In this week’s New York Times Charles Duhigg detailed the problems public drinking water and wastewater utilities face when they attempt to raise rates to upgrade and repair infrastructure. Duhigg cites an EPA estimate that “$335 billion would be needed simply to maintain the nation’s tap water systems in coming decades.”  Surprisingly, he did not mention a number of proposed and existing options to help meet some of those funding needs, none of which involve raising rates to households or businesses.

Last year, citing the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2009 report card, which gave our nation’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure a grade of D-, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore) introduced H.R. 3202 – The Water Protection and Reinvestment Act. The Act, which currently has 29 Democratic co-sponsors in the House and 4 Republican co-sponsors, would establish a trust fund to “provide a deficit-neutral, consistent and protected source of revenue to help states replace, repair, and rehabilitate critical drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities.” The Government Accountability Office issued a report identifying sources of revenue for the trust fund that could total as much as $10 billion annually, none of which involve raising water rates. Supporters of the legislation include the ASCE and the American Public Works Association; however, the bill is not without its detractors.

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) criticized the legislation at a hearing last summer. The Association’s primary objections center on federal control of a fund that would be distributed primarily through grants. Instead, the organization would prefer low-cost financing and subsidies for local water systems that would be administered at the state level through a Water Infrastructure Bank.

A limited but more immediate source of funding comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the federal stimulus funds allocated last year), which has $6 billion designated for the Clean Water Revolving Fund and the Drinking Water Revolving Fund administered by states. You can track funded projects at this government web site and you can find more information about stimulus spending at this private site. Together these sites offer a fairly comprehensive look at stimulus spending on a project-by-project basis in each state.

Of course all of us can support our municipal water systems by not buying bottled water and drinking tap water instead. Investments in municipal systems have declined, in part, because of our increased support of bottled water, which is both unwarranted and extravagant. For the average price of a bottle of water you could get about 3,000 gallons of tap water. The money Americans spend on bottled water is money our municipal water and wastewater systems desperately need. Alternately, states could enact fees on beverage containers that would be designated to fund water and wastewater infrastructure improvements, similar to the way New York State’s Bottle Bill designates fees collected on certain bottles to support trash and recycling infrastructure.

Certainly, increasing rates is appropriate in communities where they have been set too low, but clean, clear water is so essential to public health and well being that it warrants public funding.  Proposals to accomplish that, such as the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act, deserve close scrutiny and support.

New York City recently passed a regulation banning bake sales from public schools with the exception of one per month and after 6 PM (when no one is around). So what’s left to sell? Doritos, pop-tarts, bags of cookies and other processed junk-food permitted by the Department of Education. Instead of home-baked items prepared with love, care and admittedly, a bit of sugar, children will be left with the choice of factory-prepared, chemical laden “food-like products” with advertisements plastered all over the packaging.

Eric Goldstein, chief executive of School Food and Transportation for the Department of Education, defends the plan to the New York Times as “one piece in a holistic wellness puzzle,” stating that 40 percent of the city’s 1.1 million school children are obese or overweight. But did these children become overweight from eating their parents’ baked goods? Overwhelming evidence gathered from research on food deserts, school lunch programs and home-cooking would argue otherwise. In fact, it’s that industrialized junk food that started Americans down the path of obesity.

Allowing junk food to be the sole snack option outside of lunch further encourages the bad habits of already-confused children and teens about what foods they should eat. Rather than urging parents to provide healthier options, the Department of Education has once-again bowed to the interests of large corporations and circumvented the “healthy food” discussion altogether. This regulation allows for heavy advertising throughout the schools by corporations such as Kellogg and Pepsi Cola setting the course for a lifetime of irresponsible food decisions.

Parents, children and other concerned individuals will not take this issue sitting down. NYC Green Schools has organized a “Bake-In” and rally at City Hall on Thursday, March 18^th from four to six. Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio and Council Member Gale Brewer will attend the rally and Brewer will re-introduce the regulation for appeal on March 25^th. With enough support, there is hope that home-baked goods will once again be the focus of the bake sale and children will be spared the further bombardment of junk and ads.

