallen 43% since 1960. About half of its residents are white, about 37% are Black.

“There’s a lot of things that we suffer from here in Gadsden, in Alabama, that didn’t come from here,” Zackery said. “It is sort of like, if you can identify where the source of the problem is, that’s fine, but you got to identify a solution.”

With little help from state authorities, Gadsden was left alone to figure out how to fix the drinking water. The water board sued the chemical maker 3M Company and the carpet companies and got settlement money to pay for cleaning the drinking water.

Credit: Will McLelland

Credit: Will McLelland

Six other drinking water providers in Alabama have since filed lawsuits, all alleging forever chemicals from the carpet industry have contaminated their water supply. Matt Griffth is an attorney at the law firm Beasley Allen, which has represented numerous utilities – including in Gadsden – in lawsuits over PFAS.

“There’s no one in these communities who is responsible for putting the PFAS chemicals into their raw water drinking supply,” Griffith told AL.com. “And so most of these systems who are facing this problem don’t think it’s fair to have the ratepayers pay for this very expensive technology to remove PFAS from the drinking water.”

Gadsden Water broke ground last May on a new treatment plant that could address the PFAS contamination through a process called reverse osmosis. It is set to open in spring of 2027.

But in the meantime, residents are left to rely on water from the Coosa River.

‘Carpet Capital of the World’

When officials went looking for the source of the forever chemicals in Gadsden’s drinking water, they determined that it didn’t come from anywhere nearby – or even from within Alabama.

The “Carpet Capital of the World” lies in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, about two hours northwest of Atlanta. Dalton, Georgia, is home to carpet mills operated by Mohawk and Shaw. And they aren’t the only carpet businesses in Dalton.

In the 1970s, around three decades after PFAS were first created, the carpet industry began using the chemicals to make rugs and carpet both stain and water resistant.

New reporting from AL.com, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Post and Courier, FRONTLINE (PBS) and The Associated Press found that carpet companies’ long use of PFAS in Georgia polluted drinking water and the environment across swaths of the South.

The carpet industry isn’t the only one that used products that contained PFAS. The chemicals have been used in nonstick cooking pans, raincoats, firefighting foam and more. And testing has found the chemicals in food, water, people, animals, seemingly everywhere.

But in lawsuits, several water utilities in east Alabama allege they’ve traced their drinking water contamination back to how wastewater from the carpet industry in northwest Georgia was disposed.

According to these lawsuits, Dalton Utilities treated most of the wastewater from the carpet mills. The lawsuits allege that PFAS resisted the wastewater treatment process.

Dalton Utilities then sprayed the treated wastewater on more than 9,000 acres of land along the Conasauga River, according to the lawsuits.

That wastewater contained high concentrations of PFAS, lawyers for affected water systems allege, that seeped into the river through groundwater or stormwater runoff.

The Conasauga eventually flows into the Coosa and crosses into Alabama – and Gadsden.

Credit: Justin Price, Pete Corson and Phil Robibero

Credit: Justin Price, Pete Corson and Phil Robibero

The carpet companies and Dalton Utilities point the finger at chemical companies and others, arguing they are not to blame.

Dalton Utilities said it was not made aware of PFAS in its wastewater until 2009. The carpet manufacturers, it said, did not tell the utility that they were sending PFAS-heavy waste into its system.

“Though Dalton Utilities did not use or profit from PFAS and PFAS-containing products, Dalton Utilities is taking action to address the harm to infrastructure and the environment resulting from the actions of others,” the utility wrote in a letter to reporters.

In 2024, Dalton Utilities sued Mohawk, Shaw, 3M, DuPont, another major manufacturer of PFAS, and others in federal court, seeking to hold them accountable for the ongoing PFAS cleanup.

Representatives for Mohawk and Shaw say they complied with all laws and regulations. Mohawk is suing 3M and DuPont.

“The issue in northwest Georgia is not the ‘handling’ of the chemicals in the facilities,” Jason Rottner, an attorney representing Mohawk, wrote in a letter. “The lawsuits allege contamination via wastewater, and 3M never instructed Mohawk to alter how it discharged wastewater from its facilities even though 3M knew precisely how PFAS in wastewater could contaminate the environment.”

