The EPA is facing two separate challenges from environmental groups over its water rule that narrows the ability of states to veto energy infrastructure projects such as oil and gas pipelines if they adversely affect water quality.
The world’s most relied-upon renewable energy source isn’t wind or sunlight, but water. Last year, the world’s hydropower capacity reached a record 1,308 gigawatts (to put this number in perspective, just one gigawatt is equivalent to the power produced by 1.3 million race horses or 2,000 speeding Corvettes). Utilities throughout the globe rely upon hydropower to generate electricity because it is cheap, easily stored and dispatched, and produced with no fuel combustion, meaning it won’t release carbon dioxide or pollutants the way power plants burning fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas do.
n article in the local newspaper caught Andrea Amico’s eye in May 2014. It reported that one of the three drinking-water wells at a sprawling business and industrial park nearby was shut down because of high levels of chemical contamination.
“Instantly, my heart sank,” says the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, woman. Amico recalls her reaction to the news: “My husband works there and he drinks water all day, and my two kids go to daycare there and they drink water all day.”
She’d never heard of the substances tainting the tap water—Portsmouth was one of the first communities in the US to discover these chemicals in public drinking water. Amico, who holds a master’s degree in occupational therapy and works in health care, started researching health effects from these contaminants and at first found little information.
Today, the situation has changed.
When the coronavirus pandemic forced classrooms to close this spring, Leticia Garcia’s family in Fairfax County, Virginia, quickly ran short of money. Garcia cleans schools for a living and, with her hours sharply reduced, found herself at home with her two daughters.
She cut their cell phone service to keep the water, gas and electricity on. Now, only Garcia and her son, who helps pay the utility bills, have working phones.
Less than a week before Christmas in 2016, the State Water Resources Control Board held a single public hearing in our community. The topic? Draining our community’s water supply and sending it to the Bay Delta.
Not only was the hearing deliberately held when our community’s attention was focused on the holiday — it was the only local hearing the Water Board held in Merced before adopting its ill-conceived Bay Delta Water Quality Control Plan SED.
The cost of buying cases of bottled water for cooking and drinking is adding up for residents of Earlimart, where a contaminated well became the main source of tap water for more than 8,000 people there in late May.
The state Water Resources Control Board that is responsible for drinking water has a program to provide financial assistance for bottled water to help communities in crisis. It has not been available in Earlimart — and it is unclear why.
For the past two decades, dams have been falling across the United States in a bid to reverse a legacy of destruction of fish and their habitat. American Rivers, a nonprofit advocacy organization, estimates that 1,200 dams were dismantled nationwide from 1999 to 2019, including major dams on the Elwha and White Salmon Rivers in Washington State.
Hector Gastelum has been censured by the Otay Water District Board of Directors for posting controversial comments on social media. Again.
In 2017, the water district censured Gastelum and removed him from all committees because of a tweet that described Muslim people as “subhuman scum.”
This time, Gastelum’s censure is the consequence of a racist post criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement.
South San Joaquin Valley farmers have a reason to celebrate this week: Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives appropriated $200 million to fix the Friant-Kern Canal. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, Chairwoman of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, attributed the allocation to the advocacy of Rep. T.J. Cox.
More than 350 facilities nationwide have taken advantage of a temporary Environmental Protection Agency rule that lets companies forgo monitoring their water pollution during the pandemic.
