Blog Categories: Europe

Pollution of local waterways, public health at stake from farm lobby actions

Wheeling, WV — A coalition of local and national public interest organizations have asked a federal court for permission to participate in a legal action that will decide when Clean Water Act restrictions apply to the release of pollutants in animal manure into local waterways used for recreation, drinking and to support nearby communities. In the lawsuit, American Farm Bureau Federation and West Virginia Farm Bureau Federation (Farm Bureau) claim that a Clean Water Act permit is not required for discharges of animal waste from a large Hardy County poultry concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO). The organizations, including Potomac Riverkeeper, West Virginia Rivers Coalition, Center for Food Safety, Food & Water Watch, and Waterkeeper Alliance, are seeking to ensure that the Farm Bureau-backed poultry CAFO cannot sidestep Clean Water Act standards. Today’s filing asks the Court to give the public interest organizations the same right to participate already given to the Farm Bureau.

The motion to intervene in the case was prompted by the CAFO’s refusal to comply with an EPA order directing it to obtain a Clean Water Act permit for its discharges of pollutants from animal manure generated at the facility. The CAFO houses 200,000 chickens and contains ditches that direct animal waste from the operation into a tributary of the South Branch of the Potomac River which is listed by the state as “impaired” because of algal blooms and the presence of fecal bacteria. Although the CAFO is not disputing that its waste is discharged into these waters, it sued the agency claiming that the discharges to local waterways are exempt from the Clean Water Act, rather than obtaining a permit. The motion to intervene seeks confirmation that no exemption applies here.

“The issue here is about more than one CAFO polluting one waterway,” said Brent Walls, Upper Potomac River Manager for Potomac Riverkeeper. “It’s about defining a way to preserve and protect the right of everyone to have clean rivers and streams, even when they’re near industrial agriculture.”

Poultry CAFOs are recognized as major sources of water pollution caused by discharges of nitrogen, phosphorus and fecal bacteria. Pollutants released from poultry CAFOs contaminate waters making them unsafe for swimming and causing algal blooms which foul and deplete oxygen from the water, endangering human health and aquatic life. For forty years, the Clean Water Act has been the primary way for injured citizens and the government to take action to clean up water pollution and ensure that our nation’s waters are safe for swimming, fishing and drinking.

“We cannot afford to have our delicate and valuable waterways become a dumping grounds for factory farms,” said West Virginia Rivers Coalition Executive Director, Angie Rosser. “The public uses and depends on clean water, and has the right to protections from polluters so millions can continue to enjoy the Potomac River and the surrounding region.”

“If the CAFO and the Farm Bureau are successful, it will roll back core Clean Water Act protections that safeguard human health and the environment from unregulated releases of animal waste into our nation’s waterways,” said Marc Yaggi, Executive Director of Waterkeeper Alliance.

“We fully support EPA’s stand to enforce the Clean Water Act against polluters and to preserve the Potomac River system,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director at the Center for Food Safety, “This case should not be used as a tool to create new exemptions from established and vital environmental laws. Factory farms cannot be allowed to use the Potomac – or any waterway – as a private sewer.”

The motion to intervene was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. Potomac Riverkeeper and West Virginia Rivers Coalition are represented by Columbia Environmental Law Clinic; Waterkeeper Alliance is represented by itself and Earthjustice; Center for Food Safety represents itself and Food and Water Watch.

About Potomac Riverkeeper
Potomac Riverkeeper’s mission is to stop pollution and to restore clean water in the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers and tributaries through enforcement and community engagement. For more information about Potomac Riverkeeper, go to http://www.potomacriverkeeper.org.

About West Virginia Rivers Coalition
West Virginia River Coalition’s mission is to “seek the conservation and restoration of West Virginia’s exceptional rivers and streams”. The goals pursuant to that mission include preserving the high quality waters of the state, and improving those waters that should be of a higher quality. For more information, visit the WVRC website at http://www.wvrivers.org.

About Center for Food Safety
Center for Food Safety is a national, non-profit, membership organization founded in 1997 to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. CFS maintains offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon. More information can be found at www.centerforfoodsafety.org.

