| Yet, in 1987, Iowa responded to widespread nitrate contamination of groundwater by imposing a small tax on fertilizers and dedicating the resulting revenue (about $1 million per year) to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. In the ensuing years, the Center and other state efforts helped reduce nitrogen fertilizer use by 12 to 15 percent relative to neighboring states while maintaining high crop yields.
Milne said there are many ways green taxes are critical to advancing markets and social goodness (not to mention our carbon-neutral future):
?Reflect Real Costs. |
Devra Davis
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 There is a window of opportunity to initiate studies in areas where groundwater pollution has remained high and localized. There is also an important opportunity for prevention that could forestall major public health problems in the future. The legislative mandates, policies and programs of the federal and state agencies that currently manage hazardous waste sites are inadequate to the task of protecting public health. The distribution and frequency of exposures of specific populations near specific hazardous-waste sites cannot be ascertained, because the needed data have not been gathered. |
Ron Garner
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 Glacial water crystals show one to three levels of hexagon structures, whereas the New Zealand groundwater crystals show seven or more hexagonal layers.
Another observation made by Mr. and Mrs. Excelex was that biophotons composed of several levels of hexagonal structures have a brighter radiating light (energy field) surrounding them than a single-hexagon level biophoton. This brighter light is a clear indication of higher energy within the water, which explains why Mr. and Mrs. Excelex's plants that were fed structured water grew so well compared to others given different water. |
David Steinman
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 If a factory farm operation in North Carolina or a manufacturing plant in Louisiana is polluting the groundwater with dangerous chemicals and everybody knows it, rhat farm or plant ought to pay a tax, instead of shifting the burden ro consumers.
?Influence Behavior. Providing tax credits for conservation and renewable energy sources has had tremendously positive influences on consumer behavior and corporations. Many of society's leading-edge conservation projects today were initiated, in part, as a response to societal rewards via credits and deductions. |
Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith
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 In 2005, the United States Geological Survey found that by-products of common chemical products used by humans, including antibacterial soap, steroids, bug sprays, and prescription drugs, were entering streams and groundwater, causing a disruption to fish reproduction while increasing people's resistance to antibiotics when they consumed the fish. |
James Howard Kunstler
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 It prevents rain from being absorbed as groundwater and sends it instead into rivers, and ultimately into the ocean. The effect of this is the inability of water tables and wetlands to recharge and the diminishing ability of the terrain to support life. In the United States, only 2 percent of the country's rivers and wetlands remain free-flowing and undeveloped. As a result, the country has lost more than half of its wetlands.
The U.S. average of 1,300 gallons of water per day, per citizen, is the highest use rate in the world, and some sixty times the average for many third world nations. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 People are recycling old cardboard boxes from laundry detergent made with toxic ingredients and chemicals that wash down the drain and pollute the streams, groundwater and, ultimately, the ocean. They're recycling soft drink cans loaded with either high-fructose corn syrup -- the sweetener that promotes obesity and mental disorders in children -- or artificial chemical sweeteners that cause cancer and neurological malfunction.
I've seen people recycle prescription drug boxes and over-the-counter drug boxes. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Think about it: now instead of dumping toxic waste products into landfills where the chemicals leach into the groundwater supplies and get consumed by people, these toxic chemicals get consumed by people first, then they get flushed into the rivers and streams. It reminds me of the beef industry, where one of the USDA-approved feed ingredients for cows is, believe it or not, "chicken litter." (I'm not making this up.) Apparently, there's no good way to get rid of all that chicken excrement unless you feed it to cows. You can look this up on the USDA website if you don't believe me. |
Alex Steffen
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 But nothing we "wash away" is actually gone—chemical residues remain, floating into the bathwater, and the rest flows into sewers and groundwater, and ultimately cycles back into our lives one way or another.
