I\u2019m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.<\/p>\n
Read more DEI now banned in NC public schools. Will it have a \u2018chilling\u2019 effect on teachers?<\/a><\/p>\n On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement with the Delaware chemical giant Chemours for polluting per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS or \u201cforever chemicals,\u201d at three principal sites across three states \u2014 including the Fayetteville Works plant in Fayetteville.<\/p>\n From the early 1980s to 2017, the company (part of DuPont for most of those 37 years) discharged wastewater that contained GenX, a chemical now used to make plastics. GenX got into the Cape Fear River, which flows southeast from Fayetteville and supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians.<\/p>\n The state was not included in the settlement negotiations, N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson told The N&O<\/a>. The deal was instead worked out between Chemours and two plaintiffs \u2014 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the State of West Virginia.<\/p>\n So, is this settlement a fair deal for North Carolina? Let\u2019s do a little point, counterpoint:<\/p>\n It\u2019s a good deal<\/b>: The consent order<\/a> requires Chemours to pay a $22.5 million penalty and spend $90 million to reduce PFAS discharges across North Carolina, West Virginia and New Jersey over the next 15 years.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bad deal<\/b>: If split evenly between the three states, that would mean $2 million a year in North Carolina to reduce \u201cforever chemical\u201d pollution, which top North Carolina Democrats and several environmental non-profits said is far too low. Plus, Chemours gets a dollar-for-dollar reduction (up to 40%) for any cleanup work the states mandate. So future money North Carolina charges Chemours could get deducted from the $90 million fine.<\/p>\n Good deal:<\/b> Chemours will spend $280 million to \u201csupply clean drinking water for more than a decade\u201d to communities near its facilities in West Virginia and New Jersey. Asked why North Carolina isn\u2019t seeing this money, a DOJ spokesperson told me, Chemours already has to provide clean drinking water to the area surrounding the Fayetteville site under an existing settlement with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.<\/p>\n Bad deal<\/b>: Chemours doesn\u2019t admit to violating federal law, including the Clean Water Act. \u201cIf you have health impacts from drinking 40 years worth of PFAS, then you know this consent order does nothing to consider what Chemours\u2019 responsibility might be there,\u201d Kemp Burdette, the Cape Fear Riverkeeper, told me.<\/p>\n Good deal<\/b>: Chemours will establish further PFAS pollution controls at Fayetteville Works for 15 years \u201cbased on recommendations from a third-party engineering firm.\u201d The company must also prevent the release of the chemical compound GenX in Fayetteville at a 99% efficiency rate or higher.<\/p>\n Bad deal<\/b>: 15 years is a fairly long time horizon for Chemours to spend $90 million to mitigate PFAS discharges, some may argue.<\/p>\n Good deal<\/b>: \u201cThis first comprehensive federal settlement against a major PFAS manufacturer delivers on the Trump administration\u2019s promise to make polluters pay and stop PFAS contamination at the source,\u201d said Jeffrey Hall of the EPA\u2019s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.<\/p>\n Bad deal<\/b>: \u201cOur state is ground zero for GenX contamination, but under this deal, North Carolina would receive practically nothing,\u201d Jackson said in a phone interview Wednesday. \u201cAnd Chemours gets to decide how any little cleanup money we do receive is spent.\u201d<\/p>\n Questionable deal?<\/b>: In April, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin selected two Chemours employees to the agency\u2019s 36-member Science Advisory Board. The EPA negotiated the settlement with the company.<\/p>\n Not a done deal?<\/b>: The public now has at least 30 days to comment on the settlement. Then, it needs court approval. The case was filed in a U.S. District Court in West Virginia.<\/p>\n Read more Caleb Wilson has eyes set on being \u2018better than Mike\u2019 with Chicago Bulls<\/a><\/p>\n Fighting the federal settlement might be tough, but the agreement doesn\u2019t preclude North Carolina from taking future actions against Chemours at the state level. \u201cThese folks are going to see me in court,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n SAS institute is about to mark its official 50th anniversary. On July 1, 1976, the software company took over a deep roster of corporate and academic customers from North Carolina State University in an arrangement that almost certainly wouldn\u2019t happen today<\/a>.<\/p>\n A lot has changed in the past half century \u2014 including just last week when SAS cut 300 positions<\/a> companywide. Its CEO has, over five decades, gone from an ambitious 30-something to the state\u2019s richest resident. SAS, for a time, was the most valuable software business on the planet. It still reports generating north of $3 billion each year. But instead of shipping reels of magnetic tape<\/a> and thick user manuals, it now strives to keep pace in the age of cloud computing and AI.<\/p>\n The town of Cary had fewer than 22,000 residents when SAS established its local campus in 1980. Today, Cary has (checks math) a lot more people.<\/p>\n But through this journey, there have always been M&M\u2019s. Going back to the company\u2019s very first office on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, there were M&M\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo administrative assistants would weekly go to pick up goodies for us,\u201d recalled Michael Camp, one of the first SAS executives. \u201cSo on Wednesdays, when they came back, they had a treat, which was M&M\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n This Wednesday tradition carried over to the Cary headquarters. Free M&M\u2019s came to represent the broader workplace benefits SAS was known to offer. Yes, there was free childcare. Chef-cooked daily lunches with a pianist playing easy listening tunes. Most employees had their own offices, with doors. No cubicles. Racquetball courts. A bucolic campus with a pond. A 35-hour work week.<\/p>\n But people still bring up the multicolored candy, often. \u201cI\u2019m kind of glad I\u2019m away from those,\u201d said Larry Noe, a retired SAS software engineer whose mother, Jane Helwig, was one of the company\u2019s four founders<\/a>. \u201cThey would disappear pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n In a 2000 article on the company\u2019s vaunted culture, Bloomberg News wrote that \u201cthere is more to please employees: a 35-hour workweek and free M&M\u2019s, plain and peanut.\u201d Working five fewer hours every<\/i> week and getting free candy shared equal footing in that sentence.<\/p>\n From a 2026 perspective, reverence for M&M\u2019s as evidence of an office utopia seems strange. The N&O stocks a candy bowl in our office. Google provides free, catered lunches. I\u2019ve visited Pendo\u2019s downtown Raleigh tower when they\u2019ve had a coffee cart. Several major tech companies offer workers sleeping pods for midday naps.<\/p>\n On-site childcare remains a fairly rare perk of SAS employment, but many of the benefits that are now common at other companies appear to have been pioneered at SAS. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin reportedly reached out to SAS CEO Jim Goodnight when they were starting to build their California campus.<\/p>\n Has SAS retained its workplace charm? \u201cIt pretty much stayed consistent as far as the benefits go,\u201d one recently retired employee told me Thursday. He couldn\u2019t recall ever working on a weekend or super late at night.<\/p>\n The 35-hour work week no longer appears to be official policy, with company spokesperson Trent Smith emailing this week that \u201cwith more than half of our employees and revenue based outside the U.S., our approach to work is grounded in flexibility, trust and accountability. We empower employees to work in ways that support their teams, customers and business goals while giving them the flexibility they need to do their best work.\u201d<\/p>\n On the M&M\u2019s front, the company switched during COVID from offering them in bulk to having individual packages. And they\u2019re in every break room on campus, Smith said.<\/p>\n