Fresh warnings as a Maryland community’s PFAS crisis continues

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A PFAS contamination crisis is continuing to plague a Maryland community as a plume of contaminated groundwater moves through the area, residents and their attorneys said this week.

Even with actions by Perdue Agribusiness to address the contamination, PFAS chemicals from the company’s soybean plant in Salisbury, MD continue polluting local surface waters, soil and drinking water in wells beyond those Perdue has tested, they say. Concerns were aired Nov. 12 in a town hall meeting, as community members continued to push for protective actions.

“In November, where we are right now, there’s no evidence that Perdue is taking any action at all to basically contain what is happening on their site,” Chase Brockstedt, an attorney who is representing residents of the Eastern Shore city in a class action lawsuit against Perdue, said at the town hall Wednesday night.

Wastewater-containing lagoons at the Perdue plant are leaking, while discharge from the facility continues to enter local streams and toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in excavated soil leaches into local groundwater, according to Brockstedt.

“All of that is going on while Perdue seeks to expand its plant by some 65% … without doing what we think is necessary … what experts and consultants in the industry think is necessary to immediately stop what is happening,” he said.

Community members at the town hall voiced concerns about how the contamination is impacting their daily lives and jeopardizing their health.

“I feel like I’m living off the grid right now!” said one resident. “I’m sitting here filling up water every day from one jug to another for cooking and stuff like that. It’s ridiculous.”

Another asked if she could safely feed her dogs apples from trees on her property after her well tested positive “big time” for PFAS.

“I would be very careful about eating those apples,” said Phil Federico, another plaintiff attorney.

Ongoing litigation

In 2024, attorneys filed a class action lawsuit against Perdue Agribusiness on behalf of over 570 residents alleging the company showed “reckless indifference to the health and safety of the public” in handling the contamination of residential private well water, seeking to hold Perdue accountable for cleanup and damages and saying the company failed to warn residents in a timely manner. Perdue allegedly knew about PFAS in its wastewater for over a year before it informed residents.

In August, a federal judge denied Perdue’s request to delay the case, calling the contamination a matter “of some urgency,” allowing the case to proceed to discovery. However, the judge dismissed claims that sought to link the contamination to residents’ existing medical problems.

The attorneys filed a second lawsuit in July alleging Perdue is violating federal environmental laws by improperly disposing of PFAS-tainted waste. Perdue has asked the court to dismiss the case, the attorneys said, and the request is pending before the judge.

The lawsuits against Perdue followed an action by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) designating Perdue a “responsible person” for the contamination. Perdue has since paid to test private wells for PFAS, installed treatment systems at impacted homes, provided free bottled water and installed treatment systems and made “several preventative upgrades” at the soybean plant, the company said in a November 12 statement. The company said it has reduced “regulated PFAS in the facility’s treated wastewater to trace levels.”

“Salisbury is our home, and we take our responsibility to our neighbors seriously,” Drew Getty, Perdue’s senior vice president for environmental sustainability, said in the statement. “It was important – and I’m certain reassuring to our neighbors – that we have identified the PFAS source. I am confident that the steps we have taken over the past year will adequately address the PFAS contamination.”

Concerning the facility’s planned expansion, “every aspect of this project has been reviewed with the state from the start — nothing has progressed outside the public permitting process, which has included public hearings,” said a Perdue spokesperson.

However, a July 2025 report prepared by an environmental consulting firm for plaintiffs’ lawyers recommended Perdue expand its efforts to test residential wells and install additional PFAS drinking water treatment systems, as well as remove contaminated soil “hot-spots” at the plant, among other measures.

Some Salisbury residents whose well water has been contaminated have suffered health problems they believe may stem from high levels of PFAS in their water.

PFAS are humanmade chemicals that persist in the environment for many years and build up in the bodies of humans and animals. The PFAS chemicals identified in Perdue’s groundwater, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS), have been linked to a range of health problems. An international cancer group has classified PFOA as carcinogenic to humans and PFOS as possibly carcinogenic to humans, while PFHxS has been found to disrupt thyroid hormones and the immune system.

“A whole wall of PFAS-contaminated groundwater”

Many of the over 600 private wells in Salisbury tested so far contain very high concentrations of PFAS, plaintiffs’ attorneys said at the town hall, with some found to have levels of PFAS 10-100x higher than standards for safe drinking water set by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2024. The agency under President Trump has said it will drop limits for four of the chemicals, including PFHxS, while delaying the deadline for drinking water systems to comply with the rule for PFOA and PFOS.

Roger Truitt, an environmental consultant working with the plaintiffs’ legal team, said at the town hall that a consulting company hired by the law firm has been finding high levels of PFAS in some private wells that fall outside of Perdue’s testing zone.

“So it’s not just the area that Perdue has focused on,” said Truitt. “This regional plume … is beyond the area that they are currently testing and putting in treatment systems.”

Contaminated groundwater from the soybean plant is also winding up in local streams and moving westward at a rate of about one to two feet per day, said Truitt. “That’s a whole wall of PFAS-contaminated groundwater moving from the Perdue facility over into these residential areas that are on private wells,” he said.

Perdue said in its statement this week that the only source of PFAS identified at the facility is a fire suppression system that has now been replaced, according an investigation by an environmental consulting company.

Truitt disputed that claim at the town hall meeting. “The PFAS … is all over their site,” he said. “It’s not just in the one area where the fire fighting foam was, they say, leaked out.”

Featured image: Sign at a Nov. 12 town hall meeting about the ongoing PFAS crisis in Salisbury, MD. (Credit: Shannon Kelleher)