Environmental Groups Announce Top 2008 Electoral Targets
Collaborative Effort Aimed at Electing Mark Udall, Tom Udall and Jeanne Shaheen to the U.S. Senate
Building on the success of 2006, particularly the defeat of Richard Pombo, a coalition of leading environmental organizations led by the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, Environment America, and Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund today announced its top collaborative election targets in 2008. These organizations will work together to elect pro-environment champions in the Senate races in New Mexico, Colorado, and New Hampshire.
"The environmental groups' collaborative efforts in 2006 to defeat Pombo in CA-11 showed the strength of our membership and proved our ability to successfully educate and engage voters face-to-face on environmental issues," said John DeCock of Clean Water Action.
Congress Urged To Restore Water Protections
Risk To Drinking Water Sources Cited In Testimony
"In our work with over a million members in more than twenty states, people tell us that passing the Clean Water Restoration Act is the right thing to do," said Darrell Gerber, Clean Water Action Minnesota Program Coordinator in testimony today before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "The critical question before Congress is: Do we want to throw out 35-years worth of progress in cleaning up our waters or do we want to continue working to make all our waters fishable, swimmable and drinkable? The people we talk to across the country, and independent polls, resoundingly say the clean-up must move forward."
Waters covering 59 percent of the nation's waterways that are the drinking water source for more than 100 million people were put at risk when a series of court decisions followed by federal agency actions in 2003 and 2007 resulted in removal of many wetlands and streams from protections under the nation's 35-year-old Clean Water Act.
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Spotlight
Rhode Island Director Wins EPA 2008 Merit Award
When Sheila Dormody was nominated by her colleagues for the federal Environmental Protection Agency's 2008 Merit Award, they told the story of a passionate leader with remarkable successes in fighting mercury pollution and organizing Rhode Island activists.
And when the EPA made the Earth Day announcement that Dormody”Clean Water Action's Rhode Island Director”had won the prestigious award, the agency cited a long and impressive list of accomplishments. They included: leading the effort to ban the toxin mercury from Rhode Island's landfills, negotiating legislation to recycle mercury switches and remove them from old cars, introducing programs to remove mercury from schools, as well as chairing the state's Mercury Reduction Group and co-chairing the state Department of Environmental Management Roundtable on the Environment.
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The Issues
- Clean Water: Bush Administration policies could put the drinking water of over 110 million Americans at risk. The Clean Water Restoration Act would ensure that all waters of the United States are protected from pollution and destruction. Read more about stopping water pollution and protecting drinking water sources and take action!
- Climate Change & Clean Energy: Congress is considering a new energy bill this summer that would combat global warming by improving auto efficiency and promoting renewable energy. Learn more about the bill and take action!
- Toxics & Chemical Policy: We need to phase out the most dangerous chemicals, innovate safer alternatives, and protect high-risk communities. Cleaner and safer chemicals, products, and production processes are feasible. Learn more about the issue.
Other News
Bush Passes The Global Warming Ball To Next President
Clean Water Action President John De Cock Statement on President's Planned Climate Speech
April 16, 2008
Today's Rose Garden climate speech by President Bush is just the latest attempt to run out the clock on global warming without taking meaningful action. The President's failure today to endorse mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions means he has left this challenge for the next President and Congress.
President Bush is correct today in identifying the need to deal with carbon emissions generally, and emissions from coal plants in particular. But the President largely remains where he was eight years ago when he pledged to restrict carbon dioxide from coal plants, and instead caved into big energy companies and did nothing.
During the last eight years of voluntary programs, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise, and today's announcement of long-range, non-binding goals will do nothing to reverse that trend. For their last few months in office, Clean Water Action calls on the Bush administration to stop interfering with efforts by states to move ahead with clean cars emissions standards, stop censoring the science of global warming, and drop their opposition to mandatory federal limits on global warming pollution.
Climate Action Pledge
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New Report Says $8 Billion Needed To Fix Massachusetts Drinking Water Infrastructure
Water main breaks are only one manifestation, but a very visible sign, of our aging, crumbling drinking water infrastructure. There have been over a dozen water main breaks reported in Massachusetts communities in the last three months.
Currently, there is no comprehensive, statewide compilation of water main miles, or of water main breaks in Massachusetts. In this report, Clean Water Fund staff has reviewed the Annual Statistical Reports filed by municipal water districts in 2006; even with 56 of 266 Community Water Systems' data unavailable, our figures show that in 2006 there were at least 1,970 leaks found which lost hundreds of millions of gallons of potable water from leaks in water mains.
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