Jim Hightower Quotes

Industrial agriculture now accounts for over half of America's water pollution.

We're talking about a chemical that's out there. Not just on one farm in West Virginia, not even just in the public water of an entire community there, but it's now in water all over the country, all over the planet, in the blood of virtually every living thing.

In California, up to 15 percent of wells in agricultural areas exceed a federal contaminant threshold, according to studies.

By polluting clear water with slime you will never find good drinking water.

When you can light your water on fire due to methane contamination in your ground water, what else can you do but laugh?

I simply can't believe nice communities release effluents.

People who can turn on a tap and have safe and clean water to drink, to cook with and to bathe in often take it for granted — and yet more than one billion of our fellow human beings have little choice but to use potentially harmful sources of water

Fortunately, we know more about the problems that we have than in all preceding history. We know now the consequences of the things that we put into the air, into the water - of the way we treat life on Earth.

The procedure has a strange Alice-in-Wonderland quality. The reservoir was created as a public water supply, yet the community, probably unconsulted about the sportsmen's project, is forced either to drink water containing poisonous residues or to pay our tax money for treatment of the water to remove the poisons - treatments that are by no means foolproof.

Atrazine - a herbicide often used on corn fields, golf courses and even lawns - has become one of the most common contaminants in American drinking water.

In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel - it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn.

The situation is quite serious - groundwater is important source for water use, including drinking water, and if it gets contaminated, it's very costly and difficult to clean.

Of course, as consumers, we want cheap and good products; however, if these production processes are exceeding wastewater discharge standards and even causing heavy metal pollution, they will cause long-lasting damage to the ecological environment and public health.

In some cases, it's not just about cleaning up the factories. It's about cleaning up the nearby rivers and lakes that have been tainted with heavy metals.

Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It's agriculture. It's golf courses. It's domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf.

Well, it seems all the fish in the rivers are dying. Could this be an act of cod?

I think about what's going down my sink. So I won't pour oil down my sink. I won't - if I'm cleaning a pan, I'll wipe it and bin because I've seen - I've been down sewers.

I think 'Gasland' is the doorway for a lot of people to see something happening in their backyard and realize the national and global implications.

Truly, we do live on a 'water planet.' For us, water is that critical issue that we need. It's the most precious substance on the planet, and it links us to pretty much every environmental issue, including climate change, that we're facing.

I'm a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia's tap water.

Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health.

In many ways, our homes act as one big drain that, through our daily relationship with water, carries many toxic substances into our waterways and the environment.

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

Shrimp farms are a scourge on the earth, frankly, from an environmental point of view. They pour huge amounts of pollutants into the ocean. They also pollute their next-door neighbors.

The film 'Tapped' illustrates quite clearly how we've been getting 'soaked' for years by the bottled water industry.