• 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.  

• Ocean

Red Tide Rolls Into Florida Again

• climate change
• Florida
• red tide
• runoff

The red tide that plagued the West Coast of Florida for more than a year in 2017-18 is back again, and that means no swimming and increased respiratory problems for residents in the Naples-Fort Myers-Sarasota area, not to mention negative impacts to local businesses.  According to CNN, scientists say it is difficult to predict where the tide is heading next, or how long it will last, but the last one — which lasted 16 months — was devastating.

Why This Matters:  Climate change and runoff from agriculture and development are the culprits and this toxic algae problem seems to be a problem that is here to stay.  Locals are worried about their health, wildlife like fish and dolphins, and whether their businesses can survive if this outbreak lasts for long.  In the past, red tides happened but they lasted only a week or two — but the previous one lasted 16 months.

• Water

Trump Administration Rolls Back WOTUS Rule, Undermines the Clean Water Act

• Clean Water Act
• factory farmer
• non-point pollution
• nutrient pollution
• runoff
• wetlands

Yesterday the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency rolled back one of the most important environmental rules put in place by the Obama Administration – the Waters of the U.S. Rule (“WOTUS”) – which protects wetlands that are the best natural barriers to storm surge and flooding and also keeps agricultural pollution out of our waterways.  […]

• Land

Warren Proposes Big Changes in Ag Sector to Help Farmers and Fight Climate Change

• agribusiness
• agriculture
• climate change
• farmers
• pollution
• runoff
• subsidies
• sustainable agriculture

On Wednesday, Senator Elizabeth Warren, rolled out yet another policy plan with big implications for combatting climate change — this time aiming at overhauling the way the government subsidizes the agricultural sector in order to incentivize conservation and stabilize farm incomes for family farmers. 

• Ocean

Experts Predict Huge Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico this Summer

• #Cleanwater
• dead zone
• Gulf of Mexico
• hypoxia
• Mississippi River
• nitrogen
• phosphorus
• runoff

Yesterday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued its annual prediction of the size of the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic or “dead” zone and it is expected to be nearly 8,000 square miles (roughly the size of the State of Massachusetts) and could rival the largest one ever, which happened in 2017.  This year’s […]

• Water

Industry pushes back on the Lake Erie Bill of Rights

• Lake Erie
• pollution
• runoff
• water pollution

We wrote a couple of weeks ago about the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, an initiative that requires the Toledo City Charter be amended to ensure the Lake Erie watershed has legal rights to “exist and flourish,” and provides a right for citizens to sue private actors that threaten the Lake’s health. While the Bill of Rights has been praised by environmental groups and the activists responsible for its passage have been invited to speak at the UN General Assembly next week, farmers and industry groups have actively worked to oppose it.