Help! I’m on the List!
If you are listed as an adjacent property owner in one of the permit applications, here is some more info and some things you can do.
Who’s Spreading This Stuff?
Synagro, the biosolids-company, is the applicant and holder of permit VPA 01587, and contracts with multiple property owners and managers across the county to spread the sewage sludge (biosolids) on their land. Information on this site came from a FOIA request made before DEQ made this reissue application public. The sludge comes from wastewater treatment plants, including the Blue Plains Wastewater treatment plant, the largest in the world.
Imagine what goes into the average household toilet. Now imagine what goes into the largest wastewater treatment plant…
For this Albemarle County permit, Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality is allowing sewage sludge to be brought in from wastewater treatment plants in Northern Virginia, Richmond, Petersburg, Annapolis, MD, Frederick, MD, and many more, including DC’s Blue Plains.
You can access the full source list HERE.
Blue Plains accepts waste from two million customers across Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland. They treat an average of 384 million gallons per day. (Source: dc water)
To Your Health
Living on or near biosolids-applied land poses special risks to your family’s health, your livestock, and the wildlife on and near your land. Among other contaminants, biosolids may contain high concentrations of PFAS, so-called "forever chemicals", which have been linked to multiple cancers, low birth weight, and fertility issues. PFAS don't readily break down in the environment - which is why they make for such effective nonstick pans and firefighting foam. Instead, PFAS accumulate in the body and in the animals that we raise and hunt for food. It can contaminate soil, crops, groundwater, and surface water. It can contaminate you.
The EPA has known since 2003 that biosolids are contaminated with PFAS, and yet it continues to promote toxic sewage sludge as a safe fertilizer, prioritizing the needs, sanitation, and convenience of cities and suburbs over the health of rural Americans.
Know the Risks
To Property Values
In states with more robust testing, PFAS contamination from biosolids has destroyed livelihoods. Farmers in Maine have had their farms condemned and permanently removed from food production. Their land is nearly worthless and their neighbors’ property values were impacted, too. One big difference between these states and Virginia is that Virginia simply isn’t testing biosolids for PFAS. Yet.
Know Your Rights
Stay Informed
Track the progress of the permit on DEQ’s Virginia Pollution Abatement page and add your name to our email list on our Contact page.
Submit Comments, Complaints, and Demand a Public Hearing
There will be a 30-day window to submit comments. If DEQ receives at least 25 public comments asking for a public hearing, and those comments meet certain criteria, there will be a public hearing. For instructions on how to submit your comment and make sure it counts, click HERE.
Talk to your Neighbor
For how to approach them and some articles to print for them, click HERE.
Tell the County: Adopt an Ordinance
Contact the staff and the Board of Supervisors and urge them to exercise their authority and adopt a sludge ordinance. For more info, click HERE.
Get an Extended Setback for Your Property
Take this form to your doctor to sign and then submit it to DEQ. It will force them to not spread within 400 feet of your property.
Test Your Water for PFAS
Getting that done is surprisingly difficult - the water-testing program at Virginia Tech doesn’t do it. But we have used these DIY kits from Cyclopure and they seem to be reliable, as well as affordable. Whether you find PFAS or not, please consider sharing your results with us.
Watch Out for “Greenwashing”
The sludge industry has been funding research and perfecting its message for decades. To read more about the messaging strategy they are using to combat the current PFAS situation, read the section titled “Call and Response” on our SCIENCE page.
Talk to Your Neighbors
Start with the Spreaders
Try reaching out to the people who are planning to spread biosolids. Approach them as a friend who needs to give them some important information. Remember that almost no one would willingly destroy their own property. They have just been misled into thinking this practice is safe.
If you can manage to meet them in person, that is always the best. If you can only write them a letter, please print out some news articles to include. Some good ones that are not behind a paywall:
From the Bay Journal, this article ‘Forever Chemicals’ in sludge fertilizer, resisted by Virginia, Maryland is from May, 2025. It provides a good summary of the latest reporting on the issue, along with links to other good articles.
This piece by Ivy Main in the Virginia Mercury is from 2024, but is still an excellent overview: Is sewage sludge laced with ‘forever chemicals’ contaminating Va. farmland? No one’s testing it.
If you can access the New York Times, you will find a recent series of articles about PFAS and sludge by reporter Hiroko Tabuchi, including this one: Sewage Sludge Fertilizer From Maryland? Virginians Say No Thanks.
You can also visit our ARTICLES page and print out ones you think will be most helpful to share. It’s up to the property owners whether they spread sludge or not. They do have the power to tell Synagro they have changed their mind and rescind their permission.
