March 2026 - MABA Biosolids Spotlight - SPOTLIGHT on the Reg/Leg Team
March 2026 - MABA Biosolids Spotlight
Provided to MABA members by Bill Toffey, Effluential Synergies, LLC
SPOTLIGHT on the Reg/Leg Team
The Reg/Leg Team at MABA has a critical message for all of us biosolids practitioners: “Things are heating up.” “We are in a fight of our lives,” so “we need to collaborate” and “urge our public agencies to call their legislators” to “explain the cost of losing our programs.” The threat is existential to biosolids facilities and programs that have been a cornerstone to the infrastructure of municipal wastewater developed over the 50 years of Clean Water Act implementation. Short-sighted, politically expedient legislation could have negative effects on virtually all municipal wastewater facilities. MABA’s Reg/Leg team is driven by this threat and invites all MABA members to join the activities unfurling this Spring.
The Reg/Leg Team has emerged as a core committee. It coordinated comments to the EPA draft risk assessment in 2025. It has instituted active monitoring of proposed regulatory and legislative changes in each state of the MABA region, issuing updates to its members. As proposals are issued, the Team has submitted comment letters to legislation in Maryland and New York. MABA members and the executive director provided testimony to legislative committees in Maryland in February.
Coordinated action on stale-level regulations and legislation has emerged as a major role for MABA and for other regional associations. The committee has created task forces within our membership and with sister organizations to work more deeply on concerns in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York. MABA, along with NEBRA (New England Biosolids and Residuals Association), reached across the U.S. to allied organizations in the Midwest, Southeast, and Northwest to jointly prepare for upcoming legislative sessions in New York. Their framework includes fact sheets, a legislative packet, and a disposal capacity study. The focus is on nine states that face similar legislative threats, those in the MABA and NEBRA regions and also Colorado, California, Florida, Illinois, Washington and Texas. The overall goal is to be ready with unified data, messaging, and tools to oppose bans regionally.
PFAS has become the core target in upcoming state biosolids legislation. That wastewater agencies are “passive receivers” of PFAS-laden influent is well established. Also increasingly understood is that partitioning to biosolids of fluorinated compounds is eclipsed by the loading in effluent. Also increasingly disclosed is the large loadings of background PFAS through atmospheric deposition. Difficulty in providing replicable results across laboratories and across liquid versus solids samples is also a major complication. All of these factors ought to militate against knee-jerk legislative and regulatory actions.
Yet, risks of adverse actions in 2026 are high. The extreme incident of PFAS-bearing biosolids in the state of Maine in 2019, an outcome of PFAS use for paper coating at paper mills with industrial discharges to municipal sewers, was the loudest call of concern, even if not representative of PFAS risks elsewhere. The Maine incident, including PFAS showing up in farmlands with a history of biosolids applications, naturally had political and regulatory fallout in nearby New England states and then throughout the Mid-Atlantic. The biosolids service and waste companies that felt the first impacts in New England, such as Casella, Waste Management, Denali and Synagro, were placed in the “rock and a hard place,” as few of their public agency clients who had a desire to be on the “point of the spear” for disclosing PFAS in their systems; few had access to the legislators who were being pressured to act immediately on PFAS; nor did public agencies have the relational or financial capacity to influence EPA’s project that became so harmful with the release in mid-January 2025 of a draft risk assessment. The long- and short- of it: an unprecedented risk of state legislative and regulatory actions against biosolids and a countervailing urgency to have a strong regional, collaborative response by the entire biosolids community, both in the mid-Atlantic and nationally.
Stepping into this unprecedented situation, and at the center of today’s Reg/Leg Team’s actions, is MABA’s Executive Director Mary Baker. Lynne Moss, Residuals and Odor Control Practice Leader, Black & Veatch, declares: “Mary is phenomenal. She gets the organizing step -- understanding what is needed, setting deadlines, reminding everyone of their task, and getting the right people to key meetings.”
Lynne Moss, Residuals and Odor Control Practice Leader, Black & Veatch, returned to the mid-Atlantic from a period of biosolids work in Texas, where she provided leadership to its Water Environment Association of Texas.
