Clean Water // Current TV

Tell President Obama to Walk Away from Empty Promises of Fracked Shale Gas

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama lauded natural gas from shale as a... more

JanforGore
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16 days ago
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20 comments

Interactive Gasland site

Interactive fracking information.

treewolf39
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1 year ago
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4 comments

Tons of Los Angeles River Trash to Be Captured Before Reaching Pacific Ocean

Los Angeles Times... . Environmental news from California and beyond... more

EthicalVegan
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3 months ago
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2 comments

Rachel Beckwith: Nine-year-old girl’s wish to raise money for clean water takes off after her tragic car crash death

Rachel Beckwith wanted to raise $300 by her ninth birthday to help bring clean water... more

EdJoyProductions
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7 months ago
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Biorhythms 2.0-Reality and pipelines

My next installment of relevant Earth News that reports about the environmental issues... more

JanforGore
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7 months ago
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109 comments

U.S House votes to gut the Clean Water Act

Fueled by coal industry complaints about the Obama administration's crackdown on mountaintop removal, legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday that would strip federal regulators of their authority to make state agencies properly police water pollution.

House members approved the legislation by a vote of 239 to 184.

The legislation faces an uncertain future in the Senate, and a veto threat from the White House, but its approval by the House provides a symbolic victory for critics of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"The reality is that the agency is strong-arming the states," said Rep. Nick J. Rahall, D-W.Va. "Rather than bringing the sides together and bringing balance, they have widened the divide."

Rahall, ranking Democrat on the House Committee Transportation and Infrastructure, joined with committee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., to push legislation they dubbed the "Clean Water Act Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011."

Mica and Rahall found common ground in their anger with EPA: Rahall over the mountaintop removal crackdown and Mica over federal efforts to force greater cuts in nitrogen and phosphorous pollution from Florida farms and other businesses. West Virginia Reps. Shelley Moore Capito and David McKinley, both Republicans, were co-sponsors.

The legislation would stop EPA from rejecting Clean Water Act "dredge-and-fill" permits approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as EPA did earlier this year with the largest mountaintop removal permit in West Virginia history.

But the bill goes much farther than that. It would block EPA from stepping in if states write water quality standards federal scientists believe are too weak. EPA would no longer be able to withdraw federal approval of state water pollution regulatory programs, and would be stripped of authority to object to water pollution discharge permits issued by state agencies.

In a report issued Tuesday, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said although lawmakers have considered minor changes to particular regulatory programs before, "it is highly unusual for Congress to advance legislation that would broadly alter the federal-state partnership in order to address dissatisfaction with specific actions by EPA or another agency."Fueled by coal industry complaints about the Obama administration's crackdown on... more

JanforGore
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7 months ago
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17 comments

EPA hands over job of cleaning water to polluters

Public health, tourism and the environment in Florida suffered a major loss this week when the federal government put the protection of state waters back into the hands of the very people who have polluted them — big business and its enablers in Tallahassee. In a letter to the state, the Environmental Protection Agency dropped its effort to adopt clean water standards for Florida following 13 years of foot-dragging by state officials. This is either Washington's way to force the state's hand or a decision by the Obama administration not to alienate Florida in the run-up to the 2012 election. Either way, it's a risky game of chicken with a governor and a state Legislature that have shown no regard for the environment and clean water.

A brief history: The federal government told the states in 1998 to limit nutrient pollution in rivers, lakes and coastal areas by 2004 or it would do the job for them. But 2004 came and went. Florida environmental groups sued in 2008 seeking to compel the EPA to intervene under the Clean Water Act. The agency settled the case in 2009 under an agreement it would draft the standards for Florida. After 11 years of stalling, new rules were on the way and expected this year. Then Monday, after howls of complaints from business groups and state lawmakers, the EPA said it would give Florida another chance. The agency did not agree to preapproving any rules or to surrendering its rulemaking authority entirely. But it agreed to give Florida the time to write new clean water standards of its own.

This concession was as close to an all-out surrender as they come, and it's a shame EPA lost its nerve in the face of a massive disinformation campaign. State leaders and business interests hijacked the debate by ponying up inflated estimates for what it would cost to clean up Florida's waters. The EPA agreed to a host of loopholes — exempting entire industrial operations from the clean water rules, creating a waiver process and dragging out enforcement. Still, the state went to court to protect the biggest polluters. For this, Florida gets rewarded with another chance?

continued.Public health, tourism and the environment in Florida suffered a major loss this week... more

JanforGore
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8 months ago
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22 comments

The Widening Gyre Of Plastic: Made To Last Forever, Designed To Be Thrown Away

Plastic is wonderful material. It has so many uses, infinitely malleable to fit almost... more

3BLMedia
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9 months ago
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Baltimore's Most Interesting City Council Candidate

Baltimore City Council candidate Adam Van Bavel is a City Paper Readers Poll... more

AVBforBCC
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9 months ago
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1 comment

Weekly Mulch: Cost-Cutting at the Environment's Peril

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger In Washington, the environment is under... more

MediaConsortium
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10 months ago
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Helping the Duwamish

James Rasmussen and the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition that he coordinates have... more

HildeNichols
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10 months ago
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Can Radioactive Particles Be Filtered Out of Water?

