USDA and EPA Should Cancel Next Week’s Water Pollution Trading Workshop in Nebraska

Washington, D.C. – “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be holding a workshop in Lincoln, Neb. next week to promote ‘water quality markets’. We’re calling on the USDA and the EPA to cancel these meetings and reverse their support of market-based approaches to water pollution, which will only enrich polluters and financiers at the expense of our nation’s waterways and the Clean Water Act.

“Reports have shown that Nebraska’s waterways are among the most polluted in the nation, thanks to pollution from factory farms and large slaughterhouses and processing plants. Water pollution trading takes the onus off of polluters, providing a voluntary, deregulatory scheme that undermines the main tenet of the Clean Water Act—that pollution is illegal.

“We must do better than create hard-to-understand schemes with the appearance that something is being done about pollution, when in fact, the USDA and EPA are undermining proven laws and allowing polluters to evade protective regulatory oversight. While the EU just declared water a public good, our regulatory bodies are rushing to commoditize it. We call on the USDA and the EPA to cancel the workshops in Nebraska next week, reverse course on their promotion of water pollution trading, and uphold the Clean Water Act.”


Press Release: September 10, 2015
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/pressreleases/usda-and-epa-should-cancel-next-weeks-water-pollution-trading-workshop-in-nebraska/

Food & Water Watch
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/