Large slick' could be huge plankton bloom By Houma Today22 March 2011 HOUMA — Scientists at a Cocodrie marine-research center say a miles-long discolored patch on the Gulf originally feared to be oil may actually be a huge algae bloom — the kind that fuels the annual dead zone off Louisiana's coast.   The patch, estimated [...]

Eutrophication: Mapping the first steps that lead to dead zones By RTSea Blog19 March 2011  Dead Zones - an alarming term used to describe aquatic areas where oxygen levels are so greatly reduced as to push out or kill most fish, plants, and shellfish. It's a dramatic descriptor for the extreme end result of two much [...]

EPA takes heat over bay pollution 'diet' By Timothy B. Wheeler, The Baltimore Sun16 March 2011Farmers complained Wednesday to a sympathetic audience in Congress that the Environmental Protection Agency's "pollution diet" for restoring the Chesapeake Bay is based on flawed science and threatens to drive growers out of business with burdensome and unnecessary regulations. Appearing [...]

Republicans question EPAs stewardship of bay cleanup By Steve Kilar, CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE, The Daily Record16 March 2011WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency’s method to estimate the amount of poultry manure that leaches into the Chesapeake Bay was just one policy challenged during Wednesday’s meeting of the House Subcommittee on Conservation, Energy and Forestry. “In [...]

Environmental Groups Take Aim at Water District By KARI LYDERSEN, Chicago News Cooperative5 March 2011The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is an area the size of New Jersey where little marine life survives because algae suck virtually all oxygen from the water. Two years ago, the federal government found that Chicago is the [...]