Monsanto Lawsuit & Water Issues Top of Mind

Monsanto Lawsuit & Water Issues Top of Mind. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

Portland has joined six other West Coast cities in filing a federal lawsuit against Monsanto for contaminating Portland waterways with PCBs. The city unanimously passed a resolution authorizing the City Attorney to sue Monsanto who says that Monsanto was the sole U.S. manufacturer of PCBs and manufactured over 1 billion pounds of PCBs between the 1930s and the 1970s, when Congress banned PCBs and that Monsanto continued to sell PCBs long after it knew of the dangers they presented to human health and the environment.

More than 100 Western water user organizations, commodity groups and state Farm Bureaus sent a letter to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee calling on Congress to pass drought legislation this year. The groups asked the Committee to find a legislative solution to the immediate- and long-term impacts of the drought. Congressman Dan Newhouse says he heard a lot about local water issues in his district recently.

NEWHOUSE: The snow pack picture looks much more promising this year than it did last year but there's still a lot of interest in a bill that we recently introduced with Congressman Reichert that enhances the Yakima River Basin that continues emphasis there to increase storage and conservation, addressing environmental issues as well.

That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.