Water

Old MacDonald Had a Farm . . .

But unfortunately, the farm wasn’t as bucolic as you might imagine, as the NY Times reports: Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the E.P.A. An estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from …

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Delta blues

California’s legislature ended its session Saturday morning without doing anything to address the problems of the Bay-Delta, or more generally of the state’s dysfunctional water governance system.  As Rick explained last month, water was at the top of the agenda this year for both the Republican Governor and the Democratic leaders of the legislature. This …

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Mountaintop removal update: EPA may grow a spine

EPA today announced that it would review 79 pending applications for Clean Water Act section 404 permits for surface coal mining projects in Appalachia (hat tip: Coal Tattoo). This review is good news, and an indication that EPA may be developing a backbone with respect to the effects of mountaintop removal mining on the region’s …

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Travel is Broadening: Idaho & the Wider Reality of Water Supply and Water Waste

They say that travel is broadening.  The recent experience of this Californian in the wilds of Idaho attests to the wisdom of that axiom. Earlier this month, I had to journey to Idaho to attend a conference and give a talk.  While there, I listened with interest as a former Idaho Supreme Court justice and …

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Good fish news of the week

We know that environmentalists in general, and environmental lawyers in particular, typically seem to have nothing but bad news on their minds. So we’re always happy to convey good news when we hear it. This week, it comes out of northern New York, where the USGS reports that wild-spawned Atlantic salmon have been found in …

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Atrazine in drinking water

Atrazine is suddenly very much in the news. Today’s New York Times features a major story about whether the EPA’s current standard for acceptable levels of atrazine in drinking water is tight enough to protect human health. Yesterday’s Peoria Journal carried a story about a class action lawsuit filed in Illinois state court against Syngenta, …

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Surprise! This Was World Water Week

I have to admit that World Water Week slipped by me unnoticed. (I guess I “didn’t get the memo.”) But it’s not too soon to start thinking about next year: The 2010 World Water Week theme will deal with the consequences of water use on the status of the resource itself. Water quality and water …

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Want more mercury? Eat fish

The US Geological Survey yesterday issued a report on mercury contamination in fish and stream beds across the US. The news is not good — at more than one quarter of the sampled sites, mercury levels in fish exceeded EPA’s acceptable standard, which means that it is unhealthy to eat an average amount of those …

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Time for Fundamental Water Reform in California?

Yesterday was a most interesting, and potentially-momentous, day for water policy in California.  Taking center stage at the state Capitol in Sacramento was a joint hearing of California State Senate and Assembly environmental committees to consider a package of bills addressing the chronic environmental ills that have befallen the California Delta and failures in state …

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I’ll gladly tell you Thursday if your beach is safe today…

Each year, NRDC publishes a report on the sometimes-foul state of our beachwater nationwide.  This year’s Testing the Waters analysis shows that people are still regularly swimming in water with unsafe levels of E Coli and other pathogens, and that thousands of people likely get ill every year from a day at the beach.  In the northeast …

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