Members of Congress are all too happy to make a grand spectacle of regulating private industry. But, when the government itself is culpable for harming Americans, the federal government’s love affair with toxic sludge – known as “biosolids” – is a masterclass in burning tax dollars, shredding evidence, and punishing the victims in order to protect itself from the American people.
Toxic Sludge
Starting with the Clean Water Act of 1972, Congress stopped local municipalities and industry alike from dumping raw sewage into the seas and water ways. However, it also restricted local municipalities from landfilling and incinerating sewage, pushing local municipalities to find alternatives.
The result? Literally, mountains of poop mixed with industrial chemicals and nowhere to go.
Enter the EPA, which, in its infinite wisdom, decided in 1973 to recycle this sludge into “biosolids.” Not a bad idea, had this sludge only consisted of organic matter like poop.
Instead, the EPA allowed all sewage waste, including industrial waste, to be considered sewage sludge—which the EPA then turned a convenient blind eye to.
By 1993, the EPA’s 40 CFR Part 503 Rule cemented this madness, declaring “biosolids” – a euphemism for all toxic sewage waste dressed up as fertilizer – safe for farmland while only monitoring these biosolids for just nine heavy metals and two nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus).
Of the roughly 700+ known forever chemicals that the EPA strictly regulates in the air and water such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, flame retardants, and other known hazardous chemicals, it does not apply its own regulations to sewage sludge applied to farms, public parks, school yards, or forests.
Even though the chemicals found in sewage sludge are known mutagens, carcinogens, and neurotoxic at even trace levels in air or water, when it comes to land application, the EPA shredded evidence of risks and pushed public use.
According to EPA whistleblower Dr. David Lewis, his employer (under the Obama administration) shredded evidence that biosolids contained these chemicals and pushed forward with a “National Biosolids Public Acceptance Campaign”—creating a national blacklist of scientists deemed “unfavorable to government and industry.”
Meanwhile, the EPA has allowed municipal wastewater treatment facilities to offload this toxic sludge to private corporations – often associated with the chemical manufacturers creating the sludge – to turn their sludge into gold—selling it to farmers as the government-approved “green” solution to expensive chemical fertilizers.
The Part 503 Rule was Big Chem and Big Government’s answer to their own mess, but it was the EPA that used public funds to launch the National Biosolids Public Acceptance Campaign to sell the public on land application as the latest green miracle—claiming biosolids enrich soil and cut climate change emissions. Never mind the heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, parasites, or PFAS lurking in the sludge.
By 1993, 60% of the nation’s 7 million tons of sludge were being spread on fields, sold as a win-win for municipalities and farmers.
Fast forward to today, and we have no idea how much land is contaminated but conservatively, at least 700 million acres of farms, public parks, forests, and crops are drowning in PFAS—AKA “forever chemicals” linked to cancer and infertility—while Congress now plots to protect itself and the feds from the fallout.
Unfortunately, it’s the American people and America’s farmers who have gotten the sh*t end of the sick in this raw deal as land, water, crops, livestock, and livelihoods have been poisoned—facing seizure orders.
Land and livestock seizures.
DOD bases spew PFAS nationwide, with over 50,000 farmers facing contamination risks and quarantine orders. Yet, the feds are rigging the game to dodge liability.
In 2019, the State of New Mexico ordered dairy farmers like Art Schaap to euthanize 3,665 cows, forcing him to dump 12,000 gallons of milk daily after the state found PFAS contamination from the Department of Defense’s Cannon Air Force Base.
Despite the fact that firefighting foam from military exercises had contaminated the groundwater, the DOD is using our tax dollars to fight America’s farmers and ranchers in court, while America’s food supply pays the price.
Michigan slapped rancher Jason Grostic, with a “seizure” notice, putting him out of business overnight after the state decided to monitor his wells.
“They said, ‘You’re out of business.’ I said, ‘Now what am I supposed to do?’ They said, ‘We haven’t got a clue, but you’re not selling your beef, and you can’t get rid of your cattle,” Grostic told DTN Ag News.
In the State of Texas, Synagro Technologies was sued by AG Ken Paxton after Republican Representative Helen Kerwin (Brook Rollins’ mother) became involved with farmers in her district that had lost everything due to forever chemicals on their land. PFAS levels hit 610,000 ppt in a calf’s liver—30 thousand times the EPA’s drinking water advisory.
However, farmers, already bankrupted by Big Government’s “solution,” have been holding on to hope that the industry captured EPA would finally release the long awaited Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment for PFOA and PFOS, commissioned by Congress.
Lawsuits against the DOD and Synagro for cleanup have recently stalled in courts, but armed with the evidence of the report – where the EPA finally seemed ready to acknowledge the risks of spreading concentrated chemicals known to cause cancer, parasites and neurological diseases – accountability seemed near.
The Congressional CYA: Section 507
Or it did… Until Congress just doubled down on an appropriations bill in the House and Senate, effectively ordering the EPA to drop the report.
Section 507 of the House Appropriations Bill, would block funding for finalizing the draft report, or taking any actions related to the report’s findings.
“None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used to finalize, implement, administer, or enforce the draft risk assessment, titled “Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment for PFOA and PFOS published by the Environmental Protection Agency in the Federal Register on January 15, 2025.”
While some have argued that the cost of complying with this report would be too expensive for municipal wastewater facilities, this isn’t about saving taxpayers, but burning taxpayer dollars to fund another coordinated CYA as the evidence farmers need is shredded.
The assessment sets PFAS limits that would give policymakers and the courts an authoritative guideline to determine how many parts per trillion of currently regulated chemicals in air and water are harmful to life when applied to land as sewage waste.
By burying this assessment report that Congress commissioned with our tax dollars, our elected leaders are not only burning our money – leaving America’s farmers high and dry – but they’ll also be passing along an unfunded mandate to clean up the DOD’s mess while protecting the deep state and its cronies from the American people.
This is Big – deep state – Government at its ugliest: creating the crisis, the “solution,” punishing the victims, and now shielding itself from accountability as farms are seized and shut down forever.
All of which should lead every American to ask: Who, exactly, do our elected members of Congress serve? What, exactly, is the point of an Environmental Protection Agency that neither protects the environment or the American people?
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