Water is life. Knowledge is power.
Photo: Two class actions over lack of clean water in First Nations were filed in 2019 and then combined in 2020. Photo: APTN
The Federal Court and the Court of Queen’s Bench of Manitoba have jointly approved an $8-billion settlement in a national class-action lawsuit between Canada and First Nations and their members who’ve had to drink unclean water.
The deal, ratified on Dec. 22, will dish out at least … [more…]
A study released in November of 2017 produced by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and the National Medical Association (NMA) “Fumes Across the Fence-line” shows for the first time with empirical data that pollution disproportionately affects communities of color. The 36-page study links pollutants emitted by gas or oil facilities near communities of color to high rates of asthma … [more…]
Chart: Earthquakes in Heart of Texas Oil Country Spur Water Crackdown
(Bloomberg) — Texas is considering new restrictions on how shale explorers dispose of wastewater from oil drilling as earthquakes rattle the largest oil-producing American state.
The new rules would target how much and at what pressure briny water that emerges from oil wells is injected back into the ground, Jared Craighead, chief of staff for the Texas Railroad Commission, … [more…]
Every summer the U.S. Central Plains go dry, leading farmers to tap into groundwater to irrigate sorghum, soy, cotton, wheat and corn and maintain large herds of cattle and hogs. As the heat rises, anxious irrigators gather to discuss whether and how they should adopt more stringent conservation measures.
They know that if they do not conserve, the Ogallala Aquifer, the source of their prosperity, will go dry.
The Ogallala, … [more…]
WASHINGTON — To ensure that tap water in the United States is safe to drink, the federal government has been steadily tightening the health standards for the nation’s water supplies for decades. But over and over again, local water systems around the country have failed to meet these requirements.
In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that, since 1982, between … [more…]