‘Environment’

Reversing an earlier decision, Iowa’s three public universities will begin a groundwater-monitoring program at a quarry in Waterloo that they use to dump coal ash.

Student environmental activists from Iowa State University will meet with the school’s president Oct. 2 to demand that the university’s practice of disposing toxic coal ash in an unlined quarry in Waterloo be stopped.

With Iowa’s Tom Harkin taking up the late Ted Kennedy’s HELP Committee chairmanship in the U.S. Senate, an Arkansas lawmaker is taking the gavel of the Agriculture Committee. But Iowa’s two U.S. senators say that despite the shift, Iowa’s farming interests should remain well represented in the nation’s capital.

Chipped wood debris, possibly from flood-damaged Linn County homes, will soon be used to create energy at a Wisconsin biomass facility.
The contract, approved Tuesday by the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency, states that at least 6,000 tons of chipped wood debris will be sold to Michigan-based DTE Energy Services for use in a modified [...]

The death of renowned scientist Norman Borlaug last weekend yielded a bumper crop of effusive obituaries. He was credited — almost universally — with saving billions of lives, fathering “the Green Revolution,” and changing the worldwide face of agriculture forever.
I won’t pretend to know for certain whether any of those claims are false. Borlaug clearly [...]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama understands the danger of coal ash and will act to protect the public health when it issues new regulations on the toxic waste by year’s end, Gov. Chet Culver said Thursday, expecting that “there will be some changes” down the road.

A Jewish social justice organization is encouraging members to send a message to the new owners of the Agriprocessors plant in Postville in conjunction with the holiday Rosh Hashanah.
Jewish Community Action, an organization that has remained involved in Postville in the wake of the May 2008 immigration raid at the plant, has developed a home-printed [...]

A common agricultural herbicide that is banned in Europe is contaminating watersheds and drinking water across the nation, including in Iowa, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental watchdog group.

Student activists at Iowa State University want their school to alter its coal ash disposal method by the end of 2009, and they began their campaign Monday to make that happen.

Students at Iowa’s state universities say getting their schools to change their coal ash disposal methods will be a priority during the coming school year, and a new organization could make that easier.