Tag: policy
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Hydraulic fracturing negatively impacts infant health
Map: Locations of births and fractured wells in Pennsylvania. Credit: Currie, Greenstone, Meckel, Sci. Adv. 2017;3: e1603021 From North Dakota to Ohio to Pennsylvania, hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, has transformed small towns into energy powerhouses. While some see the new energy boom as benefiting the local economy and decreasing U.S. reliance on foreign…
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EPA drops rule requiring mining companies’ funding to clean their pollution
Photo: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said modern mining practices and state and federal rules already in place address the risks. (Dec. 4, 2017) President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday that it won’t require mining companies to prove they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution, despite an industry legacy of…
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A rare victory for Iowa water quality
Following a public outcry, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources has abandoned an effort to weaken the state’s E. coli water quality standards. Officials had designed the change with the explicit goal of reducing the number of Iowa waterways deemed impaired. Environmental advocates had warned public health would suffer if the DNR assessed waterways based…
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Simple River-Cleaning Tactics That Big Farms Ignore
Iowa is the largest corn producer in the U.S.—and the second largest producer of nitrate pollution in the Mississippi River Basin. Photograph by Amy Toensing, National Geographic Creative. By Elizabeth Royte. Photographs by Dennis Chamberlin PUBLISHED December 7, 2017. This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit investigative…
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Water stewardship: Tell me, show me, prove it
Photo via Shutterstock: Companies such as Coca-Cola, DIAGEO and BASF are stepping ahead of the crowd when it comes to proving their water stewardship strategy. My last column generated an online discussion about the overall role of "collective" action in water stewardship strategies and the role of the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) standard and…
