Maine
Opinion: Maine needs to do more than ban agricultural use of wastewater sludge
The BDN Opinion part operates independently and doesn’t set newsroom insurance policies or contribute to reporting or modifying articles elsewhere within the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com.
Michael Haedicke is an affiliate professor of sociology on the College of Maine and a college fellow on the Senator George J. Mitchell Heart for Sustainability Options. Jean MacRae is an affiliate professor of civil and environmental engineering on the College of Maine and a Mitchell Heart school fellow. This column displays their views and experience and doesn’t converse on behalf of the College of Maine or the Mitchell Heart. Haedicke is a member of the Maine chapter of the nationwide Students Technique Community, which brings collectively students throughout the nation to deal with public challenges and their coverage implications. Members’ columns seem within the BDN each different week.
This yr, many Maine communities will face elevated prices for sewage disposal due to current laws that prohibits spreading wastewater sludge on farmland. These communities might want to ship their sludge to landfills as an alternative.
Utilizing wastewater sludge to fertilize agricultural soil has been a longstanding follow in Maine and elsewhere, however this follow can expose folks to PFAS. These “eternally chemical substances” persist in the surroundings, accumulate in meals and water, and have been linked to well being issues like most cancers, thyroid illness and weakened immunity.
Ending agricultural use of wastewater sludge will assist restrict folks’s publicity to PFAS, nevertheless it doesn’t resolve the issue. Storing PFAS-laden sludge in landfills is a brief repair that raises new considerations. Finally, PFAS should be faraway from shopper merchandise to scale back environmental contamination.
PFAS is a blanket time period for 1000’s of artificial chemical compounds with carbon-fluorine bonds. The widespread use of those compounds for the reason that mid-Twentieth century implies that most individuals are uncovered to hint quantities in on a regular basis life. PFAS are in non-stick cookware, waterproof and stain-resistant clothes, meals packaging and even in private care merchandise.
PFAS find yourself in sewers after they go by our our bodies or are washed from our our bodies and laundry. Throughout sewage therapy, solids are separated from liquid wastewater, creating biosolids or “sludge.” PFAS persist with the solids, turning into concentrated there. Maine Division of Environmental Safety assessments have demonstrated that PFAS concentrations within the sludge produced in almost all Maine communities exceed secure ranges for agricultural soil.
When sludge is utilized to agricultural land, PFAS could also be taken up by crops, transfer with runoff to the closest water physique, or seep into groundwater, inflicting PFAS to enter ingesting water and meals provides. Furthermore, because the nickname “eternally chemical substances” suggests, PFAS break down very slowly. As soon as they enter the surroundings, they are going to be there for the foreseeable future.
Maine’s new legislation prohibiting agricultural use of wastewater sludge is a step in the fitting route for public well being and environmental high quality. Diverting sludge to landfills will assist to include PFAS and restrict exposures.
Sadly, this follow creates new issues. The simplest to see is the monetary burden that it locations on municipalities, which can be handed on to residents within the type of greater sewage charges or property taxes. Making landfills liable for wastewater sludge along with different supplies may even expend their restricted area extra rapidly.
Different issues are much less apparent. As an illustration, when natural supplies like sludge decompose in landfills, they produce methane, a potent greenhouse gasoline. Even with techniques in place to seize and burn methane, a sizeable fraction of landfill gasoline escapes to the environment.
Moreover, PFAS can dissolve in water that contacts strong waste, referred to as leachate. Whereas trendy landfills are lined to gather leachate, small quantities migrate by and might contaminate groundwater. Even when leachate is handled, and the ensuing sludge is returned to the landfill, some PFAS stays within the handled liquid and is discharged into the surroundings.
There isn’t any surefire solution to safely include PFAS chemical substances. As an alternative, policymakers and residents have to work in the direction of lowering the usage of PFAS altogether to restrict the burden of eternally chemical substances in our our bodies and the environment.
Maine has begun this course of. Final yr, lawmakers enacted LD 1503, which can ban the sale of most merchandise containing deliberately added PFAS by 2030. The method will begin subsequent yr with carpets, rugs and cloth therapies. Utilizing LD 1503, we imagine that regulators ought to make rapid efforts to take away PFAS from meals contact supplies and private care merchandise to cease essentially the most direct routes of human — and wastewater — publicity.
When PFAS are faraway from the merchandise we eat, we’d as soon as once more be capable to return natural matter to agricultural soils. Attending to a secure, round meals system ought to be a important precedence for Maine policymakers. This implies acknowledging present security considerations however making a system the place sludge turns into a useful resource as soon as once more.