On May 16, the Obama Interior Department announced its long-awaited rules governing hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") on federal lands.

Deciding how America will nourish itself and sustain its farms would seem a top policy priority— yet as the US Farm Bill demonstrates, sustainably grown, healthy food and livable incomes for farmers and workers remain an afterthought in a process controlled almost entirely by agribusiness and a handful of farm-state legislators. Despite strong public opinion supporting local food, farmer’s markets, organic agriculture, food workers’ rights and access to fresh produce, agribusiness and commodity interests continue to dominate food and farming policy.

Conservationists went before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today, in a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice challenging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) initial management plan for the Vermilion Cliffs and Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monuments.

New draft rules for fracking on public lands, released by the federal Bureau of Land Management today, would leave drinking water supplies for millions of Americans, as well as millions of acres of wild lands, at risk, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The rules need to be strengthened in a number of ways in order to protect public health and the environment.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposed an updated set of rules governing hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” on public lands today. The controversial oil and gas development technique—in which drillers blast millions of gallons of chemically treated water into the earth to force oil and gas from underground deposits—has been linked to air and water pollution and public health problems.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management released new draft rules for fracking on public lands Thursday afternoon that would vastly weaken safeguards against the highly toxic gas extraction process, which has already done untold damage to public water, land and air.

The Ohio Valley Electric Corporation, Ferro Corporation, American Electric Power, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Southern Company top the list of the most hazardous polluters of U.S. surface water, according to a report released today by the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch and the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts Amherst (PERI).