Argus Leader, Faith Bremner

Published September 10, 2008

Senate Democrats are about to renege on an earlier plan to give more money to programs that pay farmers and ranchers to protect wildlife habitat and water quality, a spokesman for the Environmental Working Group said Tuesday.

Des Moines Register , PHILIP BRASHER

Published May 29, 2009

Washington, D.C. - Government conservation money in Iowa should be targeted to farms in areas that pollute the Mississippi River basin and cause a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental group says.

After 50 years of legal infighting, a victor has emerged in California's water wars -- agriculture. A decade after environmentalists prevailed in getting more fresh water down the north state's rivers and estuaries to improve fisheries and wildlife habitat, farmers are again triumphant. Central Valley irrigation districts are signing federal contracts that assure their farms ample water for the next 25 to 50 years.

U.S. agency offers 3 options; critics prefer retiring farmland

San Francisco Chronicle, Glen Martin

Published November 1, 2005

A pending decision on the disposal of contaminated wastewater produced by San Joaquin Valley agriculture could have disastrous consequences for Bay Area drinking water, fisheries and wildlife, officials say.

United Press International, Staff Published January 15, 2006

BIG SKY, Mont. -- Environmentalists, fishermen and city officials are challenging the farmers and ranchers who have long controlled water resources in the West.

A slideshow on several key environmental issues.

Des Moines Register, Philip Brasher

Published May 29, 2009

Government conservation money in Iowa should be targeted to farms in areas that pollute the Mississippi River basin and cause a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental group says.

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.