WATERSHED SEMINARS
The National Water Health Project has announced free training sessions for watershed groups: 6/11, Developing a Major Donor Program will be at the County Commons Bldg in Frisco; 6/29, Getting Your Community Involved and Utilizing Your Volunteers will be at the Aspinall/Wilson Center on the Western State College campus in Gunnison; 7/14 is a repeat of the Major Donor Program at WSC; 8/12, Advanced Technical Training at WSC; and 9/9, “What would it look like if??” A look at the possible future role and functions of watershed groups will be in Glenwood Springs. <http://www.coloradowater.org/NWHP.htm>
COURT RULING COULD POKE HOLES IN FEDERAL DAMS
A federal judge decided federal dams can’t let downstream flows dry up, meaning hundreds of irrigation dams in Colorado and the West will have to release some water year-round. The flows, known as bypass flows because they bypass the dam, are usually small, but maintain fish, plants and wetlands. Denver Rocky Mountain News; May 4 <http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_2858825,00.html>
COLORADO OFFICIALS PRAISE CONSERVATION FOR BUOYING UP RESERVOIR LEVELS
Colorado officials say increased levels in the state’s reservoirs have more to do with conservation efforts of residents than the slight improvement in the state’s snowpack, which provides 80 percent of the state’s fresh water. Denver Rocky Mountain News; May 18 <http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_2893962,00.html>
COLORADO WATER STUDY AWASH IN SKEPTICISM, SUSPICION
The state’s review of Colorado’s eight major river basins has Western Slope environmentalists and ranchers fearful that it will fuel new growth and county officials afraid it will set the stage for a state-backed water raid. Denver Rocky Mountain News; May 2 <http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_2851766,00.html>
NEW REPORT PREDICTS WATER SHORTAGE FOR METRO DENVER
Denver and parts of the Front Range could lack water for 100,000 families by 2030, according to a landmark report that said the shortfall could be even greater if current plans for water development fail to materialize. Denver Rocky Mountain News; 5/6 <http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2864167,00.html>
COLORADO CITY HOLDS FATE OF WATER DEAL
The fate of Colorado Springs’ $900 million, 43-mile water pipeline rests with Aurora’s willingness to leave 465 million gallons of Arkansas River water in the river, rather than storing it in its Spinney Mountain Reservoir. Denver Post; May 24 <http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2167939,00.html>
COLORADO CITY SIGNS ON TO WATER PACT
The Aurora City Council signed on to the five-way pact with Colorado Springs, Fountain, Pueblo and the Southeast Colorado Water Conservancy District, clearing the way for Colorado Springs’ $900 million Southern Delivery System. Denver Rocky Mountain News; May 28 <http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2921279,00.html>
COLORADO DROUGHT DENIES FISH WATER AGAIN
Because of ongoing drought, Western Slope reservoirs in Colorado don’t have any extra Colorado River water to release to scour habitat for four species of endangered fish for the fifth year in a row. Denver Rocky Mountain News; May 24 <http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_2909356,00.html>
TALKS CONTINUE IN NEW MEXICO WATER RIGHTS SUIT
A federal judge warned non-Indian parties to the decades-old Aamodt water-rights lawsuit that they may not be pleased with a judicial decision based on New Mexico law that gives those who used the water first senior water rights. Santa Fe New Mexican; May 28 <http://www.santafenewmexican.com/main.asp?SectionID=3D2&SubSectionID=3D6&ArticleID=3D45190>
ALBUQUERQUE OFFICIALS PUT CITY, COUNTY ON WATER BUDGET
City and county officials put together an advisory board to quantify how much renewable water Albuquerque has in a year and will create a budget on how that water can be consumed. Albuquerque Tribune; May 28 <http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news04/052704_news_water.shtml>
NEW MEXICO TRIBES’ WATER SETTLEMENT NOT LIKELY TO GET FUNDING THIS YEAR
Congress probably won’t fund a regional water system in New Mexico that’s the core of a plan to settle a 40-year-old suit over tribal water rights. Santa Fe New Mexican; May 27 <http://www.santafenewmexican.com/main.asp?SectionID=3D2&SubSectionID=3D6&ArticleID=3D45165>
RAIN DID LITTLE TO DAMPEN DROUGHT IN UTAH
Utah’s rivers and streams are running below 50 percent of an average year and Utah’s reservoirs which normally gain 300,000 acre feet of water in May from melting snowpack, gained only 7,900 acre feet this year. Salt Lake Tribune; June 2 <http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06022004/utah/171977.asp>
