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local and national features
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Jun 15 2010
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Mining in el Salvador |
Salvadoran community rejects mining in the department of Cabañas, because it would contaminate the water sources in that community. Pacific Rim mine company sues el Salvador for 77 million dollars based on the free trade agreement
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Apr 01 2010
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Keep Nestle Out of the Columbia Gorge |
On Monday, March 29, 2010, Keep Nestle Out of the Gorge, a coalition of environmental and social justice organizations led by the consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch, launched a coordinated campaign to prevent Nestle Waters North America from opening a water bottling facility in Cascade Locks.
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Mar 12 2010
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Desalination and the Alternatives: It's Up to the Community |
Santa Cruz Water Department and Soquel Creek Water District have embarked on a plan for a desalination plant, a highly energy intensive way to increase the water supply. The greenhouse gases that such a plant would produce have inspired opposition. A forum on Thursday, March 18th at Live Oak Elementary School features Bill Kocher from the Santa Cruz Water Department and Debbie Cook, former mayor of Huntington Beach, and author of "Desalination, Energy Down the Drain."
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Jan 18 2010
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Video: Bark Hike To Proposed Nestle Bottling Plant |
Currently, Nestle is proposing a new bottling plant in the town of Cascade Locks on the Columbia River, capturing the pristine water of Oxbow Springs. This video is from the January 2010 Bark Field Trip to the proposed Nestle bottling site.
Hike is led by Loriann Burd of the forest advocacy group Bark and Julia DeGraw, of Food and Water Watch
Food and Water Watch Fact Sheet
24 minute Video Of Bark Hike
Sign the petition!
Article from the Bark Site
Bottling a hundred million gallons annually, Nestle is seeking to turn a profit on our most valuable public resource.
Hike is led by Loriann Burd of the forest advocacy group Bark and Julia DeGraw, of Food and Water Watch
Food and Water Watch Fact Sheet
24 minute Video Of Bark Hike
Sign the petition!
Article from the Bark Site
Bottling a hundred million gallons annually, Nestle is seeking to turn a profit on our most valuable public resource.
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Dec 30 2009
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Mother Jones Article Promotes Corporate Agribusiness Astroturfing |
A poorly researched article on California water, the "New Dust Bowl," is online and appeared in the November-December edition of Mother Jones magazine, a publication known for its investigative reporting. Dan Bacher, an Indybay contributor and editor for Fish Sniffer, critiques the article, stating, "The 'New Dust Bowl' sounds just like a headline from the Sean Hannity Show or Fox 'News' - and the article reads like a propaganda piece for growers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley."
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Nov 19 2009
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Industrial Foam found in Bedford County Creek: Natural Gas Production Contamination Suspected |
Foam has been found in Scheaffer Creek, a tributary of the Juniata River watershed which supplies Pennsylvania's capital. Springs and ponds downhill from Spectra Energy's drilling pads first showed the foam weeks ago. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has not tested for specific chemicals associated with natural gas drilling, and is telling residents that the foam is only laundry soap. Residents are worried that the cancer causing chemical 2-BE is present in their drinking water supplies.
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Nov 17 2009
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Traditional Native Leaders: Hydrofracking must be banned |
Albany, NY—The Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force (HETF), the environmental branch of the traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) government, issued a statement on November 5th calling on New York State to ban the permitting of natural gas drilling. The statement by the Haudenosaunee leaders vowed to exert their treaty rights to ban any hydrofracking on or near their aboriginal territory, and cited threats posed by the proposed drilling not only within the New York City watershed but to clean water around the region, including the Great Lakes which contain a fourth of all potable fresh water in the world.
Additional Information: ShaleShock.org—Shaleshock Citizens Action Alliance | Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force | Onondaga Nation: People of the Hills | Hydraulic-Fracturing | Hydrofracking: Bradford, PA | Make your voice heard on Nov. 19th—Public Hearing | LISTEN: Voices of Dimock | Ruckus Society Training: Learn Important Skills for Gas Activism! | Drilling 101 | The problems with gas drilling | What about the water? | DEC extends shale comment period | Shale drilling concerns evolve | Learning the natural-gas drill | Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program Related: The Indypendent Issue 142: Our Water At Risk
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Nov 08 2009
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The Indypendent Issue 142: Our Water At Risk |
Plans for natural gas drilling in New York State have been widely criticized as dangerous and environmentally irresponsible. Now, the proposal for drilling in the state has come to a head. Jessica Lee reports, “For more than a year, a swelling movement of landowners, politicians, individuals and environmental organizations has been pressuring New York State to strongly regulate — or even ban — a natural gas drilling process that could wreak havoc on the environment.”