Moss had seen the power of professional collaboration on tough legislative issues at work in Texas before she returned to the mid-Atlantic. She is able to draw upon her national reputation and knowledge and upon her specific experience in developing a communications strategy with the Water Environment Association of Texas, and she brought this experience to the Maryland legislature in 2025 when it considered biosolids.
Mary Baker, Executive Director, Mid Atlantic Biosolids Association, on the left, coordinates presentations and meetings for the Reg/Leg Team and is joined here by BV’s Lynne Moss and DC Water’s James Fotouhi at a 2025 meeting in Maryland.
Baker is pursuing sustained coordination of advocacy efforts across the region involving legislative actions and environmental regulations. A highlight of the MABA collaborative effort is the initiative to have the engineering firm of Brown & Caldwell prepare a regional report, with the information needs of legislators in mind, on the capacities and costs of biosolids management options across the region, backed up with practical case studies. and the potential of community impacts so the legislators can remain responsive to the very large need of ratepayers stateside. The first goal in 2026 is to have material available to the NYS Task Force, with timing of its release to align with the NYS legislature’s schedule, which is imminent. The report can then be used for a wider audience in the MABA region, empowering MABA members and regional partners to testify, share materials, and help “connect the dots” for effective, non-disruptive regulatory solutions to PFAS-bearing biosolids wherever the issue is engaged.
John Uzupis and Trudy Johnston share the distinction as MABA’s most consistent and tenacious Reg/Leg Team members. Both have careers that span upwards of 40 years with biosolids. Both have been front-and-center in confronting regulations and policies that seem to reflect mind-numbing politics and public fears rather than realistic risks of biosolids recycling. And both have been leaders in encouraging aggressive response to the PFAS issue, including working to ensure the creation of workgroups and participation in voluntary PFAS monitoring of biosolids to establish much needed data.
John Uzupis, Technical Services Director, Synagro, began his biosolids career working with the Pennsylvania regulator, but has been a core driver from Synagro’s engagement in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.
As Synagro’s Technical Services Directory, John Uzupis is frustrated by legislators who trust over industry experts those NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) who too frequently misrepresent science (notably that of lab analyses of PFAS) and those regulators who deny permits based on questionable environmental justice arguments, thereby forgetting that biosolids management is an essential attribute of wastewater infrastructure for the entire community. He is also making the point that legislators understand the importance of technical lab issues which complicate the interpretation of data on PFAS in biosolids and the reasonableness of policies derived from that data. Uzupis holds the opinion that “PFAS is just the latest hook activists are using in their fight against land application, and the legislators are listening to them.”
Trudy Johnston, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Material Matters, has also had a four-decade-long career in solids management, and has been on the forefront of responses to regulations and legislation over that time
Trudy Johnston, a founding partner of specialty consultant Material Matters, is willing to hold the biosolids industry accountable for its vulnerability in the face of PFAS, as the industry fails to cultivate a positive reputation with the community and its elected leaders. Johnston says: ”The wastewater industry is not great at communicating their value to the community. Municipal agencies need to invest more in their public reputation.” Municipal agency leaders have yet to develop a good reputation with local elected officials by practicing transparency, deploying communication tools with ratepayers, and implementing practices that create high quality biosolids. She believes biosolids practitioners are vulnerable to adverse legislative and regulatory PFAS rules because of the history of nuisance odors in biosolids and poor field storage operations. And she believes agencies ought to be out-front on the PFAS issue, discovering their biosolids quality and hunting for controllable sources.
The Reg/Leg Committee is working to enlarge its capabilities. It has been working to empanel itself with members who keep close track of issues in their principal state. While Uzupis and Johnston follow challenges in Pennsylvania, the duo of Alyssa Lovelace and John Leslie take on New York State and Lisa Ochsenhirt with her partner Chris Pomeroy take on Virginia and Maryland.
