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Jackie Filson, jfilson@fwwatch.org, 202-683-2538
Groups Petition EPA to Take Emergency Action On Chronic Groundwater Pollution in Rural Oregon
Oregon officials have failed to meaningfully address drinking water contamination for three decades, may approve a new mega-dairy in the area.
Moments ago, a coalition of public interest groups filed a petition under the Safe Drinking Water Act requesting the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) take emergency action to address groundwater contamination in Morrow and Umatilla Counties. Oregon officials have been unable or unwilling to remedy widespread and dangerous nitrate contamination of critical drinking water resources for almost 30 years. The petition urges EPA to step in as Oregon forges forward with plans to permit yet another massive concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) that would increase nitrogen pollution and exacerbate the current public health threat.
The petition was filed by eight organizations that are members of the Stand Up to Factory Farms coalition: Food & Water Watch, Friends of Family Farmers, WaterWatch of Oregon, Columbia Riverkeeper, Humane Voters Oregon, Animal Legal Defense Fund, Center for Food Safety, and the Center for Biological Diversity, as well as an impacted Hermiston resident.
"Oregon officials have effectively abandoned their responsibility to protect people by doubling down on their failed approach to preventing groundwater contamination, which continues to put control in the hands of the very polluters that have created a pervasive threat to human health," said Tarah Heinzen, Senior Staff Attorney with Food & Water Watch. "The Safe Drinking Water Act fully empowers EPA to take emergency action to protect human health in the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area in these circumstances, and our petition demonstrates that it must."
Drinking water sourced from the Lower Umatilla Basin Groundwater Management Area (LUBGWMA) routinely exceeds safe levels of nitrate contamination, which has well-documented adverse health risks including increasing the risk of a variety of cancers, thyroid disease, "blue-baby syndrome," and reproductive and gestational problems.
"Anybody who looks at the nitrate levels - according to the state's own tests - would be shocked to know the state has let this go on for so long," said Shari Sirkin, Executive Director with Friends of Family Farmers. "We don't need another industrial mega-dairy, particularly now, with historically low milk prices and so many dairies going out of business across the country."
"We will not sit by while industrial mega-dairies treat communities like a hazardous waste dump and sacrifice the health and safety of neighbors in the pursuit of profits," said Amy van Saun, Senior Attorney with Center for Food Safety. "Mega-dairies externalize their significant public health and environmental costs to the people of Oregon, and if our state legislators cannot protect Oregonians, we must enforce our federal laws to protect community drinking water."
"Raising and warehousing cows for milk and meat production -- in extremely unnatural numbers for both the animals and the environment -- is contaminating drinking water in Eastern Oregon," said Cristina Stella, Senior Attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund. "The EPA must act to stop the contamination and regulate factory farms like the industrial polluters that they are."
Oregon reports conclude that mega-dairies and their waste disposal practices are responsible for much of the nitrate pollution in the LUBGWMA's groundwater. Yet, Oregon officials appear to be moving towards approval of yet another massive dairy operation on the site of the failed Lost Valley Farm mega-dairy, which could threaten further contamination of the LUBGWMA.
The petition requests that EPA, at a minimum, provide a safe alternative source of drinking water for the impacted communities so long as dangerous nitrate contamination persists, further monitor drinking water quality and identify the specific entities and land-use practices causing the contamination, and issue orders necessary to begin reducing nitrate loadings and eventually return the area's underground aquifers to a safe and drinkable condition.
See full petition here.
Appendices here.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500Climate Movement Sounds Alarm on Trump Picking 'Big Oil Sellout' JD Vance for VP
"JD Vance will sell out to the highest bidder, whether that's Trump or the fossil fuel industry," said one Sunrise Movement campaigner. "That makes him dangerous."
Climate campaigners reacted to former U.S. President Donald Trump's selection of Sen. JD Vance as his running mate Monday by highlighting the Ohio Republican's climate denial and strong support for the fossil fuel industry—one of his top campaign contributors.
"Like Donald Trump, JD Vance has proven that he will make it a top priority to roll back climate protections while answering to the demands of oil and gas CEOs," Sunrise Movement communications director Stevie O'Hanlon said in a statement. "Vance is one of Congress' biggest recipients of donations from oil companies."