UTAH COUNTIES BATTLE OVER NEW DAM, WATER AND GROWTH
A proposed dam and 17,000 acre-foot reservoir near Price in eastern Utah would be one of the last to take advantage of federal subsidies set up for small farmers, but local critics say it would threaten their existing reservoir to supply growth in neighboring Sanpete County, south of Salt Lake City. High Country News; May 10 <http://www.headwatersnews.org/HCN.utahdam.html>
UTAH LAW STIFLES ANY REASON FOR IRRIGATORS TO CONSERVE
Utah farmers are under intense pressure to use all their allotted water, despite the sixth year of drought, from a change in water law passed by the 2002 Legislature. Deseret News; May 27 <http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595066072,00.html>
SALT LAKE GETS EVER SMALLER WITH DROUGHT
The sixth year of drought in Utah has shrunk the Great Salt Lake to its lowest level since 1970. Deseret News; May 19 <http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595064152,00.html>
WYOMING GOVERNOR ASKS EARLY FOR FEDERAL DROUGHT AID
Gov. Dave Freudenthal asked U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman to declare two counties in northeast Wyoming drought disaster areas and to keep the request for federal aid open. Casper Star-Tribune; May 28 <http://www.casperstartribune.net/news/wyoming/11dfb3e74c08a81087256ea1008046a2.txt>
WESTERN DROUGHT COULD BE RETURN TO NORMAL, HARSHER CLIMATE
Research into drought cycles over the past 800 years suggests that the relatively wet weather in the West over the past 100 years was a fluke and that exploding growth in the area was based on a gross miscalculation of the region’s water supply. New York Times; May 2 <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/national/02DROU.html>
WESTERN DROUGHT CYCLE MADE WORSE BY CLIMATE CHANGE
Tree rings show that 2002 was the driest year in Arizona in the past 1,400 years, and when coupled with the explosion of growth and development since 1976, creates a dire picture for water in the West. New York Times; May 10 <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/opinion/10MON5.html?n=3DTop%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials>
WEST MUST RECOGNIZE WATER LIMITS, COSTS
Drought and development are bringing an end to the West’s too-cavalier attitude about its water, and if the region is to continue to prosper, it’s past time. Pat Williams, Center for the Rocky Mountain West; May 14 <http://www.headwatersnews.org/pat051404.html>
FIVE YEARS OF DROUGHT MAY PUSH ARIZONA CITIES TO CONSERVE
Until now, Tucson has been the only Arizona city to do something about the pending water shortage, but that may change; Phoenix will lose all its Colorado River water before California has to give up a drop. Arizona Daily Star; May 4 <http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=3D86617>
ARIZONA GOVERNOR CALLS FOR WATER CONSERVATION
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano said the state is in no imminent danger of losing its share of Colorado River water, although federal officials have warned they may declare a water emergency and cut off Arizona first. Arizona Daily Sun (AP); May 14 <http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=3D87161>
FEDERAL MANAGERS NEED TO SET EXPECTATIONS FOR GRAND CANYON RIVER, DAM
Management of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon will never be settled as long as studies are at cross-purposes and as long as federal managers consider the differences irreconcilable. Arizona Daily Sun; May 21 <http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=3D87585>
ARIZONA RANCHER FIGHTS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM JAIL
Wally Klump went to jail rather than remove his 28 head of cattle from a BLM grazing allotment in Arizona, saying the federal government is trying to drive him off the land to get his water rights. New York Times; May 9 <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/national/09WATE.html>
RAREST TROUT RECOVERY PLAN APPROVED
The Forest Service has approved a plan to “restore what wildlife officials call the rarest trout in America” to 11 miles of a Sierra Nevada creek after first removing nonnative fish, says the North County Times, AP 5/5. The planned use of chemicals to remove the non-native fish prompted a lawsuit “that delayed the process for a year while a federal environmental impact statement was prepared.” The new plan would use “a less-damaging formulation of the fish poison Rotenone” to remove non-native fish and restore Paiute cutthroat trout, a reintroduction that the USFWS contends would “also help the rare mountain yellow-legged frog and Yosemite toad.”
