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lead
Lead Ammo Harms Wildlife and Undermines the Mission of Our National Parks
Banning lead from our national parks would be one of the single biggest conservation advances in a generation.
Aug 27, 2024
Earlier this month, a California condor, the first of its kind to hatch and take flight in Zion National Park, died of lead poisoning just shy of its fifth birthday. Shockingly, one of this condor’s siblings was earlier found to have the highest recorded lead value ever documented in a live bird over the entire 28-year history of the condor release program.
Lead poisoning remains the leading cause of diagnosed death among California condors. About 90% of condors trapped and tested during this past year had blood lead levels indicating lead exposure. As scavengers, condors ingest lead shot from carcasses of animals killed with lead-based ammunition.
But condors are not the only victims. Lead is a leading threat to all national park birdlife, especially bald eagles, hawks, and other raptors. Lead fragments from spent shells contaminate the entire wildlife food chain.
It’s time for decisive action to protect the wildlife that our national parks were created to preserve.
While most parks by law do not permit hunting, a significant number do. Of the 429 national parks, 76 allow various types of hunting—recreational, subsistence, or tribal hunting. These parks (the largest of which are in Alaska) cover more than 60% of land within the entire national park system. In addition, more than 85% of parks with fish (213 in all) are open for fishing with lead tackle.
The impact is devastating. More than 130 park wildlife species are exposed to or killed by ingesting lead or prey contaminated with lead.
These wildlife deaths are preventable. Since November of 2022, Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland, the cabinet officer overseeing the National Park Service, has had a proposed rule sitting on her desk that would end the use of lead-based ammunition and fishing tackle in all park units. Despite this, no action has been taken on this rule-making petition.
In contrast to the Park Service’s total inaction, its sister agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, (FWS) has declared that “lead ammunition and tackle have negative impacts on both wildlife and human health.” The FWS has taken the first tentative steps to reduce or eliminate the use of lead ammunition by:
- Imposing partial bans on lead ammunition in certain refuges where new hunting opportunities have opened up;
- Phasing out of lead ammunition on three refuges newly opened to hunting; and
- Developing a pilot program to reimburse hunters for using lead-free ammunition.
Though these steps do not constitute a complete ban on lead ammunition, they represent a significant step forward, especially considering that nearly 80% of wildlife refuges and other management districts offer hunting and fishing access.
Unfortunately, wildlife protection does not appear to be a high priority for National Park Service Director Chuck Sams and his leadership team. Earlier this year, he approved questionable hunting practices, such as killing bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens, using dogs and artificial lights to hunt black bears, and shooting swimming caribou from motorboats across more than 22 million acres of Park Service administered lands in Alaska.
These are not the actions of a conservation-focused agency.
Banning lead from our national parks would be one of the single biggest conservation advances in a generation. Such a move would place the Park Service alongside 26 states and countries that have already banned lead ammunition.
The ecological stakes are profound. It’s time for decisive action to protect the wildlife that our national parks were created to preserve.
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4 Ways Biden Can Protect Food, Water, and Climate From a Second Trump Term
Biden has made important progress; now, he needs to continue this progress and finalize vital rules in the next several months.
Mar 03, 2024
The clock is ticking on President Joe Biden’s first term. The administration has made progress on several regulations that would defend our health, economic well-being, and environment. But these regulations would be right in the crosshairs of a second Trump administration, in the dire event he returns to the White House in 2025.
Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress can more easily overturn regulations passed by the president in the previous 60 legislative days. It would just need presidential approval. That means, with former President Donald Trump in charge, we could see swift rollbacks of anything Biden finalizes after May of this year.
Ahead of November’s elections, we need to prepare for any outcome.
These next few months must be a sprint for his administration. Despite setbacks and missteps, Biden has taken massive strides to protect our food, water, and climate. To fortify this progress, the administration needs to move fast. These four things should be at the top of its to-do list.
1. Stem the Flood of Toxic PFAS Forever Chemicals
PFAS, a class of toxic chemicals, pose one of the most widespread public health threats of today. For decades, corporations made and sold PFAS while knowing the harms, with hardly a slap on the wrist.
So far, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed several measures to address this crisis. It proposed enforceable drinking water limits for two of the oldest and most common PFAS, PFOA and PFOS, as well as four other forms of PFAS.
It also proposed designating PFOA and PFOS as “hazardous substances” under the Superfund program. This would allow the EPA to direct polluters to clean up their messes and pay for it—insulating everyday people from picking up the tab. Companies must be held accountable, and these rules, when finalized, would be an important first step.
2. Protect Communities from Dirty Infrastructure Projects
One of our bedrock environmental laws is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This law directs agencies to consider environmental impacts and frontline community voices when deciding whether to permit a new project.
In 2020, Trump gutted NEPA. His rules sidelined community participation and removed important factors, like climate, in agency assessments.
Thankfully, Biden began working to roll back Trump’s changes in 2021. Notably, the first new rule includes provisions that restore the act’s definition of “indirect” and “cumulative” impacts, allowing agencies to examine the full consequences of proposed projects. The second, currently under review, cements environmental justice as a key consideration for agency assessments.
In order to lift up community voices, defend environmental justice, and protect the climate, Biden needs to finalize this rule.
3. Rein in Corporate Abuses Against Farmers and Growers
In our meat industry, just a handful of processing companies reign supreme. Because of this, many farmers have no choice but to sell to Big Meat. That has allowed these companies to dictate prices, labor conditions, supply chains, and more—and they’ll do almost anything to cut costs, even at the expense of families, farmers, and workers.
