Maine was warned about toxins in sludge decades before PFAS crisis began

Read the full article by Lori Valigra, Bangor Daily News (The Maine Monitor).

“Maine’s PFAS crisis is often portrayed as a result of regulators and health officials not knowing about the chemicals that were present in the sludge spread throughout the state, but there were concerns about its contents almost from the start of the state-run program, the BDN found.

In 1983, two farmers attending a growers’ meeting in southwestern Maine heard about a new product that would change their lives, and farming in the state, for decades to come.

That product was sludge, a muddy byproduct of industrial processes and municipal wastewater treatment that also contained nutrients for enriching soil.

For Fred Stone, a dairy farmer from Arundel, the decision to spread the fertilizer meant a free way to enrich his clay soil to grow cow feed.

‘I didn’t give it a second thought,’ Stone recently said of his decision to use sludge.

But Tim Leary decided against it. It initially sounded like a good idea since he didn’t have enough manure for his Saco farm. But he later talked to friends at the wastewater department and local dairy who cautioned about the chemicals and heavy metals likely to be in the fertilizer, which was made of refuse from the S.D. Warren Paper Mill in Westbrook.”…