Seventy\u00a0agricultural businesses and organizations issued a letter to members of the state Legislature, Gov. Kathy\u00a0Hochul\u00a0and other state leaders\u00a0pushing\u00a0them to pass the bill proposing a five-year moratorium on land spreading sewage sludge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur farmland, our water and our people cannot be treated as dumping grounds for toxic sewage sludge. New York must act to end this practice\u00a0once and for all,\u201d the letter reads.\u00a0\u201cWhile promoted as a form of recycling, contaminated sewage sludge\u00a0in reality poses a grave and growing threat to our communities.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sewage sludge, also known as biosolids, is the\u00a0product\u00a0of\u00a0the wastewater treatment process and can be used on farmland as\u00a0fertilizer. However, residents in Steuben and Albany\u00a0counties\u00a0believe the practice led to their wells being contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and bacteria such as E. coli and coliform.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The letter is addressed to the Legislature, Hochul, Commissioner for the Department of Environmental\u00a0Conservation\u00a0Amanda\u00a0Lefton\u00a0and Commissioner of Agriculture Richard Ball. Among the groups that signed the letter are the\u00a0Environmental\u00a0Advocates\u00a0N.Y.,\u00a0American Farmland Trust,\u00a0New York State American Academy of Pediatrics and more. The groups range from environmental, health, water safety\u00a0and\u00a0individual farms.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It calls on the\u00a0state and Legislature to\u00a0pass\u00a0a moratorium on the spreading of biosolids,\u00a0study the extent of past\u00a0spreading, prioritize farmer and community protections for those who have been previously\u00a0impacted\u00a0by\u00a0landspreading\u00a0of biosolids, and invest in alternatives for sewage sludge disposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The\u00a0state\u00a0Senate\u2019s one-house budget proposal included a $10 million for the agricultural PFAS response fund.\u00a0The New York Farm Bureau, the state\u2019s largest agricultural lobby group, issued a memo\u00a0regarding\u00a0its\u00a0support for testing biosolids for PFAS prior to applying them to farmland. Although, the memo, written by Director of Public Policy Renee St. Jacques,\u00a0said they do not have\u00a0a current\u00a0policy on all aspects of the bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFarmers want to ensure that the biosolids do not\u00a0contain\u00a0PFAS and are safe to use before considering any land application,\u201d the memo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The New York Farm Bureau says the agricultural PFAS response fund would incentivize farmers and landowners to test their soils if biosolids were spread there within the last five years, but issued a word of caution if PFAS is found on farmland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNYFB also appreciates the inclusion of funding in this legislation that would support farmers if certain levels of PFAS\u00a0are\u00a0found during the testing of\u00a0farmland,\u00a0but there are questions on what will happen to the land if the PFAS levels are too high. There are many reasons PFAS can be found in groundwater and soil. Currently,\u00a0there is no known path forward to remediation of land. The question is whether any amount of funding would be able to support New York\u2019s farmers\u00a0with this loss of farmland,\u201d the memo said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seventy\u00a0agricultural businesses and organizations issued a letter to members of the state Legislature, Gov. Kathy\u00a0Hochul\u00a0and other state leaders\u00a0pushing\u00a0them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,3478,116,288,257,8255,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,112,108,87],"class_list":{"0":"post-185543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-local-business","10":"tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-central-ny","13":"tag-emily-kenny","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-news","17":"tag-new-york-state","18":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","19":"tag-new-york-state-news","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-ny-state-of-politics","22":"tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","23":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}