“O farmers, exceedingly fortunate, if only they knew their own blessings.”

— Virgil, Georgics

For decades, cities have offered farmers a deal that sounded like thrift itself: treated sewage sludge — rebranded “biosolids” — spread on fields as free or cheap fertilizer. The problem is what survives the treatment plant. PFAS — the forever chemicals in nonstick pans, waterproofing, and firefighting foam — pass through wastewater treatment and ride out to the fields in the sludge [1], where they do the one thing they’re famous for: refuse to leave.

The reckoning is not hypothetical. In Maine, testing found unsafe PFAS levels on more than sixty farms that had taken sludge — some dairies lost everything — and in 2022 Maine became the first state to ban land application outright [2]. In Johnson County, Texas, five farm families sued Synagro, one of the country’s largest biosolids companies, alleging its fertilizer contaminated their water, killed their livestock, and gutted their property values [3]. The evidence in that case is the kind that ends arguments: a stillborn calf’s liver tested at 610,000 parts per trillion of PFOS — against a federal drinking-water limit proposed at 4 [4]. Surface water on the plaintiffs’ land tested above 84,000 parts per trillion [5]. And in late 2025, a federal judge dismissed the suit that tried to force EPA to regulate PFAS in sludge, ruling the agency has discretion to keep not acting [6]. For a contaminated farm, the courthouse is the remedy — the companies that made the chemicals and the companies that sold the sludge as safe.

Here’s why the farmer, of all plaintiffs, should take heart. A farmer’s case is built almost entirely of controllables: application records, soil panels, well tests, milk tests, a veterinary necropsy, property appraisals before and after. Nobody has to prove what caused an illness twenty years from now; the land itself testifies, in numbers, today. California’s valleys have received sludge for decades — Kern County spent years fighting imported sludge from Los Angeles, and its residents voted to ban it — and most ground here has never been tested for what came with the bargain.

So the practical counsel, whether or not you ever hire anyone: if your ground, or ground you’re thinking of buying, ever took biosolids — test before you plant, test before you close, and keep every record of every application. If the numbers come back clean, you’ve bought certainty at lab prices, which is the cheapest it’s ever sold for. If they don’t, you’ll want to have found out first, and early.

Attorney advertising. This column is education and opinion, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different; deadlines apply and can expire. If something here sounds like your situation, the consultation is free for catastrophic and impact cases — text 559-PIGSFLY (744-7359).