An environmental group recently approached Carbon County officials in the hopes of educating them on the issue of sewage sludge being spread on farmlands.

Brandon Fogal of Save Carbon County spoke to the commissioners about the newest project the group has been working on. Previously, they worked on showing the problems if the PennEast Pipeline would have been constructed through the area.

“What we’ve been working on has to do with the land application of sewage sludge,” Fogal said, adding that this is the solids from septic systems or large septic treatment plants that are dried and then spread on farms as fertilizer.

“In theory, it doesn’t sound bad at all,” Fogal said. “But large septic treatment plans like that can’t necessarily remove all of the things that would be of concern like heavy metals and things like that, but most notably PFAS (toxic forever chemicals), which are becoming more and more of an issue as people are becoming aware of how threatening they are. ... and we’re not really testing for them here.”

He said that most farms using biosolids as fertilizer are testing positive for these contaminants, pointing out other states that have had major problems with farmlands being contaminated because of this practice.

“It’s been a big problem in other states with farmlands getting contaminated without them realizing it because they’ve been told it’s safe and then all of a sudden you need to decontaminate a large swath of farmland,” Fogal said. “We felt that was a threat here because there are several farms here that are taking sewage sludge as fertilizer.”

Fogal asked the county if officials would be willing to sign a resolution giving local government the authority to regulate what is coming into their municipality. Right now, local municipalities are not permitted to regulate this matter.

Save Carbon County currently has 16 local municipalities that signed resolutions asking for authority to regulate biosolids and hope that the commissioners will see the need.

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein said it is alarming what is allowed to come in from out of state.

“It’s good enough for Pennsylvania and not their own homes?” he questioned.

Fogal agreed, saying “If it’s such a great product, why are they giving it to us for free? ... We don’t want to see local farmers wind up in the same situation as they have in Maine right now, where they’ve got like 50 farms shut down until they can find a way to decontaminate the soil.”