New York State
Maine
Michigan
Minnesota
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New York State
Sierra Club reports that New York fails to protect farmland from PFAS in sewage sludge
Highlighting a practice that compromises farmland nationwide, a new report finds that sewage sludge spread as fertilizer on New York state fields contains toxic chemicals that sicken farmers, contaminate crops, and threaten consumer health. The report published Thursday by the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, suggests that the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has failed to prevent dangerous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from entering the environment through the practice, and urges the state to put a stop to the contamination.
"SEWAGE SLUDGE ‘FERTILIZER’ CONTAMINATES FARMS WITH TOXIC PFAS." (2023)
Atlantic Chapter Sierra Club.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10FIuwd8g9pTLeJ2bsEVUV6ez6EA65Z1E/view
"Continued use of dangerous sewage sludge as a “soil amendment” in New York State threatens the future of our farmland and compromises the safety of crops, the safety of our water resources drawn on for drinking water, and the health of farmers, gardeners, the environment and consumers who eat fruits, vegetables and grains, and the eggs, meat, milk and other dairy products from livestock fed crops grown on contaminated land.
Of particular concern to farmers, the practice of using sewage sludge as a fertilizer or soil amendment threatens the health and resiliency of our state’s soils. In 2021, New York joined the growing national trend of prioritizing soil health. The state’s Soil Health and Climate Resiliency Act “declared the policy of the legislature to promote the health and resiliency of New York’s agricultural soils, including the biological, physical, and chemical components of such soils, to sustain agricultural plants and animals, produce a health, affordable food supply, promote climate resilient farming and the reduction of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, and further protect and promote natural resources and the health, safety and welfare of the people of this state.”
Against the inaction of the state, local residents are taking action. In upstate Franklin County, local residents are concerned that Casella trucks in sewage sludge, including from other states and Canada, to its Grasslands processing plant, and that tens of thousands of tons of its product are spread on county farmland and elsewhere in the state to this day. With widespread support of local residents, the town board of Thurston in Steuben County enacted a moratorium in April 2023 on new solid waste facilities to block Casella from accepting sewage sludge for land application."
Maine
Maine bans the spreading of sludge and sludge-derived compost as fertilizer.
PORTLAND, OR—On Wednesday, Maine Governor Janet Mills signed into law a bipartisan bill, LD 1911, that is the first in the nation to ban the spreading of sludge and sludge-derived compost as fertilizer. Sludge has been the source of widespread contamination from PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), known as “forever chemicals,” forcing family farms to shut down and poisoning drinking water wells of entire communities. The law bans the use of sludge as a soil amendment.
Last week, Governor Mills also signed a supplemental budget that includes $60 million dollars to set up a fund for impacted farmers. The resources include income replacement, buyback funds, medical monitoring funds (for both farmers and impacted well owners), and funding for research on cropping alternatives and an additional $9.2 million dollars to increase testing capacity and provide more staff to the Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry.
Michigan
Serious PFAS contamination in Michigan led the state to make significant progress in regulating and reducing PFAS contamination of biosolids and wastewater.
PFAS contamination has been reduced because NPDES permits require industries discharging PFAS to sewers to treat their waste to reduce or eliminate PFAS. https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/how-michigan-reduced-industrial-discharges-pfas. In 2021, Michigan EGLE began including PFAS in WWTP NPDES permits as part of their PFAS reduction strategy. Most NPDES permits simply require monitoring and reporting PFOA/PFOS but now some must comply with limits for discharge of PFOS or PFOA. "PFOS has become the main regulatory driver for PFAS control, with 31% of WWTP effluents reporting results above the applicable water quality values (Figure 2). Two years into implementation, there is significant evidence to support that utilizing the established authorities under the IPP to identify and control industrial sources of PFAS (specifically PFOS) to POTWs is highly effective at reducing the discharge of this pollutant into the environment."
Land contamination by biosolids is also reduced because biosolids must be tested before application and then only applied at levels deemed safe. https://www.michigan.gov/egle/about/organization/water-resources/biosolids.
