In 2022, the company created the Coalition of Recyclers of Residual Organics by Practitioners of Sustainability to lobby its interests to Congress. Leading the nonprofit group is Synagro CEO Bob Preston. Since its creation, the organization has spent $220,000 on federal lobbying, according to disclosure forms.

Lobbyists for Synagro argue that the company should not be held liable for the PFAS contamination in the sludge that it sold since it wasn’t the one who made it. PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are widely used synthetic chemicals that are dangerous to humans, animals, and the environment.

Sludge is created by filtering out water from sewage, which is then sold as inexpensive fertilizer. 

Synagro has faced several lawsuits over its PFAS-laced sludge, which has contaminated residential areas and farmlands. Ranchers in Johnson County, Texas, filed a lawsuit this year against the waste recycling company for damages caused by a neighboring farm’s use of sludge fertilizer. County investigators discovered that 32 types of PFAS were in the ranchers’ soil and water.

Several members of Congress have backed Synargo, with Sens. John Boozman (R-AR) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introducing a bill in May protecting “passive receivers” of PFAS, such as water utilities, from “bogus third-party lawsuits.”

The contamination of PFAS in sewage sludge has been a known problem since the 1990s, but the government continues to promote sewage sludge as a safe option for fertilizer, and farmers have obtained permits to use sewage sludge on nearly 70 million acres — about a fifth of America’s agricultural land. The Environmental Protection Agency has said there is no safe level of PFAS. 

Water treatment facilities told the New York Times they are experiencing difficulty finding landfills to accept their sludge due to their fears of the contaminants.

“It seems crazy to be able to say they’re a passive receiver and they shouldn’t be liable, that they know it’s harmful but they’re going to continue to sell it,” Laura Dumais, an attorney with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that assisted the Texas ranchers with PFAS testing, told the outlet. “It’s like CVS selling a tainted medicine and saying, ‘We can’t be liable and we’re just going to continue to sell it.”

While the Trump administration is seeking to roll back certain environmental regulations from the Biden administration, President-elect Donald Trump’s recent pick to head the EPA, former Rep. Lee Zeldin, previously voted in favor of PFAS regulations.

But at the same time, the incoming leader of the Senate’s environmental committee, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), said in a hearing last week that she would seek to overturn new PFAS regulations put into place last year. 

And although Trump denounced being affiliated with Project 2025, the architects of the agenda (many of whom either previously worked in his previous administration or now have jobs in the new administration) have called for removing the hazardous-substance designation.