BANGOR DAILY NEWS • February 21, 2022
The practice that led to a recent and widening discovery of “forever chemicals” in Maine land and water can be traced back to the 1970s, the legendary U.S. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie and his landmark Clean Water Act. Muskie grew up in Rumford along the Androscoggin River, once so choked by toxic foam and noxious fumes that fish could not live in it. His revolutionary 1972 legislation made dumping pollutants into rivers illegal, set wastewater standards and funded sewage treatment plants across the country. But that solution to so many problems spawned another. What to do with the sludge left over in the plants’ filtration systems? Maine settled on spreading it over farmland as fertilizer. State regulators are now chasing the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS — contained in the sludge. It was born out of environmental tradeoffs that will continue during the fight against the cancer-linked chemicals.