UPDATED: To correct name and title. (Wed,. April 5, 10:30 a.m. MT)
By Naoki Nitta for Grist.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Grist-Public News Service Collaboration
Standing under a shady tree drooping with pomegranates late last year, Brad Simmons, a retired metal fabricator who has lived in Healdsburg, California, for 57 years, showed off his backyard orchard. Along with the apple, cherry, and peach trees, he's packed one pear tree, two lemon trees, and a century-old olive tree into his bungalow's compact garden.
Of course, the small grove requires plenty of water - an increasingly scarce resource in a state that continues grappling with a historic drought
despite recent torrential rains. Yet Simmons, like many of his fellow 12,000 residents, has managed to keep much of this wine country community north of San Francisco looking verdant while slashing the city's water use in half since 2020.
Healdsburg benefits from an invaluable resource that keeps gardens, trees, and vineyards irrigated: free, non-potable water produced by its wastewater-reclamation facility. The plant recycles 350 million gallons of effluent drained and flushed in the city every year, according to city officials, or slightly more than half its annual water consumption. The reused H₂O is used in irrigation, construction, and other applications that require lower levels of treatment than drinking water. This eases pressure on regional reservoirs and wells while enlisting a wide pool of users in promoting an ethos of conservation, all the while helping manage the amount of treated wastewater discharged into the Russian River.
"I worry about water all the time," Simmons said as he dragged a hose across his parched grass to an enormous box filled with 275 gallons of reclaimed water. The washer-and-dryer-size containers have become a standard lawn fixture around town. "So this is a real lifeline."
California's wastewater projects
Currently, California treats and reuses approximately
728,000 acre-feet, or approximately 18 percent, of the yearly wastewater it produces. But the state has higher ambitions for increasing water security: New goals call for a near threefold increase by 2030 to
2 million acre-feet annually.
Backed by initiatives such as the California Water Board's
Clean Water State Revolving Fund and federal support, including a
$750 million grant program, several large projects are in the pipeline. Orange County, for one, is upping capacity on its potable water-purification plant - already the world's largest - to recycle
130 million gallons of effluent daily. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is eyeing a new
$3.4 billion recycling facility that would secure a renewable source of drinking water for 19 million customers in the Los Angeles area.
For smaller communities or those with limited resources, however, a more modest approach can be just as effective, says Anne Thebo, senior researcher at the
Pacific Institute, a nonprofit water conservation think tank in Oakland, California.
"The local context can really give communities flexibility in developing their water-reuse plans," she notes. Agricultural communities hold an advantage here, she says, because many forms of irrigation don't require recycled water that's clean enough to drink. But all communities have some flexibility in their ability to use treated effluent, because water used to irrigate timber or lawns can be lower in quality than that used for pasture grass like alfalfa or crops that can be eaten raw, such as strawberries and lettuce. Developing a water-recycling plan that suits the needs of the community can diversify a region's water portfolio and offset overall demand.
Healdburg's approach
Reuse wasn't Healdsburg's main priority when it upgraded the wastewater plant in 2008. The city needed to comply with environmental discharge regulations into the Russian River, which included meeting a higher threshold of nutrient and pathogen removal. The $29.3 million enhancement added pathogen-filtering membranes and UV light to a process that already included filtration and a microbial scrubbing. The additional measure purifies wastewater to near-drinking quality, making it clean enough to release into the 1,485-square-mile watershed.
Still, even at that quality, regional water authorities limit discharge to October through mid-May, when rain typically swells river volumes and reduces the risk of negative impacts. For the remaining months, "we have to figure out what to do with it," says Healdsburg's water and wastewater engineer Patrick Fuss. This became the core challenge, and eventual success, of Healdsburg's program - ensuring that there's enough demand for that supply.
Although state regulations allow the agricultural use of triple-treated water, they also require permits that outline specific uses, largely to ensure the safety of groundwater and the public. Healdsburg's original permit included wine-grape irrigation along with residential, landscaping, and industrial use. But finding sufficient takers for the treated water was, for years, a challenge, Fuss says. While the recycled water is free, it's non-potable and requires separate plumbing and tubing, making for a potentially expensive outlay. Others had
unfounded concerns about nitrate, mineral, and chemical residues in the supply tainting their prized grapes.
