SUN JOURNAL • June 20, 2022
For Roger Gauthier, it is already hard enough to be a farmer in 2022. But this spring, after his land in Auburn was included on a list of sites where sewage sludge had been spread as fertilizer, he lost a number of customers who used to buy his hay. Gauthier’s property was owned by the Lewiston-Auburn Water Pollution Control Authority, which held a land application license for sludge. Sludge used as fertilizer can sometimes carry worrying amounts of PFAS compounds. Gauthier said the acres he recently bought from LAWPCA and uses for haying are separate from where sludge had been spread and soil tests showed the land was either at or below state screening standards. He also said tests of his well water have come back negative. “It’s cost me thousands of dollars,” Gauthier said, referring to people associating his land with PFAS contamination.