Lawyers for DuPont did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

3M, in a statement, said it stopped all PFAS manufacturing in 2025 and has invested $1 billion in water treatment at its facilities. “3M has taken, and will continue to take, actions to address PFAS manufactured prior to the phase out,” the company said.

Mohawk and Shaw both said they stopped using all PFAS in 2019.

Lawsuits stack up

It’s not easy to remove forever chemicals from drinking water.

Gadsden installed new carbon filters in 2018. But as of Jan. 5, the city’s drinking water contained a combined 28 parts per trillion of PFOA and PFOS, two of the oldest forever chemicals.

3M began phasing out PFOS and PFOA in 2000. Shaw said it stopped using those two chemicals by 2008, and Mohawk says it stopped using them around the same time.

In 2024, the EPA said no amount of those two chemicals is safe in drinking water. The agency also issued a rule that would set the maximum level in drinking water for each chemical at 4 parts per trillion. That’s the equivalent of less than one drop in an Olympic-size swimming pool.

On average, in 2025 Gadsden’s water contained PFOA and PFOS at more than twice the level that the EPA warns about.

While Alabama requires water systems to test for PFAS, it does not include any penalties if the water tests above the level the EPA warns about, said Lynn Battle, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

In east Alabama, water systems both rural and suburban, including one 200 miles south of the carpet capital, have alleged their drinking water was contaminated with PFAS used to manufacture carpet in northwest Georgia.

Health concerns

Zackery, the radio host in Gadsden, is a cancer survivor and says his illness galvanized his activism around water quality and forever chemicals in the region.

“It woke me up even further after I started reading the list of issues, health issues that this can propagate,” Zackery said.

Zackery acknowledges that there are so many factors contributing to a person’s health, it’s impossible for him to distinguish.

“If you’re sick, you’re sick,” he said, “and the water didn’t help you.”

Over the last 20 years, more and more research has emerged linking forever chemicals to a variety of health issues.

Still, the science is emerging. The EPA says it is hard to study the health effects of PFAS because of just how many chemicals are in that group. In addition, people are exposed to forever chemicals in different ways, and the way those chemicals are used has changed over time.

Zackery says he sees the PFAS in Gadsden as part of a greater issue of “environmental racism,” where environmental hazards disproportionately affect minority or low-income communities.

“You know, sacrifice a few Black folks and a few poor white folks…huge youth population” he said. “You don’t get no blowback from them…So we have a low income, lowly educated, very unhealthy group of people.”

Research has shown that minority communities are more likely to be exposed to higher levels of PFAS in drinking water.

“Our work suggests that the sociodemographic groups that are often stressed by other factors, including marginalization, racism, and poverty, are also more highly exposed to PFAS in drinking water,” said Jahred Liddie, a PhD student at Harvard University who led the study, in a press release.

Decatur to Dalton

If there’s one person who knows what Zackery and the people of Gadsden are going through, it’s Brenda Hampton, a former paralegal who became a water activist upon returning to her home state of Alabama.

She was a guest on Zackery’s radio show, “Introspection,” last fall.

“It’s going to take people waking up in Gadsden, coming together, organizing and letting the people know we’re going to be here,” she said. “We’re in your face and we need some clean water.”

In northwest Alabama, residents have struggled for more than a decade with PFAS contamination of the Tennessee River. Along the river in Decatur sits 3M, a chemical manufacturer and former maker of PFAS.

Thirteen miles downstream from 3M in Decatur is the water intake for West Morgan-East Lawrence Water Authority, which supplies water to nearly 100,000 north Alabama residents — including Hampton.

After living in Massachusetts, Hampton returned to the region to care for her mother. Now in her 70s, she said she’s also dealt with health issues of her own.

“I started comparing after I was looking around to see, what do we have in common with other communities, because Lawrence County is a rural area,” Hampton said. “And the only thing that I could find that we had in common was the water.”

