Over the last decade, Maine has spent more than $100 million as it became a national leader in the fight against harmful forever chemicals, but dwindling funds will soon force state officials to make difficult choices about whom to help and whom to turn away.

In a legislative briefing Wednesday, Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Melanie Loyzim didn’t ask for more funds to find, study, or clean up perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Instead, she asked for help deciding who should benefit from the money it has left.

“I’m asking you to help us make the difficult decisions on who should and who will not receive services from the state,” Loyzim told members of the Environment and Natural Resources Committee at the start of a three-hour multiagency presentation.

With the funding that remains, Maine could finish its $28.8 million investigation of 1,100 sites where PFAS-laden sewage sludge was spread on farm fields as a fertilizer and install water filtration systems at the private wells nearby that test above the state’s PFAS drinking water standards.

But it doesn’t have the $3.3 million a year it would need  to maintain the 660 filtration systems it will likely need to provide clean drinking water to people who live near places where state-permitted sludge spreading occurred, Loyzim said.

“When our funds run out, there are Maine citizens with very high concentrations of PFAS in their drinking water that will have to shoulder thousands of dollars in annual maintenance costs for the treatment systems that we have installed,” Loyzim said.

And it doesn’t have enough money to install water filtration systems in the homes of those whose well water tests above a new federal PFAS standard but below the old state standard, even though the state is likely to adopt the same one sometime over the next year, officials said.

So far, 20% of wells tested as part of the sludge investigation have exceeded Maine’s interim PFAS limits for drinking water: 20 parts per trillion (ppt) of a combination of six PFAS. The strict new federal standard sets a 4 ppt cap for two PFAS and 10 ppt cap on four others.

COSTS COULD INCREASE

Adopting the federal limit would increase investigation costs alone by $10.8 million, officials estimate.

Looking back at the first half of its sludge investigation, Maine estimates it would have to spend $1 million to install 300 more water filtration systems on top of the 495 that it has already installed after testing 43% of the sludge sites, according to a DEP status report released last week.

The average cost of maintaining a filtration system is about $5,000 a year, but in highly contaminated areas, where additional monitoring is required and filters must be changed out four times a year instead of once, the annual cost of accessing clean water can more than double.

According to Susanne Miller, the director of DEP’s Bureau of Remediation and Waste Management, other states are expecting the homeowner to bear some or all of the annual water testing and system maintenance costs. A few leave the homeowner on the hook for the cost of installing the system, too.

In 2022, Maine became the first state to ban sludge spreading — Connecticut has since followed — and adopted a phased-in ban on sales of most products that contain PFAS. It will soon consider a state take-back program intended to rid Maine of harmful PFAS-laden firefighting foam.

State lawmakers don’t have to decide what to do with DEP’s remaining PFAS money right now, Loyzim said. DEP has enough money to complete the sludge investigation, she said. And the new federal drinking water standard only applies to public water supplies, not private drinking wells.

That wouldn’t stop a landowner who drinks from a private well that falls in between the state and federal contamination standards from expecting the state to pay for their water filtration system. Loyzim said her staff fields desperate phone calls seeking just that almost every day.

“Your constituents are not going to like it,” Loyzim warned lawmakers.

According to Amy Lachance, the director of the drinking water program at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, state law requires Maine to adopt a permanent drinking water standard that is at least as strict as the federal standard.

Based on the last round of tests, which were conducted in late 2022 and early 2023, 68 public water supply systems tested above the state PFAS standard. All but three of those have fixed the problem by installing a filter system, hooking up to another water source or closing a tainted well.

But those tests show that 130 of Maine’s 679 public water systems — which include schools and day care centers — would fail to meet the new federal PFAS guidelines. Those systems, which serve an estimated 161,000 people, would have until 2029 to come up with a remedy, Lachance said.

The new federal rule would also expand the definition of who is considered a public water supplier to include another 87 places that have not previously had to sample their water or test for PFAS, such as a company with more than 25 employees on site who drink from the same well.

NOT ALL BAD NEWS

While decidedly grim, the briefing wasn’t all bad news. The Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry happily announced that it had miscounted the number of PFAS contaminated farms at Maine Agricultural Trades Show last week: it was 82, not 111.

Staff had mistakenly combined farms with contaminated water, those with contaminated soil and those with both contaminated water and soil into a single category, essentially double counting those that had tested positive for PFAS in both of the major agricultural categories.

In her briefing remarks, Deputy Commissioner Nancy McBrady said it is likely the number will reach 111 by the time the state sludge investigation is complete, but emphasized that PFAS does not define Maine agriculture, and when contamination happens, it is no longer considered a death sentence.

A farm soil or water sample that tests above Maine’s screening level does not mean the crops, livestock or dairy products from that farm were unsafe — the egg-laying hens, milk cows or potato fields creating that farm’s produce might have been far away from the tainted field, pond or well.

Maine launched its sludge investigation in 2021, five years after Arundel dairy farmer Fred Stone, who had used sludge fertilizer for 30 years, learned his water and soil were contaminated, and his milk was testing seven times over the state limit. His farm became the first in Maine to close due to PFAS.

To date, forever chemicals have affected just 1% of Maine’s 7,000 farms, McBrady noted. Only five farms have closed, and another three have significantly reduced their operation. The rest are continuing to farm, often with state help, either by switching fields, methods, crops or livestock.

McBrady acknowledged Maine’s role as a leader in the PFAS battle: “We are not alone, just out ahead.”

Even trace amounts of some PFAS can be dangerous to humans, with exposure to high levels of certain PFAS linked to decreased fertility and increased high blood pressure in pregnant women, developmental delays in children and low birth weight, increased risk of some cancers and weakened immune systems.

People are exposed to forever chemicals through a broad range of common household products, such as nonstick pans, makeup and waterproof clothing. People living on farms also can be exposed through consuming eggs, milk and meat from pasture-raised hens and cows, and drinking from on-site wells.

The chemicals are resistant to heat, water and grease can now be found almost everywhere: in animals from pandas to polar bears, in the rain, even in our blood. They eventually wind up in our public water supplies and many of our ponds, lakes, rivers and oceans.