Due largely to lagging runoff prevention efforts in the Midwest, the low-oxygen area in the Gulf of Mexico is bigger than expected this year, imperiling marine life across nearly 4 million acres.
Sluggish progress on reducing nutrient runoff into the Bay marks an inconvenient truth, but offers lessons for others seeking to clean their watersheds.
Worsening local effects on health and recreation in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin are spurring action on problems that also cause the Gulf of Mexico’s chronic 'dead zone.'
This summer’s 'dead zone,' a low-oxygen area where the river empties into the sea, could span 5,827 square miles across the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana has the power to call for change.
One year away from a federal deadline to reduce nutrient runoff into the Gulf of Mexico by 20%, increases in tile drainage, livestock and fertilizer use have made success unlikely.
Scientists are predicting the low-oxygen “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico will be around 4,100 square miles this summer — smaller than average, but still more than twice the size of a federal goal that seeks to reduce nutrient runoff from fertilizer use on Midwest farms.
While Iowa takes most of the blame, nutrient loading of Great Plains waterways that flow into the Missouri River, then to the Mississippi River and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico are causing a literal dead zone in the Gulf that is steadily increasing in size.
You’ve got to hand it to people along America’s Gulf Coast who support their families as commercial shrimpers and fishermen.
They certainly are patient.
For the past 25
