Read the full article by Rose Schnabel (WUFT).
“North Florida has had enough.
The region’s flat, rural cattle pastures, longtime dumping grounds of South Florida’s sewage sludge, will close their gates to feces-filled trucks by 2028. That’s owing to a provision of Florida’s Farm Bill, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in March.
Sewage sludge is what’s treated from millions of toilet flushes. New state law bans municipalities from spreading the less-treated types on farm fields, a practice that’s been prohibited south of Lake Okeechobee since 2013. Legislation to tighten regulations on the most-treated sludge, too, awaits the governor’s signature.
Water quality advocates consider the ban a decisive victory for the St. Johns River. Farmland along the river receives more than two-thirds of the state’s so-called ‘class B’ sludge, they say, causing an estimated $1.1 billion in cleanup costs in the watershed
That sludge has potentially dangerous levels of ‘forever chemicals’, the Environmental Protection Agency told farmers in a draft report published last year. Maine and Connecticut stopped smearing the stuff on farmland in 2022 and 2024, respectively, and a slew of other states are considering full or partial bans.”…