#cleanwateract — Public Fediverse posts

💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: 🦦🗽 A camera captured the first river otter sighting in the #Bronx River in over a century.

Once treated as a city dumping ground, the #waterway lost #otters and #beavers to #pollution and #habitat loss. Decades of cleanup restored #oysters and beavers, now joined by this otter signaling active #ecosystem recovery.

👉 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/19/otter-bronx-river-new-york-city

#riverotter #bronxriver #conservation #wildlife #animals #water #restoration #newyork #nyc #urban #cleanwateract #nature #environment

#EPA Rule Would Drastically Curb Protections for #Wetlands

The proposal could strip federal protections from most U.S. wetlands, some of which feed drinking water systems.

Maxine Joselow
By Maxine Joselow
Reporting from the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters in Washington
Nov. 17, 2025

"The Trump administration proposed on Monday to significantly limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to limit pollution in wetlands, rivers and other bodies of water across the country.

"The proposed rule could strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams, potentially threatening sources of clean drinking water for millions of Americans. It was a victory for a range of business interests that have lobbied to scale back the #CleanWaterAct of 1972, including farmers, home builders, #RealEstateDevelopers, oil drillers and #petrochemical manufacturers."

Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/climate/epa-curbs-protections-for-wetlands.html

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/KEbdk

#WaterIsLife #USPol #SacrificeZone #SacrificeZones #CorporateColonialism #EPAFail #Industries #IndustrialUse
#Mining #PollutionSacrificeZones #GreedKills #CapitalismKills #CapitalismMustDie

Notorious US #ChemicalPlant polluting water with toxic #PFAS, lawsuit claims

Complaint says #Chemours factory dramatized in Hollywood movie #DarkWaters continues to pollute #WestVirginia river

by Tom Perkins, January 27, 2025

"The chemical giant Chemours’s notorious West Virginia PFAS plant is regularly polluting nearby water with high levels of toxic 'forever chemicals', a new lawsuit alleges.

"It represents the latest salvo in a decades-old fight over pollution from the plant, called Washington Works, which continues despite public health advocates winning significant legal battles.

The new federal complaint claims #WashingtonWorks has been spitting out levels of PFAS waste significantly higher than what a discharge permit has allowed since 2023, which is contaminating the #OhioRiver in #ParkersburgWestVirginia, a town of about 50,000 people in #Appalachia.

"The factory was the focal point of a Hollywood movie, Dark Waters. It dramatized the story of how the pollution widely sickened Parkersburg residents, and the David v Goliath legal saga in which a group of residents and attorneys took on Chemours, then part of DuPont.
The findings ‘highlight the importance of careful scrutiny of novel chemicals’, said Irene Jacz, a study co-author and Iowa State economist.

"An epidemiological study stemming from the case blew the lid off of the health risks of PFAS, and ultimately cost #DuPont about $700m.

"Though the landmark case still reverberates across the regulatory landscape, the suit started almost 25 years ago, concluded in 2016, and Chemours’s pollution continues. The new lawsuit is part of other legal actions related to the facility that have filled the gap left by weak regulatory action, local advocates say. The never-ending struggle 'wears you out', added Joe Kiger, a Parkersburg resident who was one of the original litigants in 2001.

"'We have put up with this for 24 years, and [Chemours] is still polluting, they’re still putting this stuff in the water,' Kiger said.

"The new lawsuit, filed by the #WestVirginiaRiversCoalition, alleges 'numerous violations' since the level of PFAS the company is permitted to discharge per a consent order was lowered in early 2023. Among the contaminants are #PFOA, a PFAS chemical to which virtually no level of exposure in drinking water is safe, the #EnvironmentalProtectionAgency (#EPA) has found. It also includes #GenX, a compound for which the EPA has similarly found very low exposure levels can cause health problems.

"The EPA ordered Chemours to take corrective action, but the company has done nothing in response, and the agency has not taken further action, the suit states. The complaint does not mention drinking water, which is largely filtered. But the suit alleges the ongoing pollution prevents residents from using the river for recreation.

"In a statement, Chemours said the 'concerns are being addressed' through the consent order. It also noted it was renewing discharge permits with the state, and was working with regulators 'to navigate both the consent order and the permit renewal process'.

"'Chemours recognizes the Coalition as a community stakeholder and invites the Coalition to engage directly with the Washington Works team,' a spokesperson wrote.

"The EPA and West Virginia Rivers Coalition declined to comment because litigation is ongoing.