CALIFORNIA WATER DISTRICT APPROVES PLAN TO PAY FARMERS FOR IRRIGATION WATER
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California approved a new plan that will pay farmers to rotate their crops so irrigation water can be diverted to residents in coastal communities. <http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-13/s_23857.asp>
WATER USE REMAINS STABLE
A report from the USGS shows that in 2000, Americans used 408 million gallons of water/day, a number that has remained fairly stable since 1985. The report finds power generation makes up 48% of usage, irrigation is 34% of the total and public supply for residential, business and industrial accounts for 11% of daily water usage while self-supplied livestock, mining, aquaculture, domestic wells and industrial users, taken together, account for 7%. <http://water.usgs.gov/wateruse/>
KLAMATH GROUNDWATER LEVELS FALLING
A Bush administration policy of paying farmers to irrigate crops with well water has resulted in a Klamath Basin water table that has dropped 20 feet in places says the Oregonian 5/2. The Bureau of Reclamation plans on spending “$1.6 million for more well water this summer” to maintain both irrigation deliveries and minimum flows in the Klamath River for threatened salmon but that may still not be enough if irrigators along the CA-OR border “take their full” allotment.
DROUGHT DRIES UP BUSINESSES IN MONTANA COUNTY
For the first time in 60 years, Beaverhead County irrigators won’t get water from Clark Canyon reservoirs, forcing ranchers to sell off their herds and keeping farmers from planting. Billings Gazette; May 30 <http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=3D1&display=3Drednews/2004/05/30/build/state/35-drought.inc>
IDAHO WATER LAW MUST CHANGE WITH TIME
Trout Unlimited’s proposal to allow willing Idaho irrigators to lease their water for instream flows would require a change in the state’s century-old water laws, but it’s a necessary adaptation. Idaho Falls Post Register; May 25 <http://www.headwatersnews.org/pr.tuwater.html>
POLLSTERS SAY FISH NOT A FACTOR IN PRESIDENTIAL RACE
Pollsters say President Bush’s proposed change to include hatchery salmon when deciding whether endangered wild salmon deserve federal protection won’t sway voters in Washington and Oregon where jobs and Iraq are bigger issues. Washington Post; May 7 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6872-2004May6.html>
CRITICS DISAGREE ON BUSH’S PROPOSED SALMON POLICY
Some experts say fall chinook could be delisted under the Bush administration’s plan to include hatchery salmon in delisting considerations; others say the proposal will spark a hot debate that won’t be resolved for years to come. Idaho Statesman; May 2 <http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=3D/20040502/NEWS0105/405020339/1002/NEWS01>
PLAN FOR SALMON DELISTING DENOUNCED
Oregon’s governor has “denounced the Bush administration plan to delist imperiled salmon species by counting hatchery fish when determining endangerment as a threat to “more than a decade of habitat restoration work and Oregon’s quality of life” says the Oregonian 5/5. In a policy speech, Gov. Kulongonski raised concerns “that such a policy will put too much emphasis on the numbers rather than the overall health of the landscape and water quality.
SPECIES FIGHT HEATS UP OVER CHANGE IN SALMON POLICY
The Bush administration’s plan to include hatchery fish in salmon counts bears a remarkable resemblance to that proposed three years ago by Mark Rutzick, now legal adviser to the National Marine Fisheries Service, when he was the timber industry’s top lawyer. New York Times; May 9 <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/national/09SALM.html>
BUSH ADMINISTRATION WILL CONTINUE TO PROTECT WILD SALMON
Responding to a hurricane of criticism over its plans to count hatchery fish along with wild fish in determining which species to protect under the Endangered Species Act, the Bush administration is now pledging to safeguard wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest. It announced that “conservation of naturally spawning salmon and the ecosystems upon which they depend” will remain the central focus of its policy and that 25 of 26 salmon runs currently listed as endangered or threatened will likely remain so. The surprising announcement was met with guarded praise from enviros, who said the true test will come when the full policy is announced later this month. Business and development groups, in sharp contrast, reacted with outrage. Attorneys for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has filed suit over salmon listings in the past, promised to take the administration back to court over the issue. <http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/108462249658411.xml>
RECOVERY PLAN CAN WAIT, CAN SALMON?
The Bush administration is looking to delay its court ordered rewrite of the biological opinion on recovering Pacific Northwest salmon until after the presidential election says SFGate.com, AP 4/30. Environmental groups are “skeptical” of the need for the requested 6 month delay, contending that it is “much more of an extension than is practically necessary or legally warranted” and said three additional months would allow the government to do “a thorough job.” The extension request comes on the heels of a major policy shift allowing hatchery fish to be counted when considering endangerment, a move that conservationists maintain “would let the federal government off the hook for its responsibility to recover salmon throughout the West Coast” and result in the delisting of some of the 27 species now under review.