The north Alabama water utility sued 3M over PFAS contamination in 2015.

Products that contained PFAS were made at 3M’s Decatur plant and were then shipped to the carpet manufacturers in Dalton, according to testimony given in the Georgia State Legislature by Andy Davis, an attorney who has sued carpet companies and chemical manufacturers, including 3M, over PFAS contamination.

After the EPA issued health advisories in 2016, Don Sims, who was the general manager of the West Morgan-East Lawrence utility, told residents not to drink the tap water until it was fixed. Officials handed out bottled water for a few weeks until another nearby utility offered to provide clean drinking water to customers.

In 2019, the West Morgan-East Lawrence case settled. The water system used the settlement money toward constructing a $30.5 million reverse osmosis facility, which opened in 2021. Since then, the water utility’s PFAS levels have mostly stayed below detection, according to test results on the utility’s website.

In 2020, Alabama’s department of environmental management put 3M under a consent order to fix extensive PFAS contamination in and around the plant in Decatur. Grant Thompson, a spokesperson for 3M, told AL.com the company continues to work with ADEM on PFAS remediation, and has built $300 million advanced wastewater treatment systems that will continue to treat the contaminated groundwater onsite.

But while the water quality in Lawrence County has improved, Hampton says that it’s too late to make a difference for her. Following a hospitalization for high blood pressure this summer, she told AL.com she knows her time on Earth is coming to an end.

“God has brought me home again. So I know I have to keep helping those that really need it,” Hampton said. “If I can breathe on my own, then that means that God still has something for me.”

Credit: Will McLelland

Credit: Will McLelland

‘The best available technology’

Back in east Alabama, relief could be on the way.

Gadsden’s lawsuit ended in 2022 in a confidential settlement between the city, 3M, Mohawk, Shaw and Industrial Chemicals, Inc., court records state.

The utility said it is using the settlement money for installing a reverse osmosis system. That’s a water filtration system that pushes the water through thin membranes. It has been shown to be extremely effective at removing PFAS from water.

At the time of the settlement, the utility estimated the reverse osmosis facility would cost around $80 million. The city will pay the contractor building the plant, Max Foote Construction Company, nearly $103 million, said Chad Hare, manager of Gadsden’s water utility.

Why is reverse osmosis needed?

Hare said the utility is building a reverse osmosis plant because it’s “the best available technology.”

“It removes, from all tests we’ve seen, all PFAS. Not just PFOA and PFOS,” he said. “This would give us protection.”

Credit: Will McLelland

Credit: Will McLelland

In 2019, Gadsden installed granulated activated carbon filters. They were not able to remove enough PFAS to meet the EPA’s new standards, testing showed.

Gadsden’s water board filed another lawsuit in 2023, making similar allegations about PFAS contamination from carpet industry wastewater. That time, Gadsden sued DuPont, chemical maker Daikin, another carpet manufacturer and several waste handling companies.

The Alabama Supreme Court dismissed claims against the three chemical manufacturers in the lawsuit in 2025.

“Daikin America has never manufactured or sold PFOA or PFOS,” said Ted Grossman, a lawyer for Daikin, in response to written questions. “[Daikin] is committed, as it always has been, to regulatory compliance, evolving PFAS science, and global standards, and focuses on responsible lifecycle management, including recovery, recycling, and reduced PFAS generation.”

Unanswered questions

Zackery didn’t set out to spend his time on air talking about water issues. A native of Gadsden, he lived in Washington, D.C., and worked in economic development before moving back to east Alabama in the early 2000s.

He started his radio show in 2012. As the issues with PFAS in Gadsden’s water came to light, Zackery was learning about research showing how dangerous PFAS were. He said he felt like the response from Gadsden — and the state — just didn’t measure up.

He went to court to try and force the city to reveal details of its settlement in 2022. The secrecy, he said, left him and his neighbors with questions about their health.

“This is life and death,” Zackery said. “No telling how much of the stuff people have consumed in three years.”

