Using the NYT to clarify Section 507 on sludge. Once in a while they get something right.
This NYT article from January 14, 2025 was about #7 in a series by the same author that has been influential in getting the word out about the risks and regulation of PFAS “forever chemicals.” There is a new article out today that I will feature below, but the January 14 article is important because it explains that EPA’s draft report from January 2025 was the first time EPA admitted there were risks from the application of sewage sludge on farmland and in runoff into water supplies.
… The E.P.A. has for decades [since about 1990—Nass] encouraged the use of sludge from treated wastewater as inexpensive fertilizer, with no limits on how much PFAS it can contain. But the agency’s new draft risk assessment sets a potential new course. If finalized, it could mark what could be the first step toward regulating PFAS in the sludge used as fertilizer, which the industry calls biosolids. The agency currently regulates certain heavy metals and pathogens in sewage sludge used as fertilizer, but not PFAS.
That last sentence means that EPA has told sludge operators to measure 9 toxic heavy metals like arsenic in sludge and sets limits for them. It has also set limits for bacteria (which wastewater treatment plants should have already controlled) and EPA asks that nitrogen and phosphates be measured as well, since these are the components of sludge that justify it being used as fertilizer.
What EPA has failed to ask operators to measure is the amount of every other potentially harmful substance in sewage sludge: pharmaceuticals, solvents, pesticides, radioactive materials, PFAS forever chemicals, and anything else a company or consumer chooses to pour down a drain.
…The Biden administration has tackled PFAS contamination elsewhere, setting limits on PFAS in drinking water for the first time and designating two kinds of PFAS as hazardous under the nation’s Superfund cleanup law. Those rules came after the agency said in 2023 that there is no safe level of exposure to those two PFAS.
The new E.P.A. assessment “provides important information to help inform future actions by federal and state agencies,” as well as sewage treatment plants and farmers, “to protect people from PFAS exposure,” Jane Nishida, the E.P.A. acting administrator, said in a statement.
Look at that last sentence, from Biden’s acting EPA administrator made 7 months ago. The new draft EPA assessment that was issued the week before Biden left office was intended to be used to impose strict limits on PFAS sludge applications on land.
And so Section 507, inserted at the last moment into the Appropriations bill, does only one thing: it prevents agencies from spending any money to finalize or use the report’s findings to regulate sludge, in only 8 lines. I told you this six weeks ago.
But now this evil rider, Section 507, has been approved by both House and Senate Appropriations committees, and made its way into the final House and Senate versions of the bill.
Please consider protesting to your elected Senators and Representative about this travesty.
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Today, The NY Times explains how a single corrupt industry insider who got into both Trump administrations through the revolving door, may affect a single EPA rule (which legally he should be recusing himself from discussing) that could transfer the costs of environmental PFAS cleanup from industry to taxpayers. This is different than Section 507, but it tracks to the same type of government decisionmaking that harms citizens to benefit big business.
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My CHD-TV show on sewage sludge: https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/events/crisis-save-our-food-and-farms/biosolids-poisoning-farmland-laura-orlando/