About Food & Water Watch
Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control. For more, please go to http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org

About Waterkeeper Alliance
Waterkeeper Alliance unites more than 200 Waterkeeper organizations that are on the front lines of the global water crisis patrolling and protecting more than 1.5 million square miles of rivers, lakes and coastlines in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa. Waterkeepers emphasize citizen advocacy to defend the fundamental human right to swimmable, drinkable, and fishable waters, and combine firsthand knowledge of their waterways with an unwavering commitment to the rights of their communities and to the rule of law. For more on Waterkeeper Alliance, please go to http://www.waterkeeper.org

Media Contacts:
Brent Walls, Potomac Riverkeeper; 304-707-4095, [email protected]
Angie Rosser, West Virginia Rivers Coalition; 304-637-7201, [email protected]
Steve Masar, Center for Food Safety; 202-679-3370, [email protected]
Blair Fitzgibbon, Waterkeeper Alliance; 202-588-1086, [email protected]
Rich Bindell, Food and Water Watch; 202-683-2457, [email protected]

New Food & Water Europe Issue Brief Emphasizes Importance of Measuring Well-Being Without Extending Market Values to Natural Resources

Brussels –  In an issue brief released today by Food & Water Europe, the international consumer advocate highlights the importance of creating alternatives to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that do not facilitate the financialization of nature. The brief, And the Value of Nothing: Alternatives to Gross Domestic Product and the Financialization of Nature, explains that GDP was never intended to account for distribution of wealth, quality of natural resources and schools, and other factors that measure the overall health of a society.

“Relying on market-based schemes to protect the environment and fight climate change is misguided and it will have serious repercussions in the future,” said Food & Water Europe Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “Consumers must be diligent in monitoring the decisions of policymakers who seek to financialize our public resources.”

While economists promote many alternatives to GDP, the most prominent alternatives attempt to impose market values on common resources, which would lead to their commodification. But these recommendations do not offer solutions to the problem of GDP; they merely extend its parameters to include our priceless resources. Pollution trading and water privatization are concrete examples of these misguided efforts to apply market mechanisms to environmental problems.

“The idea that you can correct the damage caused by the spread of markets by expanding markets even further is misguided,” said Gabriella Zanzanaini, director of European Affairs at Food & Water Europe. “We shouldn’t try to counter neoliberalism with some sort of left neoliberalism.”

In the wake of a major economic crisis fueled by the deregulation of Wall Street and riddled with staggering unemployment statistics, governments and economists have been pursuing alternative means to GDP. Unfortunately, many of these alternatives would aid aggressive efforts to financialize nature and profit from privatizing resources that should be managed by the public.

Two prominent alternatives to GDP, the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), are actually more of an expansion of the philosophies of GDP that extend their indicators to include non-market values.

From water markets to pollution markets, financial actors have ambitions set on expanding into new and newly profitable areas. These alternatives to GDP will facilitate the financialization of nature, placing our essential, common resources under the power of bankers.

Putting a market value on resources like water comes with large repercussions. For example, in 2012, natural gas companies seeking water for hydraulic fracturing outbid farmers in the United States. The result was that the oil and gas industry froze out farmers from access water for agriculture.

The financialization of nature is the process of replacing environmental regulation with markets. In order to bring nature under the control of markets, new commodities need to be created by the commodification, marketization and often privatization of our common resources. It is a means of transferring the stewardship of our common resources to private business interests.

And the Value of Nothing: Alternatives to Gross Domestic Product and the Financialization of Nature is available here: http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/EUValueofNothing.pdf

Contact:

Gabriella Zanzanaini, Food & Water Europe, gzanzanaini(at)fweurope.org, +32 488 409 662

Rich Bindell, Food & Water Watch, rbindell(at)fwwatch.org, +1 202 683 2457

Is the UK setting up a poverty trap for African farmers?

30 November 2012 (Gauteng, South Africa, London and Brussels) – The Africa Centre for Biosafety (ACB), supported by Food & Water Europe and the Gaia Foundation, today wrote to UK Ministers for International Development, Business and Environment asking for evidence for the basis of UK overseas aid policy.*

ACB recently published a searing critique of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (known as AGRA, supported by agribusiness multinationals and the Gates Foundation). The study finds the scheme is ultimately not about developing lasting solutions to hunger, but imposing a cash economy on African agriculture that will inevitably result in farmers becoming dependent on the multinational corporations profiting from the hardship that will follow.