"Kiger and others who have taken on Chemours and DuPont railed against the company, accusing it of 'greed' and putting profits above residents’ health. Some in Parkersburg refer to the waste as the 'Devil's Piss'.

"'They do what they can to make money,' said Harry Deitzler, a West Virginia attorney who helped lead past lawsuits.

"'The officers in the corporation sometimes don’t care about what’s right and wrong – they need to make money for shareholders and the lawsuits make everyone play by the same rules.'

"Still, most residents are not aware of the ongoing pollution, those who spoke with the Guardian say. Chemours is a large employer that still wields power locally, and spends heavily on charitable giving. Many remain supportive of the company, regardless of the pollution, Kiger said.

"'That’s the kind of stuff you’re up against,' he added. 'People put a blind trust in them. It could be snowing out and Chemours would tell everyone it’s 80F [27C] and sunny, and everyone will grab their tan lotion.'

"The saga began in the late 1990s when the plant’s pollution was suspected of sickening nearby livestock, and an investigation by attorneys revealed the alarming levels at which PFAS was being discharged into the water and environment.

"A class action lawsuit yielded about $70m in damages for area residents in 2004, but the litigation did not prove DuPont’s PFAS pollution was behind a rash of #cancer, #KidneyDisease, stubbornly high cholesterol and other widespread health problems in the region.

"Instead of dividing the settlement up among tens of thousands of residents, which would have only provided each with several hundred dollars, the money went toward developing an epidemiological study with independent scientists to verify that widespread local health issues were caused by DuPont’s pollution.

"The move was a gamble that ultimately paid off – the study of about 70,000 people showed by 2012 that PFOA probably caused some forms of cancer, #ThyroidDisease, persistently #HighCholesterol, pregnancy-induced #hypertension and #autoimmune problems.

"Subsequent studies have shown links between the chemical and a host of other serious health problems – #BirthDefects, #neurotoxicity, kidney disease and #LiverDisease – that residents in the area suffered.

"DuPont and Chemours in 2017 settled for $671m in costs for about 3,500 injury suits, and have paid more to install water-filtration systems throughout the region. Separately, Chemours in 2023 settled with the state of #Ohio for $110m for pollution largely from Washington Works.

"The EPA and state regulatory agencies have at times been staffed with former DuPont managers or industry allies, and litigation has been the only way to get any meaningful movement, said Rob Bilott, the attorney who led the original class-action suit.

'"It’s infuriating,' Bilott said. 'It took decades of making DuPont documents and internal data public, and getting the story out through movies, news articles, books and public engagement, and that’s what finally pushed the needle here. This is the impact of citizens forcing it through decades of litigation.'

"The latest lawsuit is a citizen’s suit under the #CleanWaterAct. Such suits give citizens the power to ask a judge to enforce federal law when a polluter is violating it and regulators fail to act.

"The lawsuit asks a judge to order the company to pay $66,000 for each day it has been in violation, which is stipulated in the permit. That would total around $50m, but the main goal is to stop the pollution.

"The EPA has acknowledged Chemours is violating the law, but has 'taken no further enforcement action regarding Chemours’s violations as of the date of this complaint', the suit reads."

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/27/chemours-pfas-pollution-lawsuit

Archived:
https://archive.ph/p3wA6
#Environment #PFASPollution #PollutionRunoff #WaterIsLife #DevilsPiss

The Drinking Water Crisis That North Carolina Ignored

For decades, #DuPont dumped toxic PFAS into North Carolina’s #CapeFearRiver. Today, the local community is suffering the health consequences—and fighting back.

June 7, 2021

[...]

"The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (#NCDEQ) filed a lawsuit against #Chemours in 2017—but only in response to bad press—and last fall, the state attorney general filed another. And yet, North Carolina is currently reviewing its water quality standards, something it does every three years, but not one rule for PFAS pollution is even up for consideration. 'People know they’re being poisoned, but the state isn’t doing much about it,' Bell says.

"So residents have been taking matters into their own hands. In July 2018, #CapeFearRiverWatch, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center (#SELC), sued the #NCDEQ to force Chemours to immediately stop polluting the Cape Fear River. The following month, the pair also filed a federal lawsuit against Chemours for violating the #CleanWaterAct and #ToxicSubstancesControlAct, but it was dropped later in the year as part of a $13 million #settlement among the NCDEQ, Cape Fear River Watch, and Chemours. The settlement resulted in a consent order that required Chemours to cease its discharges and add #scrubbers to its smokestacks to prevent airborne PFAS pollution. The outcome is a critical step in preventing future PFAS pollution, but NCDEQ has had to fine the company for not complying with the order, and its past contamination, still lingering in the #water, #soil, and peoples’ bodies, remains unaddressed."

