The glass of water that Jennifer Campagne draws from her kitchen faucet looks clear and clean. But ever since she had her household well tested and found “forever chemicals” in it, she’s leery of using it, even to make coffee.
Campagne lives in a small cinderblock cottage in Hague, VA, on the overwhelmingly rural Northern Neck between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. There are no nearby military bases, fire houses, factories or other likely sources of the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, detected in her well. There is, though, a farm field about 30 yards from her home where “biosolids,” or treated sewage sludge, has been spread as fertilizer for corn and soybeans.
The biosolids applications have been a recurrent nuisance, she said, because of the stench that wafts onto her property for days afterward, but she figured that was the price of living in farm country. Now, she worries they could be a health hazard.
“I never knew it was more than just the smell,” she said. “It’s a lot to take in.”
Every year, hundreds of thousands of tons of biosolids are spread as fertilizer on farm fields throughout Virginia and the rest of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Treated to remove pathogens, biosolids provide farmers with a relatively cheap form of organic nourishment for their crop fields and pastures.
Yet the widespread practice is coming under increasing scrutiny because biosolids often are laced with PFAS, a group of thousands of chemicals used in a wide range of products, from firefighting foam to weather-resistant clothing and even food packaging and tooth floss. Per their nickname, they don’t break down easily and have spread so widely in the environment that they’re detected almost everywhere that researchers look for them: in drinking water wells and in rivers and streams and the fish that live in them. Studies have linked long-term exposure with cancer, liver problems and decreased immunity.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2024 set stringent drinking water standards for five of the most commonly detected compounds and one mixture of them. It also developed draft criteria for limiting certain PFAS in waters that support aquatic life, though it has not finalized those.
And earlier this year, in the final days of the Biden administration, the EPA published a draft risk assessment. It concluded that fertilizing farm fields with sewage sludge containing as little as one part per billion of a couple PFAS can pose unacceptable health risks, sometimes “by several orders of magnitude,” for anyone consuming crops or livestock raised there or drinking water from wells on the site.
The EPA is still weighing feedback on its draft risk assessment of PFAS in biosolids. If finalized, it could be the basis for regulatory action. Given the push by the Trump administration to reduce or revoke regulations, environmental advocates have their doubts, but an EPA spokesperson noted that the agency developed a national PFAS action plan during the first Trump administration.
Leaving it to the states
Unwilling to wait for the EPA, activists and concerned residents and watermen are demanding state action now. In two counties on Virginia’s Northern Neck, there was enough opposition to land application to force public hearings on requests to expand the practice. In Maryland, environmental advocates pressed — unsuccessfully — for legislation this year that would have set limits on PFAS in biosolids applied to farmland in that state.
Maryland’s municipal wastewater plants produced 595,000 wet tons of biosolids in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment. Nearly 59,000 tons of it was spread on crop fields and pasture around the state. But most of it was shipped out of state, with Virginia the leading destination, MDE reported.
Indeed, about one-fourth of the 115,000 dry tons of biosolids spread on farmland in Virginia in 2024 came from Maryland, according to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. (Semisolid sludge is often dried, reducing its volume by anywhere from 20% to 60%.)
Maryland is among a handful of states that have already taken some initiative to regulate PFAS in biosolids. One state, Maine, banned all land application of biosolids in 2022 after finding PFAS contamination at more than 50 dairy farms in their wells, soil and products.
In 2023, MDE imposed a moratorium on new permits for spreading biosolids on land and had sludge from wastewater plants tested for PFAS. Then, in August 2024, state regulators recommended limiting or even stopping land application of biosolids if the PFAS concentrations in it exceeded certain thresholds. That action was modeled on limits imposed in Michigan, said MDE spokesman Jay Apperson.
The agency recommended no land application in Maryland if biosolids contained 100 parts per billion or more of certain PFAS. All but one of the Maryland wastewater treatment plants that have tested their biosolids so far have PFAS levels below MDE’s maximum, according to Brent Walls, the upper Potomac Riverkeeper. That plant that exceeded the limit sends its treated sludge to Virginia for disposal, he said.
Environmentalists welcome MDE’s moves but say they’re not enough. The state’s PFAS limits are guidelines only, and the maximum permitted for farm biosolids is 100 times greater than the level EPA said poses unacceptable health risks.
Virginia’s biosolids regulations mirror existing federal standards. While the state mandates a 100-foot setback from wells and 200-foot buffer from homes for any land application, it does not require any testing for PFAS. DEQ spokesperson Irina Calos noted that the EPA’s risk assessment is still in draft form and not a regulation that must be followed.
Citizen pushback in VA
Regulations notwithstanding, there has been citizen pushback. In what might have been a routine request, Synagro, a Baltimore-based biosolids management company, sought to increase the farm acreage on which biosolids could be spread in Westmoreland County, VA. But residents there raised objections after learning that much of the biosolids being applied to farmland in Virginia comes from Maryland wastewater treatment plants that have PFAS in their sludge.
The Potomac Riverkeeper Network obtained testing data from MDE, which showed PFAS in the biosolids of all but one of 22 Maryland wastewater plants permitted to spread it on Virginia farmland.
Adding to locals’ concerns, Virginia DEQ found PFAS last year in the water of Nomini Bay, a Potomac tributary in Westmoreland County. Though the levels detected there were below the EPA’s drinking water standards, they still exceeded the draft water quality criteria the agency has proposed to protect people who might eat wild-caught fish from PFAS-tainted waters.
