Gershon Cohen is Project Director at the Campaign to Safeguard America’s Waters, a client on Earthjustice's case regarding wastewater discharge by cruise ships in Alaska.

Recently, Earthjustice staffer Jessica Knoblauch spoke with Gershon Cohen, project director of the Campaign to Safeguard America’s Waters. In June, Earthjustice successfully defended an Alaskan ballot initiative that Cohen co-authored, which called for cruise ships to stop discharging waste into Alaska’s pristine waters.

JK: How did you first learn about cruise ship pollution? 

GC: Back in 1999, I read about how Royal Caribbean had just been convicted for dumping waste into the water. One of the places they dumped it was right near my home in Alaska. I immediately called the Environmental Protection Agency to find out if I could get a copy of their permits to see what they were supposed to be able to discharge. A few hours later, I got a call back from a very sheepish EPA person who said “Gee. They don’t have permits.” I said, “What do you mean they don’t have permits? How could you be discharging millions of gallons of wastewater and not have a permit?” He said, “Well, it looks like they’re exempt. I was like, “No kidding. I wonder how they worked that?” That’s where it all started for me. 

Haul from a dumpster dive in Sweden. Photo courtesy of sigurdas.

Dumpster diver documentary details discard diet
Americans need to stop tossing out more of half of their food and start donating it, reports dumpster diver Jeremy Seifert in Grist. Seifert, who’s been diving into dumpsters and pulling out edible food for several years, recently created a documentary detailing our wasteful society and the dumpster diving culture. In the article, he also calls on the progressive grocery store chain Trader Joes to end food waste by donating soon-to-expire foods to homeless shelters rather than tossing them. Making sustainable food choices not only helps feed the more than one-in-eight Americans dependent on food stamps, it also helps the environment by cutting down on water use and methane emitted by rotting food. So, dive in!

Report finds oceans under attack
The world may be on the verge of the sixth mass extinction with the oceans serving as ground zero, reports Reuters. According to the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, coral reefs are dying, low-oxygen dead zones are spreading and fish populations are collapsing worldwide thanks to climate change, over-fishing, pollution and habitat destruction. Though many of these issues are all too familiar to the scientific community, the magnitude and direness of the situation managed to shock even the ocean experts who created the report. In the report, the authors issue a dire warning: "Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing ….the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean.” Find out how Earthjustice is working in the courts to protect our vital oceans.

Sacramento River salmon

It’s hard to view the recent actions of some big agricultural operations in California’s San Joaquin Valley as anything but hostile to the state’s wildlife. Some of the biggest growers are refusing to take an overflowing allotment of irrigation water as enough and are cluttering up the court system with lawsuits aimed at wringing every last drop of water for themselves, no matter what damage that causes native fish species. 

The big growers went to court last week trying to force state and federal operators of water diversion pumps in the Sacramento/Bay delta to crank up to the max even though thousands of juvenile fall run king salmon have been killed at the pumps over the last few weeks. The young fish are trying to migrate from the rivers where they were born to the sea. The carnage at the pumps lead pump operators to ratchet back pumping. This infuriated water users but the judge refused to order more salmon killing, agreeing that federal law requires pump operators to take steps to protect t salmon runs that traverse the Sacramento/ Bay delta.
 
As the judge was ruling, a respected policy center released a new study showing that although the big growers moaned and groaned during the recent three year drought, most also found a way to keep the water coming and earned near record profits.   This happened while wildlife that lives in or migrates through the Sacramento/Bay delta suffered sharp declines due to lower than usual water flows.

"The Last Mountain" movie poster

The buzz is heightening. The Sundance official selection documentary The Last Mountain is arriving at theaters across America beginning this weekend in Washington, DC, and New York City. Throughout June, it will open in 18 other cities, bringing this film -- on the frightening effects of destructive mountaintop removal mining-- to the biggest metropolitan markets in the nation.

The film is a powerful glimpse into the bombing and razing of mountains in West Virginia for coal, the corrupt politics that enable that destruction, and the people and communities at the foot of the exploded mountains who are paying the real price, and suffering the real costs, of one of America's greatest and most enduring environmental tragedies.