water pollution
In Missouri, lawmakers are poised to eliminate local regulation of CAFOs
Communities in Missouri have been fighting the expansion of large-scale livestock operations in the state for years. But a controversial pair of bills moving through the state legislature would make community oversight of those farms even harder. The bills would eliminate local ordinances that regulate industrial animal farms in the state, or make it impossible to enforce those ordinances. The bills mirror trends in other states where legislators have moved to undermine local control of large-scale livestock farms.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Atrazine spikes in drinking water often go unseen, says report
Nearly 30 million Americans in 28 states “have some level of atrazine in their tap water,” says the Environmental Working Group in a report on the second-most widely used weedkiller in the country.
High costs for small towns to remove nitrate from drinking water
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.
North Carolina ‘no place for CAFOs,’ says green group
Hurricane Florence is the latest illustration that "flood-prone coastal states like North Carolina are no place for CAFOs," said the Union of Concerned Scientists, calling for tighter regulation of industrial livestock farms. Gov. Roy Cooper and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue are scheduled to view agricultural damage today and may see some of the four dozen manure lagoons statewide that are flooded or overflowing because of storm water.
A much-debated Costco plant draws more ire from Nebraskans
When the plan for a new Costco chicken-processing plant in Fremont, Nebraska, was announced in 2016, it drew angry local protests. Now large-scale chicken farms that will supply the plant are popping up across the state, causing a new round of protests amid concerns about environmental and health effects.
EPA bars reporters from Pruitt summit on water contaminants
The Environmental Protection Agency barred reporters from a national summit on water contaminants, which was convened Tuesday by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. Reporters from the AP, CNN, and E&E News were blocked from attending the meeting, and one reporter was shoved from the building.
Delaware community takes on big poultry, citing pollution
On Wednesday, a Delaware community near a Mountaire poultry processing plant gave the company notice that in 90 days it would sue the plant for polluting its drinking water.
Another Missouri community fights the CAFO-expansion trend
Residents of tiny Lone Jack, MO, are fighting a proposal by a local ranch to expand its feedlot from around 600 cows to nearly 7,000. It is the latest in a series of communities pushing back against a national trend toward concentrated animal agriculture. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Coalition urges Iowa legislators to end new factory farm development
A coalition of 55 environmental, agricultural, and food-safety organizations signed a letter urging the Iowa General Assembly pass a moratorium on new and expanded factory farm development in the state. Iowa currently houses nearly 23 million hogs, a record for the state and the highest number in the country.
EPA delays Obama’s WOTUS rule until 2020 while it writes its own version
President Trump set out to erase the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule in his first weeks in office. Now the EPA has finalized an action that should keep the so-called WOTUS rule from ever taking effect.
Heavy rainfall causes surge of nutrient runoff that fuels algal blooms
When heavy rainfall sweeps the countryside, waterways are flooded with peak levels of the nutrient phosphorus, which can trigger algal blooms and create dead zones in rivers, lakes, and coastal waters, says a newly published study.
Toxic algae outbreak in Lake Erie is third worst in 15 years
The algal bloom in Lake Erie this summer, fed in part by agricultural runoff, was roughly the same size as in 2013, the third-most severe bloom in 15 years of federal records, said the Associated Press.
Ninety-four percent of U.S. tap water laced with plastic
Not only are tiny plastic particles showing up in the fish we eat, but they’re in nearly all the tap water we drink, says an investigation by Orb Media. The research examined samples from around the world, and 83 percent of them contained microplastics.
Study: Many U.S. lakes are keeping up with pollution, if not exactly getting cleaner
Lake pollution has largely remained unchanged since 1990, despite expanding agriculture, urban development and climate change, says a study of 3,000 lakes in the Midwest and eastern states. Seven percent of the lakes in the study saw increases in phosphorus — a common component of farm runoff that’s implicated in toxic green-algae blooms. Nine percent of those lakes saw improvements.
U.S. halts study of health risks and mountaintop coal mining
Facing a proposed budget cut, an Interior Department agency told the National Academy of Sciences to stop work on a study into the health risks faced by Appalachian residents who live near mountaintop removal coal-mining sites, said the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette-Mail.
EBay founder’s Hawaiian dairy dream gets blowback
Pierre Omidyar says he wants to build a dairy along the coast of Kauai to reduce Hawaii’s reliance on imported milk, but locals worry that runoff from such an operation, as well as the flies and odors it would bring, would hurt the island’s crucial tourism business, reports The New York Times.
EPA’s Pruitt says he will bring clarity to clean water law
The EPA will provide clarity to the reach of the clean water law with its revisions of the so-called Waters of the United States that was proposed by the Obama administration and blocked by court challenges, said administrator Scott Pruitt in a Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette interview. Pruitt said the new rule would be “objectively measured and traditional in its view of how we should measure waters of the United States.”
Vermont’s approach to farm pollution seen as a national model
From Vermont’s Lake Champlain to rivers in California, waterways are being overloaded with nutrient pollution running off farms. But Vermont took an approach to cleaning up its waterways that could well serve as a model for other states, especially now that the federal government is in regulatory retreat in the Trump era, writes Paul Greenberg in FERN’s latest story with Eating Well magazine.
Gulf of Mexico ‘dead zone’ is larger than average
As predicted, the low-oxygen “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is larger than average this year, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday. At 6,705 square miles — or roughly the size of New Jersey — this year’s dead zone is more than three times the size of the target set for 2035.