AGRA effectively seeks to institutionalise biopiracy by accessing publicly available genetic resources, patenting or imposing other intellectual property rights on the resulting seeds, and then using these industrial monoculture crops to channel African farmers into focusing on earning enough export cash to buy the privatised seed. The AGRA model uses free inputs to develop monopoly control over outputs and expects farmers to pay for seeds they previously shared and traded, and played a major part in developing over thousands of years.

AGRA’s model creates the foundation for the expansion of biotechnology and synthetic agricultural inputs, a combination that has proved disastrous in other parts of the world — notably among Indian cotton farmers, whose families are still suffering from the tens of thousands of suicides that have resulted from the debts incurred.

Farmers should keep their focus on feeding people, and experience shows they can best do this by retaining control over their own resources, not permitting profit-driven multinationals to take over and concentrate power away from those doing the work.

ACB Director Mariam Mayet said:

“We’ve seen this model too many times already, and the outcome isn’t good. Western economies are suffering hugely from the problems indebtedness causes. If the UK is serious about supporting the small farmers in Africa who are feeding the majority of the people, it needs to explain how handcuffing farmers to debt and an agrochemical treadmill is going to be more effective than low cost, proven approaches of looking after the soil and maintaining seed systems.

“The UK would do far more good if it was honest about the impacts IMF-imposed structural adjustment policy has already had in Africa and putting them right rather than ramping up the damage. Forcing whole countries into a cycle of providing agricultural commodities for others in order to buy inputs to produce yet more exports for the profit of external corporations smacks of recolonisation. It’s a very dangerous game to play.”

Liz Hosken of the Gaia Foundation adds:

“African farmers urgently need to regain control over their traditional seed diversity, which enables them to adapt to climate instability and spread their risks. AGRA’s strategy, a legacy of the so-called “Green Revolution”, creates farmer dependence on a few corporate-controlled seeds and agro-chemicals, which fail to meet farmers’ diverse nutritional and agricultural requirements. There is nothing ‘green’ about this approach. Concentrating power over Africa’s food supply in the hands of a few corporations defies all logic.”

Food & Water Europe Food Policy Advisor Eve Mitchell said:

“AGRA is all about making money, but Africans will never see the bulk of it. Among other things, it is not acceptable that UK taxpayer money is being used to turn public genetic resources and traditional knowledge in Africa into privatised crops, especially in conditions of structural increases in food and agricultural input costs. Exporting agricultural technofixes might seem like a way to reap future profits and put a sticking plaster on the UK economy for a while, but this is at the expense of food producers and consumers in Africa. The UK Government claims all its policy is based on evidence. We’d like to see the basis for the decision to back AGRA.”

* A full copy of the letter can be downloaded at:

http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/EuropeAgraLetter30Nov2012.pdf

and the ACB report is available at:

www.acbio.org.za/index.php/publications/seedfood-sovereignty/396-alliance-for-agreen-revolution-in-africa-agra-laying-the-groundwork-for-the-commercialisation-ofafrican-agriculture.

Contacts:

Mariam Mayet, Director, Africa Centre for Biosafety – +27 11 646 0699 (landline) or +27 83 269 4309 (mobile)

Eve Mitchell, Food Policy Advisor, Food & Water Europe – +44 (0)1381 610 740 (landline)

Liz Hosken, The Gaia Foundation – +44 (0)7768 344 096 (mobile)

***

The ACB campaigns against the genetic engineering, privatisation, industrialisation and corporate control of Africa’s food systems and the commodification of nature and knowledge. It supports efforts towards food systems that are equitable and ecologically sustainable, built upon the principles of food sovereignty/agro-ecology. The ACB provides research, policy, analysis, advocacy and knowledge sharing.

The Gaia Foundation is passionate about regenerating cultural and biological diversity, and restoring a respectful relationship with the Earth. Together with longterm partners in Africa, South America, Asia and Europe, we work with local communities to secure land, seed, food and water sovereignty. By reviving indigenous knowledge and protecting sacred natural sites, local self-governance is strengthened. This enables communities to become more resilient to climate change and the industrial processes which have caused the many crises we now face.

