Florida Joins Growing National Push to Stop the Spread of Sewage Sludge
Companies like Merrell Bros. turn Florida’s sewage into fertilizer. Director of Florida Operations Charles “Red” Vancura stands inside one of the company’s greenhouses in Spring Hill, Florida, on Nov. 14, 2025.
Garrett Shanley / WUFT News
North Florida has had enough.
The region’s flat, rural cattle pastures, longtime dumping grounds of South Florida’s sewage sludge, will close their gates to feces-filled trucks by 2028. That’s owing to a provision of Florida’s Farm Bill, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in March.
Sewage sludge is what’s treated from millions of toilet flushes. New state law bans municipalities from spreading the less-treated types on farm fields, a practice that’s been prohibited south of Lake Okeechobee since 2013. Legislation to tighten regulations on the most-treated sludge, too, awaits the governor’s signature.
Though states are increasingly skeptical of spreading sludge, land application is often the cheapest disposal method and, according to the EPA, the main one. That means bans hit local utilities hard, said Ian Pepper, professor and director of the Water and Energy Sustainable Technology (WEST) Center at the University of Arizona.
With land application off the table, municipalities can burn their biosolids, put them in a landfill or further treat them until they’re marketable to the general public as fertilizer. Pima County, Arizona, imposed a moratorium on land application in 2020 because of PFAS concerns, Pepper said. The county, which had been spending about $1.3 million annually on land application, spent $3.3 million to bury the sludge in a landfill instead.
“That got their attention,” Pepper said of wastewater managers. “And so in response to that, we started a collaborative study.”
The university and the utility tested sites where sludge had been applied in varying quantities since 1985 and found low levels of PFAS on the surface and underground. “We gave that data to the Pima County Board of Supervisors,” Pepper said, “and lo and behold, the moratorium was rescinded.”