Typically made with few ingredients, Irish soda bread doesn’t require a lot of effort. For one, it’s a quick bread (using baking soda, rather than yeast, to make it rise) and the main ingredients are typically flour, baking soda, salt and buttermilk. I found that its simplicity was exactly what I was looking for in that moment. As I reached into the cabinet to get the ingredients I couldn’t help but be mentally transported back to Ireland.

Taking part in the traditions of my ancestors made me beam with pride. Using simple ingredients to produce a comfort food baked with love and intention was a joyful experience. As soon as I put my hands in the dough, it felt instantly therapeutic. I kneaded and kneaded, bringing together the wet and dry ingredients in a marriage of flavors. The sweet smell of the bread baking in my oven brought me back to my childhood, when I couldn’t wait to find that foiled-wrapped piece of soda bread that my mom would put in my lunchbox on St. Patrick’s Day. This simple pleasure, taking notice of my family’s traditions, really put me in tune with my own existence. It felt genuine in a city with such fleeting pleasures.

Unfortunately, St. Patrick’s Day is too often thought of solely as a day to imbibe to the point of inebriation. I found comfort in engaging in a deep-rooted tradition that truly celebrates my Irish heritage, which is too often not given the respect it deserves on this day. If you are keen to make my Irish Soda Bread, you can see the recipe on our sister site, Meatless Monday.

While farmers were the star of the show at last Friday’s antitrust hearing in Ankeny, Iowa, the debate over the monopolization of farming is one where all of our interests are squarely at stake.

Anyone who eats and has a brain should be downright terrified that just a few giant businesses control the vast majority of food available to us as consumers.  Perhaps that explains why more than 15,000 people submitted comments in anticipation of the hearings – four more of which are scheduled this year as a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

To his credit, Attorney General Eric Holder seemed to be trying not to mince words in Iowa – always tough for an attorney – and particularly so for one under the right’s atomic microscope.  Noting that farming “has been at the core of the American economy ever since there was an American economy,” he went on to say, “[W]e’ve learned the hard way that . . . long periods of reckless deregulation can foster practices that are anti-competitive and even illegal. . . .  We know that a growing number of American farmers find it increasingly difficult to survive by doing what they’ve done for decades. And we’ve learned that some of them believe the competitive environment may be, at least in part, to blame.”

Farmers who attended a pre-hearing meeting Thursday evening made the case for themselves.  Noting that farming goes back “forever in my family,” Todd Leake, who grows wheat, soybeans, sunflowers and navy beans in North Dakota, said, “The crops we grow are the basis of civilization.  If anything belongs to the public domain, if anything belongs to the people of the world, it’s the crops we grow for food.”

Iowa hog farmer Larry Ginter, a long-time opponent of factory farms, also made the connection between the plight of American farmers and the struggles of so many people outside our borders, saying,”  “Labor, family farms, democratic rights are in a pitched battle against the dictatorship of capital. We’ve got to understand that this is an international struggle.  Those Mexican workers coming up here are family farmers. Those Sudanese workers in the packing plants are family farmers and workers being driven off by the big dictatorship of capital. We have to understand that we are not alone in America.” Urging his fellow farmers to action, Ginter concluded, “Nothing can happen on the farms unless farmers turn the wheel and plant the seed.”

Wisconsin dairy farmer Joel Greeno, said “My parents’ 29^th wedding anniversary was a farm foreclosure. Their 30^th anniversary was a sheriff’s auction on the courthouse steps.  My neighbor’s farm was stolen from him that was owned since 1942 by his family. He came to ask how to get food stamps because he’d always lived off his farm, no longer had that, and said that his social security of  $9,000 a year couldn’t feed him.  This has got to end. Washington has got to step up.  DOJ is our only lifeboat. They have to fix this. They have to correct it. Monsanto does not have the right to dictate the value of my life, my work, and the food I produce. Kraft Food does not have the right to set the price of my milk, which they do without question.”

Patrick Woodall, a research director for Food and Water Watch, and a panelist at the hearings said, “At the end of the day, farmers and activists could speak truth to power and delivered a tough message to the regulators that action was long overdue, it was time to bust the agribusiness trusts and level the playing field for farmers and consumers. Many audience members, like Marcia Ishii-Eiteman from Pesticide Action Network North America, also challenged the reliance on agrochemical inputs and the false hope of genetically modified crops.”

