The Issue
Water
Many Americans’ drinking water contains contaminants, and bottled water makers don’t fully disclose the source or purity of their water. EWG is the place to go for information about your water.
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The Latest on Water
Environmental Working Group’s new report Troubled Waters has laid out three ways the 2012 federal farm bill can protect drinking water from farm chemicals run-off. Congress should:
- End direct payments, reduce farm insurance subsidies and block any new entitlement programs that encourage all-out production and hurt the environment.
- Renew the conservation compact that requires farmers receiving taxpayer-funded support to carry out basic conservation practices.
- Provide adequate funding for conservation programs in order to reward farmers who take steps to protect water.
A new Environmental Working Group report examines water pollution caused by farm runoff and details how treating the problem after the fact is increasingly expensive, difficult and, if current trends continue, ultimately unsustainable.
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One of the big challenges facing the globe in the next century will be access to clean water. In America, federal agriculture policies are putting drinking water used by millions of people at risk. Perverse incentives such as farm subsidies and ethanol mandates have ushered in an era of fencerow-to-fencerow planting of chemical-intensive commodity crops, even as funding to protect water sources has been repeatedly slashed.
Read MoreWater that runs off fields treated with chemical fertilizers and manure is loaded with nitrogen and phosphorus, two potent pollutants that inevitably end up in rivers and lakes and set off a cascade of harmful consequences, contaminating the drinking water used by millions of Americans. Treating this water after the fact to clean up the contamination is increasingly expensive, difficult and, if current trends continue, ultimately unsustainable. The only solution that will preserve the clean, healthy and tasty drinking water that people expect is to tackle the problem at the source.
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In a rare bit of good news for Americans concerned about the quality of their water, a district court judge in Polk County, Iowa, has denied an industrial agriculture lobby’s efforts to raise legal objections to the state’s clean water provisions. The Iowa Environmental Council has the scoop: Legal challenges to new clean water protections in Iowa raised by the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and other groups are “without merit” and should not move on to trial, a judge in the Iowa District Court for Polk County ruled Friday.
Read MoreA variety of links to recent articles. Including: Food Fight author Dan Imhoff has come up with four ways the federal farm bill has contradicted itself over the years. The glaring conflicts, he says, include: subsidizing what the federal government doesn’t want people to eat, paying farmers to pollute, encouraging farmers to overplant and plow land, and farming corn for fuel.
Read MoreFormer Agriculture Secretaries Dan Glickman and Ann Veneman have sent a letter to House and Senate leaders urging them to renew the 25-year conservation compact between taxpayers and farmers, DTN’s Chris Clayton reported (subscription required).
Read MoreSenate Agriculture Committee leaders are planning to draft their version of a 2012 farm bill by the end of April, a legislative aide told The Hagstrom Report.
Read MoreA coalition of environmental groups including the Gulf Restoration Network, Prairie Rivers Network and the Iowa Environmental Council are suing the federal Environmental Protection Agency to force it to set state water quality standards and tighten pollution limits on wastewater treatment plants.
Read MoreAfter more than three years of deliberation, California’s Central Coast Regional Water Quality Board has enacted new comprehensive rules requiring area farm operations to curb nitrate and pesticide pollution that contributes to some of the nation’s worst water quality conditions.
Read MoreAnimal waste and fertilizer from farming operations in California’s Salinas Valley and Tulare Lake Basin are the source of 96 percent of the nitrate contamination in the area’s groundwater, a new study commissioned by the State Water Resources Control Board found.
Read MoreFarmers can produce far more than the world’s food and fiber — they can also contribute to the enormous task of keeping our drinking water clean and our streams healthy.
Today, Environmental Working Group released a new research paper by conservationist Max Schnepf that looks at the history of America’s eroding conservation compact and how farmers view the long-standing deal between them and taxpayers.
Read MoreAccording to a Huffington Post article published today, U.S. Marine Corps officials have urged federal health experts not to release complete information about an ongoing federal water assessment at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, home to the largest documented case of water contamination at a domestic military facilit
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In 2010, EWG identified chromium-VI contamination in the drinking water of 31 of the 35 cities we tested. One Kentucky city has stepped up to solve that problem.
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Nearly 40 Marine veterans diagnosed with male breast cancer today urged President Obama to support legislation in Congress that would provide health care for those made ill by carcinogenic chemicals that contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
Read MoreWe parents give a lot of orders. "Put your pajamas away. Clear the table, please. Don't pull the cat's tail!" But in her new book, Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis, it's Sandra Steingraber who gives the orders - to us parents.
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Lobbyists for polluting industries and opponents of environmental regulation have been tripping over one another to come up with self-serving lists of targets for the Congressional Super Committee as it labors to find ways to reduce federal spending and trim the deficit.
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Lobbyists for polluting industries and opponents of environmental regulation have been tripping over one another to come up with self-serving lists of targets for the Congressional Super Committee as it labors to find ways to reduce federal spending and trim the deficit. The nation deserves a more thoughtful approach, one that recognizes that Americans want, and deserve, to live in a place where air and water are clean, where soil and natural resources are conserved for future generations, and where health and safety – not merely profit – stand atop the hierarchy of public values.
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The Environmental Protection Agency has handed a major victory to veterans, civilian workers and families who resided at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina when its drinking water was polluted with the chemical trichloroethylene, a solvent used to remove grease from metal.
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