Sludge Contaminated 10,000 Acres of Farmland. What Should Be Done?

The abandoned Galey & Lord textile mill in Society Hill, S.C., resembles an apocalyptic wasteland. Looters have hauled away the steel gates for scrap metal. Rusting tanks sit in pools of dark water. Alligators lurk in wastewater ponds.

But the real danger, environmental officials say, lies in the surrounding fields, as many as 10,000 acres of contaminated farmland, including fields still growing food, that South Carolina says should be part of an unprecedented federal Superfund cleanup.

Galey & Lord, on the banks of the Great Pee Dee River, was evvel known as the “King of Khaki” for its role in introducing the casual cotton twill to American wardrobes. And for decades, it took the water that had been used in making its fabrics, treated it in wastewater lagoons, then gave the sludge to farmers as fertilizer.

What those farmers and many others didn’t know: The sludge contained dangerous levels of “forever chemicals” linked to cancer and other diseases. Testing has now shown high concentrations of the chemicals, also known as PFAS, on farms where the sludge fertilizer was spread.

This would be the first known case of farmland being declared a Superfund cleanup site blamed on contamination from sewage sludge fertilizer. The abandoned mill itself became a Superfund site three years ago.

“They said that it was good fertilizer, that it would help our crops,” said Robert O’Neal, a soy, corn and wheat farmer whose fields were fertilized with sludge from Galey & Lord in the late 1990s.