A Landfill is Contaminating a Canadian Lake with PFAS

I’ll examine this international controversy and the threat to public health caused by PFAS from a landfill’s leachate. I’ll look at drinking water contamination and how PFAS bio-accumulates in fish. Finally, I’ll interview Henry Coe, a Vermont environmentalist who understands the history of this tragedy and the dangers inherent in disposing of PFAS into surface waters.

Pat Elder March 1, 2021

Radio reported in mid- February, 2021 that PFAS chemicals had been discovered at the city of ’s drinking water intake area which is connected to Lake Memphremagog. Sherbrooke is located about 45 miles north of the Coventry Landfill in Vermont which has dumped millions of gallons of PFAS-laden leachate into the waters feeding the lake. The landfill, operated by Casella Waste Systems, is the only landfill in Vermont. It handles the waste of all 625,000 Vermonters. The landfill is

situated adjacent to wetlands and surface waters that drain into the lake. In this region, rivers and surface waters flow north into Canada. (The red x shows the site of the landfill. Sherbrooke is shown in the north.)

In the fall of 2019, environmentalists won a four-year moratorium on the treatment of landfill leachate anywhere in the Memphremagog watershed. At the same time, Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation reported nearly 16,000 parts per trillion (ppt) of 12 varieties of PFAS in the leachate being dumped into the which feeds into the lake.

The poisonous liquid is now trucked down state to wastewater treatment facilities along the Winooski River - until the moratorium expires.

The testing was carried out by ’s Ministry of the Environment in late 2020. Although PFAS were detected at 13 ppt in the drinking water, Karine Godbout, president of the environment committee of the City of Sherbrooke, told residents there is nothing to be alarmed about. She echoed statements by Jean-Pierre Fortier, division head, water management and construction at the City of Sherbrooke. Fortier said the PFAS levels did not pose a threat to drinking water, although there may be concerns about the quality of the water in the long term.

Vermont has not tested the waters of the lake.

In 2018, Health Canada published ridiculously high guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality for both PFOA and PFOS. The Canadian government's maximum acceptable concentration for PFOS in drinking water is 600 parts per trillion and for PFOA it is 200 ppt. Vermont, meanwhile, limits PFOS, PFOA and three other types of PFAS to 20 ppt in drinking water. The US EPA has set a non- enforceable advisory of 70 ppt. The EPA doesn't play much of a role in regulating PFAS in the US.

We don’t know the details of the testing performed by the Canadian authorities, although PFOS is known to travel extraordinarily long distances in water. The Canadian authorities were careful not to point to the American landfill as a source of the contamination, although Fortier did say PFAS is known to be present in the leachate that comes out of landfills.

It’s the fish we need to be worried about.

Coincidentally, Maryland’s Department of the Environment also found 13 ppt of PFAS in the St. Mary’s River, close to the Chesapeake Bay. The state dismissed the result, saying the “public health risk evaluation for recreational surface water exposure and oyster consumption were very (Cancerous tumors are shown on a low.”

Bullhead's fin and mouth.)

Oysters from those waters were found with PFAS at 2,070 ppt, crabs had 6,650 ppt, and sea bass contained 23,100 ppt, while Maryland authorities are OK with these findings. Don't worry, be happy is their mantra, and it's the same in Vermont.

The data released by Maryland and the authorities in Quebec showing 13 ppt of PFAS are most disturbing because they portend massive contamination of all aquatic life in the watershed. The maximum permissible level for PFAS in the European Union is .13 ppt in seawater. (point 13) The levels in Quebec and Maryland are 100 times that level.

Many varieties of PFAS are linked to a host of cancers, fetal abnormalities, and childhood diseases. PFOS, for instance, is bio-accumulative in fish and other seafood. Just one or two parts per trillion in the lake is enough to trigger a bio- accumulative process in seafood that can result in tens of thousands of parts per trillion of PFAS in fish, endangering human health.

In Lake Monoma, Wisconsin, near Truax Field Air National Guard Base, water is contaminated with 15 ng/l of PFAS. Authorities limit eating carp, pike, bass, and perch to one meal a month, although many health officials say allowing any consumption is irresponsible.