BRINGING DOWN THE SNAKE RIVER DAMS
Wild salmon are in serious decline in the Pacific Northwest. More than $3.5 billion has been spent on failed salmon-recovery measures, like trucking salmon around dams. Activists and many biologists say that what we really need to do is leave the salmon in the waterways and take the dams out — specifically, four dams on the lower Snake River in southeastern Washington state. Call on President Bush to save this keystone species by knocking down salmon-damning dams. <http://www.care2.com/go/z/13786>
FEDERAL COURT KEEPS PROTECTIONS IN PLACE FOR WILD STEELHEAD
Bonneville, power marketer for the hydropower projects, wants cutbacks on the amount of water it spills over the dams to speed fish to the ocean in July and August. The Umatillas are on record to sue if Bonneville goes through with the plan. The big dams that have turned the Columbia into a series of slackwater pools have been bones of contention since the salmon runs started to dwindle in the 1970s. Fish ladders enable adult fish to travel upstream around the dams. But getting the young smolts downriver without running them through turbines that leave them stunned and vulnerable to predation has repeatedly proved difficult. <http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=3D839>
TRIBE, IDAHO UNVEIL HISTORIC WATER PACT
The historic agreement between the Nez Perce Tribe, state and federal officials and irrigators includes the tribe giving up all claims to water in the Snake River Basin, but approval from Congress, the President, the Idaho Legislature and the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee must be obtained by March 2005. Idaho Statesman; May 16 <http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=3D/20040516/NEWS01/405160330>
NO REVIEW OF METHOW CASE
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a lower-court decision that allows the Forest Service to close irrigation ditches across national forest land in Methow Valley, WA “to provide additional water to help endangered fish runs” says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 5/3. “We consider this a great victory for protecting the wild,” said Earthjustice of the case, which began when irrigators sued to avoid the cost of upgrading their antiquated and highly wasteful irrigation ditches. Earlier, an appeals court had rejected the irrigator’s argument that “the Forest Service did not have the right under the ESA to deny long-standing water rights to farmers.”
IGNORING SCIENCE ON HYDRO DAM
Seven conservation groups sued the U.S. Forest Service for issuing an environmentally damaging hydropower license for a hydroelectric project on the North Umpqua River, according to the Oregon News Review, 5/25. For more than 50 years, the North Umpqua Hydroelectric Project has harmed species and habitat within the North Umpqua River basin and on Umpqua National Forest lands. According to the lawsuit filed by Earthjustice, the Forest Service ignored the advice of its own scientists when it agreed to the issuance of a new operating license for the project without requiring adequate measures to protect wildlife and their habitat. “Conservationists are merely asking that the North Umpqua River be managed according to scientists’ recommendations,” said Kristen Boyles, an Earthjustice attorney representing the conservation groups in court. <http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=3D844>
IDAHO FARMERS WONDER IF WATER WILL LAST THROUGH HARVEST
Idaho’s runoff is a month ahead of schedule after a warm March turned plentiful snowpack into record lows. Spokane Spokesman-Review (AP); May 5 <http://www.spokesmanreview.com/business-news-story.asp?date=3D050404&ID=3Ds1516367&cat=3Dsection.business>
IDAHO IRRIGATORS MUST YIELD WATER IN MIDST OF DROUGHT
Idaho irrigation companies are looking for ways to supply as much as 100,000 acre feet of water in increased flows for salmon in the Snake River and their share of 427,000 acre feet for the Nez Perce Tribe. Idaho Statesman; May 19 <http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=3D/20040519/NEWS01/405190313>
WILD SALMON PRICES BOOSTED BY CAMPAIGNS PROMOTING HEALTH, TASTE, ENVIRONMENT
Sitting on his boat, the Dragnet, Loren Dixson had to think back to when his daughter was a baby to remember a time when prices for his salmon were this good. <http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-06/s_23526.asp>
WETTER WORLD COUNTERS GREENHOUSE GASES, SAYS SCIENTISTS
Australian scientists have found the Earth may be more resilient to global warming than first thought, and they say a warmer world means a wetter planet, encouraging more plants to grow and soak up greenhouse gases. <http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-13/s_23835.asp>
MEXICO FACES COMING WATER CRISIS