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said, “This is not just about farmers and ranchers. It’s really about the survival of rural America.”

He’s right, of course, but that’s not just some romantic Rockwellesque notion; almost anyone who eats depends on a shrinking number of farmers struggling at the other end of our fork. If they disappear, our freedom to eat what we choose will vanish as well.

For me, there’s nothing more uplifting than meeting children who are excited about growing their own food.  So when the Sweetie and I travel, we often google around looking for Edible Schoolyards to visit.

In Phoenix, we really hit pay dirt!  Mrs. Molly Roberts, a retired science teacher called back to replace a teacher on pregnancy leave, happily accepted the challenge and went right back to work showing her students at the Lowell Elementary School how to plant a salsa garden.

Mrs. Roberts understands that kids will get excited about gardening when they know they’ll get to taste the results, so the children planted tomatoes, cilantro, onions, and chili peppers.  To top it off, they planted some strawberries in order to make strawberry ice cream.

The kids planted both sun and shade gardens and make daily log entries to compare how the plants grow differently in the two diverse environments.  Mrs. Roberts also uses the garden to teach about how plants grow, how sun affects plant health, why healthy soil is important, and how to be good gardeners.  The children also learn the value of composting.

In this clip you’ll see Mrs. Roberts and the children telling you exactly what they’re up to.  One of the students shows off the sun garden, and you’ll see how excited all the children are!  I’m the one in the background asking all the questions.

In the second clip, one of the students tells you about what she enters into her log.  Another shows us the shade garden.

Here’s the principal, Mrs. Rosanna Hidalgo, showing us around the campus, rightfully called La Tierra Buena.  Never have I seen a public school with such lovely grounds. And somehow, Mrs. Hidalgo was going to find the time to play basketball with the kids after school let out. As we chatted with her, she said hello by name to every child who passed by. Wish I had a principal like her when I went to Elementary School.

Elizabeth Puccini is co-founder of the NYC Green Schools initiative and parent of a student at The Children’s Workshop School in Manhattan. With the help of like minded parents, Elizabeth brought Meatless Monday to three New York City schools. She tells us how easy it is to bring Meatless Monday to our nation’s schools:

How did Meatless Monday at The Children’s Workshop School, The East Village Community School and P.S.94 come about?

The three schools share the same cafeteria. Inspired by the Baltimore school system, our Nutrition Committee asked if we could have Meatless Mondays. The School Foods Manager said yes. It was that simple.

Have there been changes to school food policy since the committee stepped in?

Absolutely. We have a salad bar that serves chickpeas and tofu, and we’ve eliminated fried products. We’ll soon be including education about the health and environmental benefits of eating plant-based foods.

Can these victories be easily adopted by other city schools?

Yes. School Foods is obligated to meet the requests of parents and schools. Suggesting Meatless Mondays is something parents and principals can take on right away!

What has the students’ response been?

Students are starting to appreciate the consequences of what they eat. When you limit meat, their first question is “Why?” This begins a dialogue about why it’s so important to eat less meat and get your protein from plant sources.

What advice would you give other parents?

Get involved, and know you have the power to demand change. Form a nutrition committee, get the support of the principal and meet with your School Foods Manager (every school is assigned one) to speak about changes in your menu!

Power to the Parents! – That’s the rallying cry at the first New York City school to adopt Meatless Mondays. Up next?  A Bake-in at City Hall March 18.

Subsidies for Slop – Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Brooklyn community organizer Mark Winston Griffith talked to Brian Lehrer this week about ending food deserts. Stringer startled Lehrer with the truly gross revelation that City tax incentives continue to subsidize fast food outlets including – count ‘em – six McDonalds in Manhattan alone!

Cootie Crops – An Arkansas farmer who sued Bayer for GMO contamination of his crops has been awarded more than $1 million in damages in a decision that will doubtless be appealed.

CAFOs Spawning Civil War – Rural residents of Pennsylvania have been fighting their own elected representatives in their desire to stave off the toxic effects of factory farms. This week, many of them took their fight to the state capitol.

