News Releases

Duke Energy, the biggest investor-owned power utility in the country, is asking Indiana regulators to force the state’s residents and companies to pay for electricity they have not used due to the coronavirus pandemic that has shuttered businesses and kept people at home.

A coalition of public interest, social justice, watchdog and environmental groups are joining forces to hold Duke Energy, the largest investor-owned U.S. electric utility, accountable for its policies, which impact almost 8 million Americans in six states – and by extension, impede the nation’s progress toward a clean energy future.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order today declaring meat-processing plants essential infrastructure and allowing the Agriculture Department to use the Defense Production Act to force them to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the growing numbers of food and farm workers sickened by the virus , according to a report by Bloomberg News .

Removal of the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS from drinking water costs local communities millions of dollars, says a new Environmental Working Group study, published today in the European water industry journal Water Solutions. The study documented the severe threat PFAS poses to drinking water safety, emphasizing that preventing ongoing discharges of PFAS is key to protecting public health.

Ignoring his own scientists and public health advocates, Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler refused today to tighten federal standards for soot emitted from auto tailpipes and smokestacks that causes serious respiratory harm.

In a legal brief filed with a federal appeals court this week, EWG staff attorneys argue Monsanto relied heavily on an untrustworthy and dubious government risk assessment to dispute a jury’s findings that the agrochemical company’s Roundup weedkiller caused cancer in a California man.

EWG today applauded House leaders for making drinking water pollution a priority for the next COVID stimulus bill.

The Trump administration’s unprecedented move to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to suspend enforcement of critical environmental laws is shameful and further evidence of the administration’s utter disregard for public health, EWG said.

Nearly 70 percent of the fresh produce sold in the U.S. contains residues of potentially harmful chemical pesticides, according to the Environmental Working Group’s 2020 Dirty Dozen™. Yet the dirtiest produce commodity is not a fresh fruit or vegetable but a dried one – raisins.