BANGOR DAILY NEWS • March 17, 2022
We are sponsoring — LD 1911, An Act To Prohibit the Contamination of Clean Soils with So-called Forever Chemicals — that would ban the spreading of these toxic chemicals on farmland. Some opponents to the bill, like Casella, which operates Hawk Ridge composting facility, want us to accept the poor logic that contaminated composted sludge can safely be applied to clean land and that their dirty compost will only be used in places not already contaminated. Both assumptions quickly fall apart under scrutiny. PFAS contamination is not a partisan issue. The Legislature has come together many times to pass legislation to help deal with problems caused by this toxic chemical. LD 1911 will go hand in hand with detection and remediation efforts that the state is already engaging in to mitigate the problem. We should come together again to help protect our farmers. ~ Rep. Bill Pluecker, I-Warren, and Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford