Fred Stone, a Maine farmer whose life and livelihood began to shatter from PFAS eight years ago, sees a ray of hope from the sun.
The third-generation dairy farmer signed a 30-year contract with Walden Renewables in June so his family’s 100-year-old property can farm solar energy.
This isn’t the solution Stone, 68, sought after “forever chemicals” in the farm’s soil precluded its use for livestock or crops.
“I’m very upset that this is what we had to resort to, but this was our only way out,” he said. “We haven’t had any income for a long, long time.”
Fred and his wife Laura Stone aren’t the only farmers to have their lives capsized by PFAS, nor is Maine the only state where this has happened.
Federal and state regulators increasingly recognize that persistent per- and polyfluoralkyl substances (PFAS) can get into produce, livestock, fish, and wildlife from contaminated water and soil, rendering some contaminated land unsafe for agricultural use. Ingesting too much of some of those chemicals is linked to the increased risk of health problems including certain cancers and a weakened immune system.
After testing in the state gradually revealed widespread problems with PFAS on farms, Maine developed a suite of creative strategies to help farmers, including a law adopted last year that prioritizes the use of farms with high concentrations of the chemicals for renewable energy.
The law is designed to help the state meet multiple goals: having renewable energy provide 100% of its electricity needs by 2040; preserving uncontaminated agricultural land to avoid property once leased for farming being used for solar power; and providing income for farmers with highly polluted land.
The idea, said Dale Knapp, Walden’s head of development for New England, is to offer farmers a stopgap by giving “landowners a much higher return than nothing.”
A procurement rule that the state’s Public Utilities Commission is developing may also help developers by easing permitting requirements for these priority sites, he said.
Eventually, while the panels are generating energy, Knapp said he plans to keep his eye on research to help remediate the PFAS through plants grown on site so the property could again be used for agriculture. “Ultimately the land reverts to the owner,” who can decide whether farming is possible again or to pursue another option, he said.
Only some properties may be able to benefit from the law, Knapp said. They need to be fairly close to transmission lines with the capacity to carry more energy, he said.
And, only a small subset of farmers struggling with PFAS will need or want the solar option, said Rep. Bill Donohue Pluecker (I), an organic farmer who chairs the state House legislature’s Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry Committee.
Of the 72 farms the state has found to have PFAS, only five had to go out of business, said Pluecker, who also works with the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.
Solar is not most farmers’ first choice. Initially, they respond to PFAS problems with grief and anger, he said. But “most farmers in Maine have moved beyond that,” and want to put the problems behind them, Pluecker said.
The state and university researchers are helping by finding ways to provide technical and financial support that allows some agricultural products to safely be grown on PFAS-impacted property, said Maine’s Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry by email.
And, the science of PFAS movement is rapidly evolving, the agency said. “Thus there is potential that sites that cannot currently be farmed could be used for agricultural purposes in the future.”
‘One Tool Among Many’
Maine’s solar option is “one tool among many” that states should consider to help farmers, said state Sen. Stacy Brenner (D), who sponsored the law prioritizing PFAS-contaminated properties.
Maine’s legislature also established a $60 million fund to help farmers. The state set soil, beef, milk, and fish tissue limits for a highly persistent PFAS, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), and issued screening levels for additional PFAS.
And Maine banned the land application of biosolids, or solids from wastes treated to remove longtime known contaminants like metals, and then used as fertilizer. Those wastes—especially if they include materials from industries using PFAS—can be contaminated, and they’ve been the primary source of the problem Maine’s farms face.
“Every state has participated in land application,” Brenner said. Other states will discover contaminated land as federal rules spur more tests, she said.
The Environmental Protection Agency has increased its scrutiny and rulemaking of PFAS, finalizing a rule in 2019 requiring drinking water utilities to test for 29 PFAS and another this year limiting tap water concentrations of some of those chemicals.
In May, the EPA also declared the two most well-studied PFAS—PFOS and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)—to be hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), or Superfund law.
Many state regulators recognize that the EPA’s rules mean they need tests to identify PFAS sources, said Chelsea Gazillo, an American Farmland Trust policy manager. Yet they’re reluctant to do that without something like Maine’s bailout programs to help farmers, she said.
Placing renewable energy on land that can’t be farmed due to contamination or because it’s become too arid makes sense, said Gazillo and Jessica Wilkinson, who leads the Nature Conservancy’s renewable energy deployment team.
Meeting the nation’s climate goals with renewable energy could necessitate as much land as is in Texas, Wilkinson said. “We support policies and programs that make it faster, easier and cheaper to deploy renewables on broadly defined degraded lands.”
California is another state where former agricultural land could be repurpused to support clean energy.
Some groups estimate that California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which is intended to protect groundwater, could require fallowing, or the retirement from agricultural use, of about 1 million acres of land, said Peter Weiner, a partner with Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP.
Yet the California Land Conservation Act of 1965, or Williamson Act, can prevent use of that land for other purposes, he said.
The law lets local governments enter into contracts with private landowners to restrict property for agricultural or open space use. That legal constraint inhibits development, including renewable energy, Weiner said. California would need to take legislative action to enable other uses of land that can no longer be farmed, he said.
Liability, Other Impediments
Preservation efforts, such as trusts and liability concerns, can present challenges, said Weiner, who specializes in environmental, energy, land use, and real estate issues.
A trust has blocked Egide Dostie Jr., who runs a 600-acre family-owned farm in Fairfield, Maine, from benefiting from using solar energy.
The family placed a conservation easement overseen by the Maine Farmland Trust on the farm several years ago, before learning that 200 acres are so contaminated by PFAS they can’t be farmed or grazed by the family’s dairy herd, Dostie said. To generate needed income, the family signed a solar power contract.
But the easement prevents that, according to state attorney general’s analysis of Maine’s law.
“We’d have to take the state of Maine to court, and we don’t have the funds,” Dostie said. “We can’t raise food; we can’t milk. We’re trying to find a way to make a living, but we can’t.”
Superfund liability has also prevented development of some contaminated lands, such as Brownfields, said Weiner.
The owner of a company that operates a business on contaminated property can become liable for all past contamination, he said. “The lessee has quite a bit of liability,” which has had a chilling effect on that kind of development, he said.
Walden has been able to operate solar projects on Brownfield sites in Maine through a Voluntary Response Action Program (VRAP) the state offers that provides liability protection, Knapp said.
While owners and operators can be held liable for contamination under CERCLA, operators’ liability is generally limited to activities that contribute to the contamination in some way, he said.
“So, while there isn’t a release of liability like there would be under VRAP at the state level,” Knapp said. “An entity like Walden whose operations are not related to the PFAS contamination would not be liable for PFAS contamination as an operator under CERCLA.”
‘Need to Make It Right’
While Maine’s program has helped farmers, more work is needed to address the problems at a larger scale.
Federal agencies should also do more to help farmers dealing with PFAS, Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group said during a recent briefing specifying policies the group says could do that and more.
“The problem at federal level, is that they haven’t recognized that PFAS are a problem for farmers, and that’s the first step,” said Maine Representative Pluecker.
States and the federal government have the obligation protect farmers, and solar is part of a suite of activities needed, said state Senator Brenner.
“We as a state and the federal government sanctioned the land application of sludge as safe,” Brenner said. “We need to go back and make it right.”
—With assistance from Daniel Moore
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