AFTER IRENE: Last week's hurricane purges Chesapeake Bay's dead zones By AP News7 September 2011WASHINGTON — Hurricane Irene's high winds breathed a little life into the polluted Chesapeake Bay, bringing some short-term relief to wildlife by temporarily eliminating the estuary's vast dead zone, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The bay's dead zone [...]

Your Chicken Nuggets Are Killing Your Crab Cakes By Tom Philpott, Mother Jones28 July 2011Every year in the Chesapeake Bay, an algae bloom spreads out, sucking oxygen out of the water and destroying fish habitat. This year's "dead zone" stretches from Baltimore Harbor to south of the Potomac River, the Washington Post reports. It's on track to [...]

EPA Impaired Waters Listing May Open Door To Mississippi Nutrient Limits By Inside EPA23 August 2011 EPA is poised to decide in the coming weeks whether to list coastal waters in Louisiana as impaired for dissolved oxygen (DO), a decision that environmentalists hope could begin a regulatory process to restrict nutrients in upstream Mississippi River [...]

Friend and foe: Nitrogen pollution's little-known environmental and human health threats By Michael Bernstein and Michael Woods, American Chemical Society 28 August 2011DENVER, Aug. 28, 2011 — Billions of people owe their lives to nitrogen fertilizers — a pillar of the fabled Green Revolution in agriculture that averted global famine in the 20th century — [...]

Dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and other waters require a tougher approach: Donald Scavia By Donald Scavia, Times Picayune2 September 2011This year’s Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone, an area with oxygen so low it cannot support life, covered 6,800 square miles. Had it not been for Tropical Storm Don stirring the waters, it [...]

Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake Bay: Connected and Conflicted By Public News Service22 August 2011HARRISBURG, Pa. - On the face of it, Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River looks to be a very different body of water than the Chesapeake Bay, but both, as it turns out, share some environmental characteristics that don't bode well for either one.  Harry [...]

Monster Algae Bloom Off Jersey Shore By By Brian Thompson, NBCNewYork.com19 August 2011A satellite has identified a monster algae bloom off the New Jersey coast that could soon affect fishing and beachgoers. Images from the NOAA satellite show a swirling blueish green blob stretching from Brooklyn past Sandy Hook all the way down to Cape [...]

Nation needs a fresh view of its rivers By Mark Davis, Special to Viewpoint, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee11 August 2011"But the basin of the Mississippi is the BODY OF THE NATION." -- Mark Twain, "Life on the Mississippi" For several months this spring the Mississippi and Missouri rivers flexed their muscles and reminded us [...]

Act locally, thinksoutherly By Natalie Camplair, Twin Cities Daily Planet 18 August 2011This time of year, 1,000 miles south of Minnesota at the mouth of the Mississippi River there are 7,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico devoid of any form of life. The swath of ocean where oxygen levels drop so low that [...]

'Political Hypoxia' Over King Corn Killing Coastal Waters By Robert M. Thorson, Hartford Courant11 August 2011Political hypocrisy we understand. Political hypoxia we do not. In the familiar case, politicians say one thing but do another, and are often caught with their pants down. In the second case, a dearth of oxygen in political discussions involving [...]