‘Suffering the Consequences’: Why Maine Banned Sewage Sludge Spreading and How Farmers Are Adjusting

January 25, 2025 | Source: Spectrum News 1 | by Seth Voorhees

As New York regulators consider a plan to increase the amount of human sewage sludge used on farm fields as fertilizer, another state has banned the practice altogether. When tests in the state of Maine showed dozens of farms and hundreds of drinking water wells were poisoned by forever chemicals, the state banned the use of biosolids.

Sue Hunter says to stay in farming, you have to love farming. That is why she stays on her farm in Unity, Maine.

“It’s a beautiful piece of land,” said Hunter. “It used to be an old potato field. As a kid, I used to pick potatoes on this field.”

Hunter met her husband, Alan, not far from the farm. The two met while she was milking cows on her uncle’s dairy farm. They were married for 39 years and bought the current farm in 2008, the year before Alan was diagnosed with cancer.

“It’s been crazy,” she said.

Alan died in 2015. The loss was just the first blow.

“That’s what angers me,” said Hunter. “Is they knew about it.”

“It” refers to the forever chemicals — PFAS, from industrial contaminants Hunter says were in the sewage sludge that they spread on their fields as fertilizer.