Behold the “No Kings” protests last month. Millions of Americans in the streets opposing the Trump administration’s reckless governing principles. Thousands of communities expressing the solemn right to push back against a clear and present danger. At least for the time being. For real.
The US Senate is poised to vote on a resolution intended to eventually open a long-disputed copper mine close to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeast Minnesota, triggering protests from environmentalists who fear the action will diminish the government’s ability to protect America’s cleanest waters, most exquisite forests, and wildest natural landscapes.
Three years ago Chris Jones was a highly regarded research engineer at the University of Iowa, where he directed stream pollution monitoring work and published details about the state’s dismal water quality in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Jones also authored a university-sponsored blog, where he regularly identified agriculture as the primary source of the state’s calamitous water pollution.
Michigan issued new requirements to the state’s big livestock and poultry producers to more safely manage the brown tide of manure they spread each year on farm fields. The state’s Farm Bureau and large livestock operations vow to fight.
Even though it delivers airtight data and analysis essential for understanding and managing the risks industrial societies pose to water, land, and health, the US Geological Survey is a federal science agency that rarely attracts public notice.
By Keith Schneider
President Donald Trump’s campaign to carve up federal environmental agencies and paralyze statutes that cleared the air, cleaned US waters, and protected wildlands marks the opening of MAPA, the new era to Make America Polluted Again.
SUNNYSIDE, Washington – Waters from the snowpack of the Cascade Mountains support orchards, vineyards and dairies here in the Yakima Valley of eastern Washington State, boosting a flourishing farm economy and helping to stock store grocery shelves nationwide.
WEST BEND, Iowa – People searching for ways to limit the toll industrialized American agriculture takes on communities, land, and water may want to make a visit to Clear Creek Acres in northern Iowa.
EDON, OH – For 60 years, this one stoplight Ohio town has been known as a place where time appears to stand still. With more than 400 Amish residents settled in and around the rural community that straddles the Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan state lines, it has been common to see large families traveling by horse-drawn black buggies to and from farms where they milk dairy cows and grow corn.
A coalition of environmental organizations faced off against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in federal appellate court on Thursday in the latest skirmish in a long-running battle over the agency’s regulatory approach to water contamination connected to industrial agricultural operations.