As I’m writing this from my home office, my lone coworker, Woodie, has gotten tired of warming my feet and wants to go outside to play. I’ll be right back!
OK! A few minutes outside was nice. Good call, Woodie!
Across the country and the world, we are all struggling to cope with the new reality that is COVID-19. Our lives have been upended and everyone is trying to figure out how to minimize their risk to this new virus.
Like many nonprofits, many of our most important communications with our members are planned out many weeks in advance – a much longer timeframe than the rapid pace with which the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading.
This means, chances are, you have received one or more communications that were written “before.” Here’s what we would like you to know, now:
All of us here at Clean Water Action sincerely hope you and your family are healthy and remain so.
With all that’s happening right now, it can be difficult to pay attention to anything other than the news of the day. I’m focused on groundwater; how we use it – and use too much; how we protect it from pollution – or don’t; and how we can ensure that it’s available when we need it. And even on a day when we’re not focused on a pandemic, groundwater can be easy to forgot about -- it's our invisible resource.
What's with all the bottled water?
As people stocked up on food and essential items for their time at home to help slow the spread of the COVID-19, I saw shopping carts full of bottled water. Television shots and videos on social media of shoppers often showed the same thing. It seems that over the last two decades, our preparation for natural disasters started to include bottled water -- and a lot of it.. There is reason to prepare for disruption in water service in a hurricane. What about during a pandemic?
Clean Water Action Minnesota was in DC to talk about and support the GLRI Act of 2019 and advocated for significantly increasing federal funding for clean water and safe drinking water programs. The GLRI Act would provide stability for Great Lakes funding for at least five years, provide secure and stable funding, and will encourage more state and local governments, as well as private businesses, to invest in protection and restoration across the Great Lakes basin.
I hope you and your loved ones are staying safe in the midst of this Covid-19 emergency. While our offices are closed, our dedicated staff are safely working at home. We continue to remain active on important environmental legislation in Maryland and wanted to provide a quick update.
This Sunday, March 22 is World Water Day, a United Nations observance showcasing the need for access to clean healthy water around the world and the critical need to protect this precious resource.
I hope that you and your family are well and that you are staying healthy. We understand the challenges we're all facing right now while dealing the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. And we know that has to come first.
Pennsylvanians are grappling with the fallout from the recently passed House Bill 1100 which provides tax incentives for the build out of the petrochemical industry.
One perspective that emerged in southwest Pennsylvania is that we shouldn’t back elected officials that don’t support policies that create blue collar prevailing wage jobs that will uplift Pennsylvanians. This perspective only gets it partially right.