In February, five farmers in Johnson County, Texas, sued Synagro, a biosolids management company based in Maryland, and its subsidiary in Texas. Synagro has contracts with more than 1,000 municipal wastewater plants in North America and handles millions of tons of waste every year. The company separates liquids and solids, and then treats the solids to remove some toxins and pathogens. But PFAS, thanks to their strong molecular bonds, can withstand conventional wastewater treatment. Synagro repurposes 80 percent of the waste it treats, some of which is marketed as Synagro Granulite Fertilizer.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an environmental nonprofit that helped organize the PFAS testing on the plaintiffs’ properties in Texas, is considering filing its own lawsuit against the EPA for not implementing restrictions on PFAS in biosolids. “They have a mandatory duty to look at what pollutants are in these biosolids and set standards for them,” said the group’s science policy director, Kyla Bennett, who is a former EPA employee. “They have not followed through.”