Maine is the first state in the country to buy out a farmer driven off his land by forever chemicals.

The Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry spent $333,000 from the state’s $60 million forever chemical relief fund to buy a secluded 24-acre hay field and 83 acres of forest in Palermo, according to state officials and county land records.

“It’s bittersweet,” said Beth Valentine, the director of the state’s Fund to Address PFAS Contamination. “I’m glad we’ve closed on our first property so other landowners can see that this is a potential option if they want to move off the land, but I also recognize it was very hard for this landowner.”

Valentine and National and state level farming groups say that Maine is the first state in the country to offer a buyback program to farmers whose land is contaminated by a group of long-lasting chemicals collectively known as PFAS. Maine is leading the nation in many aspects of forever chemical regulation, including product and sludge spreading bans.

“Maine’s PFAS Fund continues to provide a cutting edge model for how other states and the federal government can help alleviate the PFAS in farmland crisis,” said Adam Nordell, who in 2023 sold his contaminated 45-acre farm in Unity to Maine Farmland Trust for use as a PFAS research site.

Two additional farmers have asked for a buyout, with the state expecting to close on their sales next month.

The field purchased by the state had been considered prime farmland where hay was grown as feed for dairy cows. Then a state investigation of land where sewage sludge had been used as agricultural fertilizer revealed in 2022 that the enriched soil had unsafe levels of toxic forever chemicals.

The state did not identify the former owner of the farm, who asked that his name not be published.

In an old listing of the property, a real estate broker gushed over the pristine farmland. The farmhouse and barn are now gone, but the recently plowed and harrowed field remains. The woods are loaded with deer, and horseback, hiking, and snowmobiling trails.

1 OF 3 SITES IN PALERMO

The sludge fertilizer had been applied by a previous landowner. A 2022 municipal report identified the Parmenter Road field — one of three sludge application sites in Palermo — had an estimated 5,000 cubic yards of sludge licensed to be spread there from 1997 to 2002.

The hayfield soil contained 36.9 parts per billion of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and 21.2 parts per billion of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, state records show. These chemicals are used to make consumer products like non-stick pans and ski wax and industrial products like electrical wire casings.

These chemicals have been linked to developmental effects, liver damage, immune system dysfunction, kidney and testicular cancer and thyroid disease, with some studies suggesting PFOS may be more toxic and linger longer in the environment, building up over time, than PFOA.

Compared with other forever chemical hotspots in Maine, the contamination level at the Palermo site was considered moderate but still more than three times the state’s 6.4 parts per billion PFOS guideline for agricultural soil to be used to produce hay intended as the sole source of feed for dairy cows.

However, it’s likely that other products could still be safely grown, sold and consumed on this property. For example, Maine toxicologists have determined that corn, which doesn’t take up PFOS the same way that hay does, could be grown there and safely fed to dairy cows, especially if mixed with other feeds.

But the owner wasn’t up for such a change. “He’s a hay farmer,” Valentine said. “That’s what he knows.”

Now that the land belongs to the state, the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry plans to try to lease the field for limited agricultural use consistent with those PFOA and PFOS conditions and may have the Maine Forest Service turn the wooded area into a demonstration forest.

The state doesn’t have the authority to lease land right now, but the Legislature’s agriculture committee voted 9-1 Tuesday in favor of a bill codifying Maine’s PFAS response program, LD 130, that would give the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry the authority to do just that.

The department wants any lease profits earned from tainted land to be returned to the PFAS relief fund.

The state purchase removes the land from the local tax rolls, which means Palermo is out about $816 a year in lost property taxes. The advisory board that oversees the PFAS relief fund will now consider if it will reimburse Palermo for lost taxes, and for how long — overseers say they can’t afford to do it forever.

PROPERTY TAXES AN ISSUE

The PFAS fund budget — $60 million in state funds and $10 million in likely federal funds — is split into pieces: about $30 million in grants to get farmers back on their feet, $21.5 million in compensation for contaminated land, $7.3 million for medical needs, and $11.2 million for scientific research.

The fund was created by the Legislature in 2022 to help Maine farmers, farmworkers and those who live near them whose lives have been upended by toxic forever chemicals left behind by a now-defunct state-approved sludge-spreading program that dates to the 1970s.

The PFAS Fund will supplement the agriculture department’s existing response program, a first-in-the-nation effort to work directly with commercial farmers whose water, fields, animals or crops test positive for PFAS contamination. In most instances, contaminated farms can find a way to remain viable.

As of January, Maine had identified 82 PFAS-contaminated farms, about 1% of Maine’s 7,000 farms. Of those, five have closed and three have scaled back their operations. The rest have stayed in operation by changing their feed, installing water filtration or switching to a crop that doesn’t absorb PFAS.

But that’s not possible for everyone. The PFAS Fund will purchase PFAS-tainted land at fair market precontamination value, as established by a team of third-party appraisers. Once purchased, Maine plans to manage the lands with a long-term goal of one day returning them to agricultural production.

Farmland in Maine is valued at about $2,860 an acre, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That value varies depending on the location, with land in the south and along the coasts much higher in value than in other areas. The national average is $5,050 an acre.