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During a House Appropriations Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee budget hearing with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan, Ranking Member Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) called attention to Maine’s ongoing challenges with PFAS chemical contamination as well as the impacts of pollution from  fast fashion.

Pingree explained to her fellow Committee members that biosolids, also called sewage sludge, was previously used as fertilizer to spread on farms. Multiple farmers have been impacted by PFAS contamination. And while Maine was ahead of the curve in testing and responding to PFAS contamination, there will be a much larger impact in the United States that will require a whole-of-government approach.

A complete transcript of the exchange is copied below.

“We're very sensitive to this issue, number one,” Regan said. “Thank you for securing that $16 million in research grant funding so that we can better understand how it is impacting our food supply. I will say that [Food and Drug Administration] FDA, [United StatesDepartment of Agriculture] USDA, EPA, we are doing the proper research again to properly understand what the risk is for this biosolids application. But to cut to the chase, two things. The first is we are intent on holding the polluters accountable. We do not want our farmers, we do not want our water systems, we do not want taxpayers and communities bearing the burden of some of these unfortunate situations.” 

Later, Pingree pointed to 2018 data from EPA estimating 100 billion garments are produced annually, most of which end up in incinerators, generating about 17 million tons of textiles in municipal solid waste. 

“85% of the garments more or less end up in our waste stream. But right now, our National Recycling Strategy doesn't address this critical source of pollution and waste,” Pingree said, and asked Administrator Regan what work the EPA is doing around fast fashion and what kind of resources the EPA would need to make a significant impact. 

A complete transcript of the exchange is copied below. Click here to watch the hearing.

Background:

As Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and the Environment, which oversees funding for the EPA, Pingree has long pushed for investments to clean up PFAS. In the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 government funding bill signed by President Biden, Pingree secured $8 million for the EPA to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to further research on PFAS contamination in agriculture. In FY 2023, Pingree also secured $5 million to assist farmers whose land has been contaminated by PFAS.

Addressing PFAS contamination is also a priority for Pingree as she and her House Agriculture Committee colleagues work to reauthorize the must-pass Farm Bill. In March, Pingree, alongside Senators Collins (R-Maine) and Angus King (I-Maine) and Representative Jared Golden (D-Maine), reintroduced the Relief for Farmers Hit with PFAS Act, which would authorize grants for states to provide financial assistance to affected farmers, expand monitoring and testing, remediate PFAS, or even help farmers relocate.

Pingree also successfully secured language in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 that directs the EPA to continue tracking textile waste and conduct a briefing on their efforts within 90 days of the funding bill’s passage. The language also encourages the EPA to incorporate textiles as a material into subsequent work stemming from the National Recycling Strategy, which aims to help build a circular economy and increase the recycling rate to 50% by 2030.

In June 2023, Pingree and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, called on the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) Comptroller General Gene Dodaro to outline ways the fashion industry and EPA can better manage discarded clothing and textile waste. The Democratic congresswomen focused on the rise of the so-called “fast fashion” industry as a primary driver of textile waste pollution.

Last year, Pingree spoke on the House floor about the growing threat of the fast fashion industry.

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Clip 1:

Pingree:

I mentioned in my opening statement, I want to congratulate you on all the work that you and your team have done on PFAS. I know how complicated this is, and it's a long time coming. I want to ask you a little bit about EPA's risk assessment on PFAS in biosolids. As you know, I think Maine is ahead of the federal government on this issue.

And our state is currently looking into alternative disposal options. Additionally, with the recent regulatory action on PFAS, some of the requirements can be difficult on the states. So I have a couple of questions about this. First, can you give us a quick update on your risk assessment of PFAS in biosolids? 

Regan:

Yes, we are working on finalizing that risk assessment this year.

 That will include a specific focus on certain PFAS that help us understand better the specific risk that it poses to farmers and the uptake in crops and livestock. So, you know, we're working on that for this year. I will say that I've personally been engaged on this issue with Secretary Vilsack and I'm very proud that we are co-leading a work group on PFAS with both USDA and the FDA.

So, I can assure you that this is top of mind and is something that not just EPA, but multiple agencies are taking serious a serious look at. 

 Pingree:

Thanks. Can you talk a little bit more about the impact to the states of your recent regulatory actions on PFAS? I'm just going to say for everyone on the committee, you know, sometimes when you talk about biosolids and all this stuff, it just sounds like a lot of jargon. This is basically the issue of for decades in our state – and probably in yours too – biosolids, which is just sewage sludge, has been an acceptable basically a fertilizer that gets spread on farms. It's a good way to dispose of it, and it's enhanced the fertility of the soil. But because PFAS are contained within it now, we have, unfortunately, multiple farmers who have found that their land is contaminated, they can no longer grow crops.

 And we don't really know what to do. Do we buy them out? Is there a remediation for it? It's a significant issue and it's an issue the USDA is tackling, but it's something that everybody's going to have to deal with this in your home state. We unfortunately, we're just a little bit ahead of the curve and started testing.