Fortunately, nontoxic products are increasingly available and affordable. A healthy home and a clean conscience don't have to result in an empty bank account. 5r & jf
Ingredients: The Good and The Bad
Kitchen Cleaners: Safety in the kitchen is important to most people. It's a paradox, though, that scouring countertops and sinks with poisonous chemicals gives us peace of mind. |
Byron J. Richards, CCN
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 Troublesome levels of pollution exist across the United States in groundwater.639 Rodents eating contaminated fish from the Great Lakes region had significant adverse thyroid problems, even at lower doses of exposure than studied in most toxicology testing.640
Nitrates can interfere with thyroid function.641 Thyroid function is dysregulated by radiation exposure.642 Infants can have impaired thyroid function from second-hand cigarette smoke from their parents. |
James Howard Kunstler
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| More than 90 percent of Florida's population depends on groundwater as the source of drinking water for public and private wells. If ocean levels rise even marginally, seawater will invade the Biscayne aquifer and Floridians will have to make other arrangements. At the upper margins of global warming prediction, a reduction of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets similar to past reductions could cause sea level to rise ten or more meters. A sea-level rise of ten meters would flood about 25 percent of the U.S. |
Alex Steffen
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| Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons plant near Denver, Colorado, was shut down in 1989 because a slew of environmental violations—leaking storage drums, tanks, and pipelines; on-site landfills; unlined disposal trenches—had thoroughly contaminated the soil and groundwater. Today the site contains what might be the largest remaining tallgrass prairie in North America, as well as several endangered or threatened species, including peregrine falcons. The most iconic nuclear wasteland of our time, Chernobyl, is also turning into an immense wildlife preserve. |
| Over the past ten years, the Barefoot College has also turned its attention to water conservation and recharging groundwater. co
Community Health mmmmm At a time when public-health efforts worldwide are shifting toward disease prevention and health promotion, the Barefoot College is once again ahead of the game. For decades, the school has been training community-health practitioners, realizing that critical basic health messages —especially when they involve taboo subjects like STDs—are best delivered by mid-wives and local health-care workers. |
| Students can learn to be solar engineers, hand-pump mechanics, groundwater experts, teachers, midwives, accountants, communicators (in videogra-phy, photography, street theater, puppetry), and apprentice in a range of traditional handicrafts. One of the most notable aspects of the program is that women are trained in nontraditional occupations, such as solar engineering and hand-pump mechanics.
People throng to the Barefoot College from all over India to learn about the award-winning program and bring what they've learned back to their own communities. |
James Trefil, Joseph F. Kett, and E. D. Hirsch
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 The burning of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and therefore places the earth at risk from this effect. groundwater Water that seeps through the soil or rocks underground. fa groundwater is a source of water for many communities through springs and wells, fa groundwater can be contaminated by chemical pollutants.
{See water pollution.) hail Pellets of ice that form when updrafts in thunderstorms carry raindrops to high altitudes, where the water freezes, and then falls back to earth. Hailstones as large as baseballs have been recorded. Hail can damage crops and property. |
Elson M. Haas, M.D.
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 Farming pesticides already contaminate groundwater in 32 states and half of the U.S. population relies on groundwater for drinking.
• Children are at greater risk for pesticide-related health problems and millions of U.S. children already receive their lifetime dose of some carcinogenic pesticides by age 5.
Natural fibers such as hemp and linen are made into fabrics and clothing and are available on the Internet or in stores. These fabrics are generally made from plants that are organically grown and untreated with chemicals. |
James Howard Kunstler
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| In 1997, the river stopped flowing for a record 226 days. The groundwater levels of the northern China plains have plummeted. The water table in major grain-producing areas is falling at the rate of five feet a year. Of China's 617 cities, 300 already face water shortages. Of China's approximately 23,000 miles of major rivers, 80 percent no longer support fish life.
The Xiaolangdi dam project now under way along the Yellow River in north China is exceeded in size only by the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze in south China. |
| Surface and strip mining, now the most common method, levels whole regional topographies and poisons groundwater at prodigious rates. Resorting to coal as a major energy source would be a big step backward in the narrative of human progress. That doesn't mean it won't happen. The Dark Ages were also a step backward after the achievements of classical Rome, but they happened nonetheless. What we face may be more like the Dim Ages.
5. |
| There were fears in particular that radioactive material could invade deep groundwater and spread all over. Therefore, most of the spent fuel rods of American reactors have been stockpiled at reactor sites all around the nation, in storage vessels that resemble swimming pools, where the material becomes steadily less radioactive as the more unstable isotopes decay and also generate less and less heat. This method of stockpiling onsite has always been considered a temporary stopgap, but has become routine pending the resolution of a national nuclear waste storage program. |
| In a matter of days, the dead swine began to rot. groundwater was compromised for months afterward and homeowners who used wells—which were the majority of residents in these rural counties—had to make other arrangements for their water. The situation could have been much worse had the hurricanes struck earlier in the season and been followed by a few days of late summer heat.
Despite miraculous advances in medical technology, genetic typing, and immunology, the nations of the world are not much better prepared for a severe flu epidemic than they were for the 1918 outbreak. |
Byron J. Richards
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 Unfortunately, California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida all have serious perchlorate-con-tamination issues, polluting the groundwater in large regions of these states. A recent sampling of breast milk taken from mothers at random from around the country showed that all samples were contaminated with perchlorate at levels which could disrupt thyroid function in their infants. Additionally, a newborn or infant drinking perchlorate-contaminated water is at particularly high risk for damage to thyroid function. |
Dian Dincin Buchman, Ph.D.