Read more:
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/drinking-water-crisis-north-carolina-ignored

#PFASPollution #WaterIsLife
#OceansAreLife #PollutionRunoff #WebOfLife #SoilPollution #Cancer #AirPollution

A Comment on the Aquila Back Forty Wetland Permit

Earlier this morning, I sent this comment on the Aquila Resources Back Forty Wetland Permit to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Public comments may be submitted here until February 2nd.

To the MDEQ:

You have probably already received a number of comments on the Back Forty Mine wetland permit application from people who live out of state, as I do. Some of those opposed to sulfide mining on the Menominee River live on the Wisconsin side, just across or downstream from the proposed mine site. Others, across the country and around the world, are deeply concerned about the cumulative effects the current leasing, exploration, and sulfide mining boom around Lake Superior will have, and are alarmed to see federal and state regulatory agencies abdicating their responsibilities to the American public in order to do the bidding of foreign mining companies.

Denying the wetland permit is the only prudent and responsible course for MDEQ to take.

As the organization American Rivers noted when it placed the Menominee River on its list of “most endangered” rivers in 2017, the Aquila Resources Back Forty project poses a “significant threat” of acid mine drainage to the river, and to the “cultural and natural resources of the Upper Peninsula, Wisconsin, and the Great Lakes Region.” Allowing Aquila to destroy or compromise area wetlands to construct its mine will only heighten the risk of large scale environmental catastrophe.

The risk is compounded by both regulatory and scientific uncertainty. As you are well aware, the Menominee Tribe maintains that the MDEQ lacks authority to issue this permit, because under provisions of the Clean Water Act the Menominee River and its wetlands are federal waters. This question remains unsettled. In the meantime, a third party, independent review of Aquila’s wetland permit application found errors and inconsistencies regarding the company’s findings on groundwater drawdown and the mine’s feasibility analysis. The wetland permit application you are considering is either flawed, because the people who filed it are incompetent, or misleading, because they have something to hide.

Deceit might be Aquila’s best strategy at this point. The Back Forty project has no claim to social license — none. The Menominee and other Wisconsin tribes have been adamant in their opposition. Local residents are overwhelmingly opposed as well. Of the 90 people who had the opportunity to speak at the January 23rd public hearing in Stephenson, only 4 could muster an argument for the mine, mainly because they put stock in the vague promise of “jobs” made by mining proponents. The rest — 86 out of 90, or 95 percent — stood in opposition to the mine.

Even if Aquila is not deliberately misleading the MDEQ and the public, the Canadian company has demonstrated time and again that it is not a responsible steward of Michigan or Menominee lands. In archaeological surveys of the region, for instance, Aquila claims to have uncovered nothing of “historical significance.” That is telling. These surveys have found nothing because they fail, or refuse to see, the significant Menominee history and culture that is right in front of their eyes. As tribal members have made repeatedly clear, Menominee history, ancestry, and culture begin and end in the river, the land, and the forest. What is historically significant or meaningful is not merely a collection of artifacts; it is a way of life and a deep connection to place. The Back Forty Mine threatens to destroy that connection.

In sum, the wetland permit application is flawed, the company has no social license to operate, and allowing the Back Forty to go forward would violate the public trust.

Postscript: On Monday, 4 June, Michigan DEQ Director Heidi Grether granted this wetlands permit, despite the DEQ’s own findings that the Aquila Resources project will likely cause “an unacceptable disruption to the aquatic resources of the State…and that the activities associated with the project are not consistent with the permitting criteria for an acceptable impact to the resources regulated under Parts 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, and Part 303, Wetlands Protection.” The permit DEQ issued — over its own objections — includes 28 pages of special conditions. It’s unclear why the DEQ did not simply deny the permit, as its findings warranted and in keeping with EPA objections to the Aquila application. More here.

#AmericanRivers #AquilaResources #BackFortyMine #BackFortyProject #CleanWaterAct #culturalResources #environmentalStewardship #federalWaters #historicalSignificance #history #MDEQ #MenomineeRiver #MenomineeTribe #MichiganDepartmentOfEnvironmentalQuality #mining #mostEndangeredRivers #publicHearing #PublicTrust #UNDRIP #UnitedNationsDeclarationOnIndigenousRights #UpperPeninsula #Water #WatersOfTheUnitedStates #wetlands #WOTUS

The Political Project of MCRC v. EPA, 2

Second In A Series
Activists Afoot!

