Don’t let PFAS

end your dairy farm

The Dostie family, dairy farmers in Fairfield Maine, recently suffered the tragic consequences of biosolids applied to their fields years earlier. The family had been farming their land for four generations. It all ended on May 27th when they sold the last of their 354 dairy cows at auction in New York. The cause: PFAS, a forever chemical found in many household products.

While the Dostie family itself was not to blame (a previous owner had applied contaminated biosolids to the land), because these chemicals last forever, they bore the consequences.

On June 8th, the City of New York passed a law that mandates all 8½ million residents separate food scraps from their regular trash. But what will become of these food scraps?

The biggest use of these scraps will be the creation of “biosolids” (formerly known as sewage sludge) in large digesters where the food scraps will be combined with raw sewage and street run-off. These “co-digested” biosolids will in turn be applied to farm lands around the country, or so NYC hopes, including possibly farms in St. Lawrence County. What could go wrong you might ask? Haven’t in fact biosolids been applied to farm lands for decades and proven safe?

Now that New York City plans to increase its sale of biosolids, it’s high time that St. Lawrence County farmers learned more about forever chemicals and how they can ruin your fields, literally forever. It should be noted that Maine has now banned all application of biosolids on farm lands in the state.

For more about the Dostie farm please follow this link. https://www.centralmaine.com/2023/06/11/a-forever-farm-is-no-match-for-forever-chemicals/

Greg Todd
Canton