Clean Water: An Overdue Investment

Congress and the president passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) better known as the stimulus bill in 2009 to help accelerate the end of the recession by pumping money into "shovel ready" public works water and wastewater systems, roads, bridges, levees, and other systems. As they debated the bill, elected officials spun yarn after yarn about working men and women going back to work to fix long overdue problems and jumpstarting the economy by spreading some of ...more

Protect the Environment, Fix the Pipes

Have you ever driven past a sign for a Water Pollution Control Plant and wondered what goes on there? Have you ever flushed the toilet, and paused to ask yourself what happens to that water? Without proper treatment, human sewage poo, pee, toilet paper, etc. is serious water pollution. The germs make people and animals sick. The nutrients cause algae blooms that choke the life out of rivers and streams. The sewer pipes that connect your home to the local sewage treatment facility ...more

Protect the People, Replace the Pipes

In the spring of 2010, a massive water pipe failure in Massachusetts made headlines all across the country. The catastrophe sent millions of residents scrambling to find safe water to drink or cook with. Health authorities directed residents to boil water before drinking it -- or even serving it to their pets. Retailers struggled to meet the sudden demand for huge quantities of bottled water.This catastrophic event graphically illustrated the connection between health of America's wa ...more

Don’t Be A Pain in the Drain!

There's a small handful of things you absolutely don't want to flush down the drain, such as money or time and also old cooking grease, unused medicines, and household chemicals.That's right. Modern American homes are full of things that CAN go down the drain but SHOULDN'T. This article will provide a few tips on what those are and how to deal with them. Responsibly. Cooking Oil and GreaseYour doctor will tell you that grease clogs your arteries. Grease also clog ...more

Water for Life, Your Lawn, Your Planet

If you are a die hard green thumb, then the first sing of spring is when you find yourself gazing out the window at yard and thinking "that looks awful." You find yourself rummaging around the shed, inspecting your garden tools, and making excuses about why you need to get out to the Home Expo Mart and linger in the lawn and garden aisle. And if you are die hard green thumb, then the first sign of summer is when you find yourself thinking "it's been a while since it rained" -- and ...more

Three Tips to Save Water and Money at Home

Water. It meets the most basic of needs, necessary for survival by animals (including humans) and plants alike.And we use a lot of it. Some experts estimate that the average U.S. residents uses more about 70 gallons of water per person, 280 gallons per day per family of four. At that rate, a typical neighborhood is using an Olympic sized swimming pool of water everyday, just to brush their teeth, shower, cook, and flush the toilet! When you imagine how many neighborhoods there are ...more

Environmental Issue Surveys: What Are They Telling Us?

A fresh environmental issue survey from CNN/Opinion Research finds that a majority of Americans believe that the economy should take precedence over the environment. It wasnt by a huge number a little more than half (51%) picked economy: and slightly less than half (45%) picked environment. The margin of error was 3%.Pollsters love this question and theyve been asking variations of it for decades. Here is how the question was worded this time around, in this particular environme ...more

Sorry Charlie: Average Advocacy Fails the Tuna

Remember Charlie the Tuna? If you havent seen him on the air in while, its probably because he was caught and eaten long ago. Overfishing has decimated the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Populations are shrinking fast. Stricter international regulations to prevent overfishing are long overdue.At the urging of Oceans Conservancy and Oceana, and allied groups, the United States recently proposed stricter protections for the Atlantic Bluefin to the United Nations negotiators. Sad ...more

Environmental Awareness: Encouragement vs. Education

"I can do small things every day that will make an impact on water pollution."It's such a simple statement, and it's true. So why is it so hard to send a message -- over the airwaves, online, or in print -- that actually evokes that reaction? Unfortunately, many environmental messages accidentally evoke an entirely different reaction, instead:"It is hard to believe that the actions of one person can really contribute to lessening water pollution." I pulled ...more

Cowboys, Conservationists, and the Hopeful Herd

When we are trying to make something happen, conservationists sometimes think like cowboys. We break out the rhetorical cattle prod and try to shock the public out of complacency and into action with a stiff jolt of bad news. There's a time and place for that -- but to motivate people to actually do something, you have to mix the bad news with a more positive environmental message.

Here are some examples of cattle prod messages that have crossed my desk recently: Giant corporati ...more