As a result, treated wastewater continued to cascade into the river until three years ago, when municipal actions driven by the escalating drought pushed the city into full compliance with the discharge rules. The multifaceted approach tightens the amount of wastewater coming into the system through water-conservation measures, while increasing demand for recycled water.
Fuss laid some of the groundwork for that by enlisting vintners through a door-to-door campaign, and engaging potential participants in planning a pipeline extension for easier delivery to them. Meanwhile, the city required the use of reclaimed water in all construction projects, making it available at two fill stations. Finally, as state and regional water restrictions tightened last year, Healdsburg started free residential deliveries of up to 500 gallons per subscriber every week.
Accommodating a diverse range of users is crucial, says Fuss, to balancing supply and demand. "We know we can achieve compliance during a drought, when the influent - the amount of wastewater we need to treat - is reduced because people are conserving, while the demand on the other end is greater," he says. A wet or normal year would flip the equation, which, without sufficient spigots, would quickly overflow the system.
Managing wastewater discharge quality is actually a major motivator of water-recycling projects in California, says Thebo. And as a rule, developing multiple benefits seems to be the common driver to success. "They're at the core of the partnerships that form between cities, growers, environmental groups, and the slew of other stakeholders. And they're also what gets the community and local politicians engaged."
In Healdsburg, there seems to be no shortage of community engagement. Popularity, in fact, killed the residential delivery program, which at its peak served more than a quarter of city households. "It was [financially] untenable as a long-term strategy," says water and wastewater superintendent Rob Scates, "but it definitely helped get the word out." The water is still given away at filling stations, and several hauling companies deliver for a small fee (Simmons reports paying $40 for each biweekly delivery).
The city, however, isn't taking chances. As extra insurance, it recently broadened permissible uses to include pastures, commercial orchards, and nondairy livestock. And plans are in the works to extend the pipe network - painted purple to denote the non-potable supply - directly into town for municipal irrigation, thanks to a $7 million
state grant. "Word's gotten out that the water quality is very good, and it's a pretty reliable system," says Scates. "Now [users] are really hooked on it. They keep us in compliance."
As an early adopter, Dennis De La Montanya, owner of
De La Montanya Vineyards, has no apprehension. He's been irrigating the grapes that produce his award-winning pinot noir and chardonnay off the purple pipes for years. "It's been a real boon in terms of water availability. And we don't put a strain on groundwater resources or the public water system," he says. "It's a win-win."
Tangible outcomes like this make the real value of recycled water apparent, says Thebo. "So many of the challenges of water scarcity can feel intractable. But when people can see solutions that impact their daily life, I think it becomes a point of pride for the community."
Naoki Nitta wrote this article for Grist.
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By Dawn Attride for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
In a single day, Lee Zeldin, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has spearheaded an institutional reversal of longstanding U.S. environmental policies in what he calls "31 historic actions." From questioning the well established finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to health to eradicating Clean Water Act provisions, the deregulation blitz could lead to increased pollution and risk to public health, environmental groups warn. "We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more," said EPA Administrator Zeldin.
Weakening Water Quality Laws Garners Support From Farm Lobby
One controversial action is a set of proposed changes to the Clean Water Act, established in 1972 to regulate pollutants in U.S. waters and prevent contamination from industries like factory farms and mineral mining. In a 2023 Supreme Court decision, Sackett v. EPA, the Court narrowed the definitions of protected waters to exclude certain wetlands unconnected to "navigable" waterways. Although Biden's EPA revised protections to include this ruling, Zeldin argues his predecessors "failed to follow the law and implement the Supreme Court's clear holding in Sackett." He now seeks to further deregulate waterway protections.
"The previous Administration's definition of 'waters of the United States' placed unfair burdens on the American people and drove up the cost of doing business," Zeldin said on Wednesday.
For states like Iowa where roughly half of water bodies are polluted (thanks in part to the 109 billion pounds of animal manure produced each year by factory farms in the state), the Clean Water Act already doesn't do enough to protect water as it stands, David Cwiertny, professor of civil engineering and director for the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination at the University of Iowa, tells Sentient. It fails to meaningfully address non-point source pollution, and exempts major pollutant sources like subsurface agricultural drainage, he says.
