In an insightful reaction to President Obama’s health care speech to a joint session of Congress, noted author Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food) said something very provocative on the pages of the New York Times.  Unlike South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson, he didn’t accuse the president of lying.  But he did make pretty clear that the health care debate thus far has ignored a very significant part of the problem: an acknowledgment that our transformation into a fast food nation is playing a huge role in making health care more costly and less accessible for all Americans.

In his Op-ed titled “Big Food vs. Big Insurance“, he writes:

Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.

He’s got a very compelling point, and it becomes even more compelling if you follow the “environmental costs” thread that he mentions only in passing.

Much of federal food policy is all about subsidies for corn, both as a feed crop for fatty meats raised under inhumane conditions on “factory farms” and for use in the ubiquitous sweetener high-fructose corn syrup found in calorie-laden soda and other processed foods throughout the supermarket.  Most of the corn grown in this country requires intensive application of nutrient-rich fertilizers, especially those with nitrogen.  A lot of the fertilizer gets dumped into rivers either through excess application onto the fields or through the mishandling of manure from the animals who eat all that corn without fully digesting the nutrients.

The water pollution problems caused by our heavily-subsidized fertilizer- intensive agriculture only serve to exacerbate our reliance on cheap and unhealthy food.  The result are seasonal “dead zones“: areas in polluted waterbodies like the Gulf of Mexico where algae blooms fed by the fertilizer runoff deplete waters of oxygen that fish need to live.  So to grow corn to fuel the increasing consumption of unhealthy process foods and soda related to the explosion of costly and increasingly-common health problems like Type 2 diabetes, we’re using fertilizers that destroy the capacity of fisheries to provide alternative sources of much healthier nutrition.  A vicious cycle if ever there was one.

Self-defeating food policies that poison and destroy fisheries aren’t the only link to rising health care costs.  As CLF reported in our “Conservation Matters” article on mercury pollution, “there is a high correlation between children with mental retardation, cerebral palsy, and other neurological disorders and mothers who have ingested high amounts of methylmercury from poisoned fish and water.”  To prevent these costly, life-long health conditions Northeastern states warn pregnant women and young children not to eat freshwater fish from the over “10,000 lakes, ponds, and reservoirs, as well as more than 46,000 miles of river deemed too toxic for fish consumption.” The pollution comes from coal-fired power plants whose owners refuse to sacrifice a small part of their enormous profits to install readily-available mercury pollution controls. CLF is continuing to fight for tougher mercury standards in hopes that New England’s freshwater fisheries–a historical source of great sustenance for our region’s people–will once again provide safe, nutritious food rather than potential health hazards.

There’s no doubt that health insurance reform is desperately needed, but to succeed in controlling costs and making us healthier it must accompanied by reforms to our food and environmental policies.

It’s no surprise that Fox News’ dunderhead commentator and global warming denier Sean Hannity is attending a Labor Day rally supporting the destructive coal mining practice of mountaintop removal.  It’s no surprise that gun-toting, washed-up 80′s rocker Ted Nugent will be there too, spewing his crass, foul-mouthed brand of conservative hatred (warning–adult language on linked content).  What is surprising is that if you are a Verizon Wireless customer, you may be helping to pay for this celebration of environmental degradation!

That’s right, if you visit the home page for the “Friends of America” rally–after you watch the video of the coal company CEO decrying how “environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your job” (last time I checked, the coal companies were part of “corporate america”)–you can visit the “sponsors” page to find out who is putting up the $$ for this “rally.”  After you scroll through the long list of big coal companies who are destroying Appalachia and fighting tooth and nail against any meaningful efforts to reduce global warming pollution, you will see Verizon Wireless listed as one of the corporate America benefactors of this gathering of malefactors.

I’m guessing that there are a lot of Verizon Wireless customers like me who believe that GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL AND IT IS A REAL PROBLEM!  So what can we do to change Verizon’s position on this issue?

Our friends and occasional coalition partners at the Center for Biological Diversity are the ones who brought this to my attention.  They have a great action alert that you can use to call out Verizon Wireless for their environmentally unfriendly use of the money you send them for cell service. 

If you want to go one step further, then I suggest picking up the phone.  If you’ve ever worked for a company with a call center, you know that clogged lines cost them money.  So let’s clog Verizon’s phone lines like their friends at the coal companies clog the once-pristine mountain streams with mining waste. Pick up your Verizon phone, call customer service by dialing *611 from your cell or (800) 922-0204 from your home, and register your complaint about Verizon’s support for an event designed to block meaningful progress on climate change.  This is one time when you can feel good about waiting on hold to talk to the phone company’s customer service rep.

