A US$4.8 Billion Municipal Biosolids Market With Nowhere To Put the Sludge

And I suspect it'll remain that way partly because of the state of Washington, the polarization.

There's not a lot of legislation coming out of D.C. right now.

in any form.

So I think that probably will have an impact definitely in the near to medium term.

And I do think it's also kind of worth mentioning too, with biosolids and PFAS, this is already something that even before the Trump administration, the EPA generally is not a super huge fan of getting involved in.

Again, this is kind of one of those moments where they prefer to kind of take that cooperative federalism model, the Clean Water Act and say, hey, I think you guys can figure it out.

And especially with something like PFAS, where the science isn't really settled one way or another, I think that if at all possible, I think the EPA would like to wait and see just a little bit longer.

Yeah, no, I agree with you.

I think you're exactly right.

Well, this is super interesting.

So I'll leave an open-ended question for you because you put out this analysis.

You've been looking at biosolids for a while in a number of different forms.

So anything else to add or closing thoughts on sort of the topic or what you're thinking? I guess like the only thing I

would add is I have been – Thinking about the concept recently of wicked problems, which is a concept from social planning science.

And the term like wicked doesn't mean that they're like evil or bad, but kind of like these problems that are so big and complicated and intractable that they almost seem like they're actively resisting being solved.

So like global climate change is a really classic example, but like homelessness, like nuclear weapons proliferation, a lot of different things you could kind of fall into this label.

I think PFAS and biosolids does too, a variety of different reasons.

And I think, you know, just kind of talking through some of the ways these problems are defined kind of like reveals that like, One thing with these problems is that there is no definitive formula or definition for them because a given person's values and worldviews shape how they see the problem.

So like PFAS and biosolids, I think for a lot of folks, they would say that the issue is the PFAS and the biosolids.

I think others would maybe say, well, actually the issue is that we're putting biosolids at land at all.

We just shouldn't do that at all, period.

Um, and also kind of that they can, they're often like symptoms of a different problem.

So I think here, right, the symptom is kind of like, Hey, wait, there's PFAS in everything in society.

We are super reliant on it, but it's like, it doesn't get destroyed at all.

And this is a growing issue.