The Packers & Stockyards Act was passed more than 100 years ago to prevent this, but weak rules and enforcement have enabled Big Meat’s abuses to grow.
The Biden administration announced in 2021 that it would release new rules to strengthen the act and rein in the meat giants. However, it has finalized only one rule so far, requiring basic transparency from poultry giants to the farmers contracted to grow their chickens. Three more rules are at various stages, and each is critical to restoring competition and protecting farmers.
4. Get The Lead Out of Our Drinking Water
Last fall, the Biden administration announced groundbreaking rules that finally start to address our country’s lead-in-water crisis. For decades, communities across the country have been plagued by lead pipes that leach the toxic heavy metal into their drinking water.
Biden’s new rules set a deadline for most cities to replace lead service lines in the next 10 years. They also ban most partial lead service line replacements, which can actually increase lead levels in drinking water.
To protect our water and our health, Biden must finalize these rules ASAP and go further. He needs to pair them with funding to make sure low-income families don’t bear the cost of these replacements and include measures that ensure lead pipes aren’t replaced by PVC plastic, another toxic material.
Biden Needs to Act Fast to Keep His Promises
Biden has made important progress in protecting our food, water, and climate. Now, he needs to continue this progress and finalize vital rules in the next several months.
Ahead of November’s elections, we need to prepare for any outcome. And we know that Trump is terrible on our issues. In his last term, he plowed through our regulatory system, gutting protections for our families and our planet. Currently, his allies and advisers are scheming toward even more rollbacks and cuts in a prospective second term.
To prevent this from happening again, we need every defense possible. And that means Biden must keep his promises and finish what he started.
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10-Year EPA Plan to Swap All US Lead Pipes 'Still Not Enough'
While welcoming the "long-overdue meaningful action" on drinking water safety, one campaigner argued that "much more must be done—much faster—at no cost to impacted households."
Nov 30, 2023
The Biden administration's proposal to better protect drinking water nationwide was met with sweeping applause on Thursday, but at least one consumer advocacy group stressed that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency policy is "still not enough."
With its proposed changes to the Lead and Copper Rule, the administration aims to replace all lead water service lines in the United States within a decade, according to the EPA. There are also provisions intended to locate legacy lead pipes, improve tap sampling, lower the lead action level, and strengthen protections to reduce exposure.
Food & Water Watch Public Water for All director Mary Grant said that "the federal government has already waited far too long to require the elimination of these toxic lead water pipes, which poisoned the water in communities across the country," from Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi to Newark, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
"The Biden administration has proposed long-overdue meaningful action toward the goal of eliminating lead from drinking water, but to ensure that every community has safe, lead-free water, much more must be done—much faster—at no cost to impacted households," she asserted.
Grant praised "agitators who emerged from... water contamination fights" and called on Congress to "step up to provide funding to replace the entire service line at no cost to impacted households, prioritizing low-income and environmental justice communities."
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed by President Joe Biden two years ago, "provided a $15 billion downpayment on this overhaul, but the total cost could exceed $60 billion," she pointed out, urging Congress to pass the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity, and Reliability (WATER) Act.
"In a moment when many of us feel overwhelmed by bad news, the EPA's lead rule provides a ray of hope."
While additional steps are clearly needed, impacted communities and other campaigners still welcomed the progress on Thursday.
"Communities like ours... have grappled with the repercussions of lead contamination for too long," said Deborah Brown, a steering committee member of Newburgh Clean Water Project in New York. "The proposed improvements, especially the replacement of all lead service lines, signify a significant stride to safe and clean drinking water for our families and future generations. It's a step in the right direction."
Earthjustice attorney Suzanne Novak—whose legal group has represented the Newburgh Clean Water Project—said that "the EPA's proposed improvements to the Lead and Copper Rule are a much-needed response to a dire public health crisis that's been ongoing for more than a century."
"The administration's proposal takes important steps towards fulfilling the Safe Drinking Water Act's purpose of protecting human health to the extent feasible," Novak continued. "EPA has recognized that quick removal of all lead service lines is imperative, and that swift action is needed when a community has persistent high levels of lead in its water."
"Because the public health burden of lead exposure falls disproportionately on environmental justice communities," she emphasized, "we need to make sure that the final rule is equitable in how it achieves reduction of lead in drinking water across the country."
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted "apparent weaknesses" of the proposal, including that "water systems are not required to pay for the lead service line replacement," utilities could get extensions beyond the 10-year deadline, and the action level reduction from 15 parts per billion to 10 ppb "is less strict than the 5 ppb standards recommended by health experts and the governments in Canada and Europe."
Still, Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health at NRDC, said that "in a moment when many of us feel overwhelmed by bad news, the EPA's lead rule provides a ray of hope that we are approaching the day when every family can trust that the water from their kitchen tap is safe, regardless of how much money they have or their ZIP code."
Environmental Working Group senior vice president for government affairs Scott Faber also praised the progress, saying that "once again, President Biden's EPA is putting our families first and honoring his commitments to the American people."
The campaigner also highlighted the need to better protect communities whose drinking water is contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), chemicals used in various products that persist in the environment and human body and are connected to health problems including cancers.
Biden's EPA proposed the first-ever national drinking water standard for PFAS in March. Faber said Thursday that "we're confident he will also make good on his commitment to finalize a drinking water standard for the toxic 'forever chemicals.'"
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