On March 2nd, the Maine legislature’s Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee approved LD-1911, “An Act To Prohibit the Contamination of Clean Soils with So-called Forever Chemicals" as amended, which will ban the land application of biosolids-based materials and the sale of products derived from municipal wastewater and certain commercial and industrial sludges. The ENR vote was seven in favor and two opposed, with four committee members absent. This final version of the bill will now head to the full legislature for consideration.

Since it was originally proposed on January 5th by Representative William Pluecker of Warren, LD-1911 has undergone extensive overhauls. The original bill would have prohibited the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (MEDEP) from licensing sites for the land application of ”sludge and sludge-derived compost” unless the materials were tested for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and the concentrations in the material didn’t exceed the screening levels established previously for beneficial reuse. The original bill would have effectively banned land application, as an estimated 80% of the materials generated by Water Resource Recovery Facilities (WRRFs) in the State of Maine exceed the existing screening standards of 2.5 parts per billion (ppb) for PFOA and 5.2 ppb for PFOS as applied to biosolids in 2019.

A last-minute amendment by Senator Stacy Brennan of Cumberland prior to the first committee Work Session on LD-1911 on February 7th, had added an emergency provision to make the bill effective immediately upon the signature of the Governor and replaced the screening limits with an outright ban. Upon seeing this version, NEBRA submitted formal comments along with numerous other interest groups. Following discussion at the February 7th meeting, that version of the bill with an added provision for some funding to help municipalities through the transition to landfilling, was passed by the Committee on a 10 to 3 vote.

The Work Session on March 2nd was intended as a “language review” but resulted in additional major amendments to the bill as proposed on March 1st, again by Senator Brenner. The amendments included the removal of the emergency clause and the municipal assistance fund that had been added on February 7th. But it also eliminated the $10 per ton fee for handling of wastewater sludges and septage that was enacted in the previous legislative session. The March 2nd version of the bill added exclusions for land application of certain materials including sludges from food and brewery wastes, which are also known to contain PFAS. The provision remains prohibiting the licensing of new septage land application sites and giving the MEDEP about a year to develop plans to completely prohibit the land application of septage. In testimony on the original bill back in January, MEDEP recommended a phased approach and asked for more time to develop a plan to completely eliminate the practice of land application of biosolids.

Language remains from the February 7th amendment that would additionally prohibit the sale or distribution of any compost or “material intended for use as a fertilizer, soil amendment, top soil replacement, mulch or other similar agricultural purposes that is derived from or contains sludge generated from a municipal, commercial or industrial wastewater treatment plant or septage.” More concerning, and likely to impact farmers, is the prohibition on the sale, distribution, or use of the “agricultural crops or other vegetative material for any agricultural purpose, including, but not limited to, for use as animal feed, if those agricultural crops or vegetative material were grown at a location in the State where septage is licensed or permitted to be applied or spread.” Finally, the bill also requires WRRFs to test their effluent for PFAS.

Considerable time was spent during the hearing on February 7th discussing the capacity of Maine’s one state landfill at Juniper Ridge and managed by Casella Organics, for accepting wastewater solids. Since the MEDEP applied the solid waste beneficial reuse screening standards to biosolids in 2019, there has been a significant shift to landfill disposal and associated increase in costs to local utilities. According to MEDEP’s data, 35% of wastewater solids were going to landfill in 2018. In 2020, it shot up to 76%. With landfill as the only management option in state, utilities will struggle with disposal and costs will increase. Out of state options for land application could be limited if the materials are outright banned in Maine, as several New England states have provisions in their laws requiring imported materials to meet their state standards or the standards in the state where the materials were generated, whichever is more stringent.

The Maine Farm Bureau commented at the March 2nd hearing on the impacts this would have on its members. Executive Director Julie Ann Smith said the proposed law would put Maine farmers at a disadvantage in not being able to use products that are allowed in other states. She predicted that would put a lot of struggling farms out of business and require more food, that will contain PFAS, to be imported from out of state.

The impact of the committee's actions in early February have already manifested in actions at the local level. In particular, the Sanford Sewer District Board of Directors voted on February 14th to stop the distribution of their compost materials which slightly exceed the state's current screening standards for PFOS. A 2020 study by NEBRA, in collaboration with the Water Environment Federation and the National Association of Clean Water Administrators, found an average increase in the cost of solids handling of 37% due to PFAS regulation. In Sanford’s case, Superintendent André Brousseau is projecting a 500 to 600% increase in solids disposal costs once they run out of space at their local landfill where they can use their compost as daily cover in the short-term.

There have been several high profile cases in Maine where farms had been significantly contaminated by industrially-impacted biosolids related to Maine’s pulp and paper industry. The sites are the result of legacy pollution; today's biosolids do not have the same levels as a result of source reductions. The state is being urged to accelerate their investigations to identify all of the legacy sites in Maine. MEDEP has invested considerable resources on PFAS investigations but resource limitations remain and continue to slow the process. Cost impacts for the State are also significant (see Costs of investigating PFAS contamination are rising ‘exponentially’ in Maine | Maine Public) – possibly up to $20 million a year.

Now that the language review for the bill has been completed and the revised version passed out of ENR, the bill will go to the House for approval and then to the Senate. There will be at least one minority report from ENR to go along with the bill as presented to the full House and Senate. One of those minority reports will seek to have a 12 month delay in banning the sale, distribution and use of biosolids and biosolids composts and reinstate financial relief for the WRRFs, hopefully.