"Municipal sewage sludge was used as fertilizer in the project that began decades ago in Palmerton, where PFAS now taint soil and water."
"PALMERTON, Pennsylvania — When this Lehigh Valley town’s prized zinc smelting factory closed in 1981, it left behind 3,000 acres of mountainous land so contaminated with heavy metals that nothing could grow.
EPA prioritized the area for cleanup under the newly enacted Superfund law with hopes of containing the pollution. With the land devoid of vegetation, millions of tons of contaminated soil was at risk of spreading into rivers, creeks and the drinking water supply in Palmerton, a town of 5,600 people.
So a novel plan was devised. With EPA’s blessing, the zinc company spread municipal sewage sludge as fertilizer on the barren land in the 1990s. A sewage sludge mixture was used again in the early 2000s, with a total of 112,515 wet tons of the stuff applied as fertilizer."
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