Maine Set Aside $60 Million for PFAS-Poisoned Farms. Farmers Have Seen $2.5 Million.

About 60% of America's sewage sludge is spread on land as fertilizer, per EPA's own June 2026 accounting — a cheap, government-endorsed way to dispose of what a wastewater plant can't flush downstream.▸ On January 14, 2025, EPA's draft risk assessment modeled possible harm to farm families starting at 1 part per billion of PFOA or PFOS in that sludge — the "forever chemicals" that don't break down in soil, water, or a cow. Seventeen months later, with no new national survey of what's actually in the sludge, the agency's own draft guidance says that number "was not intended to be interpreted as a 'safe level' of PFOA or PFOS in sewage sludge in all circumstances." The finding didn't get disproven. It got recontextualized.

Maine tested for it anyway.▸ It's the only state to have banned the practice outright and gone looking for what decades of it left behind — and the ledger of what that costs, and who actually gets paid, is public.

EPA's January 2025 draft found that in a hypothetical high-exposure scenario — a farm family drinking well water and eating food grown on biosolids-treated land — sewage sludge with PFOA or PFOS at 1 part per billion could pose a health risk.▸ The agency's June 29, 2026 guidance doesn't dispute that math. It says the scenario was never meant to describe most land application, that EPA skipped the national occurrence survey it normally pairs with a risk assessment, and that the 1 ppb figure "was only used as a starting concentration to determine if use or disposal would result in any unacceptable risk for the hypothetical circumstances presented" — not a number anyone should treat as a threshold. No new sampling data closes that gap. The guidance is a reinterpretation of the same evidence, not new evidence.

States that actually regulate the chemicals aren't using 1 ppb either — they're regulating dozens to hundreds of times higher, or banning the practice regardless of concentration:

Michigan allows land application up to 100 parts per billion of PFOS — tightened from 150 ppb in 2021, still 100 times EPA's own modeled risk starting point.▸ Virginia's 2026 law caps either chemical at 50 ppb, per EPA's own summary of state actions. Maine doesn't set a number at all — in 2022, it banned land application of sewage sludge outright, "regardless of the concentration of PFAS," per that same EPA summary.

Maine's ban didn't undo the decades of spreading that came before it.▸ Since 2022, the state's Department of Environmental Protection has identified 1,066 sites statewide that received sewage sludge, septage, or sludge-amended topsoil and must be investigated for contamination. As of December 2024 — two years into a legally mandated investigation — soil testing was about 42% complete and groundwater testing about 45% complete. Maine Public reported in May 2026 that the state's agriculture department was actively working with 127 farm sites on testing, financial assistance, and technical support.

To help the farms that came back contaminated, the Legislature created a $60 million PFAS Fund in 2022.▸ Four years later, DACF's own annual report to the Legislature shows most of that money still hasn't moved:

$28.1 million of the $60 million has been encumbered — set aside under a contract or grant agreement.▸ The remaining $31.9 million has no contract attached at all. But "encumbered" is a promise, not a payment. DACF's own figures for actual cash paid out are smaller still:

As of the end of January 2026, the Fund had expended about $2.51 million — $1.98 million in direct producer support (income replacement, grants, professional services), $414,000 for land purchases and stewardship, $98,000 for health-related costs, and $23,000 in administrative overhead.▸ The Fund closed on its first contaminated-farmland purchase, a 108-acre Waldo County property, on February 24, 2025 — three years after the fund was created. A second purchase, delayed since October 2025 by a title dispute over a conservation easement, is still pending.

This piece covers PFOA and PFOS specifically — the two "forever chemicals" EPA and every state cited here regulate by name; other PFAS compounds found in biosolids are not addressed by any of the thresholds above.