Credit: Will McLelland

Credit: Will McLelland

Gadsden fought back, arguing that if the amount of the settlement was made public, it might drive up the bids for building the new plant.

Zackery appealed all the way to the Alabama Supreme Court, which in 2024 ruled in favor of the city.

“In this case,” wrote Alabama Supreme Court Justice William Sellers, “it is undisputed that the board seeks to protect its customers from the possibility of future rate hikes that would likely occur if the competitive-bid process is influenced by immediate disclosure of the board’s total budget for the water-treatment project.”

Mike Haney, an attorney for the Gadsden water board, said it’s up to the court to decide whether to make it public.

“There’s not any lack of transparency,” Haney said. “It was a condition of the settlement that it remain confidential until or unless the court approves it can be released.”

Where is the state?

So far the small towns and municipal utilities of Alabama are on their own, left to find money to clean up the drinking water. Unlike Minnesota, Arizona and nearly 30 other states, Alabama has not sued PFAS manufacturers or users, according to Safer States, an environmental watchdog.

In the last few years, Alabama lawmakers have introduced just one bill that mentions PFAS: Legislation from 2025 would have required state environmental regulators to investigate complaints about PFAS in public drinking water. It also would have made it easier for the attorney general to sue those responsible for the contamination.

Sponsored by State Rep. Neil Rafferty, a Democrat from Birmingham, the bill died in committee, but he said he intends to reintroduce it this year. It’s been hard to get traction, he said, because people don’t know a lot about PFAS.

“In Alabama, we’re still fighting for a lot of the basics,” Rafferty said. “We’re still fighting for Medicaid expansion and affordable healthcare. So sometimes these issues of something you can’t even see that’s in your water that might hurt you decades down the line, don’t become immediate priorities when you’re just trying to get food in your child’s mouth or the vaccinations that you need to stay healthy.”

State Rep. Mack Butler, a Republican who represents Gadsden, said he “absolutely” wishes his colleagues would take a stronger stance on forever chemicals.

“Not only for the drinking water, but for the recreation the river brings to our communities,” Butler said in a message to AL.com.

In 2018, three years after the water utility that serves Hampton’s hometown sued, its general manager wrote a letter to Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, asking the state to join the lawsuit.

“To date, our elected officials in Alabama have not taken up for Alabamians like the officials in Minnesota, and more recently New York, did for their citizens,” Don Sims wrote at the time.

The state did not join the utility’s lawsuit.

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said that the state did not have grounds to join the lawsuit, because at the time, the EPA had not set limits for PFAS in drinking water.

“During Attorney General Luther Strange’s administration, our office reviewed the West Morgan (County) water situation. At that time, the EPA had only guidelines for PFAS but no enforceable standards,” a spokesperson from the office said. “Because there were no violations of any enforceable PFAS discharge standards, the state had no legal grounds for enforcement action.”

Now, if there are violations of the federal PFAS standards, they should be reported to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, the attorney general’s office said.

“Our office will take appropriate action under the Alabama Water Pollution Control Act if necessary,” the attorney general’s office said.

But the state environmental regulators say there’s not much they can do. Enforceable limits for PFAS in drinking water were set to take effect in 2029, but under the Trump administration, the EPA announced plans to push back the deadline until 2031.

“We are on a path to uphold the agency’s nationwide standards to protect Americans from PFOA and PFOS in their water,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, said in a press release. “At the same time, we will work to provide common-sense flexibility in the form of additional time for compliance.”

The slow pace of federal regulators has left cities like Gadsden to manage PFAS contamination on their own.

At a Gadsden Water Works and Sewer Board meeting last fall, Zackery listened as board members reviewed the current PFAS readings for the utility’s raw and finished drinking water.

Timothy Simmons, the board chair, asked Hare, the utility manager, if Gadsden was following all PFAS regulations.

“We meet all federal and state water quality regulations,” Hare told Simmons.

For Zackery, those words fell on deaf ears.

“I want to give great credit where it’s due, but we are still being poisoned while [the reverse osmosis plant] is being built,” Zackery said. “It’s just sad.”