Food & Water Europe commends the 262 MEPs, who supported the moratorium

Brussels – Despite intense lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, today’s vote in European Parliament demonstrates that there is no consensus for allowing large-scale shale gas development in Europe. More than one third of MEPs voted in support of a moratorium on fracking in the Parliament’s first vote on shale gas. Although the moratorium amendment fell short of a majority, the final version of the Parliament’s reports on shale gas identified the climate, environmental and health risks associated with unconventional gas.

While it is disappointing that a majority of the Parliament did not agree that an appropriate response to the documented risks of fracking is a moratorium, the reports and moratorium vote were only the first skirmish in the long-term battle to permanently ban fracking from Europe. Food & Water Europe – together with civil society groups across Europe – will continue to work with MEPs to increase awareness of the risks and negative impacts associated with large-scale unconventional gas activities.

“The fact that one-third of MEPs, representing a diverse political spectrum, voted in favour of the moratorium, shows that there is wide spread concern about fracking. These members saw through the fossil fuel industry’s smokescreen about‘ sustainable fracking,’” said Food & Water Europe policy officer Geert De Cock. “These 262 MEPs recognised that forms of extreme energy like shale gas, will hinder, not facilitate, the transition to a much-needed low-carbon energy future.”
Food & Water Europe will make sure that the European Commission offers a swift follow-up to the Parliament’s call for “an EU-wide risk management framework for unconventional fossil fuels exploration and extraction”. Allowing the unconventional gas industry to be established detracts from the EU’s efforts to decarbonize its economy by 2050. We will continue to inform EU decision-makers about how importing extreme energy extraction methods will do little to reduce European gas prices or improve the EU’s energy security. A massive investment in shale gas will only lock Europe’s energy systems into a continued reliance on fossil fuels.

Brussels – The European Commission is deliberately promoting privatization of water services as one of the conditions being imposed as part of bailouts, it acknowledged in a letter to civil society groups on 26 September 2012.[1] EU Commissioner Olli Rehn’s directorate was responding to questions posed in an open letter concerning the European Commission’s role in imposing privatisation through the Troika in Greece, Portugal and other countries.[2] The civil society groups have today written to Commissioner Rehn to demand that he stop “any further pressure to impose water privatisation conditionalities”.[3]

The Commission’s push for privatisation disregards the fact that water privatisation has failed to deliver results in Europe and around the world. Paris and many other cities have recently remunicipalised their water services due to negative experiences with privatisation. The Dutch government in 2004 passed a law banning private sector provision of water supply and the Italian Constitutional Court ruled that any future legislation attempting to privatise public services would be unconstitutional.

The Commission has not put forward any evidence to back its stance in its reply, even though research shows that public provision is often more effective than private. It also violates key articles of the EU Treaty that state the EU should be neutral on the question of water ownership.[4]

Members of the European Parliament have already tabled a question to the Commission asking for clarification on the contradiction between the Troika’s recommendations and the required neutrality of the Commission.

“This really demonstrates how the Commission has lost touch with reality. Their ideological arguments are not based on substantiated facts and goes to the extreme of ignoring the democratic will of the people,” said Gabriella Zanzanaini, Director of European Affairs for Food & Water Europe.

“The Commission has a lot to explain. Not only is there is no evidence at all to support the view that the private sector is more efficient, but there is very strong public resistance to privatization. European citizens will not back down quietly on this,” said Jan Willem Goudriaan of the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU).

As movements around Europe are gathering momentum to fight the sale of public water, the first European Citizen’s Initiative has been launched to promote the implementation of the right to water for all in Europe and the idea that water supply and management of water resources should not be subject to ‘internal market rules,’ and that water should be excluded from liberalisation.[5]

Contact:

Pablo Sanchez EPSU

tel: 0032 474 626 633 email: [email protected]

Olivier Hoedeman, Corporate Europe Observatory

tel: 0032 4 7448 6545   email: [email protected]

Gabriella Zanzanaini, Food & Water Europe

tel: 0032 488 409 662 email: [email protected]

Notes:

[1]http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/ECLettertoGZ26Sept2012pdf.pdf

[2] http://corporateeurope.org/open-letter-eu-commission-water-privatisation

[3]http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/FoodWaterEuropeCommissionerLetter17Oct2012.pdf

[4] The EU’s supposed neutrality on the question of public or private ownership and management of collective water services is outlined in article 345 TFEU and Art. 171 of the Directive 2006/123/EC on services in the internal market.

[5] www.right2water.eu