Ag Monopoly – A series of highly anticipated Department of Justice hearings into antitrust issues raised by the concentration of business in agriculture kicks off today in Ankeny, Iowa with a look at problems faced by crop farmers, including the effects of GMO seeds and vertical integration.  The hearings are being held in conjunction with USDA.  With both Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder scheduled to speak, media scrutiny and public attention should be intense. One indication of the high level of interest is the fact that more than 15,000 pre-hearing comments have been received from farmers, consumers, academics, elected officials, and industry groups. Here is a related story from the NY Times.

The delegation came here to evaluate how the United States operates within Codex Alimentarius compliance standards. Their visit ran the gamut from meeting with folks from ADM and Pfizer to meeting with Consumers Union and Food and Water Watch. Their agenda offered them the opportunity to hear a wide range of opinions. And among our visitors, there was clearly a diversity of opinion as well.

photo by Robin Madel

Russia is not currently producing enough food for its people, relying heavily on imports.  Aware that the desire to rapidly increase food production could result in the adoption of unsustainable practices, we spent much of our time with our visitors talking about what we believe is wrong with American-style industrial agriculture.

Most meat produced in the United States comes from confined animal feeding operations that pollute our water and air, while torturing the livestock unfortunate enough to be born into these horrendous environments. While the United States currently lacks the processing and distribution infrastructure to make sustainably-produced meat readily available, change is in the air, with both government agencies like the USDA and food activists working to change this picture. And, while sustainably raised meat is expensive, as my colleague pointed out, when you factor in the costs of industrial meat – including direct subsidies and the environmental and health costs, sustainably raised meat starts to look like the better bargain.

As things stand now in the United States, the rush to monopolize food and collect fat profits has left us with unsustainable factory farms, genetically-modified organisms that have never been found to be safe, and a water and air pollution problem that we are only just beginning to get our heads around. Russia, in its rush to produce food quickly, could face a similar fate unless the nation is mindful and deliberate in how it proceeds. It would be wonderful if, instead of going down this same dirty, destructive road, our Russian friends can, instead, learn from our mistakes.

Photo by Mykl Roventine

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released final regulations that will triple the amount of biofuels produced in the United States.  These new regulations implement the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2), which mandates that transportation fuels sold in the United States contain a minimum of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels per year by 2022, a massive increase from the current 12 billion gallons.

The RFS2 also requires that biofuels produced at new facilities achieve at least a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when compared with conventional fuels. According to the recent guidelines developed by the EPA, which created a new emissions accounting model, corn-based ethanol achieves a 21 percent emissions reduction, just enough to put the fuel above minimum polluting standards – barely.

While the biofuels industry was obviously happy, environmental groups greeted the new emissions model with skepticism. Jonathan Lewis, an attorney with the Clean Air Task Force, said that the “EPA appears to have bent over backward to allow some highly problematic biofuels to meet the environmental criteria set by Congress.”

While we are now on the path to a radical 300 percent increase in biofuels production, the EPA’s own Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) – a detailed examination developed by the agency to determine the potential impact of the RFS2 – warns of the effects of this expanded production on water resources. According to the RIA, “EPA anticipates that increased corn production for ethanol will increase the occurrence of nitrate, nitrite, and atrazine in sources of drinking water.” The RIA also states that “in addition to potential additional contamination of sources of drinking water, surface and ground water supplies may be strained by increased production of irrigated corn for ethanol and the ethanol production process itself in local and regional areas. Increased pumping from agricultural aquifers to support ethanol production may accelerate the long running depletion of aquifers which has been documented by the USGS.”

Concerns about the impact on water from biofuels production have been voiced before and are becoming louder. A little more than a year ago, then U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Dick Kempthorne, stated: “To reach our ethanol production target of 7.5 billion gallons per year by 2012 will require 30 billion gallons of water a year to process, or the amount of the annual water needs of Minneapolis, Minn. And if just 25 percent of the new corn crop requires irrigation, ethanol will demand more water than the combined annual usage of all cities in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Nevada. As we increase ethanol production, we must have a holistic approach that takes into account its impact on water supply.”

And late last year a report by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan independent arm of Congress that investigates federal government spending, concluded that more research is needed regarding both the water impacts of feedstock cultivation and biofuel conversion, and more data on water resources is required as well.

With so many warnings and so many uncertainties, the rush to a massive increase in biofuels production looks nothing short of reckless.