Upstream Winning

Improving and sustaining watersheds and communities always needs some upstream thinking and doing. This year’s 3 winners of the U.S. Water Prize are succeeding in different ways and contexts but all share a willingness to think outside the “box”– whether the box is a county line, a factory fence, or a bureau boundary. The Freshwater [...]

Free Webcast Series on Hydraulic Fracturing Drills into Concerns for Water

Last week, U.S. EPA released a progress report on their Study of the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing due in 2014. To shed light on this and more, the U.S. Water Alliance and Pennwell Publishing are co-producing a series of webcasts that will get down to the nitty-gritty, go beyond emotional debates, and bring energy [...]

Supremes Rule on Stormwater Permitting

On January 8, 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court issued the first of two rulings on Clean Water Act stormwater permitting cases argued in December 2012. (The second, yet to be decided as NewsWaves goes to print, involves logging roads and stormwater runoff.) The Court reversed an earlier decision in the 9th Circuit involving urban stormwater [...]

EPA Administrator Jackson Stepping Down

On December 27, 2013, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced she would resign in January 2013 after the President’s State of the Union Address. It’s common for an EPA Administrator to step down after serving a full 4 year term of a President (which is the case for Jackson, who was nominated and confirmed very early [...]

New Name and Network Reflect “One Water” Unity

The Clean Water America Alliance announced a name change to the U.S. Water Alliance and the formation of a One Water Management network, both reflecting the organization’s core mission.  “We’re changing our name but not our game,” explains Alliance President Ben Grumbles.  “The Alliance’s mission–uniting people and policy for “one water” sustainability–remains the same. Our [...]

March Madness and the Sweet Six

This busy time of year means more than just the beginning of Spring and the madness of NCAA basketball: It’s a time to commemorate water and its champions locally and globally, including our very own six winners of the U.S. Water Prize. The U.S. Water Alliance (Alliance) created and launched the U.S. Water Prize in [...]

A Call to Farms

As we celebrate the bounty of the season, pitchforks and storm clouds are gathering throughout the country and the nation’s capital over agriculture and water policy and the potential collisions between the two. On the water quantity side, some of the fresh wrangling is over subsidies that distort the real cost of water, ground water [...]

Alliance President Joins Water Science and Technology Board

U.S. Water Alliance President Ben Grumbles has been appointed to the National Research Council’s (NRC) Water Science and Technology Board which provides a focal point for studies related to water resources accomplished under the aegis of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. The board’s objective is to improve the scientific [...]

Muddy Waters of the United States

Seekers of regulatory certainty are still singing the blues after the Supreme Court muddied the waters of jurisdiction under the federal Clean Water Act in 2001 and 2006 but don’t blame the Supremes and don’t expect a harmonious solution any time soon. Sometimes we forget but wetlands are at the heart of our country’s natural [...]

Drill, Maybe, Drill!

The friction over “fracking” (specifically hydraulic fracturing for natural gas) underscores the growing need for energy security and environmental sustainability to be in balance rather than in battle and to keep water in mind through it all. Most agree natural gas has a bright future as a “bridge” fuel to cleaner, renewable energy. It makes [...]