nitrate pollution

One of USDA's largest land stewardship programs "allocates too little funding to environmentally sensitive lands in one of the most important agricultural areas in the country," said the Environmental Working Group on Wednesday. In a report, the EWG said the cost-sharing Environmental Quality Incentives Program should be reformed to make climate change its primary purpose.

Some 1 million residents of California farmworker communities have relied for years on bottled water because their tap water is tainted with nitrate and other agricultural pollutants. Now, as stores ration water to prevent hoarding during the coronavirus crisis, these residents are relying on friends and family, or driving many miles to bigger towns in search of water, reports Liza Gross in FERN's latest story. (No paywall)

The Salton Sea, the largest lake in California, is drying up, revealing a bed packed with toxic chemicals, the residue of a century of runoff from Imperial Valley farms. Public-health experts worry that those chemicals pose a grave risk to the health of people who live nearby, mostly farmworkers, the elderly and families too poor to relocate, as Lindsay Fendt reports in FERN's latest story, published with The Weather Channel. (No paywall)

President Trump announced a plan to roll back Obama-era clean water regulations that aimed to protect rivers and streams from agricultural runoff and other pollutants. It will remove vast wetlands and thousands of miles of waterways from federal protection.

Some 1,700 U.S. communities have worrisomely high levels of nitrate in their water supplies, and two-thirds of those communities, serving more than 3 million people, have no treatment system to remove it, said an Environmental Working Group report released today.

In his new book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, FERN contributor Ben Goldfarb makes the case that this widely vilified rodent, which was trapped nearly out of existence in the U.S., is not only making a comeback but could play a major role in mitigating the effects of climate change and other problems afflicting farmers. (No paywall)

The USDA says there is now enough room in the Conservation Reserve that, for the first time in months, it will accept applications for high-priority stewardship projects, such as filter strips, that prevent erosion and maintain water quality on fragile land. Enrollment runs from today through Aug. 17 for the practices, which require comparatively small amounts of land.

Iowa State Sen. David Johnson this week introduced a suite of 15 bills that would together increase oversight of animal confinement operations in the state. Johnson is calling for a moratorium on building or expanding concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, until the state’s water quality improves, reports the Des Moines Register.

Environmentalists fear state and local officials will feel less urgency to improve water quality now that the Iowa Supreme Court has ruled drainage districts are immune from damage claims, said the Des Moines Register. The court ruling affects a federal lawsuit, expected to go to trial in Sioux City in June, by the Des Moines Water Works that blames drainage districts in three counties in northwestern Iowa for high nitrate levels in the Raccoon River.

Legal fees are already approaching $2 million in the potentially landmark suit by the Des Moines Water Works against three counties in northwest Iowa over nitrate pollution in the Raccoon River, says the Des Moines Register. The Iowa Farm Bureau and Iowa Corn Growers Association offered financial aid to Buena Vista, Sac and Calhoun counties following their decision to sever a relationship with the private nonprofit Agricultural Legal Defense Fund.