Wastewater from an industrial soya bean farm and processor has poisoned a Maryland town’s drinking water with Pfas, several lawsuits allege, raising questions about residents’ health and “forever chemical” pollution from industrial agricultural operations nationwide.
Perdue Farms acknowledged that its 300-acre Salisbury, Maryland, operation is polluting local waters, but the chemicals’ sources have not been confirmed. It appears the Pfas is in part also coming from some combination of sludge used as fertilizer and pesticides, attorneys for plaintiffs say.
The latest suit was filed in late July under the nation’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which requires toxic waste to be disposed of in a way that doesn’t harm human health. Some residents say the contaminated drinking water has sickened them, and the attorneys charge that Perdue, a company with $11bn in revenues, is not acting quickly enough, or taking proper measures to rein in the pollution since it was discovered in 2023.
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“The fact that they’ve had two years to do an investigation and they have not … is exceedingly frustrating,” said Phil Federico, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the RCRA lawsuit. “[Pfas] are a carcinogen for God’s sake – they cause cancer.”
Pfas are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.
The suit alleges Perdue’s operation, 100 miles (161km) south-east of Baltimore, is spitting approximately 180,000 gallons of Pfas-contaminated wastewater daily into local waters, emitting Pfas into the air and contaminating groundwater.
Perdue’s operation includes cropland, a soya bean processing facility, grain storage and an oilseed refinery, among other facilities. The company in 2023 applied for a permit to increase the level of contaminated wastewater it discharges.
The RCRA lawsuit comes after the Maryland department of environment in 2023 discovered the Pfas during routine testing of waterways and initiated regulatory action to force Perdue to rein in its pollution.
Early 2024 testing showed levels of some Pfas compounds in local streams and rivers that were as much as 350 times higher than federal limits for drinking water. State regulators also identified a massive Pfas plume in the groundwater likely stemming from the property.
A class action lawsuit filed in late 2024 on behalf of 500 nearby residents alleges Perdue learned of its pollution but did not warn area residents about the potential contamination of their water for over a year. The company showed “reckless indifference to the health and safety of the public”, according to the complaint, and it demands the company pay for clean water and health monitoring.
In a 28 February motion to dismiss the class action suit, Perdue wrote: “’PFAS’ is not a magic word that can be invoked to open automatically the doors to federal litigation.” The lawsuit has not been dismissed.
The company did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment, but has previously said it completed testing at about 700 residential properties and had installed about 400 water treatment systems. Federico said the number of homes affected is almost certainly much higher – he estimates as many as 3,000 people in the region are drinking contaminated water.
Part of the motivation for the new RCRA lawsuit, Federico said, is the very slow pace at which Perdue has moved to identify the sources.
Pesticides used on crops often contain Pfas, and sewage sludge used as fertilizer is virtually always contaminated with concerning levels of the chemicals. Unlined lagoons on the property that store wastewater and sludge are likely contaminating the groundwater, Federico said, and Pfas-laden firefighting foam may also have spilled or been used on the property.
Meanwhile, there is evidence that the facility’s stacks or lagoons may be emitting Pfas air pollution, Federico said.
The RCRA suit asks the courts to allow independent wastewater experts onsite to evaluate the potential sources, and to order Perdue to install a wastewater treatment plant that removes Pfas onsite, among other measures.
The legal fight comes at a moment when public health advocates are starting to consider how industrial agriculture operations could be major sources of Pfas contamination, said Laura Orlando, a waste management engineer with the Just Zero non-profit. Sewage sludge has long been a concern, but advocates are also calling attention to other sources of Pfas, like pesticides, firefighting foam and other agricultural products.
“Perhaps widening the stage will help strengthen the chorus that Pfas does not belong on the farm, from any source,” Orlando said.
Perdue, in a statement to a local outlet, said the lawsuit was “motivated more by the law firm’s financial gain than by meaningful progress for communities affected by Pfas”.
Federico dismissed the accusation.
“If you want to keep doing what you’re doing in terms of production, then you’ve got to do it in an environmentally safe way – just spend the money and fix the problem,” Federico said.