Please consider reading this article by Susan Sharon at the Maine Public Broadcasting Network
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection says it now has enough evidence to prove that unwanted prescription drugs being tossed into local landfills pose a threat to surface and groundwater supplies around the state. New test results of leachate at three Maine landfills show high concentrations of a wide range of pharmaceuticals. And the findings are likely to boost support for a bill to require drug companies to collect and dispose of unused medication.
"Prove it." That's what Mark Hyland of the DEP's Bureau of Remediation and Waste Management says drug makers asked him to do. For a long time they had argued that if unused medication shouldn't be flushed down the toilet because of the risk to ground and surface water, then the best option was to throw it out with the trash until someone could show them evidence that that also posed a threat.
But now Hyland says he can prove that prescription drugs are showing up in water that collects at three Maine landfills: in Augusta, Brunswick and Bath. "And what we found was that the landfill leachate includes things like antidepressants, antibiotics, steroids, hormones, heart and asthma medications and a lot of pain medications, kind of the usual group of pharmaceuticals that you would see anywhere," Hyland says.
Leachate, the rainwater that percolates through the landfill and collects at the bottom, typically flows to a wastewater treatment plant. But unlike human waste that can be treated, pharmaceuticals cannot. And this contaminated water negatively affects aquatic organisms, fish and other wildlife.
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Natural Resources Conservation Service programs and procedures greatly increases the capacity of cooperative efforts to restore wetlands in the Lake Champlain basin,” said Dave Tilton, Project Leader of the Lake Champlain Office. “We are excited to add such a high caliber biologist to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service team.” 
