Articles Tagged with ''PFAS''

As more farmers in Maine find out that their land or dairy cows are contaminated with PFAS, the state legislature is considering a bill that would provide compensation and medical monitoring.

The Environmental Protection Agency has released a strategy for attacking contamination from PFAS, a group of more than 9,000 compounds that have been dubbed “forever chemicals” for their ability to persist in water, soil and tissue without breaking down.

We’ve got some more detail on Democrats’ plans for using their huge Build Back Better bill to promote cover crops and other forms of climate-smart agriculture. Agri-Pulse obtained a draft amendment to the bill that authorizes the $28 billion in conservation funding.

More than 2,100 agricultural operations in 37 states have been notified they are within a mile “down gradient” from high levels of PFAS contamination at military bases.

House and Senate Ag Committee Republicans are urging the Food and Agricultural Climate Alliance to join them in calling on Democrats to hold public hearings ahead of considering ag spending in the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill. Committee Chairman David Scott, D-Ga., has announced a business meeting for Friday to consider the reconciliation package.

A veteran senior Senate staffer, Fitzhugh Elder, will be taking over as GOP staff director for the Senate Agriculture Committee next month, sources tell Agri-Pulse. He will replace Martha Scott Poindexter, who’s moving to the U.S. Dairy Export Council.

USDA is re-starting the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and providing $6 billion in new forms of pandemic aid, tapping additional authority provided by Congress in December.

The ag industry is paying more attention to a group of highly persistent chemicals known as PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which have been found in drinking water and groundwater throughout the United States.

Ag groups are more than happy with the choice of Michael Regan, secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, to be the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, citing his experience working with the farming community in North Carolina and the Biden administration’s extensive outreach to farm groups thus far.