PFAS in Biosolids/Industrial Sludges — Time Marches On

The regulatory response to the reality of PFAs compounds in biosolids continues to evolve. Earlier this month, Jess Kramer, EPA's Assistant Administrator of the Office of Water, announced that the Agency is hard at work developing a new risk-based guidance concerning the land application of biosolids that may contain PFAs, updating the Biden Administration's draft risk assessment, which has come under fire as drastically overstating risk. Farmers and ranchers need clarity when it comes to risks involved with accepting municipal and industrial byproducts for land management and wastewater treatment facilities need to keep land spreading available as a cost-effective means of disposal. Therein lies the rub.

Reporting suggests that the EPA is considering developing a tiered-risk approach to the issue, has been adopted at least preliminarily in several states, such as Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The issue grabbed headlines in 2022 when a dairy farm in New Mexico was closed due to livestock exposure to PFAS—although not as a result of biosolids spreading—and Maine banned the land application of biosolids. 

Wisconsin is accepting comments until the end of May on version 3 of its guidance document titled: “Interim Strategy for Land Application of Biosolids and Industrial Sludges Containing PFAS.” The Interim Strategy is being revised in light of the April 2026 enactment of 2025 Wis Act 201, which, inter alia, created a statutory directive to the DNR to include certain PFOA and PFOS limitations or conditions in WPDES permits for the land application of biosolids and to develop a general permit. Version 3 of the Interim Strategy ratchets down to the prohibition on land application of biosolids or sludges that contain >100 ug/kg of combined PFOA and PFOS from the existing version's >150 ug/kg.  Unrestricted land application is still available if results are >20 ug/kg.  WDNR is already proposing PFOA and PFOS monitoring in reissued permits to implement these changes.  

If you have questions concerning these developments, reach out. Our team will continue to monitor these regulatory developments. 

"Beginning with this version of the Interim Strategy, all WPDES permittees with PFAS monitoring requirements should begin tracking cumulative loadings of PFOA and PFAS on each landspreading field receiving sewage sludge and/or industrial sludge."

dnr.wisconsin.gov/...