The New $7.61 Million Asheville Settlement Pays the EPA, Not the Neighbors — CTS Superfund Site Comments Are Due October 21, 2026

The newest Asheville settlement is not a payout to residents. On September 21, 2026 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published notice in the Federal Register (91 FR 59775) that it proposes an administrative settlement with three companies over the CTS of Asheville, Inc. Superfund Site on Mills Gap Road in south Asheville. The settling parties are CTS Corporation, Mills Gap Road Associates and Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation. The proposed agreement, which EPA posted with the notice, says: “Within 30 days after the Effective Date, Settling Parties shall pay EPA $7,610,000,” plus interest on that principal from March 16, 2026 until payment.

That money reimburses the government. The agreement covers EPA’s “Past Response Costs” — what the United States spent on the site through January 25, 2025, with interest — and lets EPA put the payment into the federal Superfund or a site-specific Special Account that “may be retained and used to conduct or finance response actions at or in connection with the Site.” There is no class, no claim form and no settlement administrator, and nobody near the site receives a check from it. The companies “do not admit to any liability arising out of the transactions or occurrences alleged by EPA.”

The one thing the public can do is comment. The EPA public notice states: “The Agency will consider public comments on the proposed settlement until October 21, 2026.” Comments must reference the site’s name and go to Paula V. Painter, Program Analyst at EPA Region 4, by email at Painter.Paula@epa.gov or by phone at 404-562-8887. The same contact provides copies of the agreement; the PDF is also linked from the notice page.

Comments can matter. Per the Federal Register notice, EPA “may modify or withdraw its consent to the proposed settlement if comments received disclose facts or considerations which indicate that the proposed settlement is inappropriate, improper, or inadequate.” Nothing is final until EPA issues written notice that the comment period has closed and that no comment requires a change — the agreement calls that the “Effective Date.” The 30-day payment clock runs from that date. If the companies pay late, the agreement sets a stipulated penalty of $1,500 per violation per day, and the three companies are jointly and severally liable, so if one does not pay the others must.

As of October 13, 2026, the posted agreement is the version pending EPA signature: Mills Gap Road Associates and Northrop Grumman signed it on March 16, 2026. The local TV station WLOS reported the $7.61 million figure on October 5 and gave that as the Federal Register date; the Federal Register itself shows September 21, 2026.

The agreement settles one thing: the companies’ liability to the United States for past cleanup costs. It expressly reserves EPA’s rights for costs that fall outside that definition, for natural resource damages and for criminal liability. It says nothing about compensation for people who live or lived near the site.

Neighbors have already tried that route in court and lost on timing. CTS Corporation ran an electronics plant on the property “from 1959 to 1985,” the U.S. Supreme Court recounted, storing the solvents trichloroethylene (TCE) and DCE; it sold the land in 1987. Owners of parts of the property and adjacent landowners said they learned from EPA in 2009 that their well water was contaminated, and sued in 2011 — “24 years after CTS sold the property.” In CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, decided June 9, 2014, the Court held that federal Superfund law does not override North Carolina’s statute of repose, which bars tort suits filed more than 10 years after the defendant’s last act, and reversed the appeals court that had let the case go forward. Justices Ginsburg and Breyer dissented. Anyone with a personal-injury or property claim related to the site should talk to a North Carolina lawyer about whether any claim is still possible; this settlement does not create one.

WLOS reports that EPA testing in 1990 found toxic chemicals in the soil and water at the roughly nine-acre property, which the agreement locates at 235 Mills Gap Road, and that cleanup work began in 2017. The legal path ran through two earlier EPA orders — a 2004 removal-action order and a 2012 order for the remedial investigation — and a federal lawsuit, United States v. CTS Corporation, Mills Gap Road Associates, and Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, No. 1:16-cv-00380 in the Western District of North Carolina. The consent decree lodged there in 2016 required the companies to carry out the remedy EPA had chosen for TCE in the groundwater, then “estimated to cost $8,885,000”; the court entered it on March 7, 2017, according to the new agreement.

So the companies were already paying for the cleanup work itself. The new $7.61 million is a separate bill: EPA’s own costs at the site through January 2025, which the government is now recovering. EPA keeps the right to pursue later costs.

Riverside Drive, $11 million. The Asheville Citizen Times reported on September 11, 2026 that “The city and its insurance companies paid $11,000,000, and two contractors together paid $1,000,000” to the widow of a man killed in a crash on ice on Riverside Drive on January 20, 2020. The city’s own share was $500,000; she received $4.4 million individually and $6.6 million as administrator of the estate. The city did not admit responsibility, and Asheville Watchdog reports that litigation among the city and contractors continues. It is a private wrongful-death settlement with no claim process for anyone else — we covered it in detail on October 7.

Is there a class action lawsuit against Asheville Eye Associates? Yes — and it settled. Class members got an automatic $10 eyeglasses voucher and could claim one year of identity protection and up to $1,250 in documented losses, HIPAA Journal reported; the breach was reported to federal regulators as affecting 204,984 people. The deadline to claim, opt out or object was April 6, 2026, and the final fairness hearing was set for May 14, 2026. As of October 13, 2026, we could not confirm a final approval order: the official site, aeadatasettlement.com, blocked our access, and no public report we found gives the outcome. Benefits that depend on final approval, such as activating identity protection, follow the court’s order.

What settlements are being paid out in Asheville right now? None of the three cases above pays the general public a new cash amount you can sign up for. The CTS money goes to EPA, the Riverside Drive money went to one family, and the Asheville Eye claim deadline passed on April 6, 2026. So any text, email or website that offers to “check your eligibility” for the CTS Superfund settlement or the $11 million Riverside Drive settlement is not connected to either case. The agreement itself involves no payments to or from residents, so nobody has a reason to ask you for bank details or a Social Security number in connection with it; comments go to the EPA contact listed in the notice.

The genuine documents are easy to check: the notice is on epa.gov under Region 4 public notices and in the Federal Register as document 2026-19249. Type those addresses yourself rather than clicking a link in a message. For Asheville Eye, the only legitimate contact points are those printed on the court-approved notice from the settlement administrator.