Warning: Bigger, faster, and more abundant mosquitoes may be breeding in a river or stream near you.   A new scientific study presented at this month’s meeting of the Ecological Society of America reaches the scary conclusion that mosquitoes–carriers of the West Nile Virus and other diseases–thrive in waterways contaminated by sewage.  As if we needed even more public health reasons to clean up and prevent sewage pollution!

Scientists have concluded that sewage spills and overflows are a boon to these bloodthirsty pests.

Sadly, untreated sewage pollution still flows regularly into many of New England’s rivers and streams as a result of sewage spills from aging or improperly maintained sewage collection and pumping systems.  For example, when a rupture in a Burlington, VT city sewage collection pipe went unrepaired for 8 days in 2005, it released approximately 4 million gallons of raw sewage into the river until sewage treatment plant operators finally addressed the problem.  In the wake of this high-profile incident, CLF led the effort for passage of the “spill bill”–a Vermont law that requires sewage treatment plant operators to undertake enahnced sewage spill prevention and emergency response measures and to notify the public when sewage spills occur.  The public has a right to know when its waters are being contaminated with spilled sewage (this Agency of Natural Resources web site includes a report of all recent spills) and to demand that action be taken to prevent sewage overflows through regular maintenance and greater investment in clean water infrastructure.

As with so many other important environmental and public health issues, CLF’s efforts in one of the New England states are helping to lead the country toward a future with cleaner water.

Currently, Congress is debating passage of the S. 937 “Sewage Overflow Community Right to Know Act.”  Like the Vermont law championed by CLF, this bill would amend the Clean Water Act to require mandatory reporting of sewer spills and the cleanup, mitigation, and prevention measures adopted as a result.  According to our friends at American Rivers in D.C., the bill has passed through the House of Representatives and through the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee.  With your help, the Clean Water Act will soon ensure our collective right to know when our rivers, streams, lakes, and beaches have been contaminated by raw sewage.  Ask your Senator to cosponsor S. 937 and to work for its passage this year– in the meantime be sure to stock up on citronella and bug dope…

As my first post to the CLF Blogosphere I want to offer an alternative perspective on fostering environmental conservation and social justice, and I’m just going to say it: economics.

Allow me to introduce you to CLF Ventures, Inc., the non-profit consulting affiliate of the Conservation Law Foundation. CLF started Ventures in 1997 to foster creative, client-centered environmental solutions. At that time, CLF recognized that the challenges facing the environment could not be overcome through litigation and advocacy tools alone. This happened relatively early in the game, and was a pretty progressive move for an established environmental advocacy organization with the history and grassroots credibility of CLF.

Today, CLF Ventures provides a unique model for advancing environmental change—by implementing projects that have demonstrable environmental gain as well as economic advantage—and that complement the work of our advocacy colleagues. We use a unique combination of environmental, non-profit and community insights to help private and public organizations become more sustainable through the creation of effective risk assessment and collaborative stakeholder engagement strategies.  Our distinct value to clients is our ability to gain stakeholder and regulatory insights that are impossible for clients to collect on their own due to poor existing community relationships. Our value to the stakeholder community is our ability to bring our clients to the table under circumstances conducive to collaboration. We have a demonstrated record of successful outcomes wherein our clients and the community come to better understand each other’s values and needs.

This may sound like boilerplate consulting mumbo jumbo, but the point is critically valid: the world is complex and the world of environmental advocacy is more complex still. Very rarely are the issues black and white. While the best option to secure needed social and environmental protections may be legal advocacy, it is not the only option. Put another way, litigation is a hammer, and it’s a very effective tool for driving nails, but not every environmental problem is a nail. When an organization is making real changes to improve impacts on the surrounding community and environment, CLF Ventures will leave the hammer at home and load up the toolbox with other job-appropriate tools to help them succeed.

Let me step away from the confusion of a not-so-clever metaphor and be perfectly clear: before many others, CLF recognized that market-driven solutions can complement environmental advocacy. Twelve years on, CLF Ventures has successfully demonstrated that business interests are not incompatible with social and environmental interests, and that when given a chance, and proper guidance, partnerships with the private sector can provide leadership and innovation that benefits our economy, our community, and our environment.

There may always be a need for litigation and legal advocacy, but we at CLFV are grateful that CLF understands and supports our efforts to influence environmental change through markets and bottom lines as an alternative means to the same end.

