The Secret Environmental Cost Of US Ethanol Policy By Jack Gillum and Chet Brokaw, Associated Press writers12 November 2013 CORYDON, Iowa (AP) — The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water [...]
Plan to Address Hypoxia in Gulf of Mexico Urged by Experts By ScienceDaily.com7 Nov 2013Despite a 12-year action plan calling for reducing the hypoxia zone in the Gulf of Mexico, little progress has been made, and there is no evidence that nutrient loading to the Gulf has decreased during this period. University of Illinois researchers [...]
Catching Fish in the "Dead Zone" By John N. Felsher, Acadiana ProfileOctober-November 2013 issue Scott Avanzino and Bobby Adisano show off a wahoo they caught while fishing in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice. Returning to Cocodrie on a blistering day in August, our fish coolers overflowed with more than 17 species, including 11 [...]
Vitter criticizes EPA's dead zone approach By Xerxes Wilson, Houma Today2 November 2013U.S. Sen. David Vitter is criticizing the federal government for taking a “heavy-handed” approach to remedy the Gulf dead zone. In a letter to Nancy Stoner, the Environmental Protection Agency’s acting assistant administrator, Vitter criticizes the agency’s decision to list three segments of [...]
Hypoxia Issues in the Gulf of Mexico By ScienceDaily.com24 October 2013The Mississippi River Basin is home to much of the United States' fertile crop land. Though we need our food and energy crops, their production has led to an increase in the levels of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus in our water sources. Increasing [...]
Nitrogen Fertilizer Remains In Soils And Leaks Towards Groundwater For Decades By Albany Tribune21 October 2013Nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops lingers in the soil and leaks out as nitrate for decades towards groundwater – “much longer than previously thought,” scientists in France and at the University of Calgary say in a new study. Thirty years [...]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Chicago's Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Discuss Nutrient Recovery's Crucial Role in Combatting Water Pollution By GlobeNewsWire.com8 October 2013CHICAGO, UNITED STATES and VANCOUVER, B.C., Oct. 8, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Environmental advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke today about the significant benefits that nutrient recovery will provide to Chicago area watersheds [...]
Minn. taking lead to reduce Gulf dead zone By Amy Wold, The Advocate26 September 2013 For more than a decade, organizations and scientists working toward reducing the size of the annual “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico have shared a similar complaint: The dead zone remains largely unchanged and states, left to their own [...]
Federal judge orders EPA to determine 'necessity' of regulating nutrients entering Mississippi River By Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com/ The Times-Picayune23 September 2013 A federal judge in New Orleans has handed environmental groups what amounts to half a loaf in their push for federal regulations on the flow of pollutants into the Mississippi River that fuels the [...]
Environmentalists win round against Gulf dead zone By The Associated Press23 September 2013NEW 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. A [...]