Press Releases: Pollution

Press Release: The Ohio Valley Electric Corporation, Ferro Corporation, American Electric Power, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Southern Company top the list of the most hazardous polluters of U.S. surface water, according to a report released today by the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch and the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts Amherst (PERI).

Pollution Trading: Cashing Out Our Clean Air and Water documents government-sanctioned pollution reduction programs that provide a market place for trading credit allotments in an effort to offset harmful discharges. But these mechanisms don’t deter industrial pollution. In fact, they give companies an opportunity to pay and trade for the “right” to pollute.

Media Statement: The recent news that American Carbon Registry approved a new methodology for estimating nitrous oxide (N20) emissions from fertilizer application in agriculture renews our concern that California is considering allowing agricultural offsets in its carbon cap-and-trade program. Allowing these offsets would make an already risky program even worse for the residents of California.

The poultry industry, just one small part of our factory farm nation, has a massive waste problem. Today, national consumer group Food & Water Watch criticized the plans of poultry processing giant Perdue Agribusiness and Fibrowatt LLC to build a power plant on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that generates electricity from chicken manure.

Press Release: Emails released today by national consumer group Food & Water Watch reveal an unnervingly close and direct relationship between Governor Martin O’Malley and chicken giant Perdue. Seventy pages of emails, mostly between Governor O’Malley and Herb Frerichs, Perdue’s general counsel, illustrate the strong hold the industry has on Governor O’Malley on topics ranging from waste incineration to the lawsuit brought by the University of Maryland Legal Clinic against Perdue and one of its contract growers.

Press Release: Today, national consumer organization Food & Water Watch announced a new program to scrutinize the largely unchallenged claims that market-based schemes like pollution trading, water markets, privatization and commodification of common resources will help reduce pollution and manage our water resources.

Media Statement: “The Chesapeake Bay Program Reauthorization and Improvement Act recently introduced by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Tim Holden (D-Penn.) is designed to ignore the real problems underlying pollution in the Chesapeake Bay: industrialized agriculture and urban sprawl.

Press Statement: “We are appalled to hear that the House Natural Resources committee has passed the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act, which would waive federal environmental protections for Department of Homeland Security activities on federal lands in border areas. Let’s hope it doesn’t go any further than that.

Press Release: Approximately one year after the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, national consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch released a report detailing the public health and environmental fallout from the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, and called attention to skewed budget priorities for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the President’s 2012 budget proposal.

Press Statement: “The latest agreement between Congressional leaders and President Obama decimates water protections.”