Water Sector News
A snapshot of clean water stories from publications around the country, updated daily!
From Maine to California, the solution to sludge disposal is not settled
While Maine has outlawed sludge as an agricultural fertilizer, preferring to landfill it to stop the spread of the harmful forever chemicals lurking within, California has taken the opposite tack.
That state has instead essentially banned sludge landfilling in favor of recycling 90 percent of its organic waste, including sludge, to lower its greenhouse gas emissions. California's sludge is still spread on farm fields as fertilizer.
Other states fall somewhere in between California, known for an environmental ethic that produced the nation's first greenhouse gas regulatory program, and Maine, which hails itself as a leader in legislative efforts to stop the spread of harmful per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, called "forever chemicals" or PFAS.