By Douglas Main
New research has identified hotspots in the US with concerning levels of water quality and poor access to clean drinking water, revealing that Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Washington had the most water quality violations across the board.
By Douglas Main
Citing health concerns, newly appointed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this week that he will direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop recommending that states add fluoride to their water, and will convene a federal taskforce of independent health experts to study the health risks presented by the practice while establishing a new “optimal” level.
By Douglas Main
Utah has become the first US state to ban the decades-old practice of adding fluoride to public water supplies. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed the new law on Thursday, prohibiting fluoridation starting May 7.
By Douglas Main
A newly released trove of data reveals widespread pollution of US tap water with more than 320 chemical contaminants, including industrial chemicals and farm-related pollutants.
By Douglas Main
Opposition to the US practice of adding fluoride to drinking water supplies has been growing as more evidence accumulates linking fluoride exposure to potential harmful brain impacts in children. Now, the future of the practice could be in doubt, with Thursday’s confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).
US environmental regulators are planning to change allowable levels of a weedkiller tied to reproductive health problems to a level critics say discounts years of documented health risks — and potentially marks a new battlefront within the Trump administration.
By Carey Gillam
Nearly 30 million people are living in areas of the US with limited water supplies as the country faces growing concerns over both water availability and quality, according to a new assessment by government scientists.
By Nina Elkadi
Kathy Stockdale and her husband have spent almost 50 years working the land in central Iowa. As a family farmer raising corn and soybeans, Stockdale knows how to deal with harsh weather, poor crop prices, and an array of other challenges that come with a making a living in agriculture.
But the operation she has spent a lifetime cultivating now faces a threat unlike any Stockdale has previously faced: Developers are planning to carve through her property with a pipeline carrying hazardous CO2 gas from ethanol plants, and there is little she can do to stop them.
The pipeline would run a mere 700 feet from Stockdale’s front doorstop and would create a barrier between the home she shares with her husband and the nearby home where her son lives. The farm’s soils and wetlands would be forever altered by the pipeline intrusion, and if the pipeline were to rupture, the damage could be catastrophic, Stockdale fears.
“It consumes your thoughts. You don’t sleep. You ask any of the landowners who have been fighting this, it’s been hard, it’s been stressful,” she said.
The Stockdales are among many farm families in Iowa and four other Midwestern states fighting to kill the pipeline, which was proposed three years ago by Summit Carbon Solutions (SCS) as the “world’s largest carbon capture and storage project.” SCS had initially planned to start operating the 2,500-mile pipeline network, dubbed the Midwest Carbon Express, this year. But opposition across the rural Midwest has delayed the project.
By Keith Schneider
BERNE, Minn. – It was a hot afternoon in mid-July and 60-year-old Brian Bennerotte was making a pilgrimage of sorts, navigating a shotgun-straight, gravel road south of Minneapolis on a journey through a landscape stitched with crop and livestock farms as far as the eye can see.
Bennerotte is one of only three surviving members of a family who farmed for three generations along a mile-long stretch of County Road B. As a long-haul truck driver, Bennerotte rarely gets back here. But with a visitor at his side, he finds his way.
From the passenger seat of a rented vehicle he scans both sides of the road, then points to a dust-scoured barn leaning into the wind. The building is all that remains of his family’s farmstead, which once encompassed 200 acres and a home large enough for Bennerotte’s parents to raise five boys and a girl.
Down the road a bit further, he recognizes neighboring properties: There is the Glarner farm, and the Spreiter farm and the Serie farm. All are connected by circumstances of geography, topography, agriculture, and social commerce.
All are also joined by disease and death.
Among the four families who lived for decades along County Road B, 12 people developed cancer and seven died. Bennerotte was one of three people who developed lymphoma. The disease nearly killed him in 1983 when he was 20 years old. His father and three brothers would not survive their own bouts with cancer.
For some, County Road B has a different name: They call it Cancer Road.
“Every family along here was affected. Every one,” said Bennerotte.
Minnesota, long known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes, is a heralded haven for people and wildlife alike, a state rich in natural resources.
But now, a nickel mine proposed for northern Minnesota poses a threat to the stability of precious wetland ecosystems, according to critics trying to block the project. Though backers of the mine claim it will be an environmentally friendly operation that provides crucial material for the production of electric vehicle batteries, challengers say the mine could actually create more environmental problems than it will solve.
The battle illustrates one of many challenges arising as the Biden administration pushes for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and toward so-called clean energy. In May, the Biden Administration paused the environmental review process for an Arizona copper mine in the face of similar concerns from Indigenous tribes about what the mine there might do to water quality.
“We’re not opposed to mining, but we have to ensure that these activities do not endanger our natural environment or our Indigenous communities,” said Kelly Applegate, commissioner of natural resources for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. A community of Mille Lacs members live near the site designated for the Minnesota mine, which would sit just outside the tiny town of Tamarack.
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