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Minnesota
I was pleased to see this serious discussion of soil and groundwater contamination from biosolids in this Minnesota report: “Forever Chemicals in our Wastewater - How Minnesota can build on the PFAS source reduction laws passed in 2023”. https://www.mncenter.org/pfas-report
IV. Soil and Groundwater Contamination from Biosolids
Over the past 10 years, data has shown that the land application of biosolids is directly tied to the PFAS contamination of soil and groundwater. At this point, we can no longer ignore the reality that when you look for PFAS contamination from wastewater streams like biosolids, you will find it.
The discovery of PFAS contamination from land applied biosolids has led to devastating consequences for rural communities across the country. In 2016, a family farm in Maine voluntarily participated in an EPA program that found PFAS contamination on their farm linked to biosolids land application. PFAS was found in their cows and their milk supply, as well as the husband and wife’s blood, and they were forced to close their multigenerational farm without any compensation for the chemical contamination. Maine initiated a program to test sewage sludge from different wastewater treatment plants across the state and found at least one PFAS chemical in all 44 samples they collected. The results led to the 2022 passage of a bill that banned the use of PFAS-contaminated biosolids for land application in the state.
When other states have tested their own wastewater streams, the results have been similar. In Michigan, for example, a 2018 study of 42 municipal wastewater treatment plants found PFAS compounds in virtually all samples, which included influent, effluent, and biosolids. Consistently, PFOA and PFOS concentrations in the effluent and biosolids were higher than in the influent, which once again indicates that the wastewater treatment process itself can increase the concentration of PFAS compounds. Scientific studies have looked at the impact of long-term application of municipal biosolids on agricultural soils in the United States. What they have found is that biosolids from wastewater treatment plants with higher levels of industrial wastewater are connected to exponentially higher concentrations of long-chain PFAS like PFOA and PFOS in the soil.
These results emphasize the need to treat industrial discharges and reduce PFAS before it gets to the wastewater treatment plant, which can be done through pretreatment programs that target significant industrial users. MPCA can leverage its authority under the Clean Water Act permitting programs to require pretreatment for industrial users who send their water to wastewater treatment facilities. The objectives of the pretreatment program are to “prevent the introduction of pollutants into [publicly-owned treatment works (POTW)] which will interfere with the operation of a POTW, including interference with its use or disposal of municipal sludge.” Pretreatment programs are commonly used to remove the contaminants that the EPA regulates from industrial wastewater,
leveraged this authority to address PFAS pollution from industrial sources, and Minnesota can do the same. Academic research confirms that at sites where biosolids have been land applied for decades, PFAS substances have the ability to leach from the surface, through the soil profile, and into groundwater. In terms of whether PFAS contamination in the soil has the potential to contaminate groundwater, factors like water table depth and soil type are important drivers of risk.
Even though they have now largely been phased out of domestic production, legacy PFAS like PFOS and PFOA tend to be found in soil and groundwater in the highest concentrations, because they have been manufactured for the longest. This indicates that historical, long-term use of biosolids to amended soil has a positive correlation with increased levels of PFAS in the soil and in the groundwater below. The research indicates that if we continue to land apply biosolids, we will see more water contamination from newer, short-chain PFAS that have had less time to impact the environment than their legacy counterparts.
Texas
Texas Farms Detail PFAS Contamination in Lawsuit Over Biosolids Fertilizer
Texas Farms Detail PFAS Contamination in Lawsuit Over Biosolids Fertilizer (dtnpf.com)
OMAHA (DTN) -- With regulation of sewage-sludge fertilizer mostly unsettled nationally, a pair of Texas farms are suing the waste recycling and biosolids company Synagro for selling fertilizer that the farmers allege has affected their health, contaminated their water supply and left their fields and livestock with dangerous testing levels of "forever chemicals." The farms involve five individuals who live or own property on the same county road near Grandview, Texas, about a half hour south of Fort Worth, Texas.
Their lawsuit, filed in Baltimore County, Maryland, where Synagro is based, alleges that their farms were contaminated after Synagro provided a neighboring farmer with a biosolid fertilizer that contained potentially dangerous levels of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS chemicals. The lawsuit alleges the volumes of PFAS chemicals "poisoned them, killed their livestock, polluted their water and rendered their property worthless," according to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which arranged laboratory testing of the farms' soil, water and dead livestock.