In the South Bay area of the San Francisco Bay, seawater contained a total of 10.87 ppt of PFAS chemicals. (lower than Lake Memphemagog) See Table 2a. Bivalves were found at 5,250 ppt. A Pacific Staghorn Sculpin was found in the same vicinity with 241,000 ppt of PFAS. Similarly, at Eden Landing in the San Francisco Bay, water was found to contain 25.99 ng/l, while one bivalve had 76,300 ppt of the toxins.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) says that “fish and other seafood” account for up to 86% of dietary PFAS exposure in adults.

Raised black lesions observed in 30 percent of the Brown Bullhead collected from two sites in Lake Memphremagog from 2014 through 2017 have been identified as malignant melanoma. - Newport Dispatch

A meal of pan-fried Bullhead may weigh 8 ounces or 227 grams. If the filet of the fish contains 23,100 ppt of PFAS chemicals, that’s 23.1 parts per billion, which is the same as 23.1 nanograms per gram. So, 23.1 ng/g x 227 g = 5,244 ng of PFAS chemicals.

The European Food Safety Authority has set a Tolerable Weekly Intake (TWI) at 4.4 nanograms per kilogram of body weight for 4 PFAS chemicals in food. So, according to this guideline, a 7-year-old weighing 50 pounds (22.6 kilos) can “safely” consume 100 nanograms per week of PFAS chemicals.

One meal of Lake Memphremagog Bullhead containing 5,244 ng of PFAS is more than 50 times greater than the European weekly limit for our child. If we abide by the more responsible 1 ppt daily limit championed by many public health experts, our little boy would be limited to ingesting one serving every 42 years.

Vermont must test the water and the fish.

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Henry Coe is a community-minded volunteer and lifelong environmentalist. Henry is a founding member of DUMP, a small but influential group of passionate environmentalists based in Newport, Vermont, along the Canadian border. DUMP is an acronym for Don't Undermine Memphremagog's Purity. Henry doesn’t seek the spotlight, however, his story and the lessons here must be learned to prevent immeasurable suffering and human misery.

Henry Coe describes it this way, "The Coventry Landfill is a Vermont outhouse, perched above a Canadian drinking water supply, - un-neighborly, irresponsible, immoral."

DUMP, together with Canadian neighbors, organized citizen opposition to the shipment of millions of gallons of toxic leachate from the Coventry landfill to the nearby town of Newport’s wastewater treatment plant. They were concerned that high levels of per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS) were being pumped into the pristine lake.

When Vermont's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued a permit for a 51-acre landfill expansion of the Coventry landfill, DUMP activists appealed the decision to stop the expansion. The appeal went to formal mediation in the Fall of 2019 resulting in a four-year moratorium on the treatment of landfill leachate anywhere in the Memphremagog watershed, in exchange for giving up DUMP's appeal to the expansion. The clock is ticking before the substances are again allowed into the lake. Meanwhile, the leachate is being trucked downstate to wastewater treatment plants that pollute other communities.

Coe explains, “The state has no long-term plan to deal with this waste. The Coventry landfill is located in the beautiful , situated in wetlands and abutting the Black River, which flows into Lake Memphremagog. Monster trash-carrying trucks drive over the lovely roadways every day to deposit their loads on the ever-growing mountain of trash in Coventry. The offensive odors from this landfill spread with the wind. To make matters worse, a leak in an unlined area of the landfill was recently discovered and the water in a testing well contains toxic PFAS chemicals that are way above the “safe” levels. This is not just a Northeast Kingdom problem; the landfill impact is statewide. The leachate from this landfill, containing almost six times the safety standard of PFAS toxins, is going to Montpelier, Barre, Essex, Concord, NH and Plattsburgh, NY. After being treated in wastewater treatment plants, which DO NOT remove the PFAS, it is dumped into local waterways still containing the PFAS. is being polluted by this landfill’s leachate.”

This same scenario is being repeated in communities across the country that are slowly discovering that all leachate contains PFAS chemicals that do not break down, and bioaccumulate in aquatic life and the human body. Also, there are no “safe levels” of PFAS while “safety standards” fail to protect public health.

Coe describes the history: “Even though DUMP, together with our Quebec allies, has achieved a temporary victory in getting a 4-year moratorium on the treatment: of landfill leachate at the Newport WWTF -or anywhere within the Memphremagog watershed, we are first to admit that where we have squeezed this toxic balloon in our area, it has bulged out in other directions. It took a court action to do so. The circle of PFAS poisons is perpetuated somewhere else.”