Visit CLF Ventures online to learn more: www.clfventures.org

Photo Credit: Cape Cod Times

I was disheartened, but not surprised, to read news accounts of a massive fish kill earlier this week on Cape Cod.  Over 1,000 fish turned belly-up in a river that feeds into a bay along the south shore of Cape Cod.  The mystery here is not so much about what caused this devastation, but how quickly the fix will come. And why more people aren’t up in arms about the problem?

The culprit is well-known to most who live on the Cape – septic systems leach nitrogen through the sandy soil and into coastal rivers and bays. This, in turn, feeds runaway algae and plant growth that robs fish of oxygen and wreaks havoc on the ecosystem. The nitrogen puts valuable shellfish beds at risk, too. Scientific reports show the problem is growing. Year after year, the upper reaches of many bays along Cape Cod (including coastal rivers) are being overtaken by unsightly, smelly algae.

Memories of cleaner waters…

The algae-clogged waterways I have learned of from CLF members and scientific reports are a far cry from what I remember.  My family’s vacations to Cape Cod were among our best ever, and not just because of the mini-golf and plentiful ice cream.  We played in a salt pond for hours on a giant inflatable turtle. We learned to swim in the bays’ gentle waves. We dug for clams in the tidal flats, and explored rivers and creeks.

Do you have similar memories? Maybe you want to make sure the bays stay pristine, for your own children or grandchildren. That is one reason we at CLF are working hard to address this problem.

What is being done?

Right now, residents and town officials in the 15 towns on Cape Cod are making crucial decisions about how to deal with the nitrogen problem. Septic systems in many places will have to go, or be upgraded. Yes, this will be expensive. Some federal and state funds are available to help. By account of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, 43% of the Cape’s economy is driven by tourism, and shellfish beds bring in additional revenue.   What would be the price of losing the gorgeous blue water, clean sand, and healthy shellfish that so many of us have come to love?

Click here learn more about our Cape Cod advocacy. And weigh in!

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the “discovery” of Lake Champlain by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain. Of course the Lake’s been there for more than 400 years and de Champlain was certainly not its first human “discoverer.”  Putting aside the anthropological and historical debates, we here at CLF think it’s always a good time to celebrate the many important roles that water bodies such as Lake Champlain–one of the largest freshwater lakes in the country–play in our lives.

Phosphorus pollution causes blue-green algae blooms, like this one that appeared in Lake Champlain's Missisquoi Bay in 2007. (Image Source, Vermont Department of Health)

Alas, there hasn’t been much to celebrate when it comes to water quality in many parts of Lake Champlain that are plagued annually with “blooms” or “scums” of blue-green algae caused by excess phosphorus pollution.

This pollution comes from a variety of sources including manure and other agricultural wastes, polluted storm water runoff from parking lots, rooftops, streets, and other developed areas, and from sewage treatment plant discharges.

Last week, the Vermont Health Department posted its first health advisory of the summer, warning of blue-green algae sightings in Lake Champlain’s Missisquoi Bay, Shelburne Bay, and even traces of the scum were spotted in the water off Red Rocks Park–a popular swimming location in Burlington.

As the Health Department’s advisory warns, blue-green algae can do more than just make the water look nasty.  When blue-greens are blooming the Health Department advises as follows:

• Avoid contact with algae-contaminated water.
• Do not swim or bathe in the water. Remember that children are considered to be at higher risk because they are more likely to drink the water.
• Monitor water intakes for private residences. If you see algae present near the intake, switch to an alternate safe source of water.
• Do not use algae contaminated water to prepare meals or brush teeth. Boiling water will not remove toxins.
• Do not allow pets in algae-contaminated water.

While this depressing news can give lake lovers the blues, there is cause for hope.

Earlier this month, the Vermont Environmental Court struck down a permit issued by Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) to the City of Montpelier’s sewage treatment plant, reasoning that the permit–which would have allowed the City to more than double its load of phosphorus pollution to Lake Champlain–violated the federal Clean Water Act.

This is a major victory for CLF and the Lake Champlain Lakekeeper in the broader efforts to reduce pollution in the lake at a time when Vermont is exceeding its legally-required pollution reduction targets by more than 100 metric tons each year. This news report does a good job of summarizing the decision, which can be read in full here.

Instead of redesigning the permit to actually decrease pollution as the Court has ordered, state lawyers have already started the process of appealing the decision to the Vermont Supreme Court (how sad is it that our tax dollars are funding a legal position that favors adding more pollution to a lake suffering from health-threatening algae blooms like those shown above???). I hope for a day when Vermont officials will follow the law without the need for a judge ordering them to.  Until that day comes, CLF will continue to fight for better pollution control permits that prevent pollution increases and help achieve rather than undermine the Clean Water Act’s goal of waters that are safe for swimming, fishing, and drinking.

