Food & Water Watch Archives

Food & Water Watch

November 30, 2023

US push to turn farm manure into renewable energy draws concerns

By Keith Schneider

AMES, IOWA – In a gathering that drew the attendance of both farmers and Wall Street financiers, US regulators joined with oil giant Chevron at a November conference here to promote what backers promise will be a monumental breakthrough – systemic changes that would turn polluting agricultural waste into a source of renewable energy that replaces fossil fuels and slows climate change.

Speakers at the conference, which was hosted by Iowa State University and co-sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture, assured attendees that the answers to agricultural and climate woes can be found in technology that already exists: Key, according to conference promoters, is the rapid expansion of large methane biodigesters, which capture manure waste from the nation’s cattle, hog and poultry operations and convert it into a harvest of both public and private riches.

Water and air would be cleaner and farmers could see billions of dollars in new farm income, among other benefits, according to backers.

“It can provide a substantial portion of global energy needs,” Rudi Roeslein , CEO of Roeslein Alternative Energy, told the attendees. His company has built farm-based methane systems around the country that produce enough fuel to displace six million gallons of diesel fuel and 80,000 cars. “If we do this on a large scale in the US we could generate $63.6 billion worth of revenue for farmers around the country.”

Roeslein’s company promises on its website to “restore a balance” to farmland “by using the sustainably harvested biomass to create renewable natural gas.”

Chevron promotes its investment in manure biodigestion as “finding inspiration in nature.”

“I’m really excited about the innovation in this space,” Lisa Schulte Moore, a professor and co-director of the Bioeconomy Institute at Iowa State, said in an interview. “The renewable natural gas market is providing economic incentives for better management of manure.”

But critics argue that the emergence of an alliance of Big Ag, Big Oil, and Big Government to generate energy from livestock waste is ripe with peril. They say that air pollutants and waste discharged from farms and from already existing farm-based biodigesters receive scant federal and state oversight. They fear that without strict regulation, manure digesters could make water and air pollution worse, not better. Industrial-sized farms, including concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), already are one of the nation’s largest sources of water pollution, and among the principal causes of air pollution.

November 8, 2023

PFAS industry spent over $110 million on recent lobbying, report finds

By Shannon Kelleher

Chemical industry advocates have spent more than $110 million in recent years on lobbying efforts that included opposing laws designed to reduce the use of, and exposure to, a group of toxic chemicals known as PFAS, according to a new study.

Lobbying expenditures from 2019 to 2022 undermined toxic chemicals legislation that would impact industries that make and use per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), according to Food & Water Watch, which published the report on Tuesday. During that period, only four of more than 130 bills introduced by Congress to help clean up PFAS became law.

“There’s a whole disproportionate amount of money being spent by the opposing side to try to avoid any kind of meaningful action,” said Amanda Starbuck, research director of Food & Water Watch. “If we want to stop the production and the contamination from PFAS, even before we get into the cleanup part of it, we really need some comprehensive legislation. I think this report shows what’s standing in the way.”

PFAS, also called “forever chemicals,” do not break down naturally and are found in about 83% of US waterways, according to a 2022 analysis. About 97% of Americans have PFAS in their blood, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Exposure to the chemicals has been linked to numerous health problems, including thyroid, kidney, and testicular cancer, as well as ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, and hypertension during pregnancy. Last March, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced proposed drinking water standards for six PFAS chemicals.

The companies 3M, DuPont, and others agreed to settlements over the summer that will provide communities with billions of dollars to test for PFAS and remove them from drinking water.

To investigate how much money is potentially being used to fight PFAS legislation, researchers dug into a database of lobbying disclosure forms made available by the US House of Representatives. The team focused on six top PFAS manufacturers, the companies 3M, Archroma, Chemours, Daikin, Honeywell, and Solvay, as well as Dow and DuPont, which historically made or used PFAS, and the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

The PFAS companies paid 28 lobbyists to fight a 2019 bill that would have designated two major types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund program, the report found. The PFAS Action Act passed the House but was killed by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, where a majority of current committee members accepted campaign contributions from PFAS manufacturers or the ACC, the report found. The committee’s Democratic majority received about $70,000 from top chemical companies from 2019 to 2022, while the Republican minority received nearly $400,000, according to the report.