A Texas county has launched a first-of-its-kind criminal investigation into waste management giant Synagro over PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge it is selling to Texas farmers as a cheap alternative to fertilizer.
Two small Texas ranches at the center of that case have also filed a federal lawsuit against Synagro, alleging the company knew its sludge was contaminated but still sold it. Sludge spread on a nearby field sickened the farmers, killed livestock, polluted drinking water, contaminated beef later sold to the public and left their properties worthless, the complaint alleges.
The PFAS levels independent testing found on the farm were “shockingly high”, said Kyla Bennett, policy director for the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility nonprofit, which is assisting in the analyses.
The farms’ drinking water was found to be contaminated at levels over 65m times higher than the federal health advisory for PFOS, one kind of PFAS compound, a Guardian calculation indicates, and meat was as much as 250,000 times above safe levels, the lawsuit alleges.
Putting to the side the huge problem that this practice isn’t regulated out of existence yet, it’s curious how this keeps happening again and again even after these events have been in the news for a while now. Then it occurred to me that perhaps that news doesn’t make it on Fox. 🥺
Probably because a lot of Farmers are historically conservative and adamantly against many forms of government regulation. When situations like this arise, I imagine them throwing up there hands and asking “How can something like this be allowed to happen??”
But the only people who care are those directly affected. The rest are in the not my problem part of conservatives.