Reach Out to Other Adjoining Neighbors
You can find the full list of adjoining neighbors in each of the Synagro permit applications that are listed under the section titled “The Properties,” on our Sludge in Albemarle page. Click into the pdfs of the permit applications to find which list you are on, then download the pdf, so you can talk to and educate the other people on the adjoiner list. You can organize as a group to attend public hearings and to speak at local government meetings.
Before the application is public:
Track its Progress
See how the permit is moving through the system using DEQ’s PEEP system. Start HERE, scroll down to Albemarle County’s Synagro VPA permit, and click “View Details.”
This screen grab was taken on May 30, 2025, of the PEEP platform Details view.
Ask Questions, File Complaints
Contact the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to ask for more information and tell them you want to file a complaint about spreading biosolids near you. Emails: Mattie Jenkins, John Thompson, Neil Zahradka
Contact the Dept. of Conservation Resources (DCR) to request a meeting to review the property owner’s Nutrient Management Plan so you can make sure it adheres to Code requirements. Email: Nicholas Moody
Contact the Water Control Board about their legal obligation to protects state waters from contamination by sewage sludge. You may want to tell them they are out of compliance with this section of the Code by allowing land application to continue.
Use the contact form on the Dept. of Wildlife Resources (DWR)’s website to ask that they stop rubber-stamping biosolids land application permits, because PFAS harms wildlife, hunters, and fishermen. In order to fulfill their mission to “Conserve, Connect, Protect,” they need to pay attention to this issue.
Demand a Public Hearing
DEQ must accept public comment on any permit application for 30 days. This is the public’s opportunity to tell DEQ they want a public hearing. DEQ must receive at least 25 public comments asking for or demanding a public hearing before it will hold one. Additionally, those comments have to meet certain criteria.
The full description of criteria is laid out in Virginia’s state regulations and can be found HERE. Below is an easier-to-read version. Your comment must contain:
Your full name and email address or postal mailing address. (Include both your email and mailing address, to be safe.)
Request a public hearing and state your reason(s) why you want one.
An informal statement describing your personal interest (or the interests of the people you represent) in this permit application and how you would be “directly and adversely affected” by its approval.
Optional: “Where possible,” they want specifics about the language in the permit and suggested edits to it that you want to see in order to make the permit conform with “the basic laws of the State Water Control Board.”
Once the comments are received, DEQ will review them and count your demand for a hearing toward the necessary 25 if your comment meets the above criteria AND:
Your comment raises “substantial, disputed issues relevant to the issuance…of the permit.”
Your comment does not request the DEQ do something in violation of state laws or regulations, particularly laws of the State Water Control Board.
If a public hearing is granted, then stay up-to-date and organized by joining the don’t spread on me mailing list, HERE. We’ll need your help to make sure we have a big crowd at the hearing and to make sure it’s covered by news media.
After DEQ announces it:
Let’s Get an Ordinance
What We Can’t Do
Around 20 years ago, there was a robust movement against spreading sludge. Virginia counties kept trying to ban it and ending up in court. They lost. As it stands now, between state legislation and case law, no county can write an ordinance that bans the land application of sewage sludge.
What We Can Do
State Law does explicitly provide that counties can have a “testing and monitoring” program established by a biosolids ordinance. The best example we have found of using that authority, plus a little creativity, is the ordinance of Rappahannock County. There has been no sludge spread in Rappahannock, at all.
Don’t spread on me has been working for months to get the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to adopt a similar ordinance. We are still working on it and will post updates here as they happen.
In the meantime, having more citizens emailing and calling them, asking for a sludge ordinance, would be a big help in motivating them and increasing their sense of urgency about it. You can find your Supervisor’s contact info on the County website, HERE.
Learn as Much as You Can
Use this Website
Take advantage of all the information we have gathered here. Read the articles and analysis, explore the maps, watch the webinars. The sludge industry has curated the information that gets to farmers and policymakers. They are very persuasive and we need to be prepared if we wish to counter their narrative that sludge is safe.
Get Familiar with the Law
The Code of Virginia governs permitting for sewage sludge application. It delegates most of the authority for specific rules to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), but other entities are involved in the process, too, including the Department of Conservation Resources (DCR) and the State Water Control Board (referred to as “The Board” in the Code). If your mind can make sense of legalese, read the Code, so you’ll know.
From 1981:
Sludge is the product of practically everything in our society, and may contain virtually any element and a galaxy of dangerous chemicals, depending on the spectrum of industries in the area. It's just too poisonous and unpredictable to use on land. — Dr. Donald Lisk, Director of Cornell University's toxic chemicals laboratoryQuoted in the New York Times, September 20, 1981