As I suggested in my first post in this series on MCRC v. EPA, the complaint filed by the Marquette County Road Commission would have us believe that “anti-mining” forces worked secretly with and even infiltrated the EPA, and the agency’s objections to CR 595 followed a “predetermined plan.” The EPA, it claims, had decided to oppose the haul road even before the MCRC application was reviewed.

This sounds like legitimate cause for concern: permit applications should be reviewed on their merits, not pre-judged and not according to some other anti- or pro- agenda. We certainly wouldn’t want someone in the Environmental Protection Agency to be “pro-mining”; there are enough well-paid mining lobbyists already haunting the hallways in Lansing and Washington, DC. But in this case, the anti-mining label is being used as a term of opprobrium, and to distort and deliberately misrepresent what the Environmental Protection Agency is chartered and required by law to do: in short, to enforce the Clean Water Act and protect the environment.

When it comes to proving the insinuations it makes, the MCRC complaint offers slim evidence.

For example, the complaint makes a big fuss over a November 28, 2012 letter from Laura Farwell, who lives in the Marquette area and is described here as “a prominent environmental activist.”  The letter is addressed to Lynn Abramson, then a Senior Legislative Assistant for Senator Barbara Boxer, and Thomas Fox, Senior Counsel of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, asking them to “weigh-in” with the EPA on CR 595. (Exhibit 1).

EPA must determine whether to uphold its original objections to proposed County Road 595 under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), pursuant to its supervisory authority over Michigan’s delegated wetlands permitting program. Tom may remember that during the August 30, 2011 meeting at EPA Denise Keehner of EPA’s office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds definitively reiterated EPA’s position and stated that the haul road would not happen.
Thus, this letter is to request, respectfully, that you weigh-in as soon as possible with the EPA on its decision.

The MCRC complains about Farwell’s use of the word “definitively” here and casts the 2011 meeting in a sinister light:

on August 30, 2011, a very different type of meeting regarding CR 595 took place at USEPA Headquarters in Washington, DC. MCRC was neither invited to nor informed of the meeting. In attendance (as far as is known at the present time) were top USEPA officials, Congressional staff, KBIC representatives, and a prominent environmental activist opposed to the construction of CR 595. It further appears that USEPA made no formal record of the meeting.

Without a formal record, it’s impossible to know what transpired at this meeting, and if the complaint is going to rely on Farwell’s memory of the conversation, then it should also take into account her intentions in paraphrasing and recounting it, one year after it took place. The language here — “a very different type of meeting,” “neither invited nor informed,” “as far as is known at the present time,” “no formal record” — doesn’t help in that regard, and it’s meant to suggest that conjurations were already afoot.

It’s clear the MCRC was not included in some discussions at EPA. There’s nothing extraordinary or illicit about that. All concerned parties had been meeting with and petitioning the EPA for several years at this point. The complaint is still a long way from proving that the EPA “surreptitiously met with a number of environmental activists vocally opposed to the road,” and an even longer way from proving that there was anything like an anti-mining coalition assembled in secret at the offices of the EPA.

In an ironic twist, these allegations of secrecy and whispering behind closed doors may come back to haunt the MCRC: at a Marquette County Board of Commissioners meeting this month, the Marquette County Road Commission itself faced accusations that it had violated the Open Meetings Act in planning to bring its suit against the EPA. Public officials who intentionally violate that act are ordinarily fined and incur other liabilities; in this case, there would be some eating of words as well.

By November 28, 2012, the EPA had, in fact, “decided against the proposed haul road,” as Farwell puts it in the email she sent along with the letter to Abramson and Fox. The EPA had entered objections to the Woodland Road Application (in March, 2010) and announced their objections to CR 595 (in March, 2012).  Even so, a Fall 2012 public meeting held by the EPA “in Marquette…for more input” had Farwell worried. She was not at all confident the EPA would uphold its original objections to the haul road.  The matter was still far from being “definitively” settled.

Whatever reassurances Farwell was given at that 2011 meeting — or thought she had been given, or recalled having been given, one year later — were clearly at risk of getting lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. The purpose of her letter is to prevent that.

There is nothing surprising in all this. Those watching new mining developments in the Upper Peninsula are constantly having to chase after the EPA and demand that the regulator step in and do its job.

Jeffery Loman, a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and a former federal regulator, has repeatedly put the EPA on notice and complained of the agency’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act.

In May of this year, the grassroots environmental group Save the Wild UP filed a petition with the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, arguing that Eagle Mine was issued the wrong regulatory permit. The appeal requested that the EPA require Eagle Mine to obtain a Clean Water Act permit in order to protect the Salmon Trout River and other surface waters from the discharge of mining effluent. The Appeals Board did not contest the facts put forward in the petition, but dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction. They hardly proved themselves to be staunch allies.

