Watchdog nonprofit organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility assisted Ames’s office with the testing and analysis of Synagro’s fertilizer. On behalf of the affected farmers in Johnson County, the nonprofit filed a civil lawsuit against the EPA, alleging the agency failed to identify and regulate pollutants in sewage sludge.
The EPA is working on “too slow of a timeline” and the risk assessment is not comprehensive enough, said the nonprofit’s director of science policy Kyla Bennett.
“The EPA has an obligation under the Clean Water Act to determine whether there are certain chemicals in biosolids that would cause harm to human health and the environment, and they’ve known for decades that there’s PFAS in biosolids,” said Bennett.