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
Iowa is home to two rivers, the Cedar and Iowa rivers, voted as some of America’s most endangered rivers by the American Rivers organization. Over 180,000 people in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City area depend upon the Cedar and Iowa rivers for drinking water, according to the organization’s Most Enda
The dead zone may seem like an abstract concept in Iowa, a state more than 800 miles to the north of the Gulf, but for fishermen in Louisiana the destruction is very real. Harmful algal blooms — the explosion of algae due to nitrogen and other pollutants — occur every year all along the coast of the
