Water
Nothing is more important to your health and quality of life than safe drinking water and clean streams and lakes. Across the country, pollution from farms is one of the primary reasons water is no longer clean or safe. Agriculture is the leading source of pollution of rivers and streams surveyed by U.S. government experts, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Thankfully, if we make simple changes in the way we farm, we can take a big step toward clean water.
Six West Viriginia and Ohio lawyers received the 2005 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award from the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice Foundation July 26 for their work on behalf of residents drinking Teflon-contaminated water from DuPont's nearby Washington Works plant. DuPont was sued for dumping the persistent Teflon chemical into community water supplies, although the company has known of its toxicity and potential to cause human health effects for decades.
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Some of America's richest agribusinesses are double dipping from U.S. taxpayers' pockets at a rate of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to an EWG investigation of federal crop and water subsidies to California's Central Valley Project.
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A EPA draft risk assessment says MTBE, the gasoline additive that has contaminated drinking water in at least 29 states, is a "likely" human carcinogen, according to agency sources.
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EWG petitions the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to evaluate cancer-causing potential of fluoride in tap water.
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A major investigation by The Riverside Press-Enterprise finds that an industry-funded study, relied on by federal scientists to recommend drinking water standards for a toxic rocket fuel chemical, erroneously reported no effects on people from low doses of the chemical.
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A major investigation by The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., reveals that an industry-funded study relied on by federal scientists to recommend a safe dose for perchlorate erroneously reported that healthy adults were not affected by low doses.
Read MoreIn a letter to all U.S. senators, the chief legal officers of 12 states from New York to California are urging lawmakers to vote against the federal energy bill or any legislation that protects oil companies from lawsuits over drinking water contaminated with the toxic gasoline additive MTBE.
Read MoreIn a letter to all U.S. senators, the chief legal officers of 12 states from New York to California are urging lawmakers to vote against the federal energy bill or any legislation that protects oil companies from lawsuits over drinking water contaminated with the toxic gasoline additive MTBE.
Read MoreBusinesses that object to tough pollution standards often hold communities or states hostage by threatening to take their jobs and move. Now the shoe is on the other foot in West Virginia, where a frozen-foods company refused to bring its plant to the town of Parkersburg, where the water is contaminated with the Teflon chemical C8.
Read MoreGov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has come out against a provision in the federal energy bill shielding oil companies from lawsuits over water pollution by the toxic gasoline additive MTBE — a stance at odds with his fellow Republicans in the California congressional delegation, who all voted for it.
Read MoreHouse Republicans Are Expected To Block Amendments That Would Strip Their Polluter Immunity Provision From Energy Bill
Read MoreThe NPRA's propaganda about our report is painstakingly crafted to confuse the issues, but it makes one thing perfectly clear: The oil industry is desperate to get the accountability shield, and scared of the facts that have already forced them to pay more than $250 million to two California communities whose drinking water was contaminated by MTBE.
Read MoreIn a move designed to please big oil companies, 26 Members of Congress voted in late 2003 to stop their own communities from being able to sue oil companies for polluting their drinking water with a toxic gasoline additive called MTBE. Since that vote, communities in each of those districts have filed suit for help with cleanup, and if Members vote again this year with Big Oil they will be voting away their constituents' right to sue.
Read MoreThe federal government has promised Central Valley agribusinesses that it will increase the amount of taxpayer-subsidized irrigation water by 44 percent over the next 25 years, well beyond what the state's infrastructure can reliably supply, according to Bureau of Reclamation documents obtained by EWG.
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The federal government has promised Central Valley agribusinesses it will increase the amount of taxpayer-subsidized irrigation water by 43 percent over the next 25 years, well beyond what the state's infrastructure can reliably supply, according to Bureau of Reclamation documents obtained by Environmental Working Group (EWG).
The Bush administration is paying some of the biggest and richest agribusinesses in America $17 million for cutbacks in their taxpayer-subsidized water supply. But an EWG investigation found that these same California agribusinesses — including the world's biggest cotton producer and the largest farm in America — already get hundreds of millions of tax dollars from other federal farm subsidy programs.
Read MoreFor decades taxpayers have provided subsidized water to California farmers at rates far below fair market value. When the amount of cheap water delivered to farmers was reduced during the severe drought of the early '90s to protect two species of endangered fish, a group of San Joaquin Valley water districts representing some of the nation's biggest farming operations sued the government for "taking" what they claimed was their private property.
Read MoreAn investigation by the Riverside Press Enterprise documents how industries that make and use the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate have worked to undermine sound science on its health effects -- even rewriting an article in a federally funded journal. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen Dianne Feinstein says widespread contamination of water and food makes a national rocket fuel safety standard an urgent need.
Read MoreAt a time when California water is scarce and expensive, taxpayers guarantee Central Valley farms an abundant and cheap supply through a subsidy worth up to $416 million a year, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) investigation that calculated, for the first time, federal water subsidies to each of more than 6,800 farms in the Central Valley Project (CVP).
Read MoreGov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into law groundbreaking legislation, sponsored by EWG, to ensure that California's drinking water standards are strong enough to protect children.
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