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 Groundwater accounts for almost half of the water we use for drinking and domestic uses, such as cooking and bathing.
We extract approximately 40 trillion gallons of groundwater yearly. groundwater is created when precipitation that has made its way through the soil becomes trapped at a subterranean layer of the earth's crust and fills in the spaces between the rocks. The places where we extract water, called aquifers, slowly fill up with water, which accumulates over thousands of years. |
Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.
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 Via biotechnology, the rGH manufacturers are trying to shift away from selling farm petroleum-based farm inputs that are widely associated with polluting the nation's soils and groundwater. From farmers to consumers, great skepticism in the past decade has grown over heavy use of pesticides, herbicides, etc.
Biotechnology's promise was "cleaner" ag production inputs. But bovine growth hormone fails that test, since indicated by Monsanto's research files, tremendously higher milk hormone levels result from bGH treatments. |
KC Craichy
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 They are absorbed into groundwater, rivers, lakes, and oceans, spewed into our air, and quite intentionally added to our food supply.1
In addition, a radical change in farming methods has led to a decline in the quality and nutritious content of our foods. In the past, farmers would plant different crops every year, rotating them so that a balance in the soil was preserved. Pesticides weren't needed, because insects attracted to one crop would disappear with the next. |
Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
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 Because the need for increased irrigation used groundwater supplies faster than they were replenished, a soil erosion problem developed. Then, after a few years, those "disease-resistant" crops began to become infected. Since the green revolution (over the last forty years), the use of pesticides in some places has undergone a nearly tenfold increase and the crops destroyed by insects have nearly doubled. There are now more than 500 species of insects that are pesticide-resistant.
These crops, because they are commercially grown, are less nutritious. |
| Pimentel, pesticides cost the nation $8 billion annually in public health expenditures, not to mention the unmeasured losses from groundwater decontamination, fish kills, bird kills, and domestic animal deaths.
In summary, pesticides can affect every living organism. Humans are no exception. The more detrimental effects of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides include: cancer, nervous system disorders, birth defects, and alterations of DNA; liver, kidney, lung, and reproductive system problems; and an overall disruption of ecological cycles on the planet. |
Joseph E. Mario
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 Benzene A lightweight industrial solvent, component in gasoline, seeping into the groundwater from underground gas tanks; affects the blood and Immunity, destroys bone marrow for leukemia. Take Vitamins to counter.
Butylated Hydroxy Anisole/BHA A preservative used in food; causes allergies.
Butylated Hydroxy Toluene/BHT An antioxidant used in foods; in animal tests, affected offspring with Brain changes and damage, and abnormal behavior. Banned for use in food in England. |
E. D. Hirsch
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| The burning of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and therefore places the earth at risk from this effect. groundwater Water that seeps through the soil or rocks underground. fa groundwater is a source of water for many communities through springs and wells, fa groundwater can be contaminated by chemical pollutants. (See water pollution.) hail Pellets of ice that form when updrafts in thunderstorms carry raindrops to high altitudes, where the water freezes, and then falls back to earth. Hailstones as large as baseballs have been recorded. Hail can damage crops and property. |
Joseph E. Mario
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| Groundwater has tested 140 disease-causing viruses (Prof. Charles P. Gerba, Univ. of Arizona/Tucson); water and environment may cause 75-80% of all cancers (according to the World Health Organization). Check the purity of water with American Water Service's PurTests for bacteria, nitrites and nitrates, lead, chlorine, iron (bacteria), copper, pH, alkalinity, hardness, and hydrogen sulfide (A.W.T., 5001 Smith Farm Rd., Matthews,N.C. 28105).
Hydropathy/The use of Water for healing: One method is 1 minute hot alternating with 1 minute cold showers for 15 minutes. |
David Wolfe
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 Trees elevate the groundwater table and draw minerals up into their stems, leaves, flowers and fruits. This plant matter then eventually falls to the topsoil increasing the mineralization of the soil for more vegetation to grow. Deciduous trees, which drop their leaves each year, strongly mineralize the topsoil.
The cooking of food is by far the biggest waste of resources on planet Earth. Viktoras Kulvinskas, in his classic book Survival Into The 21st Century, reports that cooking destroys 85% of the value of food. When I first realized this,
I was staggered. |
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