U.S. company says sludge shipments to New Brunswick bought it time during 'crisis'

The company increasing its shipments of Maine's human waste to New Brunswick has told state legislators that trucking it to this province is not a long-term solution, but says so-called "forever chemicals" in the sludge should not be a major concern.

Officials from Casella Waste Systems said the PFAS — perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — detected in Maine soil do not appear to come from biosolids in landfills like the one the company operates.

"It's notable that there are absolutely lot of lands within Maine that were impacted by PFAS," Casella's director of organic solutions Patrick Ellis told a committee at the Maine State Legislature this week.

"But it appears very evident that those impacts were from industrial impacted materials, industrial input being an active user of PFAS."

The presence in Maine farm soil of the chemicals, which are linked by U.S. regulators to various health risks, led to a state law banning the use of biosolids from landfills as fertilizer for agricultural crops. 

That in turn has contributed to a surplus of the sludge at Casella's Juniper Ridge landfill north of Bangor, forcing the company to truck thousands of tonnes of it to New Brunswick.

Envirem Organics, the company receiving the sludge, said this week it was "very selective" in what it accepts and has adopted even more stringent standards than what the New Brunswick government applies.

The math doesn't work to create PFAS levels in the soil that are that high.-Patrick Ellis, Casella's director of organic solutions

The province's guidelines for biosolids do not include PFAS in their criteria.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says exposure to certain levels of PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, have been linked by peer-reviewed studies to some cancers, decreased fertility, low birth weights and other effects. 

PFAS are chemicals used to make coatings that resist heat, oil and water and can be found in adhesives, packaging and non-stick cooking surfaces among other places. They do not break down and can accumulate.

Ellis said he did not believe municipal biosolids were the source of the PFAS that triggered such alarm in Maine.

Chemical levels in the soil were measured in parts per million, while the amounts in municipal biosolids handled by Casella were at the low end of parts per billion.

"The math doesn't work to create PFAS levels in the soil that are that high," he said.

Not a long-term solution

Ellis told the committee that Casella urged Envirem to notify New Brunswick provincial regulators "to let them know what was coming and so far things are going pretty well."

But he said the shipments are not a long-term solution because New Brunswick could still impose a moratorium on biosolid imports for agriculture, as Quebec did last week. 

"We have tried to be optimistic that it will not," he said, but that uncertainty is why Casella continues to look for other ways to avoid a surplus of sludge at its landfill near Bangor.

"We are riding the ragged edge of not having sufficient capacity on a daily basis. And that problem came to a head here in Maine a couple of weeks ago," Ellis told members of the Maine legislature's environment and natural resources committee.

"Fortunately we were able to avert the crisis but we are by no means out of the woods." 

The Juniper Ridge landfill, owned by the state and operated by Casella, accepts sewage waste from more than 30 municipal-level sewage authorities.

Those local entities are now facing higher fees because of the additional cost of trucking the sludge to New Brunswick.

Envirem said this week none of its products are applied to agricultural lands.

Provincial government spokesperson Anne Mooers said the environment department was notified on Feb. 27 that Envirem would be receiving additional shipments.

"However, it will remain below the volumes it committed to in its environmental impact assessment registration," she said.

A Casella letter to municipal sewage authorities said the company had to move 3,600 tonnes out of the landfill each month. At this week's committee hearing, the company said it needed to find capacity for 2,300 tonnes a month.

Mooers said Envirem has a cap on imports of 100,000 tonnes annually so the Casella shipments fell below that threshold. 

Ellis questioned the logic of the Maine ban on agricultural use of sludge, pointing out PFAS are present in materials other than municipal biosolids that are not banned in the state.

He argued PFAS levels in Casella's sludge are not high enough to be a health concern.

"What we have observed is that the activities that we are a part of, with the materials that we manage today, do not negatively impact drinking water sources," he said.

"Science will tell us that the quantity in our materials is going down, and that when used appropriately, they will not negatively impact drinking water sources." 

Sarah Nichols of the Natural Resources Council of Maine said Ellis's claims amount to "misinformation."

"We were aghast by their comments," said Nichols, who attended Wednesday's committee session at the legislature.

She said the presence of PFAS in drinking water is a completely separate issue from the soil contamination that prompted the ban.

Several members of the committee also pushed back at Casella. 

The ban "was necessary legislation," said Republican representative Mike Soboleski. "We can't knock it. We had to have it. We couldn't keep putting that stuff on the ground." 

A second Maine law adopted last year bans the import into the state of so-called oversized bulk waste — large, solid debris that, when mixed with sludge, would allow it to remain at the Juniper Ridge landfill without risk of leaks or runoff.

Ellis said Casella warned the state last year that the bill "was going to have clear impacts, likely dramatic impacts, on our ability to manage biosolids that we are contractually obligated to manage." 

He said the company is looking at other options including shipping biosolids by rail to a facility in western Pennsylvania. 

The shipments to New Brunswick bought it some time to explore those alternatives, he said.

Maine's environmental protection commissioner Melanie Loyzim told the committee the state government is also trying to find new sources of oversized bulk waste for the landfill that would allow Casella to keep more sludge at that site.

Her office is also hoping to develop a plan "very quickly" for a new landfill for sludge but said she wouldn't be able to present it to the committee until January 2024.

The state is also examining programs to reduce PFAS getting into waste in the first place.

"The more of the PFAS coming into our waste stream that we can have not enter the waste, the less and less concern we would need to have about the constituents in our sludge."

Nichols, who campaigned for the ban on oversized bulk waste imports to Maine, said a solution needs to be found within the state.

"We do not want our waste shipped to other areas at all," she said. "We do not want to see it going to New Brunswick."