EPA And Runoff!

NEW ORLEANS — Environmental advocates in states along the Mississippi River have won a round toward a long-term goal of having federal standards created to regulate farmland runoff and other pollution blamed for the oxygen-depleted “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, and problems in other bodies of water.

In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey in New Orleans gave the Environmental Protection Agency six months to decide whether to set Clean Water Act standards for nitrogen and phosphorous in all U.S. waterways or explain why they’re not needed. The EPA describes the nutrients on its website as “one of America’s most widespread, costly and challenging environmental problems,” affecting every state.

“If they step up to the plate and do the right thing, agreeing to promulgate federal standards where states have failed, the impact on waters throughout the nation could be hugely positive,” said Ann Alexander, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of nine environmental groups including the Gulf Restoration Network, the Sierra Club and the Prairie Rivers Network. If they do, she said Monday, one of the first areas to look at could be the 31 states of the Mississippi River basin, because the annual dead zone is “one of the clearest manifestations of the severity of the problem.”

Every summer, nutrients feed algae blooms at the river’s mouth. Algae and the protozoa that eat them die and fall to the bottom, where their decomposition uses up oxygen. That creates an area on the sea bottom averaging nearly 5,800 square miles — larger than the state of Connecticut — where there is too little oxygen for aquatic life.

“More than 100,000 miles of rivers and streams, close to 2.5 million acres of lakes, reservoirs and ponds, and more than 800 square miles of bays and estuaries in the United States have poor water quality because of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution,” according to EPA. “Additionally, nutrients can soak into ground water, which provides drinking water to millions of Americans.”

We didn't clean up our act so now we are forced to!  Thanks to our negligence, I have to have a license now to buy and apply fertilizer.  I have to pass another test and try to keep it up to date and renewed!

Why don't we all do things right like we have talked about on HyMark High Spots for the last five years???

Ed Winkle