Despite a quarter of a century of effort by farmers, citizens, environmentalists, and government officials to address pollution in the streams, rivers and waterways of the Chesapeake Bay region, agricultural fertilizers, animal manure and soil erosion remain the watershed’s single largest source of pollution. Without an ambitious effort to fairly but effectively regulate pollution coming from farm fields throughout the watershed, there is simply no chance that the Chesapeake Bay watershed will recover.

A frayed regulatory framework and dependence on voluntary action has done little to mitigate the damage from agricultural activities in the six states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

By Olga Naidenko, EWG Senior Scientist

As the East Coast monsoon season slogs on, there's carnage in the garden. The dandelions and plantains are elbowing the grass aside, and the morning glory vines are garrotting the daylilies. Over at Strosnider's Hardware, that bottle of Roundup is looking pretty fetching.

Executive Summary

President Obama’s proposed budget continues the long string of broken promises that have left conservation programs billions short over the past two farm bills. While the White House and the US Department of Agriculture rightly communicate that farmers are a critical component in the fight against global warming, their budget proposes to cut the very programs that can help them win.

Fresh fruits and vegetables for the First Family, school kids playing in the dirt at the White House. A reminder to Americans that food actually comes from the Earth - who's going to object to Michelle Obama planting a garden on the White House lawn?

For the first time, the U.S. Geological Survey has identified the top 150 polluting watersheds in the Mississippi River Basin that cause the annual 8,000 square-mile “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. Based on the USGS report released today, members of the Mississippi River Water Quality Collaborative urge the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state policy makers to use the report to solve water quality problems both within the states and downstream in the Gulf.

U.S. and state fishing subsidy programs have contributed more than $6.4 billion to commercial fishing operations between 1996 and 2004, accelerating depletion of once-bountiful fish species, according to a ground-breaking study by Renée Sharp, director of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) California Office and economist Ussif Rashid Sumaila, acting director of the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia.