Maine Was First to Ban Spreading PFAS-Contaminated Sludge on Farmland. Now Sludge Is Filling up Landfills

Farmland is everywhere in tiny Unity Township, from neat fields of corn to open cattle pastures. And so are layers of wet organic sludge, a onetime fertilizer that has triggered a crisis over “forever chemicals” in central Maine and how best to rid the land of the poisons.

Farmers relied on sludge from local wastewater treatment plants for years to support their crops and improve yields. Unity Township, a farming community home to less than 50 people, now has some of the highest concentrations of PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, on agricultural land anywhere in Maine.

Three years ago, Maine was the first state in the nation to recognize the risks of PFAS—manmade chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and other dire health problems—by outlawing the use of sewage sludge on farmland. But PFAS, testing showed, had already seeped into drinking-water wells and crop roots, tainting vegetables, beef and milk.

Research about PFAS is sobering and so are the concerns of people in this northern state who have worked and lived with them—and testified to state legislators about the high rates of contamination at their farming businesses and in their bodies.

“We have farmers in Maine who have more PFAS in their blood than the factory workers in the 3M plants [that produce PFAS], because we eat it, we drink it, we live it,” said Bill Pluecker, the public policy organizer at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA).