On Tuesday, the Northeast Waste Management Officials Association will hold its annual conference in Worcester, Massachusetts. Outside, a coalition of environmentalists say they’ll hold a protest demanding the state ban the land application of sludge containing toxic forever chemicals.
The Pittsfield-based Berkshire Environmental Action Team will be there. Its Executive Director Brittany Ebeling tells WAMC that every season of inaction is another of contaminants flooding into the commonwealth’s land, water, food, and ecosystem writ large.
EBELING: Industrial biosolids and waste and residential waste pass through wastewater treatment plants all across the country and communities. All wastewater treatment plants produce sludge, which the industry also refers to as biosolids, that contain dangerously high levels of PFAS, which refers to a class of thousands of compounds that are also referred to as forever chemicals. There was a draft risk assessment put out by the Biden administration by the EPA that was teeing up the administration to consider some kind of regulation of sludge and PFAS because of the known danger when soils, water, and bodies are exposed to forever chemicals. However, after it was rolled back by the Trump administration, states and counties and municipalities have been left to deal with this contamination issue on their own. In the state of Massachusetts, we have known about the harms associated with soil exposure to sludge containing PFAS, which is all sludge. For many years, the state Department of Environmental Protection has been analyzing PFAS in water quality systems and understanding the impact on public health and the environment for a long time, yet it has not taken action to ban the land application -- as states like Maine and Connecticut have done -- to protect people's public health and to protect our environment, which means that every year that sludge is applied to soil, we are increasing the extent of contamination. Dozens of public water supplies across the commonwealth have been contaminated, and we frankly don't know the extent of the problem, because there are very scarce public records available on where exactly it has been applied.
WAMC: From BEAT’s perspective and the perspective of other environmental groups in Massachusetts, what's the most substantive action Massachusetts can take about this ongoing contamination of public soil and water?
It's imperative that we ban the land application of sludge- This rather than taking the approach that states like Michigan and Minnesota have taken, using a tiered approach that places some arbitrary administrative threshold of parts per billion PFAS in sludge that they still allow to be applied to soil. And that has no grounding in meaningful public health principles. We understand that the safe exposure level to PFAS is zero, so we feel that the sound, scientifically robust practice would be to ban the land application. This could be done through legislative channels. Right now in the state legislature, Senator Comerford's bill proposes doing just this, and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection has regulatory power to do the same.
Now, talk to us about why you and this coalition of other groups have chosen the Northeast Waste Management Officials Association annual conference for this action. What's the significance there?
We have reached out to the Department of Environmental Protection expressing our concerns about the lack of meaningful public engagement, including the lack of engagement in agricultural communities like the Berkshires and in the Pioneer Valley that will be most affected by the permanent impact of exposure to PFAS through sludge. We feel that it is high time that the department takes seriously the urgency of this public health and environmental crisis, and this conference represents an opportunity at which seven states will have representatives from their Departments of Environmental Protection and equivalent present to draw attention to the impact of inaction. We simply cannot wait another farming season to move forward.
Brittany, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
Thanks, Josh. I appreciate it.
WAMC has reached out to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection for comment.
