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.
“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…
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