A dam planned for the Huentitan Canyon northeast of Guadalajara, Mexico, is becoming a flashpoint of political controversy and a grim illustration of the water problems spreading across the country. Guadalajara, like many Mexican cities, has grown sharply in population without adding any new water sources, and now faces periodic rationing and a growing crisis. Desperate to create a new source, it has proposed a dam in the canyon that critics say is poorly placed, with no plan for how to purify the highly polluted water of the Santiago River. For more than a decade, Mexico has not invested in water development, and now the aquifers that provided much of its drinking water are polluted or dry, crumbling municipal drainage systems waste some 40 percent of the water that flows through them, and virtually every city with a population over 100,000 has problems finding clean water. President Vicente Fox has called water an issue of “national security.” <http://www.gristmagazine.com/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=3D2432>
AFRICAN EXPERTS MEET TO NEGOTIATE NEW AGREEMENT TO REPLACE 75-YEAR OLD NILE RIVER COLONIAL TREATY
Experts from African countries that share the Nile River’s waters began another round of talks intended to help draw up a new agreement on how the vast resource is utilized. The Nile Basin supplies water to about 300 million people. <http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-01/s_24387.asp>
ONE THIRD OF WORLD’S POPULATION WILL SUFFER FROM CHRONIC WATER SHORTAGES
The facts concerning water and sanitation are clear, UNEP Global Environment Outlook reports estimate that in a few decades, approximately one-third of the world’s population will suffer from chronic water shortages; and nearly as much presently do not have access to adequate sanitation facilities. The pressures of a burgeoning human population, especially in the urban areas of the developing world, the expansion of agricultural production and water-intensive industrial development, as well as the impacts of unsustainable human activity have all contributed to the current state of affairs. It is not only a crisis of availability of water, but a crisis of investment and management. <http://allafrica.com/stories/200405040480.html>
REPORT FINDS MINING WASTE CONTAMINATES WATERWAYS
The Spokane River, the Coeur d’Alene River and the Clark Fork have some of the highest concentrations of mine pollution in the nation, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey. The report found that stretches of the three rivers downstream from major mine-polluted Superfund sites in Butte and in Silver Valley, heavy metals in streambed sediments exceed federal guidelines set to protect aquatic life. Mining in the region since the late 1880s has degraded water quality at about 1,600 active and abandoned hard-rock mines, according to the report. <http://www.usgs.gov/features/water_quality_studies2004.html>
WHAT HAPPENS TO DRUGS WHEN THEY LEAVE OUR SYSTEMS?
Every time you swallow a pill, some of that medicine follows a circuitous path through your body, down the toilet, through the sewage treatment plant (where if is often resistant to traditional treatments) and into the nearest river or lake, where it is eventually tapped again for the public drinking water supply. <http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-25/s_23967.asp>
GREAT LAKES TASK FORCE CREATED TO COORDINATE FEDERAL RESTORATION EFFORTS
President Bush signed an Executive Order creating the Great Lakes Interagency Task Force. The Task Force, under the lead of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), brings together ten Agency and Cabinet officers to provide strategic direction on federal Great Lakes policy, priorities and programs. The ten agencies together administer more than 140 different federal programs that help fund and implement environmental restoration and management activities in the Great Lakes basin. At the same time, the President instructed EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt to engage Ohio Governor Bob Taft as Chair of the Council of Great Lakes Governors and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley as Chair of the Great Lakes Cities Initiative to convene a complementary process of regional collaboration. In addition to the ten U.S. agencies, governance of the Great Lakes system is shared with eight U.S. states, more than half a dozen major metropolitan areas, and numerous county, local and Tribal governments. Internationally, governance of the Great Lakes system is shared with Canada. <http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/b1ab9f485b098972852562e7004dc686/81580f4daf79f76685256e980064ee6f?OpenDocument>
SALMON BUFFER ZONES REMAIN FOR NOW
– A federal appeals court has rejected an effort by agribusiness interests to remove a ban on certain pesticides along thousands of miles of salmon-bearing waterways in Oregon, Washington and California says the Eugene Register-Guard 5/6. For now, the ruling that “denied an emergency motion to set aside an injunction banning the use of 2,4-D, diazon and other popular pesticide ingredients” keeps in place buffer zones along waterways known to support salmon, and gives the lower court until May 25 to make a decision on whether the buffer zones should be maintained permanently. <http://www.earthjustice.org/news/display.html?ID=3D841>
