At the December meeting the commission discussed biosolids, sludge spreading, and state surface-water standard options tied to PFAS regulation.

Mike Winstead (DES) described a Saint-Gobain pretreatment system installed around 2019 that reduced PFAS loading to the Merrimack wastewater treatment plant. "Whatever residues they generated that contained PFAS were handled by a third party vendor for disposal, not for land application," Winstead said, adding he has no reason to believe residues from the manufacturing plant were provided for land application.

Commissioners raised concerns about long-term PFAS persistence in compost and land-applied residuals. Wendy said she is working on legislation to impose a five-year moratorium on sludge spreading on agricultural lands and to set up a fund to help impacted farmers with loans or grants. She emphasized the initial bill targets agricultural land though she anticipates broader discussion.

Ted Diers, assistant director for the DES water division, and Ken Edwardson provided an update on surface-water quality standards. Diers summarized the state’s two-step rulemaking-and-federal-submission process; Ken said the state finished its process in February 2025 and submitted a package to EPA in April 2018. He said a partial federal approval of the package (including four state MCLs adopted as fish and water ingestion criteria for intake zones) may be forthcoming. Ken cautioned that aquatic-life criteria and EPA's human-health guidance rest on different analyses and that EPA's Section 304(a) human-health guidance is currently stalled.

No final regulatory decisions were made at the meeting. DES staff offered to return with additional residuals-program data, land-application records, and proposed timelines for biosolids rules if the commission wants a follow-up session or subcommittee review.