Coe writes, “The fallacy of so-called treatment or the filtering out of PFAS-laden landfill leachate at municipal wastewater treatment facilities (WWTF's) is finally being recognized by environmental officials from New England states, but it is a national problem, not yet recognized by the public nor by policy makers. We at DUMP simply interviewed sanitary engineers and workers at some of our WWTF's two years ago. In all but one case, they truthfully answered that as designed, their plants are excellent at clarifying and neutralizing domestic household organic sewage through a combination of aerobic and anerobic bacterial action and physical squeezing and settlement allowing solids to be collected as sludge and cake sludge. They are presently not designed for and incapable of filtering out modern. persistent, long chain inorganic compounds like PFAS. The president of the state association of wastewater plant operators in Vermont is on record, stating this truth. We need to get a similar statement from the national association to help drive this debate further along.

Henry continues: As we become more educated we are aware of multiple contradictions and ironies throughout this solid waste debate.

* Ideally, we should deal with our own waste. It is a public problem. Yet, in an era of privatization, a lucrative waste industry has developed, and profits by its efficient and larger scale transport and landfilling of garbage to less populated sacrifice zones that for economics, or race, have been unable to mount the kind of opposition of NIMBY's elsewhere. Other areas of the country still have some public landfills. In Vermont, where we do not, the private industry has a virtual monopoly and is unchecked by a public or governmental review of its rates, (in the way a private utility is).

* As local and state efforts to recycle, and to separate out food scraps and organics from the waste stream, (with the disingenuous claim by state officials that thereby we are conserving future landfill space), the private waste industry simply trucks in more waste from out of state sources to fill its maximum ton per year permitted allocation. It relies upon and takes cover under the existence of the federal interstate commerce clause. In Vermont, Casella Waste Systems makes its profit from volume, and increases its percentage of transported waste from out of state to meet its annual permitted tons, (in Coventry, 600,000 tons per year.)

* Dependence by the waste industry upon WWTF's for "treatment" of its toxic landfill leachate, is its, - and society's - Achilles heel. Where does it go? How do we treat it.? Alternative treatment proposals will cost millions in capital and operational costs. Robust carbon filtration, and reverse osmosis, or combination, still require disposal of the toxic-laden filters. We must develop a safe alternative to returning these materials to the landfill.

* In Vermont, the state finally admits this winter, that WWTF's incapable of treating for PFAS, yet it continues to permit these same WWTF's to accept and dump landfill leachate into the nearest water body where no standards for PFAS yet exist. Nor do standards for fish advisories against eating of toxic fish exist. (Unfortunately, over 30% of Brown Bullhead fish caught in Memphremagog's South Bay present with cancerous lesions external to their flesh.

To our knowledge, no lab tests have been done on these same fish. South Bay lies only one-half mile downstream from Casella's 78 acre -soon to be 129 acre - state permitted dump. The state denies cause and effect. Without studies, they cannot deny the landfill is the cause. So far, this is a stand-off. This is the 21st Century! Without a Vermont solid waste plan, and without an alternative permitted landfill in the entire state, the Department of Solid Waste is caught over a barrel. Meanwhile our surface water bodies are being poisoned.”

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Thank you, Henry!

We don’t know specifically what’s causing the fish to develop malignant melanoma and we don’t know their PFAS levels, although it’s clear the state is in no hurry to get to the bottom of it. Vermont must make public the results of water tests for the Clyde River, South Bay, the Black River, and Lake Memphremagog. The water and fish should be sampled for PFAS, heavy metals, dangerous viruses, dioxins, PCBs, pesticides, and hundreds of other toxic chemicals. Public health is in the balance, here and around the world.

People catch and eat fish from the lake and have been doing so since humans first inhabited the area about 9,000 years ago.

The Western tribe (shown here in an 1870 photo) had settlements up until the eighteenth century at the mouth of the Winooski that is now contaminated with the leachate from Coventry. I wish I could talk to these people and apologize to them on behalf of today’s Vermonters for desecrating their sacred waters.

Postscript

I’ve received emails saying I’ve only been addressing PFAS contamination in Vermont caused by the military while ignoring other heinous crimes. It’s ironic because the military’s role in poisoning the environment is rarely discussed otherwise. The military shares responsibility for polluting Vermont’s environment with PFAS and other deadly toxins. It is an inconvenient truth for Vermonters.