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Before you sign the petition, ask the petitioners where the documents are.

A group of neighbors is asking 2,150 Gray's Creek residents to sign a petition to create a new municipal government by November 1, 2026. The proposed town has no published charter, no published feasibility study, no published boundary map, and no published budget. The financial pitch on the petitioners' Facebook page does not match the financial pitch on their website.

We are residents and business owners inside the proposed boundary. We oppose this incorporation as presented. A proposal this vague, on this timeline, with no charter, no budget, and no governance structure, is a power grab dressed as local control. We are not against having a town. We are against signing a permanent commitment to a plan that does not yet exist on paper.

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Three questions the petitioners have not answered.

Each question can be answered with a document the petitioners say is "in preparation." If those documents exist, publish them. If they don't, finish them before the petition opens.

QUESTION 01

Where are the documents you're asking us to sign onto?

The charter, feasibility study, boundary map, and startup guide are all listed as "in preparation" on the petitioners' own Documents page. The petition deadline is November 1, 2026.

QUESTION 02

Which budget is the real one, Facebook or the website?

Two different budgets are in public circulation. They show different revenue, different expenses, different surplus, and different positions on whether households will pay for trash service.

QUESTION 03

Are you preventing a Village Center, or planning one?

The Village Center page says the overlay district is "a protective planning tool ” not a development plan." It then lists the planning steps to build a Village Center. Which is it?

A new town cannot fix PFAS. Not legally. Not financially. Not technically.

The petitioners say Gray's Creek should incorporate in part to "champion the water project." Here is what a North Carolina municipality is actually able to do about PFAS contamination already in the ground.

What an NC municipality cannot legally do

Cannot regulate Chemours or any industrial discharger. NC G.S. 150B-19.3 (the Hardison Amendments) specifically prohibits local governments from adopting environmental rules more stringent than state rules.
Cannot set drinking water standards. Federal EPA (under the Safe Drinking Water Act) and NC DEQ have exclusive jurisdiction. A town has no standing.
Cannot issue or revoke industrial discharge permits. That authority sits with NC DEQ under the federal NPDES program.
Cannot require remediation of contaminated sites. Federal CERCLA (Superfund) and the NC Inactive Hazardous Sites program. No municipal role.
Cannot enforce against polluters directly. Civil enforcement runs through the NC Attorney General and EPA. There is no municipal cause of action for environmental violations.
Cannot mandate well filtration or bottled water for residents. That is a county health department function under NC G.S. 130A.

What an NC municipality can legally do

Pass non-binding resolutions and write letters. Cumberland County already does this.
Use zoning to block new industrial uses going forward. Cumberland County zoning already covers this and does nothing for legacy contamination.
Join multi-district litigation as a plaintiff. Property owners and Cumberland County are already plaintiffs in MDL 2873; a new town adds no legal weight that is not already represented.
Run its own water utility, if it builds one. Gray's Creek is not proposing one. PWC and Cumberland County handle regional water.

The money is already flowing without a town

The 2019 Chemours Consent Order with NC DEQ requires Chemours to fund whole-house filtration for affected wells, reverse osmosis for the worst cases, and ongoing testing. The 2023 3M settlement put $10.3 billion into a national water-utility fund. The 2023 DuPont/Chemours/Corteva settlement added $1.18 billion. Federal IIJA water grants and NC state appropriations have committed over $260 million in regional PFAS response. Not one dollar of this requires Gray's Creek to incorporate. Not one dollar gets there faster because a town exists. Not one well gets cleaned sooner.

Bottom line

"Championing" is a feeling. PFAS authority is a statute. There is no overlap. A new town with a $1-2M budget cannot regulate a multibillion-dollar chemical company, cannot set water standards, cannot enforce against a polluter, and cannot remediate contamination. Every authority that matters operates at a level above municipal.

Fifty square miles. They call this a small town.

The petitioners describe the proposed Town of Gray's Creek as a small community asserting local control. Their own published boundary covers roughly fifty square miles. That is larger than the City of Wilmington. It is approaching the size of Cary. It is roughly eight times the footprint of Hope Mills, and eight times the footprint of Spring Lake. These are the towns the petitioners cite as evidence that "small towns work."

Hope Mills works because it is small and tight. Spring Lake works because it is small and tight. Successful North Carolina municipalities concentrate residents inside compact footprints so that roads, water lines, fire response, and street maintenance reach everyone at reasonable cost per resident. That is the entire reason municipal government scales economically.

The proposed Gray's Creek boundary does the opposite. It draws a fifty-square-mile polygon across mostly rural Cumberland County and calls it a town. Below is what that looks like next to every existing municipality in the county.

At scale, on the same page

Each square below is drawn proportionally to the town's actual area in square miles. The big red one is the proposed Gray's Creek boundary. The small green ones are the towns the petitioners use as their template.

Proposed Gray's Creek
~50 sq mi

Eastover
17.4 sq mi

Hope Mills
6.5 sq mi

Spring Lake
6.5 sq mi

Stedman
1.6

Wade
1.6

Falcon
0.7

Godwin
0.5

How many Hope Mills fit inside the proposed boundary?

Eight. Each green tile below represents one Hope Mills, drawn at the same scale as the proposed Gray's Creek boundary outlined in red.

Red outline: proposed Gray's Creek. Green tiles: Hope Mills, repeated eight times to fill the boundary.

For reference, the official county map

Cumberland County existing municipalities: Fayetteville, Hope Mills, Spring Lake, Eastover, Wade, Godwin, Falcon

Existing Cumberland County municipalities. Source: NC OneMap / Cumberland County GIS.

Area and density, side by side

Municipality	Area (sq mi)	Population	Density (per sq mi)
Proposed Gray's Creek	~50	~20,000	~400
Hope Mills	6.5	~17,000	~2,600
Spring Lake	6.5	~11,000	~1,700
Eastover	17.4	~3,600	~210
Stedman	1.6	~1,000	~620
Wade	1.6	~500	~310
Falcon	0.7	~260	~370
Godwin	0.5	~120	~240
Wilmington (for scale)	52.6	~115,000	~2,200
Cary (for scale)	60.2	~180,000	~3,000

Sources: Census 2020, NC OSBM, petitioners' grayscreeknc.com. Population estimates rounded.

Proposed Gray's Creek boundary, pink polygon, shown next to adjacent municipal footprints

Proposed boundary in pink. Adjacent shaded municipal footprints for scale.

Bottom line

Hope Mills works because it is tight. Spring Lake works because it is tight. Eight times the footprint and one-sixth the density isn't a small town. It is a county district pretending to be a town, with all the road miles, service area, and infrastructure burden that scale brings, spread across a tax base too sparse to carry it.

Read the full geography analysis →

We are not against local control.

Local zoning authority can be valuable. The question is not whether to have a town. The question is whether to have this town, with these documents, on this timeline.

PRINCIPLE

Read before you sign.

A petition signature is a public record. It will be cited at the General Assembly. You can withdraw a signature, but it is harder than not signing in the first place.

PRINCIPLE

Demand the documents first.

The charter, feasibility study, boundary map, and zoning draft should be public before any signature is collected. If those documents exist, publish them.

PRINCIPLE

Show up at the meetings.

June 25 and July 16 at Paradise Acres. Bring this page. Ask the questions. Bring a neighbor.

Add your name to the record.

If you are a property owner or registered voter inside the proposed boundary, leave your information. You choose whether your name and address are listed publicly, and on which side. Email is required so we can notify you when something material in the petition changes. Nothing else is required.

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No campaign list. No solicitations. Used only to notify you when the petitioners publish a document, or when something material changes.