And now our state legislature has, you know, had to spend tens of millions of dollars already just to support the issue of farmers going out of business or having land that they've worked on forever that is no longer usable. Not only is their land contaminated, but in some cases, these are family members, little kids. You know, people themselves are contaminated by their own soil and water.

So that's just a little like it sounds sort of what are you talking about, PFAS, biosolids ... This is like a serious small agriculture, small issue of small farms and farms of all sizes. So, I'm sorry, Go ahead. So, what do you … I'm just I guess I'm telling you what the impact is on our states, but I don't know if you want to say more about the regulatory actions that you're taking.

Regan:

Well, we're very sensitive to this issue, number one. Thank you for securing that $16 million in research grant funding so that we can better understand how it is impacting our food supply. I will say that FDA, USDA, EPA, we are doing the proper research again to properly understand what the risk is for this biosolids application. But to cut to the chase, two things.

The first is we are intent on holding the polluters accountable. We do not want our farmers. We do not want our water systems. We do not want taxpayers and communities bearing the burden of of of some of these unfortunate situations. And so in terms of our regulations, we are tightening down our regulations to ensure in our drinking water that these forever chemicals are not making it into the bodies of our parents, our children, our grandparents, while also pursuing enforcement action for those who have put these into the environment. At EPA, we've worked really hard to look at our enforcement discretion to our enforcement discretion opportunities there. And what we're doing is we are again, looking at how we enforce the laws and ensuring that our farmers and our water utilities are not the unintended victims of any of EPA's actions to contain and regulate this pervasive and longstanding chemical.

Pingree:

Well, thank you, and I really appreciate the work and the research that you're doing, because, again, we don't know yet how to clean it up in the soil when it's already contaminating a farm. We don't know how to determine exactly what's an acceptable amount in a carrot or a head of lettuce or some hay that dairy cows might eat.

And now, since we're no longer allowing sewage sludge to be spread on soil, on agricultural soil, which was the best way to dispose of it, we have a landfill issue, so now we're accumulating it in landfills and our landfill operators are saying, what do you want us to do? And we don't know how to deal with it or handle it.

And again, like Maine, we're just a tiny little state, but we weren't the only ones that had to deal with PFAS. It's everywhere. And so when it sounds like sort of an abstract notion, if it hasn't hit your state, you're going to learn about it. And if it hasn't hit your small farmers. You know, that's a hard conversation when you have to talk to a family that's been contaminated or somebody has been working the land their whole life and now finds out that the stuff they're selling to their customers is no longer acceptable, that it's toxic.

So anyway, I appreciate the very much sorry for going on that one question, but it's a really tricky issue. And I, I know you guys are working on it, but thank you for that.

Clip 2:

Pingree:

A lot of my questions are about waste. I'm very concerned about whether it's PFAS or this one– I just want to bring up textile recycling. So fast fashion is something I've learned about fairly recently, just in terms of a topic.

And at first I was like, Well, okay, fine. That's just a, you know, trivial matter. But it turns out even in 2018, the EPA estimated that 100 billion garments are produced annually, most of which end up in incinerators, generating about 17 million tons of textile, municipal solid waste. So 85% of the garments more or less end up in our waste stream.

This sometimes just plastics in the ocean because of the synthetics that they're made of. But right now, our National Recycling Strategy doesn't address this critical source of pollution and waste. So, can you provide a little bit of an update about the work you're doing around fast fashion? And what kind of resources would the EPA need to make a significant impact?

Regan:

Well, thank you for this. I was telling you, I believe a while back that fast fashion wasn't something that was on the tip of my tongue either. As I've traveled the country and traveled the state, this is something that especially young people are adamantly focused on. And so we're taking this very serious. We released our part one of the National Recycling Strategy in 2021, and as you pointed out, it did not have enough in that focused on this specific topic.

So we've gone to work since then. I will say that we anticipate releasing new data specifically on textile waste and recycling this year. So that is on the way. And I would just say that in our budget we're making requests so that we can focus on these waste issues, the these new emerging issues that are not only waste issues from a municipal standpoint, but that they tie in to these municipal landfills that contribute to methane, that contribute to climate change.

And this is why has such a not a difficult time, but not a straightforward way of answering Congressman Edwards question, which is we're hiring people to work on climate change ... we’re coming at climate change from so many different angles, it’s not very easy just to say this person is focused on that, but we are focused on the textile waste. We are focused on reducing that textile waste and again, later this year you will see new data as part of our national recycling strategy. 

Pingree:

Great. Well, thank you. I look forward to working with you on that. And I know it's a variety of factors. Some of it has to do with, you know, a plethora of garments that are made in China using kids, using, you know, not the environmental controls that we have. Some of it has to do with how they're shipped into our country. There's a lot of different things we need to get at. But understanding what's in our waste stream, I think is important.

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