When it comes to defending our food, water, and climate, many of the best tools already exist, embedded in U.S. law. But in many cases, lax enforcement and industry influence have allowed corporations to skirt these laws for their own gain. 

Take the Clean Water Act. For more than 50 years, this law has helped clean up our waterways and protect them from pollution. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — the agency in charge of carrying out the law — has maintained a gaping, illegal loophole for factory farms, allowing them to pollute with impunity.

Food & Water Watch’s legal team, which we call Food & Water Justice, holds corporations and agencies accountable in the courts. Using the law, we fight for more transparency and protections while uplifting the experiences of frontline communities that have suffered the most from illegal pollution. 

Here are some of our biggest recent victories.

We’re Pushing EPA to Strengthen Regulation of Water Pollution

• In September 2021, we had a major victory in federal court challenging the Clean Water Act permit that EPA issues to all Idaho factory farms. This permit did not include any pollution monitoring, as required by the Clean Water Act, which made it impossible to know exactly how much factory farms were polluting. The court struck down EPA’s permit and sent the agency back to the drawing board. This victory is far broader than Idaho; it set an important precedent we are using to strengthen other states’ factory farm permits across the country. 
• In May 2023, we settled a coalition lawsuit with EPA, forcing the agency to revise and strengthen its standards to curtail slaughterhouse pollution. This pollution includes untreated wastewater contaminated with nitrates, phosphorous, E. coli, and other pathogens. Now, we are pushing the agency to issue the strongest possible standards to protect our drinking water and our environment from these dangerous pollutants.
• Since 2017, we’ve pushed EPA to strengthen its regulations on factory farm water pollution. These weak standards have allowed thousands of factory farms across the country to pollute waterways and endanger communities. As a result, factory farms boost their profits while neighboring families and small farmers pay the price. Thanks to our suit, EPA has begun studying the issue, a first step to revising its rules. But we won’t stop until the agency fulfills its legal duty and properly regulates factory farm pollution.

We’re Fighting Dirty Energy Projects

• In April 2024, we finally stopped the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project, which threatened to pump more fracked gas from Pennsylvania into New York City. We combined litigation challenging federal approval of the project with grassroots organizing to pressure officials, and we successfully stopped state permits from being issued. Ultimately, the developer gave up on the project and let its federal certificate expire.
• This win built on a prior win in August 2022, when we set an important precedent regarding how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) must consider climate impacts before approving energy projects. In our challenge to FERC’s approval of a Tennessee Gas pipeline project, we argued that it had failed to fully consider the project’s climate impacts, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. By ensuring a more comprehensive review of climate impacts, this ruling will help stop harmful projects and protect communities and our climate.

We’re Bringing Regulators Face-to-Face with Frontline Communities

• Since 2020, we have been demanding action from EPA to address Eastern Oregon’s persistent groundwater nitrate contamination by factory farms and other polluters. Our legal petition has spurred long overdue action by state and federal officials, and in June 2023, we worked with community-based allies in Eastern Oregon to win a community meeting in Boardman, OR with EPA officials. We have advanced similar advocacy in Washington, Minnesota, and Iowa, where factory farms are contaminating drinking water in rural communities. In November 2023, we worked with partners in Minnesota to win a state work plan to address the contamination, including a nitrate task force to study the issue with residents and local leaders. Families on the frontlines of pollution deserve to speak with the regulators whose actions have material impacts on their lives.
• In January 2022, we won a public workshop before the California Air Resources Board (CARB), providing frontline communities a platform to demand that CARB reconsider its promotion of factory farm gas in California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard program. We will continue to use our legal tools to partner with our community allies, helping advance their priorities on factory farm pollution and more. 

We’re Holding USDA Accountable for Its Financing of Factory Farms and Shedding Light on This Dirty Industry

• In October 2022, we won a strong federal District Court order requiring USDA to disclose certain factory farm loan information under the Freedom of Information Act. We have since used this order to compel USDA’s Farm Service Agency to provide extensive data about factory farm financing. Then, in April 2023, we built on this win by striking down an illegal USDA rule that exempted “medium”-sized factory farms receiving USDA financing from environmental review and public notice. Now, USDA will have to review environmental impacts and provide transparency for impacted communities on its actions. 
• In January 2018, a federal court struck down Idaho’s “ag-gag” law. Ag-gag laws prevent whistleblowers and prevent recording inside factory farms and slaughterhouses, allowing these operations to get away with abuses. Food & Water Watch contributed to the win with a friend of the court brief detailing the food safety risks of shielding factory farm practices from the public. Then, in June 2020, we shared in the defeat of most of North Carolina’s ag-gag law, and we cemented this victory in October 2023 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case. 
• In August 2017, an FWJ-drafted petition to EPA called on it to crack down on Iowa for failing to regulate factory farm pollution. Our petition led EPA to require the Iowa DNR to update its factory farm pollution rules, strengthen its enforcement actions, and inventory the state’s factory farms. The state discovered 5,000 facilities it didn’t know about.

FACTORY FARMS MAKE US SICK

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