For years citizens of California's central valley have been asking for help and Wednesday, if only for a few hours, one of the most influential people in the country listened. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson travelled to a church in Fresno to hear the concerns of the people of the valley and what she heard was troubling to say the least.

In Arvin, one in four children has asthma. In Kettleman City a birth defect cluster has terrified a small town. In Delano farm workers and local citizens have been exposed to dangerous pesticides. And throughout the valley huge swaths of land are out of compliance with federal air quality standards and entire towns have undrinkable water. These were just a few of the concerns raised by members of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition (CVAQ) at Wednesday's meeting.

Although the news in the valley is bad, Wednesday's meeting was a positive development. Nearly 10 years ago, affected citizens, concerned medical practitioners and environmental groups  including Earthjustice got together to form CVAQ. Since then the coalition has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of the area's environmental and health problems. The fact that the top environmental official in the land made a trip to listen to local residents is no small feat. Both the members of CVAQ as well as Administrator Jackson deserve kudos for this.

Teabag by teabag, the anti-environment faction in the House of Representatives has filled its federal government spending bill with amendments that will cripple protections for our water, air, natural resources, wildlife and public health. 

Not since the darkest days of the Bush administration have we seen such an onslaught on the environment—and the hits are still coming. By mid-day today (Tues., Feb. 15), the list has grown to include attacks on a number of endangered species, including wolves and salmon, and on the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to keep lethal pollutants out of the air we breathe and the water we drink. Some amendments are outright handouts to our nation’s worst polluters.

The spending bill will fund the government so that it can continue operating after March 4, but first the Senate must pass the bill. Today, Pres. Barack Obama warned that he would veto the bill as constructed.

The following is a list of the most harmful provisions and amendments proposed so far:

Dow Chemical and others have been accused of spying on Greenpeace. Photo courtesy of sxc.hu.

Judge orders GMO sugar beets to be ripped from the ground
Citing the potential for environmental harm, a federal judge in California has ordered farmers in Oregon and Arizona to rip up hundreds of acres of genetically modified sugar beets, reports the Associated Press. The ruling stems from an Earthjustice lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which issued permits for Monsanto's GM, Roundup Ready sugar beets without first determining what kinds of effects the genetically modified crops could have on other foods.

Greenpeace accuses corporations of playing spy games
Greenpeace is suing chemical giant Dow Chemical and others for alleged corporate espionage, reports the Washington Post. The environmental activist group, which has taken on such corporate giants as McDonalds, Coca Cola, and Monsanto, accuses the companies of hiring spies from 1998 to 2000 to "perform a range of 'clandestine and unlawful' actions to undermine its anti-pollution efforts against the chemical industry," including stealing confidential records and even sending phony volunteers to illegally record calls and hack security codes.

<Update: Read the San Francisco Chronicle story on this issue.>

Terri Carawan's health problems began in 1984, soon after the spraying started. Her skin became inflamed and her burning, itching eyes were nearly swollen shut with fluid. Despite tremendous fatigue, she struggled with sleeplessness.

It turns out that the telephone company where Terri worked as an operator had recently hired a pest control service to deal with lice and other insects in the building. Every month, they sprayed a pesticide called chlorpyrifos throughout the premises, including on the switchboard Terri operated.

In one of my first cases as a young lawyer, I represented Terri after her exposure to chlorpyrifos, recovering her medical expenses and lost wages and getting the spraying stopped. More than a quarter century later, while most indoor uses of chlorpyrifos have been banned due to risks to human health, the pesticide is still sprayed liberally—nearly 10 million pounds per year—on corn, oranges, and other crops in fields and orchards across the United States.

Today, I am proud that Earthjustice, along with NRDC and Pesticide Action Network, is filing suit to get this dangerous pesticide banned for good.