water quality

The state pollution control agency in Minnesota spent nearly $125 million - half of its budget - to clean lakes and waterways contaminated by farming, says the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

The largest U.S. farm group asked for Supreme Court review of the EPA's "pollution diet" designed to reduce nutrient and sediment runoff into the Chesapeake Bay.

Long-term monitoring of nitrate levels in 22 large rivers shows no widespread evidence of improvement, although nitrogen from fertilizer and livestock sources has been fairly stable since the 1980s, says the U.S. Geological Survey.

Agriculture and homebuilder groups "appear headed for the U.S. Supreme Court" in their opposition to the EPA’s "pollution diet" for the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America, says the Newport News (Va) Daily Press.

Cattle and rice producer Bob Stallman will retire as president of the American Farm Bureau Federation in January, after 16 years as leader of the organization.

City dwellers are more likely than rural residents to regard livestock operations as environmentally harmful and to have concerns about impacts on water quality, say Purdue researchers who surveyed 797 Indiana adults during July 2014.

Thirteen states filed suit in federal court in North Dakota against the "waters of the United States" rule that defines the upstream reach of the Clean Water Act, said Agri-Pulse.

An Iowa company wants to build the largest hog farm in Wisconsin, which also would be the first megafarm in the Lake Superior basin, says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

For the third time, the House Agriculture Committee approved a bill to override a court decision on permits for pesticides applied on or near federally regulated waters.

The U.S. Geological Survey says "excess fertilizer and manure applied to the Chesapeake Bay's Eastern Shore are causing poor-quality water flows in streams that flow into the bay."

Trustees of the Des Moines Water Works voted at the end of a 60-day warning period to sue drainage districts in three counties in northwest Iowa over high levels of nitrate in the Raccoon River, a source of drinking water for Iowa's capital city.

A rare coalition of grain processors, conservationists and clean-water groups asked the Agriculture Department to dedicate one-third of the Conservation Reserve to buffer strips, windbreaks and other practices that protect water quality and wildlife habitat.

EPA administrator Gina McCarthy says the agency will issue rules this spring that set the ethanol mandate and define the upstream reach of clean-water laws, according to DTN, but she did not offer a specific date for the announcement.

Geographically isolated wetlands, such as the prairie potholes of the upper Midwest and the playas of the Southwest, "play an outsized role in providing clean water and other environmental benefits," says Indiana University in describing...

Farmers and urban water systems can work together to improve water quality, says a white paper that presents nine examples from upstate New York to the Everglades and California.

If Iowa farmers plant buffer strips alongside waterways, they "could get two-thirds of the way to the state’s goal for reducing phosphorus pollution and one-fifth of the way to the nitrogen pollution target," says a report by the Environmental Working Group.

Up to $20 million is available in grants to "facilitate the creation of new, innovative markets for carbon credits," USDA announced. It says carbon markets provide additional revenue sources for producers who practice soil and water conservation.

State Rep Gary Worthan, who represents two of the northwest Iowa counties targeted by the Des Moines Water Works for a lawsuit over nitrate levels in the Raccoon River, said the utility should "reel in their legal beagles...talk with us and find a common solution" said the Des Moines Register.