As word got around the county last fall, watermen and residents filed written objections to Synagro’s request to spread biosolids on five new sites in Westmoreland comprising about 1,900 acres. The company already is permitted to spread on 2,500 acres.
“The Northern Neck is laced with streams and creeks that flow into the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, one objector wrote to DEQ. “The whole area is used extensively for water recreation, crabbing and fishing. With the PFAS chemicals flowing from farm fields into these waterways during heavy rains, we are putting the health of many of us at risk.”
There were enough objections that DEQ was required to schedule a public hearing on Synagro’s request. Two weeks before the March 17 hearing, the company withdrew its application, citing delays in the processing of its permit.
A Synagro spokesperson said by email that the company applies biosolids “in accordance with regulatory requirements.” Without elaborating, the spokesperson contended that the assumptions and methodology the EPA used in assessing health risks of PFAS in biosolids “are in question.”
But Betsy Southerland, a retired senior scientist and manager at the EPA, defended the work of agency staff she once supervised. “This was the most cautious risk assessment I’ve ever seen,” she said at a March press conference, “and it still finds high risks,” particularly for the families of farmers eating food produced from biosolids-treated fields.
Public objections have now forced a hearing May 19 on another Synagro request to expand its biosolids land application in neighboring Essex County, which borders the Rappahannock to the south. DEQ heard from 28 residents, businesses and organizations, including the Rappahannock Tribe of Virginia. Many accused the agency of failing to do its job of safeguarding against contamination of water, fish and shellfish.
“If we have one bad outbreak from these forever chemicals, our market could be ruined,” warned J.C. Hudgins, president of the Virginia Waterman’s Association, who crabs, fishes and oysters in the Rappahannock.
Also weighing in were some of Virginia’s largest aquaculture businesses, which raise oysters on leased grounds in the Rappahannock. AJ Erskine, with Cowart Seafood Corp. and Bevans Oyster Co., wrote to register concern about “potential contamination with PFAS … that will eventually infiltrate our tributaries.’’ Tommy Kellum, with W.E. Kellum Inc., warned of “unintended consequences” that could hurt not only his family’s longtime oyster enterprise but also tourism and recreation.
Legislative nonstarter in MD
While a couple of biosolids permits have led to hearings in Virginia, Brent Hunsinger, advocacy director for the nonprofit Friends of the Rappahannock, said the issue of PFAS contamination of biosolids “likely needs a fix at the state level, not just on a permit-by-permit basis.”
State remedies can be hard to come by, though. Prompted by MDE data showing PFAS contamination in biosolids from the state’s largest wastewater plants, concerned lawmakers introduced legislation in January that would have barred any biosolids application to farmland in Maryland if the PFAS content exceeds the 1-part per billion level cited in the EPA’s draft risk assessment.
While environmentalists and scientists testified for the measure, as did Virginia waterman Mike Lightfoot, who lives in Westmoreland County, operators of municipal wastewater treatment plants opposed it. They warned it would in effect ban any agricultural use of biosolids, depriving farmers of a cheap source of organic fertilizer. Also, they said, water and sewer rates would skyrocket to cover the costs of landfilling or incinerating PFAS-tainted sludge.
Activists offered to compromise, amending the legislation to phase in PFAS limits on biosolids starting at 50 parts per billion, half the threshold now recommended by MDE. While endorsed by state regulators, it failed to win over all treatment plant operators, and the legislation didn’t get out of committee.
Wastewater utilities say they’re simply conduits for PFAS piped to them, and most of the contamination comes from household rather than industrial waste. They argue that the best way to clean up biosolids is to eliminate harmful PFAS from so many consumer products, not force the utilities and their ratepayers to bear the costs of dealing with it.
The Potomac Riverkeeper Network, which has done its own testing of Nomini Creek, Jennifer Campagne’s well and one Westmoreland farmer’s soil, aims to continue sampling in the area to develop a clearer picture of the sources and impacts of PFAS, said Walls, the Upper Potomac Riverkeeper.
Just ‘triage’ for now
“Nobody’s really ready to solve this problem yet,” said Evan Isaacson, an attorney with the Chesapeake Legal Alliance, which has worked with the Potomac riverkeeper group on the issue. “It’s going to require some investment,” he added, both in removal technologies and in developing alternatives to PFAS.
“Until that time,” Isaacson said, “it’s basically triage mode. Don’t put it next to someone’s well, don’t put it next to a school.”
Jennifer Campagne said she really didn’t dwell on the biosolids being applied to her neighbor’s field until another neighbor, Lightfoot, alerted her to the possibility of contamination. Then she got the distressing results of a test showing PFAS in her shallow well.
DEQ records show the field next door to Campagne has received biosolids from four different sources, three of them in Maryland, according to Brent Walls, the Upper Potomac Riverkeeper.
It’s been two years now since any biosolids were applied there, Campagne said. The level of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in her well is below the 4 parts per trillion the EPA has set as the safe limit for drinking water. But the test also detected three other unregulated PFAS compounds. While those are all at similar seemingly low levels, research indicates they may have health effects, too.
“It does bother me now,” she said, noting that she has lupus, a long-term disease that often inflicts chronic pain and fatigue and can be life-threatening if not properly managed. “I have so many family members that have passed from cancer. I feel like that’s an added risk.”