By SYLVIE DALE
Associate Online Editor
Oct. 16, 2000—The Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force reached a consensus Wednesday on what should be in a Final Action Plan to address the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
The hypoxic, or dead zone, on the Gulf's Texas-Louisiana Shelf is an area that forms during the summer months covering 6,000 to 7,000 square miles, an area that has doubled in size since 1993.
Within this hypoxic zone, the dissolved oxygen levels are so low that aquatic life is threatened, affecting a rich fishing industry. The task force, organized four years ago try to solve the problem, has agreed this is caused by excess nutrients emptying into the Gulf from the 31-state Mississippi-Atchafalay Basin.
The Final Action Plan will include a quantitative goal to reduce by half the size of the hypoxic zone. This goal will be pursued through specific strategies to be developed within two years by states and tribes on a watershed basis.
The action plan calls for these strategies, all together, to aim for a 30 percent reduction in the discharge of nitrogen to the Gulf by 2015.
The task force has been faced with opposition from a number of groups, including industry, farms and wastewater treatment plants along the watersheds which would have to comply with the action plan. Chief among the plan's opponents has been the American Farm Bureau, which issued a press release July 28 arguing against the 30 percent reduction in nitrogen limits suggested in the draft document. The AFB believes that most of the burden of reducing the nitrogen loading in the Mississippi will fall on its members' shoulders, and that farmers' livelihoods could be hurt if they have to reduce fertilizer use.
John Wilson, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Program Analyst for the Assessment and Watershed Protection Division has been one of the two principal senior staff members supporting the task force and the affiliated, staff level Coordination Committee. Wilson said that the task force plans to work with farmers and other affected groups to minimize any difficulties caused by the hypoxia reduction efforts.
"While the plan contemplates some additional regulation of point sources under the Clean Water Act, such as industry and other water treatment facilities, the basis of the plan is to seek means, including additional federal funds, to help other sources, particularly farmers but others as well, increase the efficiency of their use of fertilizers, so that crop production is maintained and less nitrogen is lost to the water where it does harm.
"So the expectation is that many farms and other sources of nitrogen will take advantage of various financial and technical opportunities to change their current practices and reduce unnecessary losses of nitrogen," Wilson said.
The action plan will call for, and include the outlines of, a budget initiative to:
- improve monitoring and modeling of the basin for nitrogen sources, fate and transport
- support increased research and monitoring in the Gulf
- support state and watershed education and planning efforts
- assist landowners to develop and implement best management practices to reduce nitrogen losses to the river
- assist landowners to install vegetated buffers, treatment wetlands
- upgrade sewage treatment facilities
- provide for changes in operation; and
- provide a source of support to test innovative ideas to reduce nitrogen discharge to the Gulf.
In its comments to the task force, the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies (AMSA) wrote that although AMSA supports plans to address hypoxia in the Gulf, the association has significant concerns with the task force's draft Action Plan which relies primarily on subjective judgments regarding:
- The impacts of nutrient loadings in the upper reaches of the basin on the hypoxia zone
- The ability of the basin to implement nonpoint source reductions without a predetermined plan for ensuring their implementation
- The effects of other variables such as flood control initiatives, freshwater flows, suspended sediment, and other oxygen demanding substances have on controlling the degree of hypoxia.
"The Gulf Strategy does not appear to have the quantitative assessments needed to demonstrate to the public the mechanisms driving the hypoxia, nor the level of controls needed to effectively reduce the hypoxia to natural or acceptable levels," wrote Norm LeBlanc, Chair of the AMSA Water Quality Committee.
The task force will submit a final action plan to the White House in November for submittal to Congress.
Other comments are available from http://www.epa.gov/msbasin/hypoxiacomments/.
For more information, view the draft Action Plan at www.epa.gov/msbasin/fr-actionplan.html on EPA's Internet site.
