Farms Fight Dead Zones
The worst thing about the dead zones now growing annually at the mouths of more than 400 rivers around the world is that the causes aren’t local, but originate in farm fields and urban areas sometimes more than a thousand miles away.
Take the very first identified dead zone, for example, at the mouth of the Mississippi River where it dumps into the Gulf of Mexico. Each year during the summer months it stretches from Mississippi to Texas covering an area the size of New Jersey and killing everything – fish and plant alike – in its path.
But the roots of the Gulf’s oxygen-sapped dead zone — primarily phosphorous and nitrogen – is mostly fertilizer runoff delivered from far away by a river system connecting 31 states to the north.
It is yet another example of the Gulf being treated like America’s toilet bowl; flush the farm fields and gutters in Illinois and Pennsylvania, and eventually all the crap ends up off the coast of Louisiana.
But legislating polluted runoff is tricky, whether by state or federal law. Imagine the governor of Louisiana asking his counterparts in Iowa and Ohio to mandate their farmers use less fertilizer; it’s a tough sell.
Yet there are increasing examples of efforts being made locally and by individuals to slow contributions to the mess that is quickly helping to kill off the Gulf … and other estuaries around the country and the world.
(For the rest of my dispatch, go to takepart.com)
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