It’s our way of trying to cure the blue-green algae blues.

According to an April 2008 National Science Foundation press release discussing the findings of a Russian/American scientific collaboration, even the world’s largest freshwater lake–Siberia’s Lake Baikal–is feeling the effects of a changing climate and not in a good way.  Drawing on sixty years worth of data collected under grueling weather conditions (negative 50!) throughout the tumult of 20th century Russia, researchers document long-term warming trends that are changing the lake’s pristine waters and unique habitat. We’re talking about global warming affecting the health of a 25-million year-old lake that contains 20% of the world’s fresh water and 2500 plant and animal species that make their home there but nowhere else.

Global climate change threatens the pristine waters of Siberia's Lake Baikal--the world's largest freshwater lake. That's bad news for much smaller and less-resilient lakes like Lake Champlain. (Image source National Science Foundation, Nicholas Rodenhouse)

Closer to home, CLF has been making the case that global climate change is aggravating pollution and food web problems in Lake Champlain–one of the ten largest fresh water lakes in the United States.

For decades, many agencies of the United States government including the Environmental Protection Agency have produced studies warning that global climate change will likely make water pollution problems worse because we can expect:

• “warming water temperatures to change contaminant concentrations in water and alter aquatic system uses”
• “new patterns of rainfall and snowfall to alter water supply for drinking and other uses leading to changes in pollution levels in aquatic systems, and” (editor’s note–this summer sure seems like we’re seeing a new rainfall pattern in New England)
• “more intense storms to threaten water infrastructure and increase polluted stormwater runoff”

–EPA National Water Program Strategy Response to Climate Change

The Lake Baikal study is further confirmation that global warming and water quality issues are deeply intertwined.  It should serve as a wake-up call to government officials charged with cleaning up and preventing pollution because “[t]his lake was expected to be among those most resistant to climate change, due to its tremendous volume and unique water circulation.” If climate change is affecting Baikal, it’s certainly affecting Lake Champlain and other freshwater bodies throughout New England (not to mention the major impacts on our Oceans).

While we must do all we can to slow down and reverse the worst of what global climate change will bring–an effort CLF is leading in New England–it’s long past time to start factoring the reality of ongoing climate change into predictions about water pollution and decisions about pollution prevention and cleanup.

EPA had that chance when it reviewed and approved Vermont’s proposed phosphorus pollution cleanup target–or Total Maximum Daily Load– for Lake Champlain in 2002.  It had plenty of its own research that could have and should have shaped important decisions regarding:

• the amount of pollution reduction needed
• the likely effectiveness of different proposed pollution cleanup activities
• the likely cost of cleanup and prevention activities

Despite all the global climate change studies EPA and the U.S. Government had created with your tax money–EPA failed entirely to factor climate change into the water quality equation for Lake Champlain. That’s why CLF has filed a lawsuit in federal court to hold EPA accountable for this failure before it’s too late for Lake Champlain.  What good is scientific research if you don’t use it to shape decisions in the real world?  Click here to read a copy of the complaint and stay tuned for updates as the case moves forward.

While there are many longer-term lifestyle changes that we all ought to adopt (like composting, driving fewer miles, using less water, etc), here are 6 things that you can do in 3.5 minutes to save our planet without leaving your chair:

1. Save a tree, stop junk mail. We all know about the Federal “Do Not Call” list – but unfortunately, there’s no such list for junk mail. However, you can sign up with DMAchoice.org to eliminate up to 80% of junk mail sent to your home. The trees will thank you, and it takes only 90 seconds.
2. Petition for expanded public transit. There are many benefits to expanded public transit – including a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and decreased dependence on foreign oil. Signing this petition takes just 15 seconds.
3. Act now to save our oceans. In just 20 seconds, you can contact all your elected officials and urge them to take action to preserve this precious resource for generations to come.
4. Map public transportation routes online. From Rhode Island to San Francisco, Google Transit provides step-by-step directions for using subways, street cars and bus routes! All the schedule and station information is built in. Drive less and live more by mapping out your work and travel routes in 25 seconds.
5. “Greenify” your computer in less than one minute. Go to your “Control Panel” (Mac users should access “System Preferences”) and switch your desktop or laptop to a “power save” setting. Modify your preferences so that your computer automatically goes into a low power or sleep mood when idle.
6. Realize that one person can make a difference. The average American will generate 52 tons of garbage by age 75, uses 24 barrels of oil a year and goes through 4,836 gallons of fresh water a month. In zero seconds, you can understand the impact that you have on this planet and your ability to make a difference.