Children's Health Defense
By Shannon Kelleher
U.S. regulators claim they are not legally required to regulate toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals in sewage sludge spread on farmland across the country, according to a court filing the government made this week in response to a lawsuit from an environmental watchdog group.
In its Sept. 9 filing, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed in June by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) on behalf of a group of Texas farmers and ranchers.
The lawsuit claims contamination with PFAS from sewage sludge has sickened and killed the farmers’ livestock, “injured their health, threatened their livelihoods, and devalued their property.”
The agency denied PEER’s claims that it is violating the Clean Water Act by failing to identify and regulate several types of PFAS that have been found in treated sewage sludge used as fertilizer.
While the law requires the agency to conduct reviews, there is no requirement for the agency to actually identify “additional toxic pollutants,” the EPA said in its filing.
When it comes to sewage sludge, “both the identification and regulation of any additional toxic pollutants(s) are left to the discretion of EPA,” the agency stated in the court filing.
“The relief they seek — an order directing EPA to identify PFAS in its next biennial report, and to regulate PFAS thereafter — is simply not available,” the EPA stated…
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