States Along the Mississippi Battle Over Farm Runoff

By Leslie Kaufman

As the surging waters of the Mississippi pass downstream, they leave behind flooded towns and inundated lives and carry forward a brew of farm chemicals and waste that this year - given record flooding - is expected to result in the largest dead zone ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dead zones have been occurring in the gulf since the 1970s, and studies show that the main culprits are nitrogen and phosphorus from crop fertilizers and animal manure in river runoff. They settle in at the mouth of the gulf and fertilize algae, which prospers and eventually starves other living things of oxygen.

Government studies have traced a majority of those chemicals in the runoff to nine farming states, and yet today, decades after the dead zones began forming, there is still little political common ground on how to abate this perennial problem. Scientists who study dead zones predict that the affected area will increase significantly this year, breaking records for size and damage.

For years, environmentalists and advocates for a cleaner gulf have been calling for federal action in the form of regulation. Since 1998, the Environmental Protection Agency has been encouraging all states to place hard and fast numerical limits on the amount of those chemicals allowed in local waterways. Yet of the nine key farm states that feed the dead zone, only two, Illinois and Indiana, have acted, and only to cover lakes, not the rivers or streams that merge into the Mississippi.  

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How Can States Raise Revenue?

By Mark Brenner

For related articles and more information, please visit OCA's Connecticut News page, Illinois News page,  New York News page, and our Politics and Democracy page.

The traditional union approach to budget politics is to accept the limits of what's possible-typically defined by politicians and lobbyists-and push for the best deal we can within those fiscal constraints.

Labor leans heavily on its inside game, and builds outside pressure in the form of anti-cuts coalitions that highlight the vital services public employees provide, and the harm that cuts will cause to the poor and vulnerable.

Unions may organize lobby days, but they don't do sustained member education, much less community outreach, pressure, or more militant tactics.

Raising taxes is painted as the political kiss of death, so politicians-and most unions-aim low. They avoid engaging with the deeper question of what a fair economy would look like and what role budgets play in getting us there.

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Cities, States Start to Adopt Climate Change Survival Strategies

As it becomes ever more clear that Congress has retreatedfrom climate change legislation faster than a Greenland glacier, cities andstates are starting to focus on adapting to the inevitable.

A report released this week by the California Adaptation Advisory Panel laid out themyriad threats climate change poses to the Golden State -- as well as strategies toanticipate and prepare for rising sea levels, along with more wildfires, heat waves, andwater shortages.

"Failure to anticipate and plan for climate variability andthe prospect of extreme weather and related events in land development patternsand in natural resource management could have serious impacts far beyond whathas already been experienced," the report states.

In short, California needs to deploy monitoring technologyalong its 1,100-mile coastline and overhaul its approach to land usedecision-making.

Eight cities and counties across the United States,meanwhile, have joined what is being called the nation's first climate adaptationeffort. The participants are Boston, Cambridge, Mass.,  Flagstaff, Ariz., Tucson, Ariz., GrandRapids, Mich., Lee County, Fla., Miami-Dade County, Fla., and the San FranciscoBay Conservation and Development Commission.

Created by the ICLEI-LocalGovernments for Sustainability, a Washington nonprofit, the ClimateResilient Communities program gives the cities and counties planning and database tools to prepare for rising temperatures and sea levels.

"Local governments have a responsibility to protect people,property, and natural resources, and these leading communities wisely recognizethat climate change is happening now, and that they must begin planning forimpacts that will only become more severe in the coming decades," MartinChávez, ICLEI USA's executive director and a former mayor of Albuquerque, saidin a statement.

The idea is to create a standardized municipal planningprocess to prepare for climate change.

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States Make Anti-Union, Preemptive Strike Against EFCA

By Jonathan J. Cooper
Common Dreams, August 12, 2010
Straight to the Source

PHOENIX - With Washington silent for now on legislation championed by unions, the debate is playing out instead in the states.

With a measure approved Wednesday by its Republican-controlled Legislature, Arizona became the fourth state that will ask voters this year to undercut proposed federal legislation aimed at making it easier for workers to unionize. Arizona voters will decide in November whether the state constitution should require a secret ballot for workers deciding whether to create a union; South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah residents will be asked similar questions.

If passed, the secret ballot initiatives would have little immediate effect because federal law already allows employers to require a secret ballot.

Rather, the ballot measures are an attempt to pre-emptively undermine the proposed federal law known officially as the Employee Free Choice Act - dubbed "card check" by opponents.

EFCA would allow a majority of employees to create a union by signing a card. Unions say workers, not their employers, should get to decide how to form a union.

Businesses have the advantage in a union election because management has unfettered access to employees and can intimidate them by changing work schedules and assignments or threatening to fire them, said Bill Samuel, government affairs director for the AFL-CIO.


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