IDAHO, MONTANA RIVERS AMONG NATION’S WORST FOR MINING POLLUTION, STUDY SAYS
The Coeur d’Alene watershed in north Idaho and the Clark Fork basin in Montana have some of the nation’s highest concentrations of heavy metals from mining, according to a new federal report. Spokane Spokesman-Review; May 20 <http://www.spokesmanreview.com/allstories-news-story.asp?date=3D052004&ID=3Ds1521032>
EPA RELEASES PLAN TO CLEAN UP WESTERN MONTANA’S CLARK FORK
The EPA released its $120 million final plan to clean up a century of mining waste along 120 miles of Montana’s Clark Fork River, with reclamation requirements that pleased environmentalists. Missoulian; May 5 <http://www.headwatersnews.org/miss.clarkforkplan.html>
THE SCOOP ON BOTTLED WATER AND WATER FILTERS
Concern about unhealthy tap water is driving more and more people to buy the bottled sort, despite the high cost and lack of evidence that bottled varieties are cleaner or safer — not the mention the mounting piles of water-bottle waste. <http://www.gristmagazine.com/possessions/possessions050404.asp?source=3Ddaily>
U.S. LAWMAKERS SEEK TO REMOVE LEAD FROM TAP WATER
U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill Tuesday to eliminate lead in the nation’s drinking water supply after high levels of the toxic metal were found in the capital’s tap water. <http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-05/s_23465.asp>
WAL-MART TO PAY $3.1 MILLION TO SETTLE WATER POLLUTION CHARGES
Wal-Mart has agreed to pay a $3.1 million fine for storm-water runoff violations of the Clean Water Act, in a settlement with the U.S. EPA and the Justice Department — marking the second time it has paid such a fine, after a $1 million penalty in 2001. The company was charged with violations at 24 construction sites in nine states for allegedly failing to request the proper permits, institute runoff-control plans, or install controls to prevent discharge. Storm-water runoff can carry toxic chemicals and sediment that kill fish and destroy aquatic habitat. Wal-Mart pledged to institute training programs for its contractors and improve storm-water procedures at the 200 or so sites a year where it builds its gargantuan stores. The $3.1 million — the largest fine ever levied against a company for such violations — represents 0.001 percent of the $256 billion in sales Wal-Mart reported for the last fiscal year, and will no doubt teach the giant retailer a very important lesson. <http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-13/s_23832.asp>
FACTORY FARMS GETTING SWEETHEART DEAL FROM EPA
Something stinks, and it’s not just the hundreds of thousands of tons of excrement piling up in the nation’s concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) — or factory farms, to the uninitiated. Documents reveal that agribusiness lobbyists and lawyers have been working hand in hand with EPA officials to craft a program that lets factory farms pay a fee — critics call it a “pittance” — to fund monitoring of emissions from their smelly facilities, in exchange for which they receive full immunity from lawsuits under the Clean Air Act. An industry lawyer called it “a very cheap insurance policy” for CAFOs. <http://www.gristmagazine.com/muck/muck051904.asp?source=3Ddaily>
SHRIMP FARMING WREAKS ECO-DESTRUCTION, GROUP SAYS
Shrimp farms are polluting land and oceans, destroying wetlands, and depleting wild fish stocks, wreaking environmental havoc on some of the world’s poorest countries, says the nonprofit Environmental Justice Foundation. The destruction is driven by a get-rich-quick attitude among farmers and aided and abetted by governments and development organizations, said the group. Shrimp farms are frequently located in cleared mangrove forests, and the farming involves a harsh cocktail of antibiotics, fertilizers, herbicides, and other chemicals that pollute wetlands and soil. The EJF report says governments and aid agencies use shrimp farming as a quick and easy way to spur development in poor countries — most of the 50 countries where the farms are located are developing — but they do not plan sufficiently to protect the environment. <http://www.gristmagazine.com/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=[C3D2477> Uranium mining company may face criminal charges for water contamination, Australian minister says – <http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-20/s_24071.asp>
HEAD OF CHINESE CHEMICAL FIRM RESIGNS IN WATER POLLUTION CASE
The president of a chemical company in southwest China has resigned after waste from his plant polluted the water source of a million people, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. <http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-11/s_23675.asp>