[CPEO-BIF] PFAS "Sludge Contaminated 10, 000 Acres of Farmland. What Should Be Done?" South Carolina

[Lenny Siegel <Lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Sludge Contaminated 10,000 Acres of Farmland. What Should Be Done?
For years a textile mill gave farmers its sewage sludge as free fertilizer. Today the land is full of “forever chemicals.”


By Hiroko Tabuchi
New York Times
April 21, 2025


The abandoned Galey & Lord textile mill in Society Hill, S.C., resembles an apocalyptic wasteland. Looters have hauled away the steel gates for scrap metal. Rusting tanks sit in pools of dark water. Alligators lurk in wastewater ponds.

But the real danger, environmental officials say, lies in the surrounding fields, nearly 10,000 acres of contaminated farmland, including fields still growing food, that South Carolina says should be part of an unprecedented federal Superfund cleanup.

Galey & Lord, on the banks of the Great Pee Dee River, was once known as the “King of Khaki” for its role in introducing the casual cotton twill to American wardrobes. And for decades, it took the water that had been used in making its fabrics, treated it in wastewater lagoons, then gave the sludge to farmers as fertilizer.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/climate/sludge-fertilizer-farmland-superfund.html


—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)




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