• Forests

Pennsylvania Public-Private Partnership to Plant 10 Million Trees by 2025

• clean water
• runoff

The Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership is a partnership led by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) between national, regional, state, and local agencies, conservation organizations, outdoors enthusiasts, businesses, and citizens that have committed to improving Pennsylvania’s communities, economy, and ecology by planting of 10 million new trees in priority landscapes in Pennsylvania by the end of 2025.  Their goal is to plant them alongside rivers and streams to rebuild “riparian forest buffers” that can significantly reduce the amount of polluted runoff coming from those areas and improve soil health by keeping it on the land instead of in the water, as well as providing habitat for fish and other animals.

Why This Matters: This is a win-win-win — due to its climate benefits, soil health improvements, and its contribution to clean water in streams, rivers, and even the Chesapeake Bay.  It could be a model for other states.  

• Water

PFAS Found On Hundreds of Military Installations, With Numbers Likely To Rise

• Camp Lejeune
• clean water
• PFAS
• toxic

The problem of toxic fluorinated chemicals or “PFAS” is pervasive nationwide — and of the more than 1350 sites that have been identified by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) roughly half of them are on military installations, and the numbers are expected to rise once testing at Navy and Air Force installations is completed. 

Why This Matters:  Service members and their families did not sign up for this kind of preventable hazard when they joined the military — fighting in conflict is, of course, life-threatening, but simply living on a military installation should not be.  And the fact that President Trump has repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that comes to his desk that requires the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate PFAS shows his callous disregard for the safety and well-being of our service members and their families.  

• Water

The Clean Water Act Has Been Drained

• clean water
• Clean Water Act
• PFAS
• WOTUS

By Monica Medina, Founder and Publisher, Our Daily Planet The fall of 2019 will be remembered for the Ukrainian scandal and the impeachment investigation.  But for many Americans, this should be remembered as the time when our nation’s clean water crisis became crystal clear.  This is not just a Flint problem.  It is a national […]

• Water

Supreme Court Hears Clean Water Act Loophole Case

• clean water
• Clean Water Act
• groundwater
• navigable water
• waters of the Unitied States

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case about whether the Clean Water Act requires a permit for pollution from “point sources” — pipes and drainage ditches — that flows into a river or the ocean via another medium like groundwater or a wetland that is not covered by the statute. 

Why This Matters:  The stakes are high for both sides. The water treatment plant argues that it did not discharge directly into a navigable water — the ocean or a river — so it can’t be held responsible under the Act — a technicality, but one that they say protects many facilities like theirs from the high cost of treating discharges like these, as well as excusing homeowners whose septic tanks might leak.  Environmental groups on the other side say that if a polluter is allowed to discharge into another medium like groundwater and the pollution then ends up in a navigable water, it will create a huge loophole in the Act.

• Water

Newark Fast Tracks Lead Pipe Replacement

• clean water
• drinking water
• EPA
• lead
• Newark
• water

We wrote the other week about Newark’s ongoing water crisis and the city’s plan to distribute bottled water to residents after water filters that were previously made available to the public lacked the ability to filter out lead. Now New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced a new $120 million plan yesterday to fast-track […]

• Water

Newark Offers Bottled Water to Address Water Crisis, Residents Grow Weary

• clean water
• drinking water
• lead
• New Jersey
• Newark

After it was determined that the 40,000 filters Newark city officials gave out to residents to address the ongoing water crisis weren’t actually filtering out lead, the city decided to begin distributing bottled water. In a startling echo of Flint, residents of Newark have been kept in the dark about the safety of their drinking […]