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September 11, 2024

EPA denies duty to regulate PFAS in sewage sludge spread on farmland

By Shannon Kelleher

US regulators claim they are not legally required to regulate toxic PFAS chemicals in sewage sludge spread on farmland across the country, according to a court filing the government made this week in response to a lawsuit from an environmental watchdog group.

In its Sept. 9 filing, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked the US District Court in Washington, DC to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed in June by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) on behalf of a group of Texas farmers and ranchers. The lawsuit claims contamination with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from sewage sludge has sickened and killed the farmers’ livestock, “injured their health, threatened their livelihoods, and devalued their property.”

The agency denied PEER’s claims that it is violating the Clean Water Act by failing to identify and regulate several types of PFAS that have been found in treated sewage sludge used as fertilizer. While the law requires the agency to conduct reviews, there is no requirement for the agency to actually identify “additional toxic pollutants,” the EPA said in its filing.

When it comes to sewage sludge, “both the identification and regulation of any additional toxic pollutants(s) are left to the discretion of EPA,” the agency stated in the court filing.

“The relief they seek— an order directing EPA to identify PFAS in its next biennial report, and to regulate PFAS thereafter—is simply not available,” the EPA stated.

PEER attorney Laura Dumais said in a press release that the agency’s position “flies in the face” of the language of the Clean Water Act, and harms people across the country who can be exposed to “PFAS-laden sewage sludge on millions of acres of land…”

March 11, 2024

Farmers facing PFAS pollution struggle for solutions

By Shannon Kelleher

When Jim Buckle and his wife, Hannah Hamilton, started their 18-acre organic vegetable farm in Unity, Maine more than a decade ago, they wanted to grow the healthiest food possible. But after a wholesale buyer asked them to test their operation for toxic chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in 2022, the couple was in for a shock.

The soil tests came back clean, as the couple expected. But Buckle’s heart sank when the results arrived for the well water they used to wash and irrigate their vegetables. Through no fault of their own, the farm Buckle and Hamilton had carefully cultivated for nearly a decade was contaminated with PFAS-laced sewage sludge that had been used as fertilizer on land nearby years earlier.

Faced with evidence that their harvests were also likely contaminated with potentially hazardous PFAS toxins, he and Hamilton made the decision to close down their farming operations, at least temporarily, as they wrestled with how they might clean up their farm and protect it from future contamination.

“We said, ‘wow, this is crazy. We actually have this problem,’” Buckle said.

About a year earlier, first-generation organic farmers Katia Holmes and her husband faced a similar crisis on their 700-acre Misty Brook Farm in Albion, Maine, where they raise livestock and grow grains. In their case, the well water was fine, said Holmes. But testing of their cows’ milk – and the hay they bought from a neighbor to feed the cows – came back with elevated levels of PFAS.

Further testing revealed that a previous owner of the Holmes’ land had spread sewer sludge on certain fields 20 years ago, leaving behind PFAS in the soil.

“We called all the stores and pulled all our products,” said Holmes.

Buckle’s and Holmes’ stories are, sadly, becoming more common.