If you lived, worked, or served at Fort Bragg (renamed Fort Liberty in June 2023) and developed a serious illness after drinking the water, your legal claim does not sit in a Fort Bragg class action. It sits in a nationwide federal case in South Carolina. The Fort Bragg water contamination lawsuit route for personal injury runs through MDL 2873, the Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation, and a court-set filing window for the core qualifying conditions closed on September 10, 2025.1Case management order establishing the Filing Facilitation Window What that means for you depends on your diagnosis, when you file, and whether a future window opens.
Where the Lawsuit Lives
MDL 2873 is housed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina before Judge Richard M. Gergel. As of April 2026, more than 15,000 active lawsuits sit inside it. The defendants are the manufacturers of AFFF firefighting foam and its chemical ingredients, including 3M, DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva. Plaintiffs allege that the foam, used for decades at military airfields and other sites, contaminated groundwater with PFOA and PFOS and caused serious illness in the people who drank the water.
Claims in the MDL cover personal injury, medical monitoring, property damage, and economic loss. A bellwether trial on kidney cancer claims had been scheduled for October 2025, but the court vacated that date, and as of May 2026 no new trial date has been set. A pool of 28 bellwether cases is moving through case-specific discovery: eight kidney cancer, eight testicular cancer, eight thyroid disease, and four ulcerative colitis. No personal injury settlement has been reached. Legal observers expect a global personal injury resolution sometime in 2026 or 2027, once bellwether outcomes establish a framework for valuing claims.
Which Conditions Qualify
The MDL recognizes six core conditions for personal injury claims tied to PFAS exposure:
- Kidney cancer
- Testicular cancer
- Liver cancer
- Thyroid cancer
- Thyroid disease
- Ulcerative colitis
The EPA classifies PFOA and PFOS as probable human carcinogens. Broader research has associated PFAS exposure with prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, immune system dysfunction, liver damage, elevated cholesterol, weakened vaccine effectiveness, and pregnancy complications including lower birth weight, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and pre-eclampsia. Those conditions sit outside the six core diagnoses that drive the current bellwether pool, and whether a claim built on them can proceed depends on the individual case.
Estimated payouts for Fort Bragg claims, if and when the MDL reaches a resolution, have been placed in the range of $30,000 to $500,000 depending on diagnosis and duration of exposure. No settlement framework is in place, so those figures are projections, not offers.
The September 2025 Filing Deadline
A case management order in the MDL established a Filing Facilitation Window with a final deadline of September 10, 2025, for personal injury claims involving the six core conditions listed above. Claims filed after that window face stricter procedural and evidentiary requirements. In late 2025, several firms that had been accepting Fort Bragg PFAS cases stopped taking new clients. The possibility of a future filing window remains, but there is no announced date. If you have a qualifying diagnosis and did not file, that is the first thing to raise with a lawyer.
What the Contamination Actually Looks Like
The Army has used AFFF at Fort Bragg since the 1970s, mainly at Pope Army Airfield and Simmons Army Airfield along with fire stations and crash sites across the installation. A 2022 site inspection confirmed that PFOA and PFOS had reached the groundwater beneath both airfields. Testing has since documented migration off the installation into private drinking water wells in Cumberland and Moore Counties.
Historical testing from 2013 through 2019 found total PFAS concentrations as high as 84.1 parts per trillion across on-post water systems, including Eureka Springs, Pre Ranger, Range 7, and the Old North Utilities Services system that serves the main base. Individual readings during that period reached 25.6 ppt for PFOA and 22.7 ppt for PFOS. A remote training location tested at 95 ppt in 2020, and a training well registered 98 ppt in December 2022. Samples collected on December 9, 2024 by Old North Utilities Services, which serves roughly 65,000 people on the main base, showed PFOS at 13.1 ppt and PFOA at 8.7 ppt.
In April 2024, the EPA finalized a Maximum Contaminant Level of 4 parts per trillion for both PFOA and PFOS in drinking water. That standard does not become legally enforceable until 2029, but it is the benchmark the readings above should be measured against.
Off-post, the Army identified 122 parcels with private wells potentially affected and began testing in Spring Lake in 2023. Of the first 12 private wells tested within a one-mile radius, four exceeded the EPA’s new standards. The highest private-well readings reached 42.2 ppt for PFOS and 16.7 ppt for PFOA. By March 2026, wells within a one-mile radius were still registering as high as 29 ppt for PFOA and 32 ppt for PFOS.
The Big PFAS Settlements Do Not Pay Fort Bragg Claimants
Two large PFAS settlements involving the same defendants have already been finalized. Neither pays personal injury claims from Fort Bragg.
3M agreed to a settlement valued between $10.5 billion and $12.5 billion to resolve claims by U.S. public water suppliers. Judge Gergel granted final approval on March 29, 2024, with payments scheduled over 13 years. The settlement class covers active public water systems only. It explicitly excludes privately owned wells and public water systems owned by the federal government that lack independent authority to sue. Military base water systems generally fall into that exclusion.
DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva separately reached a $1.185 billion settlement with U.S. public water systems (Chemours $592 million, DuPont $400 million, Corteva $193 million). That agreement also excludes personal injury claims and water systems owned and operated by the U.S. government. All three companies have stated they will “vigorously defend” against the personal injury claims still pending in the MDL. A later $875 million settlement those companies reached with the State of New Jersey in August 2025 covers New Jersey sites and does not apply to Fort Bragg.
Fort Bragg Is Not Camp Lejeune
The two cases are often confused because both involve North Carolina military bases and contaminated water. They are legally separate. Camp Lejeune claims involve different contaminants, primarily volatile organic compounds like trichloroethylene and benzene, and proceed under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act inside the PACT Act. The administrative filing deadline under that framework was August 2024.
Fort Bragg claims are not governed by the PACT Act. Personal injury claims run through the AFFF MDL. Environmental cleanup runs through CERCLA. The chemicals, the statute, and the remedies are different, and eligibility under one framework tells you nothing about eligibility under the other.
VA Disability Benefits Run on a Separate Track
Veterans exposed to PFAS-contaminated water at Fort Bragg may be eligible for VA disability benefits, but the process is not automatic. The VA does not currently designate any PFAS-related condition as presumptive. That means service at the base alone does not establish eligibility. A veteran must prove three elements: a current diagnosed disability, an in-service event or exposure, and a medical nexus linking the two. Claims are decided case by case.
VA benefits are separate from any compensation that might come through the MDL. Receiving VA disability does not affect eligibility to participate in the litigation, and vice versa.
The Army’s Cleanup and Alternative Water
The Army is managing investigation and cleanup under CERCLA, the federal Superfund law. A Preliminary Assessment and Site Inspection was completed in June 2022. The Remedial Investigation phase, which maps the full extent of PFAS in groundwater and evaluates risks, is expected to be completed by October 2027. The Army has transitioned to PFAS-free firefighting foam on-post, but the legacy contamination remains in the ground.
Under a September 2024 policy update, the Army implements proactive measures for private wells where PFOS or PFOA levels meet or exceed 12 ppt. For wells with concentrations between 4 ppt and 12 ppt, final cleanup goals are set at either the EPA’s MCL or background PFAS levels, whichever is higher. The Army has committed to providing alternative water supplies at no cost to residents whose wells exceed federal thresholds, including bottled water, whole-home filtration systems, or connection to municipal water. If your well has not been tested and you live near the installation, the Army’s off-post sampling program is the route to request testing, and NC DEQ maintains public PFAS resources through its website.
None of the cleanup work substitutes for a personal injury claim, and the litigation does not accelerate cleanup. They are parallel processes with different timelines and different remedies.