"JD Vance not only flip-flopped on supporting Trump, he flip-flopped on climate," she continued. "He went from expressing concern about climate change before running for the Senate, to voting to gut [Environmentl Protection Agency] protections and denying that there even is a climate change crisis."
O'Hanlon added: "JD Vance will sell out to the highest bidder, whether that's Trump or the fossil fuel industry. That makes him dangerous. Donald Trump was the worst president for climate in U.S. history. JD Vance will empower Donald Trump to enact even worse damage on our planet in a second Trump administration."
Some of Trump's key first-term Cabinet appointees—including Rex Tillerson, his first secretary of state, and Ryan Zinke, who headed the Interior Department—were former fossil fuel executives or had track records of supporting the oil, gas, and coal industries.
Trump's White House tenure was also marked by an
aggressive rollback of climate and environmental regulations and protections.
Food & Water Watch Action deputy director Mitch Jones said that "just like Trump himself, JD Vance is a fossil fuel backer and climate change denier that poses a serious risk to public health and our environment."
"Among the countless reasons that Trump and Vance shouldn't be elected to lead our country, the duo represents an existential threat to a livable climate future for all Americans and people around the globe," Jones added.
JL Andrepont of 350 Action asserted that "we are facing a dire need to ward off further climate catastrophe and injustice, so let's be clear: JD Vance is another climate-denying authoritarian who poses massive danger to this country."
"He has praised the horrific Project 2025 plan and said there are 'good ideas in there,'" they continued. "He says he would be totally fine with a federal ban on abortion. And as the effects of climate change accelerate at an alarming pace right in front of our eyes, Vance is a strong supporter of the oil and gas industry who claims that climate change is not a threat."
"We must reject him and all climate deniers at the polls," Andrepont stressed.
Targeting Corporate Landlords, Biden to Unveil National Rent Control Plan
"The rent is too damn high—and rent control is a real fix," one group said, praising the proposal.
As former U.S. President Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination and announced his running mate on Monday, Democratic President Joe Biden prepared to unveil a proposal that would cap annual rent increases at 5% for tenants of major landlords.
After Biden briefly previewed the proposal during a press conference last week, The Washington Postreported on the planned announcement Monday, citing three people familiar with the matter. The Associated Press separately confirmed the plan.
Biden is set to formally introduce the proposal on Tuesday in Nevada, which "has seen among the biggest explosions of housing costs in the country," the Post noted. "Democrats have grown increasingly concerned that Trump could win the state in November."
The president, who is seeking reelection, will propose taking a tax benefit away from landlords who hike rents by more than 5% annually, according to the reporting. The plan would only apply to the existing housing stock of landlords who own more than 50 units and would require congressional approval—so it is not expected to go anywhere unless Biden wins in November and Democrats secure majorities in both chambers of Congress.
As the newspaper detailed:
The Biden administration is also pushing numerous policies to increase housing construction, through incentives to local governments to change their zoning codes and new federal financial incentives for builders.If implemented, they could bring 2 million new units to the market in addition to the 1.6 million already in the pipeline.
"It would make little sense to make this move by itself. But you have to look at it in the context of the moves they propose to make to expand supply," said Jim Parrott, nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute and co-owner of Parrott Ryan Advisors. "The question is: Even if we get all these new units built, what do we do about rising rents in the meantime? Coming up with a relatively targeted bridge to help renters while new supply is coming online makes a fair amount of sense."
While housing industry representatives criticized the reported proposal, Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told The Associated Press that having it in effect in recent years could have helped renters.
"The recent unprecedented increases in homelessness in communities across the country are the result of those equally unprecedented—and unjustified—rent hikes of a couple years ago," she said. "Had such protections against rent gouging been in place then, many families could have avoided homelessness and stayed stably housed."
Other rent control advocates and progressive officials also welcomed the plan, with Kendra Brooks—the first Working Families Party member ever elected to Philadelphia City Council—declaring that "this is exactly the kind of leadership that working families need!"
Jacobin's Branko Marcetic said that "this is huge," particularly considering that "housing has rapidly climbed as a cost-of-living concern (and is also under 30s' most important issue)."
Multiple campaigners and organizations credited housing advocates for pushing rent control at the national level.
"It's amazing how rapidly the conversation around rent caps has changed," noted Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project. "Tenant organizing has created this change. It's a proposal for Congress which will face serious headwinds but the president just called for rent caps (even if only temporarily)."
