Tell Your State Legislators: Farms Shouldn't Be Toxic Sewage Sludge Dumps!

In a classic kick-the-can-down-the-road move, on January 14, 2025, the Biden Administration's Environmental Protection Agency finally admitted forever chemicalsare contaminating U.S. farmland because of the EPA's own long-standing policy of promoting toxic sewage sludge "fertilizer" as the way to dispose of waste from water-treatment plants.

President Donald Trump's new EPA could take the logical next step of banning sewage sludge from farmland, but given his EPA nominees, state legislators aren't holding their breath waiting. Instead, they're taking action. Already in 2025, several states have introduced bills like the law Maine passed in 2022 to ban sewage sludge from farmland.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators Farms Shouldn't Be Toxic Sewage Sludge Dumps!

The outgoing Biden Adminstration EPA has marshalled the facts on why toxic sewage sludge shouldn't be dumped on farmland. Will the Trump Administration's new EPA take the logical next step and implement a ban? Unlikely. Trump has nominated David Fotouhi as the second-most powerful person at the EPA. Fotouhi is a lawyer who has spent his career defending polluters, including those responsible for making sewage sluge so toxic! In 2021, he represented International Paper, one of several paper-mill companies that have contaminated Maine's drinking water and farmland with PFAS "forever chemicals."

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of highly toxic man-made fluorinated chemicals used in a variety of products, including waterproof fabric, stain-resistant carpets, nonstick pans, flame retardant furniture, take-out containers, cosmetics and firefighting foam. PFAS kills. There is scientific evidence that it causes cancer, kidney disease, birth defects, and liver damage, and batters the immune system.

Nathan Saunders' wife had kidney failure, but he didn't know why until more than a decade later, in 2021, when he found out their well water in Fairfield, Maine, had extremely high levels of PFAS. The toxins got into the well water through sewage sludge from the wastewater treatment plant being dumped on local farmland as "fertilizer," but it companies including International Paper polluted the water with PFAS in the first place. Fotouhi is the lawyer who succeeded in getting International Paper dismissed from a lawsuit Saunders brought. The judge agreed with Fotouhi's argument that Saunders wouldn't be able to prove it was International Paper's PFAS that ended up in Saunders' well water.

Polluters like the ones Fotouhi represents are the reason why PFAS has been detected in the blood of 98% of Americans and is contaminating 45% of U.S. tap water. Companies like 3M and DuPont have always had (and, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, still have) a free pass to dump their waste right into streams, rivers and sewage systems. 

Michigan sets standards for what levels are acceptable in sewage sludge. As Harvest Public Media reported, “if wastewater plants detect two compounds, PFOA and PFOS, above 100 parts per billion (ppb) in biosolids, they are considered ‘industrially impacted’ and can no longer be applied to land. If they're under 20 pbb, they’re in the clear.”

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators, Farms Shouldn't Be Toxic Sewage Sludge Dumps!

Personal Information

*SAMPLE TEXT TO YOUR STATE LEGISLATORS*

You will be able to modify this text on the next page, after entering your information.

 

Dear [State Legislator],

Maine and Minnesota have passed broad bans on products containing PFAS.

Maine’s PFAS ban includes a prohibition on the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer (the industry name for it is “biosolids”). A few other states, notably Michigan, are testing sewage sludge for PFAS.

Every state in the nation should do the same.

Chemical companies like DuPont and 3M have covered up evidence of the dangerous human health and environmental impacts of PFAS since the 1960s.

Today, overwhelming research links PFAS to a wide range of health problems, including kidney, testicular, bladder, and prostate cancer, as well as developmental, immune, reproductive, and hormonal dysfunction.

Chemical companies are replacing older PFAS with other chemicals in the PFAS family. Unfortunately, these replacements, such as GenX, act a lot like older PFAS, and studies show that they can present similar hazards. Short-chain perfluoroalkyl sulfonates and perfluoroalkyl carboxylates adversely affect rat livers and thyroid hormones just like their long-chain homologues do.

PFAS do not break down naturally and bioaccumulate in the environment and our bodies.

It’s time to ban all PFAS and set to work cleaning up the water and remediating the land. Some plants, including hemp, have been shown to suck PFAS out of the soil, a process known as "phytoremediation."

For more information, please contact the National Conference of Environmental Legislators: http://www.ncelenviro.org/issue/pfas/

Thank you for your attention to this important issue.
 

[Your Name]