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Aug 29 2009
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Poised to Steal Sacramento's Water, Nestle Moves to Sacramento |
On July 26, with a brief back page article, the Sacramento Bee broke the story that Nestle Waters is coming to Sacramento. A glowing article in the Business Journal and a critical article in the News and Review followed, and then the story was mostly forgotten.
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Aug 15 2009
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Mountaintop Removal Protested At EPA |
On August 14, opponents of mountaintop removal coal mining, some with stories of their own families and lands being harmed by this practice gathered at the EPA's headquarters to demand that that the EPA stop approving these utterly destructive mines. West Virginia residents told shocking stories of family members sickened with cancer and other diseases from the poisoned water these mines left behind. Read More, Pics & Audio
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Aug 04 2009
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Connecting New York's Waters With It's Residents |
More than 8 million people live in New York City, only a fraction have access to the waters. This article is about the Estuary Education Series presented by the Lower East Side Ecology Center.
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Jul 28 2009
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Pdx City Council to Consider Water Treatment Plant Wednesday |
Portland City Council will consider this week a proposal to build a water treatment plant (LT2) for our pristine Bull Run water. The plan is, we are told, designed to address a US EPA requirement that all drinking water in the US be treated/filtered for Cryptosporidium. While this cookie cutter approach will likely add to the safety of water in other cities, it is not appropriate in Portland because our Bull Run system supplies water with virtually no possibility of contamination. Cryptosporidium in a form that is lethal to humans has never been found in the Bull Run water system. There has been no demonstrated need for treatment/filtration.
The construction of a water treatment plant will be very expensive, $385 million, all of it to be paid for by the city water users. The $385 million would be financed via the issuance of bonds; interest payments due and paid for by water users would increase that figure to close to $1 billion dollars.
Alliance for Democracy has joined others in calling for the Portland city council to postpone a decision until later in August, and to hold public meetings scheduled it a time when citizens can attend. Ask the Portland city council now to postpone a decision until the public can gain knowledge of what is at stake and can get their voices heard. In addition to the letter below from Oregon Wild, please see the editional comment by the Oregonian where they write "The best solution, of course, is the one that would cost nothing: Leave Portland's water alone."
[Background Article:
http://friendsofreservoirs.org/background.html]
The construction of a water treatment plant will be very expensive, $385 million, all of it to be paid for by the city water users. The $385 million would be financed via the issuance of bonds; interest payments due and paid for by water users would increase that figure to close to $1 billion dollars.
Alliance for Democracy has joined others in calling for the Portland city council to postpone a decision until later in August, and to hold public meetings scheduled it a time when citizens can attend. Ask the Portland city council now to postpone a decision until the public can gain knowledge of what is at stake and can get their voices heard. In addition to the letter below from Oregon Wild, please see the editional comment by the Oregonian where they write "The best solution, of course, is the one that would cost nothing: Leave Portland's water alone."
[Background Article:
http://friendsofreservoirs.org/background.html]
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Jul 05 2009
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Right Wing Rally for Water Declares It's "Fish vs. People" |
There is a massive campaign underway to “turn on the pumps” and deliver additional water to corporate agribusiness in the western Central Valley. Agribusiness interests and their allies claim environmental and water activists care more about fish than people and are demanding more water, now!Corporate agriculture’s campaign is being run by Burson-Marsteller (B-M), the astroturfing Public Relations firm that has been hired by the California Latino Water Coalition. MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow, in a March telecast, called B-M “the PR firm from hell” and said it had been hired to improve the “image” of AIG, the company that has received $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money. B-M has also represented the private security firm Blackwater, Union Carbide in the Bhopal India incident, and Babcock & Wilcox, manufacturers of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Read More
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Apr 27 2009
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Earth Day Actions See Celebration, Clean-Up, Concern |
Earth Day 2009 was cause for celebration with festivals in Sunnyvale and Santa Cruz, but also cause for concern. While elementary school students in the East Bay cleaned up pollution along the Albany waterfront, university students at Stanford addressed the problem of access to water in Africa. More than 60 students carried water in buckets across Stanford's campus to bring attention to the fact that daily clean water access is not a reality for 1.1 billion people around the world. Read More | | | Related: So Pac R/R blesses Ashland Earthday w/poison! | Oly Celebrates Earth Day
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Apr 18 2009
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Paul Watson: We Need to Stop Eating the Oceans |
Captain Paul Watson writes: The Oceans are like the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg. As long as it was alive it laid a golden egg each day but then the greedy farmer decided to kill it to get all the gold inside and found nothing and the Goose laid no more golden eggs because it was dead.... We humans have waged an intensive and ruthless exploitation on practically every species of fish in the sea and they are disappearing. If we don't put an end to industrialized fishing vessels and heavy gear very soon, we will kill the oceans and in so doing, we will kill ourselves.