This letter is in response to the recent announcement that the province is launching a lawsuit against the manufacturers of PFAS chemicals for widespread contamination of B.C.’s drinking water supply.
While Biosolid Free BC and the Peninsula Biosolid Coalition strongly applaud these attempts to protect our environment and public health, the hypocrisy of this action by the province is not lost on us.
In our efforts to end the land application of biosolids in the CRD and throughout B.C., we have been warning both the B.C. Ministry of Environment and the CRD about the dangers of PFAS for a number of years, sharing numerous peer-reviewed studies that have found that the land application of biosolids is one of the primary sources of PFAS dissemination into our waterways, farms and forests.
However, despite the overwhelming academic evidence that PFAS can be harmful to human health and the environment even in small concentrations, Environment Minister George Heyman has repeatedly sent signed directives to the CRD insisting that “beneficial” land application options have to be considered in the region’s long-term biosolids management plan.
Of concern, these include potential agricultural uses, forest fertilization programs that would threaten vast natural areas and important watersheds, and even the sale of biosolids-based compost for home gardeners, all of which involve significant and inevitable impacts on our environment and public health, and none of which have received any level of approval by the First Nations on whose ancestral territory and waterways such land application options would take place.
The province’s actions repeatedly ignore the long-standing and popular CRD ban on the land application of biosolids that has been in place since 2011. Ironically, the province’s lawsuit states these chemical companies knew that even when their products were used as directed, "toxic PFAS chemicals would be released, would contaminate the environment for centuries, and would pose significant threats to human health.”
Sadly, this exact critique can be directed at the Minister of the Environment’s unwavering support for the land application of biosolids. In light of these glaring contradictions, we’d like the province to be consistent in how it protects our environment, our drinking water and the public health of residents from the dangers associated with PFAS exposure.
If the province is finally convinced by the hundreds of peer-reviewed publications about the harms of PFAS on human health, and plans to follow through on this lawsuit, then shouldn’t the same government also immediately stop suggesting the land application of biosolids is “beneficial” to our environment, and promoting this practice throughout B.C.? Isn’t it time that we join U.S. states like Maine and countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovakia and Japan, and ban the land application of biosolids to protect our natural resources and public health? Isn’t it finally time to completely end the land application of biosolids – and the ensuing spread of PFAS and other CECs – in the CRD, on Vancouver Island and throughout B.C.?
Philippe Lucas
Peninsula Biosolids Coalition