The Debt Collective said, "We will say it over and over again: The rent is too damn high—and rent control is a real fix."
"Rent caps wouldn't be a national policy proposal without tenants unions across the country making it possible through organizing," the group added. "On our way to land without landlords, remember that rent control works. The 99%'s need for a roof over our head should not be 1% profits."
Campaigners Demand Global Ban on Deep-Sea Mining
As talks resume, supporters of a moratorium are also calling for the ouster of the International Seabed Authority's leader, who faces an election on July 29.
As talks to establish global policies on deep-sea mining resumed in Jamaica on Monday, Greenpeace International renewed its demand for a moratorium on the practice, the path also backed other civil society and Indigenous groups, at least hundreds of science and policy experts, and 27 countries.
"The science is clear—there can't be deep-sea mining without environmental cost and the only solution is a moratorium. The more we know about deep-sea mining, the harder it is to justify it," said Greenpeace campaigner Louisa Casson, who is attending the United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority's (ISA) 29th session in Kingston.
"Governments at the ISA must not dance to the tune of the industry and approve rushed regulations for the benefit of a few over the interests of Pacific communities and the opinion of scientists," Casson argued, as companies and countries see chances to cash in on the clean energy transition by extracting metals including cobalt, copper, and nickel.
"The deep ocean sustains crucial processes that make the entire planet habitable, from driving ocean currents that regulate our weather to storing carbon and buffering our planet against the impacts of climate change."
The Associated Pressreported Monday that although the ISA has not allowed any extraction during debates, it "has granted 31 mining exploration contracts," and "much of the ongoing exploration is centered in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, which covers 1.7 million square miles (4.5 million square kilometers) between Hawaii and Mexico."
The Mexican government last year endorsed a moratorium and Democratic Hawaii Gov. Josh Green last week signed a bill banning seabed mining in state waters, citing "environmental risks and constitutional rights to have a clean and healthy environment."
Ahead of the meeting in Jamaica, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition campaign lead Sofia Tsenikli highlighted that "gouging minerals from the seafloor poses an existential threat that goes far beyond the immediate destruction of deep-sea wildlife and habitats."
"The deep ocean sustains crucial processes that make the entire planet habitable, from driving ocean currents that regulate our weather to storing carbon and buffering our planet against the impacts of climate change," Tsenikli said. "States must now protect the ocean and not allow any more damage."
The ISA was established under the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and a related 1994 agreement, and is responsible for waters not under the control of specific nations. As Common Dreamsreported earlier this month, some diplomats have accused British lawyer Michael Lodge, its current secretary-general, of trying to speed up the start of mining.
"The rush to complete the mining code was triggered by the Pacific island state of Nauru, which is expected to submit a mining license application on behalf of Canada's the Metals Company (TMC) later this year, regardless of whether or not regulations are complete," Reutersnoted Monday.
After ISA's 36-member Council negotiates the "Mining Code" over the next two weeks, its full Assembly is scheduled to meet on July 29 to vote on the next secretary-general, with Lodge facing a challenge from Brazil's Leticia Carvalho for the top post.
"It is time for change at the ISA," Casson of Greenpeace declared Monday. "A third term for Michael Lodge would not only put the oceans under threat but also risk further damaging public trust in the regulator. Mining companies are impatient to get started and mounting evidence indicates that Lodge is overstepping his supposedly-neutral role to align with commercial interests."
"The ISA must listen to millions of people and the growing number of governments calling for a halt to deep-sea mining," she added. "It is time to put conservation at the heart of the ISA's work."
In preparation for the talks in Kingston, Environment Oregon Research & Policy Center, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund, and Frontier Group last month released a report showing that not only would deep-sea mining destroy "a vibrant, biodiverse place, teeming with complex ecosystems and thousands, possibly millions of species," but also it isn't necessary.
"Disposable electronic devices are creating a toxic e-waste mess. Now, some mining companies are trying to convince policymakers that we need to wreak havoc on the ocean to source the materials to make more," said Charlie Fisher of the Oregon State PIRG Foundation. "This report shows that we don't need to ruin the deep sea to make the products we need. There is a more sustainable path: Make long-lasting, fixable electronics and recycle them when they no longer work."