So watchdogs and environmental groups, too, have reason to gripe about the EPA and often feel powerless in the face of bureaucratic inertia and ineptitude. Laura Farwell herself seems to have felt that way, and that’s why we find her asking Abramson and Fox for help. The MCRC complaint exaggerates her influence at the EPA when it describes her as “a prominent environmental activist.” The epithet is used here to create the misleading impression that within the offices of EPA Region 5 and the confines of Marquette County there are political opponents with resources to match the power of multi-billion dollar, multinational mining companies.

Laura Farwell and her husband Frank moved to the area in 2006 from Madison, Wisconsin. They are members of the St. Paul Episcopal Church and participate, along with their son Cody, in the church’s Earth Day tree plantings. The couple donated some money to the UP Land Conservancy. Farwell has also organized events for the Cedar Tree Institute, which works to bridge “faith communities and environmental groups.” (She is described on the Institute’s site  as “a concerned mother and local citizen.”) She is thanked for “working quietly behind the scenes” in a 2011 Earth Keeper TV video on the environmental risks posed by the Eagle Mine; and she’s copied along with many other local citizens in a Google Group post dated April 9, 2012, urging people to comment on CR 595 before the public comment period is closed.

Farwell’s commitments to land conservation are pretty clear, and while the complaint asks us to recoil in horror at the phrase “prominent environmental activist,” cooler heads are just as likely to be impressed by Farwell’s dedication to the people around her and the place where she lives. Maybe that dedication is all it takes to be a prominent environmental activist in the view of the Marquette County Road Commission.

Some locals, on the other hand, are legitimately concerned that nationally and internationally prominent environmentalists — like Bill McKibben, George Monbiot, Naomi Klein and their ilk — ignore the current situation around Lake Superior, or fail to give it the serious attention it deserves. National media have barely taken notice. Farwell herself admits that to the great and powerful in Washington DC “the proposed haul road may seem like some little back trail in the middle of nowhere,” but she urges that it will cut through “critical wetlands resources” and “enable the industrializing of this rural Great Lakes watershed by international mining interests.”

Farwell’s letter tries to create some urgency around the CR 595 issue by putting the road in context and specifying whose interests would be served by the industrializing of the region. A serious assessment of CR 595 would significantly widen the lens, taking into account the cumulative effects of all the new mining activities around Lake Superior: all leasing, exploration, development and active mining throughout northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario. Otherwise, we miss the big picture, and without that perspective, it’s just too easy to parcel out the land, the water, and the future of the region to the highest bidders.

The MCRC complaint, too, places CR 595 in the context of “mining and economic development in the Great Lakes region” in a few places, but only to make the specious argument that those who oppose or question the road are opposed to mining and therefore opposed to the region’s prosperity. These are the ideological leaps the complaint makes. Those who don’t make these leaps are called activists or anti-mining obstructionists. That is a political, not a legal argument.

It’s never too late to have a serious discussion of what sustainable economic development and true prosperity for the Great Lakes region might look like. How might we best organize our lives together in this place? is a fundamental political question. But at this juncture, it appears, the MCRC can’t afford to let that conversation happen. This lawsuit is an attempt to shut it down and stifle dissent. Where business leads, society must obediently follow. To question this order of things, as Laura Farwell seems to have repeatedly done, quietly, behind the scenes, is to commit some kind of nefarious act.

This is where the attitude on display in this complaint gets worrisome. With this lawsuit, the MCRC pretends to have the political authority to direct economic development in the region (not just to build and repair roads). But that is only pretense, and things in Marquette County are not as they appear. The public still does not know who is funding the Road Commission lawsuit, what they stand for and what they expect in return for their support. The real powers lurk behind the scenes.

#501c4 #antiMining #BillMcKibben #CedarTreeInstitute #CleanWaterAct #corporatePoliticalActivity #corruption #CountyRoad595 #CR595 #EagleMine #EarthDay #environmentalEthics #environmentalPolitics #environmentalism #EPA #GeorgeMonbiot #JefferyLoman #LauraFarwell #LundinMining #LynnAbramson #MarquetteCounty #MarquetteCountyRoadCommission #MarquetteCountyRoadCommissionVEPA #MCRCVEPA #mining #NaomiKlein #OpenMeetingsAct #politicalAuthority #politics #power #SaveTheWildUP #secrecy #StandUP_ #ThomasFox #TomCasperson #Water