Sad to have to start thinking about this topic, but hard not to. :( Hmmm, EMCEL... more

covelogibbs
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11 months ago
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6 comments

Drugging America: The drug industry exposed Deception for Profits

This article caught my attention after recently reading that OUR tax dollars subsidize... more

August_K
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11 months ago
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19 comments

Uranium Mining in Virginia

The water table for greater portion of piedmont Virginia and North Carolina is under... more

therealpixie
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12 months ago
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0 comments

Republicans launch sneak attack on clean water in budget

Some environmentalists fear that industry lobbyists responsible for weakening the Clean Water Act have successfully convinced the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives to use this year’s Continuing Resolution budget to further weaken CWA regulations.

The GOP’s CR – the money bill that will keep the government running through September 30 – includes language on page 276, Section 1747, lines 12-18 that would deny funding to the Environmental Protection Agency to implement guidelines needed to enforce the Clean Water Act.

“None of the funds made available by this division or any other Act may be used by the EPA to implement, administer, or enforce a change to a rule or guidance document pertaining to the definition of waters under the jurisdiction of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.”

This language was inserted in response to the expected release of guidelines on enforcement of the Clean Water Act by the Office of Management and Budget. The OMB rulemaking is an attempt to restore protections that eroded during the Bush Administration. It is a strategy of last resort by clean water advocates after failing to strengthen the law during the previous, Democratically-controlled Congress.

A handful of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions limit the authority of the EPA to enforce CWA protections. The most significant of these decisions was Rapanos vs. the United States. In a split decision, the court changed the definition of the type of waters the CWA could protect from waters of the United States to a more narrowly defined “navigable waters.” The 2006 ruling resulted in numerous jurisdictional issues that pro-industry lawyers have used to help their clients avoid CWA permitting regulations regardless of public health or habitat concerns.

New York’s Assistant Commissioner for Water Resources James M. Tierney told The New York Times that the court decision creates a big problem. “There are whole watersheds that feed into New York’s drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected.” The EPA says that over 100 million Americans are drinking water that comes from unguarded sources.

Even the Members of Congress cannot use the water fountains on Capitol Hill for fear of contamination – especially lead, according to Natalie Roy, executive director at Clean Water Network. After the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 and the White House in 2008, former Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced legislation to clarify what they said was the original intent of the Clean Water Act – to protect all waters of the United States – (exclusions were made for agriculture and mining) but their efforts never made it into law. “Here is the U.S. Congress, and they can’t pass a bill that would protect the waterways and the headwaters that flow into bigger bodies of water. Common sense calls for them to enforce protections but they are making distinctions because they are being beat up by corporate interests,” Roy said.

Recently, the EPA submitted guidelines to OMB describing which waters should be protected under the CWA in response to inaction on the Hill, a decade of confusing court decisions, and a narrow definition put forth by the Bush White House that forced the EPA to abandon hundreds of pollution investigations and fines. According to a U.S. Congressional investigation, the Bush-era language may have been written with a lawyer-lobbyist representing industry, Virginia Albrecht, to better benefit her clients. “Documents produced to the Committee indicate that the White House significantly weakened guidance issued by the Administration to implement the Supreme Court’s decision in the Rapanos case. These actions appear to have been taken at the behest of J.P. Woodley, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, and Virginia Albrecht, the lobbyist who intervened in the case involving the Santa Cruz River.”

Documents obtained by environmental groups through the Freedom of Information Act show that Albrecht wrote the White House in the fall of 2006 expressing concern over the proposed rules and they were then “pulled back in the face of objections from lobbyists and lawyers” for industry groups, according to The New York Times.

The new OMB guidelines are expected to affirm a broader view of what waters and wetlands should be protected, thereby forcing industry to obtain permits to pollute or fill them.

cont.Some environmentalists fear that industry lobbyists responsible for weakening the... more

JanforGore
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12 months ago
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Environmental Protection Agency pulls coal mine permit

The Obama administration Thursday reversed a Bush-era decision and blocked a bid to... more

lookatmypix
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1 year ago
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49 comments

Required Reading: Report on Impact Investing by J.P. Morgan and The Rockefeller Foundation

The report estimates significant market opportunity for impact investment over the... more

3BLMedia
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1 year ago
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California Sabotage- Prop 23 ( Interactive Video )

Great job on this. This deception cannot stand.

JanforGore
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1 year ago
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0 comments

Reverse 'Tea Bag' Cleans Polluted Drinking Water For Less Than A Cent

Access to clean drinking water is a BIG issue, but with the invention of a... more

bethbot
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1 year ago
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Fracking

So, everyone is aware of the dangers that Fracking is doing to our country... but do... more

KSirys
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1 year ago
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14 comments

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