Press Releases: All

Press Release: On October 23, at Civic Park on Capitol Hill in Denver, a coalition called “Frack Free Colorado” will draw attention to the dangers of fracking and call for a concrete plan to move the state of Colorado away from natural gas and other dirty extractive industries and toward a renewable energy economy.

Press Release: At the Plains Exploration & Production Company’s (PXP) annual community meeting last night, people from the communities surrounding the Inglewood Oil Field joined advocacy organizations Citizens Coalition for a Safe Community and Food & Water Watch in speaking out against PXP’s recent study on fracking and the practice of fracking and its related activities in general.

Media Statement: The Inglewood Oil Field fracking study PXP released today is a quintessential example of the oil and gas industry hiding behind sponsored scientists and environmental consulting groups to skew findings to align with their financial interests.

Media Statement: The largest meat recall in Canadian history has been expanded for the sixteenth time since Sept. 16, 2012, and now USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is hunting down some 2.5 million pounds of meat potentially contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7 that has entered the U.S. from the same Canadian beef slaughtering facility. That is nearly triple the amount originally estimated by USDA.

Press Release: Several organizations held a press conference outside of the Federal District Court in Baltimore this morning to call attention to Perdue’s unjust treatment of its farmers and the public health and environmental effects of factory farm runoff, as highlighted by a case that goes to trial today. The case brought by Waterkeeper Alliance against Perdue and one of its contract growers, the Hudsons, seeks to put a stop to the pollution found pouring off the farm and hold Perdue liable for the discharges. Throughout the nearly three years of litigation, activists said Perdue has been using the Hudsons as “human shields,” hiding behind its farmers instead of taking responsibility for the waste that its factory farming operations produce.

Food & Water Watch and Friends of the Earth, represented by Columbia Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic, filed a joint lawsuit today to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to strengthen the Chesapeake Bay water clean-up efforts and maintain the integrity of the Clean Water Act. The lawsuit seeks to invalidate water pollution trading provisions included in EPA’s 2010 plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The lawsuit declares that water pollution trading, otherwise known as cap-and-trade, is illegal and would undermine the region’s efforts to comply with strict pollution limits set by the Bay’s total maximum daily load or TMDL. This program would allow for new and increased pollution discharges into the Chesapeake Bay watershed under a scheme of market-based offsets and pollution trading.

“The 40 years of success of the Clean Water Act will be traded away if this scheme is allowed to go forward,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “Why would we put Wall Street, the same industry that brought us the financial crisis, in charge of protecting the Bay? Allowing polluters to purchase their way out of upgrading equipment and reducing their toxic runoff is irresponsible and reckless. It’s opening the door to the end of the Clean Water Act and the downfall of our waterways. It’s essentially an entitlement program for the financial services industry and polluters.”

Media Statement: “Yesterday, California governor Jerry Brown signed A.B. 685, which gives the basic human right to water and sanitation to all Californians. We are proud that the governor has signed this legislation, following the lead of the United Nations, states like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and communities like Detroit, which have already affirmed the human right to water. AB 685, however, was truly the first citizen-led effort in a U.S. state to recognize this basic right.