“The industry thinks it can fly below the radar, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so we need to squeak,” explains Alyssa Lovelace, partner in the consulting firm Hill, Gosdeck, McGraw & Nemeth. Lovelace has served as a legislative liaison for Saratoga County, New York, and the NYWEA board invited her in 2025 to help with the emerging state-wide threat of a biosolids ban.
Alyssa Lovelace, Partner, Hill, Gosdeck, McGraw & Nemeth, has a professional practice in representing public agencies to legislators and regulators, and was introduced to biosolids in 2025 by the NY WEA when challenges became severe
In 2025, the New York State legislature considered a bill proposing a five-year ban on biosolids, which MABA, NYWEA, and several companies including Denali, Synagro, USCC, and Casella opposed through lobbying and formal letters. Their efforts contributed to Assembly leadership tabling the bill at the end of the session. But it is now 2026, and the legislative schedule is closing in on the possibility of a reintroduction of the bill. The lead assembly person has credentials and a mission that poses a formidable challenge. Lovelace focuses on offering a middle ground to what can be rightfully characterized as extreme proposal. With the support of MABA’s Reg/Leg team, Lovelace assembled a legislative package featuring a fact sheet and point-by-point arguments against a biosolids ban. Moving forward in 2026, Lovelace has been engaging early, unifying the industry voice, aligning with NYS DEC’s data-driven risk assessments, and working to build trust among legislators, regulators and WRRFs.
John Leslie, Market Area Manager for Casella Solutions, helped Casella attempt to fight Maine’s ban on biosolids in 2019, now regards the New York threat as gravely serious: “New York State could be the first domino to fall, and others will follow.” Leslie explains how close the biosolids industry came to losing New York: “I’m very proud of Casella’s commitment of time and resources to fight against the ban and for good, science based biosolids policy and solutions. Our top management was onsite in the halls of the Assembly, listening to legislators' concerns and fighting against the proposed NY ban.”
John Leslie, Organics Market Area Manager, Casella Solutions, was a key person when the PFAS issue unexpectedly exploded in Maine, and has since worked to stem fallout in adjoining states and the MABA region.
Leslie has been participating in the MABA Reg/Leg team as it prepares for the upcoming New York legislative session. He underscores the broader implications of a potential ban in the MABA region. I’m also very proud of the efforts being taken by MABA and the Reg/Leg team to work hand in hand with NYWEA and the Biosolids Regional Associations to fund, research and develop tools to fight the proposed NY ban A ban on biosolids land application in NY would throw NY state into a biosolids disposal crises and have far reaching impacts on biosolids disposal capacity in the Mid-Atlantic Region.
Where Virginia used to be a state with legislation and regulations that worked in support of biosolids recycling, this status was tested during the 2026 General Assembly Session. Lisa Ochsenhirt, Vice President of AquaLaw, along with President and Managing Partner Chris Pomeroy, has for many years aided the wastewater industry with legislative and regulatory issues, Ochsenhirt in Maryland and Pomeroy in Virginia. Ochsenhirt is alarmed today that “legislators are seemingly ready to set aside the good science presented by local agencies.” Ochsenhirt explains: “PFAS has emerged faster and with more legislative intensity than many past concerns.” She compliments the Maryland Department of the Environment for its serious study of PFAS issues in biosolids and other media, but nevertheless “there is tension between protecting health, maintaining feasible biosolids programs, and avoiding unworkable regulatory limits” which may impact MDE’s ability to have science prevail.
Lisa Ochsenhirt, Vice President, AquaLaw, is an attorney with a specialty practice representing trade associations in Maryland in the drinking water and wastewater industries as they seek workable policies and rules
Whether is it is John Leslie in Maine and New York saying “we are fighting for our lives,” or it is Lisa Ochsenhirt in Virginia saying “things are heating up now,” or it is John Uzupis declaring “the possibilities are very bad right now,” we still have the strength to prevail in the face of the 2026 challenge. We have the energy and experience of the MABA Reg/Leg Team. The entire team asserts, and none less loudly than Mary Baker, that every MABA member is needed now to be part of the effort to bring the importance of today’s biosolids programs to the attention of their state legislators.