"As a result, analyses have shown that Iowa has among some of the worst water quality in the nation based on impaired stream miles and lake area under the Clean Water Act. These impairments have endangered public drinking water supplies while also limiting recreational water access for Iowans," says Cwiertny.
The EPA's latest announcement may make matters worse. "It's hard to see water quality in Iowa improving with the proposed plans to rework WOTUS, which will most likely end up further reducing the number of water bodies protected by the Act," Cwiertny says.
Zeldin credited concerns from farmers and ranchers as a factor to the change, as attendee American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall said he was pleased with the decision, stating it provides clarity for farmers and will help them "protect the environment while ensuring they can grow the food America's families rely on."
Stacy Woods, research director for the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said the EPA is "giving a green light" for industrial agriculture to pollute and drain valuable wetlands. "Big Ag interest groups like the Farm Bureau pretend to represent small family farms when they are really working for giant industrial agricultural companies who could not care less about draining, polluting and flooding rural America in service of their bottom line. Missing from this conversation are the voices of farmers who are invested in being good stewards of their land and who are actually part of the rural communities that benefit from wetlands," Woods said in a statement.
Crackdowns on Environmental Pollutant Regulations Will Have an Outsized Impact on Vulnerable Communities
Water wasn't the only thing on the agenda, as oil and gas regulations are also under scrutiny, along with clean air standards and termination of the "Good Neighbor" rule that requires states to manage their own pollution that can be blown into nearby states.
"EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today announced plans for the greatest increase in pollution in decades. The result will be more toxic chemicals, more cancers, more asthma attacks, and more dangers for pregnant women and their children. Rather than helping our economy, it will create chaos," Amanda Leland, Executive Director of the Environmental Defense Fund said in a statement.
Ending or revoking such regulations means fewer protections for communities with high numbers of low socioeconomic status residents. Pollution also disproportionately impacts Black and Hispanic communities, due in part to historical practices like redlining, which meant rejecting financial services to those looking to move to a residential area, often based on race or ethnicity. This practice, as well as ongoing pollution and other inequities, leads to concentration of vulnerable communities near hazardous pollution sources. Research shows these communities have higher rates of asthma and poor mental health. The EPA also plans to shut down its climate justice offices across the country whose primary focus is to help those most affected by the burdens of pollution and climate change.
These latest policy moves are likely to be met with legal action from both sides; environmental groups have already promised to "vigorously oppose" Zeldin's "attack" on public health while Trump's FBI pledged to criminally charge climate groups who received funding from the Biden administration.
"Though [these actions] will not hold up in the face of science or the court of law, they already pose grave and immediate threats to people and the environment," Dr. Rachel Cleetus, the policy director with the Climate and Energy Program at the UCS, said.
Dawn Attride wrote this article for Sentient.
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By Nina B. Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Nebraska News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
The Clean Water Act, salmonella inspections and equity in the Packers and Stockyards Act are just a few of the regulations that the industry lobbying group the Meat Institute, formerly known as the North American Meat Institute, is calling for the Trump administration to pull back.
On January 27, Meat Institute president Julie Anna Potts penned a letter to the White House providing the new administration with "strategies to reduce burdensome regulations and address meat prices for consumers." In the letter, Potts blames the previous administration for inflation, which she claims was caused by increased regulation in the food industry. Potts also targets increased worker protections against discrimination, which she claims are part of diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
"Based on what they propose, the path to lower food prices is exploiting child labor and engaging in sharecropping production models," Austin Frerick, antitrust expert and author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry, tells Sentient. "They're grab-bagging words in the moment to fit their deregulatory race to the bottom."
If Trump takes the advice of this lobbying group - which touts its representation of meat packers and processors that "account for more than 95 percent of U.S. output" of processed meats - experts do not agree that prices will necessarily go down. According to Food & Water Watch staff attorney Emily Miller, the real issue at play is consolidation in the industry.
"We know that the real cost of high food prices in this country is not inflation or the cost of regulatory compliance, as the industry is claiming. It's corporate consolidation and greed," Miller says. "Rolling back regulations that are meant to protect farmers, slaughterhouse workers, frontline communities and consumers from exploitation and pollution will just allow the meat industry to break even more profit."
While food prices have increased at a fast rate - as much as 2.5 times the rate of inflation - corporate profits have sky-rocketed five times faster than inflation. Four companies control around 70 percent of the pork industry and four companies control more than half the chicken processing market.
