Sierra Club Michigan Background document, June 1, 2022
Michigan Farm Points to National Nightmare: Industrial Waste Disposal on Farmland
Under Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s leadership, Michigan is leading national efforts to investigate the sources of PFAS contamination in groundwater and surface water. These groundbreaking data collection projects, headed by the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team, (MPART), have shed light on past and possibly ongoing practices of spreading contaminated industrial waste on farmland by reclassifying the waste as “beneficial soil conditioner.”
This week a major farming operation in Michigan, Valley View Pork, recently sold to Jackpine Holdings, is grabbing headlines because of the legacy toxic PFAS contamination on their properties due to decades of spreading leather tannery waste on agricultural land. Sierra Club Michigan and its network of volunteer leaders have been piecing together the complicated web of regulatory gaps and oversights that encourage the spreading of toxic industrial waste on agricultural lands. Sierra Club efforts show that the practice of waste disposal on farmland poses huge concerns for agricultural safety nationally.
Michigan is home to a massive PFAS contamination site, the Wolverine Worldwide factory in Rockford, MI, which used PFOS chemicals as a water treatment for leather between the 1950s to 60s and the year 2000, when PFAS giant 3M stopped selling PFOS-based products. It is widely believed that the leather industry shifted to newer-generation PFAS chemicals. The state’s response to the PFAS contamination from Wolverine Worldwide has helped spur the investigations that have helped uncover current concerns about contamination of agricultural land.
Starting in at least the mid 1990s until 2007, a major manufacturer for automotive leather headquartered in Grand Haven Michigan, (Eagle Ottawa Leather), spread 13,000 tons of tannery waste on farmland annually using a loophole in federal regulations meant to prevent chemical contamination, not encourage it. The leather tanning process is chemical intensive, in addition to PFAS chemicals used in the waterproofing process, tanning waste commonly include chromium, nitrates, and a variety of heavy metals used as dyes or volatile organic chemicals used to treat the leather. Michigan waste disposal rules classify leather treatment residuals, pulp and paper mill waste and other industrial wastes as allowed to be applied to land if limited criteria are met for reclassification of the waste as for, “beneficial reuse.” Eagle Ottawa Leather reported the land application and disposal of their waste and release of associated chemicals through EPA’s annual Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Form R submissions. A summary of their annual submissions has been downloaded from the EPA TRI website and is included here.
As well as spreading the waste on their own land, the Eagle Ottawa Leather Company, via its Newayo Farms LLC subsidiary, claimed they were able to sell their tannery waste as “beneficial soil conditioner” to other surrounding farms. Although the practice of spreading tannery waste from the Grand Haven facility in Newaygo and Oceana was stopped by regulators in 2007, we do not know enough about how widespread it may have been throughout the state. The loophole allowing for the program still exists in state and federal law, suggesting it may still be happening and it may have been a more widespread practice.
Michigan’s MPART is currently investigating the widespread presence of PFAS in groundwater at the site of investigation and their publicly posted test results show PFAS levels up to 680 ppt for PFOS, 1800 ppt for PFOA, and 20 ppt for PFNA. These levels exceed Michigan surface and drinking water standards, as well as EPA’s draft groundwater standard of no more than 40 ppt for PFOS or PFOA and no more than 70 parts per trillion the sum of both chemicals. However, MPART does not have the authority to mandate testing of agricultural products or soil. Any testing of soil and agricultural products to date has been voluntary, and the farmers that have participated deserve to be applauded for their work to protect public health.
Sierra Club applauds the work of state regulators in Michigan to investigate PFAS hot spots and hold polluters accountable for legacy contamination. In the past, Eagle Ottawa Leather discharged PFAS to the Grand Haven WasteWater Treatment plant, and as of 2020 PFAS are still measured in wastewater effluent coming from their facility in Rochester Hills Michigan. To our knowledge, there has been no required PFAS testing of agricultural products associated with either Newaygo Farms LLC, or Valley View Pork.
It also isn’t clear how many more tannery sites in Michigan or the rest of the United States are applying processed waste on land for disposal, especially on food producing sites. We attempted to inventory tannery sites using EPA and industry data. EPA’s ECHO database suggests about 130 current tannery sites are currently operating in 25 US states (queried using SIC code 3111, and NAICS code 316110). An industry index lists 74 leather tanneries in the United States. Regulators should cross-check to ensure EPA isn’t missing sites where PFAS-treatments may have been applied. Contamination could also be found from historic facilities. PFAS giant 3M began to market such treatments in the 1950s or 1960s. The U.S. fluorochemical industry phased out PFOS-based products around the year 2000, but the leather tanning industry largely switched to related PFAS treatments for waterproof finishing.
Map of known or possible leather treatment sites: