Provisions of the climate change statute appear certain to increase the already immense tide of farm-related nutrient pollution draining from the land and contaminating surface and groundwater in the grain-growing regions of the Great Lakes states and the Midwest Corn Belt. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue

Tune into What's Up With Water for your need to know news of the world's water on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and SoundCloud.

Featured coverage from this week's episode of What's Up With Water looks at:

• The seven states of the Colorado River basin failed to meet a federal deadline to agree on ways to conserve the troubled waterway. 40 million people in the U.S. and Mexico get water from the river, and its reservoirs are critically low.

• A new report from environmental watchdogs found that three facilities in the Chicago area are among the country’s top water-polluting oil refineries. The refineries named in the report include a Citgo facility in Lemont, Illinois; an ExxonMobil facility in Joliet, Illinois; and a BP facility in Whiting, Indiana. 

• In southern Iraq, drought, dams, and water diversions are impeding the region’s ecological recovery. Yale Environment 360 reports that the Mesopotamian marshes are experiencing historic setbacks.

Toxic manure discharges from large livestock operations is major source of water pollution.
 

For decades, Americans mostly turned a blind eye to the industrial-scale livestock production operations that churn out cheap supplies of meat and dairy for the masses. Occasional opposition to local pollution problems and the casual animal cruelty that characterize conventional US dairy, hog, and poultry production did little to alter practices that are embedded in the rural landscape.

That may be changing.