BY ADAM ATKINSON

North Country This Week

POTSDAM — The town board passed a resolution at its Nov. 10 meeting officially supporting a feasibility study to construct a centralized biosolids composting facility.

The board agreed in September to contribute data to the study which is underway by the Development Authority of the North Country.

The resolution passed by the board at its November meeting declared the town’s official support and said the municipality would supply 3 years of data from its wastewater operations to assist in the study by Oct. 15.

DANC is proposing a centralized facility in the county to handle and process wastewater sludge from municipalities.

Municipal wastewater sludge is currently shipped to facilities outside of the county.

The sludge from such facilities is often sold to regional farmers as field fertilizer, however environmental advocates claim the composted sludge contains PFAS toxins which end up the food chain affecting deer populations which feed off the fields where it is used.

In 2021 the state of Maine issued a ‘do not eat’ order for deer harvested near fields where such biosolid sludge fertilizer had been used after high levels of PFAS had been detected in deer populations. Read more on that at https://bit.ly/3A5zs8u and at https://bit.ly/3DUVKLm .

The resolution approved by the town board did not obligate the town financially in any way.