Even if the industry successfully de-regulates and lowers costs associated with stricter environmental and worker protections, there is no guarantee that would result in lower food prices. Corporations can continue to pocket the difference.
What This Could Mean for Workers
One rule the Meat Institute wants to rescind is the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity Under the Packers and Stockyards Act. The rule, which went into effect in 2024, "prohibits the adverse treatment of livestock producers and poultry growers based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), disability, marital status, or age."
The Meat Institute claims this rule "attempts to enshrine" diversity, equity and inclusion concepts into the act.
"I think this is definitely a way of baiting Trump to act," Miller says. "What they're really asking, pretty unabashedly, is for the ability to discriminate against other people for personal characteristics that have nothing to do with their business or the economy or anything that would have any sort of justification, which is pretty outrageous."
Another set of protections the Meat Institute targets in its bid to the new administration relates to contract chicken producers - farmers who raise chickens on a contract basis for mega-corporations like Tyson Foods. Passed under the Biden administration, the regulations had been intended in part to help chicken farmers who end up taking on enormous debts as part of their contractual agreements with poultry companies.
What This Could Mean for the Environment
The Clean Water Act is considered one of the cornerstones of environmental protection in the U.S., but when it comes to regulating the discharges from agriculture, it has long fallen short. Clawing back the already weakened regulatory power of the act could further pollute waterways that are already in poor shape, especially in states with increasing density of factory farms. For instance, more than half of rivers and streams are degraded in Iowa - a state where most counties are "severely or highly concentrated with factory farms."
Miller, of Food & Water Watch, notes that the federal government is under a court enforceable settlement that requires them to finalize the rule the Meat Institute wants to disassemble. Any effort to roll that back, she says, would be in direct violation of the settlement.
"The industry would, of course, want the least amount of regulation possible and to maintain the status quo that allows them to really harm the communities that neighbor these operations, which overwhelmingly are low income communities of color," she says.
In states dominated by factory farms, manure discharged into waterways has led to detrimental health outcomes, fish kills and higher drinking water costs.
In addition, much of the meat produced in Iowa factory farms is in turn exported. "We're basically destroying rural communities in the Midwest, notably Iowa, to feed foreign nations," Frerick says. "The environmental destruction these production models do and that says something when it's cheaper to do it here than in China."
Frerick argues that Republican administrations "turbocharge" the race to the bottom with de-regulation, opening the doors for catastrophic changes to not only the food system itself, but consumer trust and confidence that they are getting a safe product.
"You're playing Russian Roulette with people's health and safety. If you have one big scandal, one big outbreak, you could really shift people's consumption and food diets in profound ways that really can wreck an industry," Frerick says.
What This Could Mean for Food Safety
Pulling back proposed salmonella regulation could endanger consumers, Jaydee Hanson, Policy Director of the Center for Food Safety tells Sentient. Meat Institute is calling to replace a proposed rule that would increase monitoring in the poultry slaughter process with "a performance standard with the input of stakeholders."
"I'm concerned that the next thing they'll be pushing for is less aggressive enforcement of rules on E coli," he tells Sentient. "We don't want to go back to poor inspection with state inspectors that are being bribed and say that that's going to give us cheaper meat."
"You want a regulatory system where consumers know they're getting a healthy, safe product that was produced in a way that was ethical," Frerick says. "When you get rid of that, you're incentivizing the worst people."
The Bottom Line
"Any regulatory rollbacks that allow the meat industry to further consolidate its market power will just have the opposite effect on consumers and on food prices generally," Miller says. "Efforts to roll those things back would just continue to inflict harm on the people who are growing and producing our food in this country, and simply give a bigger profit margin to the corporations that are at the top of the food chain."
Though no distinct moves have been made to address the Meat Institute's requests, on January 31, the Trump White House announced a de-regulatory blitz, requiring that "whenever an agency promulgates a new rule, regulation, or guidance, it must identify at least 10 existing rules, regulations, or guidance documents to be repealed."
"Concentrated markets gouge. It's what they do. You see innovation and quality decline," Frerick tells Sentient. "Once you add in the cost, the negative externalities, all the pollution stuff, it's even more expensive. So we're being doubly-screwed, to be blunt."
Nina B. Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.
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