A PFAS campaigner has said he is “very disappointed” after wording referring to a potential public-health risk was removed from the Information Commissioner’s decision to force the government to reveal which fields had been treated with biosolids.

Paul Le Claire, chair of Water Awareness Jersey, questioned the “transparency” of the decision to revise the wording.

In March 2025, Mr Le Claire requested information concerning which fields had been treated with the sewage sludge fertiliser. 

The field locations were initially withheld by the government on the grounds that disclosing them would reveal private information. 

However, last month, Jersey’s Information Commissioner Paul Vane ruled that data on the fields should be released, determining that there was “a strong and compelling public interest in this matter, including the potential risk to public health”.

However, Mr Le Claire was informed, with about 24 hours left to take the decision to the Royal Court, that wording mentioning any risk to public health would be omitted from the final decision. 

The Freedom of Information request followed concerns from campaigners that biosolids may contain PFAS chemicals, which have been linked to health problems. The government has maintained that testing has shown the 111 fields are not contaminated.  

When the fields were disclosed, Infrastructure Minister Jonathan Renouf said: “I did think it was important to be clear on the question of PFAS before they were published, and I would like to thank the Information Commissioner for revising his decision to make it clear that he made no finding that fields where biosolids have been applied are contaminated. 

“My guiding principle is that we should always follow the scientific evidence. That is why we set up the PFAS Scientific Advisory Panel, and that is why we have engaged in rigorous testing of PFAS levels through the Island. 

“This is a situation where there is no ambiguity or room for doubt. We have hard scientific data which shows that these fields are not contaminated.” 

However, Mr Le Claire questioned why the appeal decision was granted with such short notice. 

He said: “This goes to the heart of procedural fairness.  

“I was told this was simply administrative. I was instructed to destroy the original decision and use only the revised one and I was left with about a day of my original appeal period.  

“Yet government then made the change central to its public reassurance.  

“If the change was merely administrative, why did it become so important to the government’s narrative?” 

Mr Le Claire said the public-health wording was important because some jurisdictions impose lower PFAS limits than Jersey, adding: “In Denmark or Norway or America, you wouldn’t be able to put this water into the taps that people are drinking from.” 

During the previous political term, then-Environment Minister Steve Luce brought forward legislation which, had it been approved, would have set a new legal standard for PFAS levels in mains water. This would have been that the total sum of four types of PFAS does not exceed four nanograms per litre – a target which would have had to be met within five years.

However, before it could be debated, the proposition was called in for scrutiny by Environment, Housing and Infrastructure panel chair Deputy Hilary Jeune. The affect of this was that because the debate would not be completed before the election on 7 June, it was deemed to have been withdrawn.

Many places around the world have lower PFAS limits in drinking water than Jersey, but the proposed limit of four nanograms per litre would cost between £140m and £210m in infrastructure upgrades, according to Jersey Water. 

Mr Le Claire said the information released within the Freedom of Information response does not go far enough to answer the public-health concern.

He said: “We need to know which sludge batch went to which field, its individual PFAS results, how much was applied, the application rate, previous applications, the receiving-field PFAS result and what happened afterwards.

“Where appropriate, that means examining groundwater, streams, reservoirs, crops and livestock as well.”