Subject: [WATER-ISSUES] Y Times: Chemicals in Farm Runoff Rattle States Along Mississippi River
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/science/earth/03runoff.html
June 2, 2011
Chemicals in Farm Runoff Rattle States
on the Mississippi
By LESLIE
KAUFMAN
As the surging waters of the Mississippi
pass downstream, they leave behind flooded towns and inundated lives and
carry forward a brew of farm chemicals and waste that this year — given
record flooding — is expected to result in the largest dead zone ever
in the Gulf of Mexico.
Dead zones have been occurring in the
gulf since the 1970s, and studies show that the main culprits are nitrogen
and phosphorus from crop fertilizers and animal manure in river runoff.
They settle in at the mouth of the gulf and fertilize algae, which prospers
and eventually starves other living things of oxygen.
Government studies have traced a majority
of those chemicals in the runoff to nine farming states, and yet today,
decades after the dead zones began forming, there is still little political
common ground on how to abate this perennial problem. Scientists who study
dead zones predict that the affected area will increase significantly this
year, breaking records for size and damage.
For years, environmentalists and advocates
for a cleaner gulf have been calling for federal action in the form of
regulation. Since 1998, the Environmental
Protection Agency has been
encouraging all states to place hard and fast numerical limits on the amount
of those chemicals allowed in local waterways. Yet of the nine key farm
states that feed the dead zone, only two, Illinois and Indiana, have acted,
and only to cover lakes, not the rivers or streams that merge into the
Mississippi.
The lack of formal action upstream has
long been maddening to the downstream states most affected by the pollution,
and the extreme flooding this year has only increased the tensions.
“Considering the current circumstances,
it is extremely frustrating not seeing E.P.A. take more direct action,”
said Matt Rota, director of science and water policy for the Gulf
Restoration Network, an environmental
advocacy group in New Orleans that has renewed its calls for federally
enforced targets. “We have tried solely voluntary mechanisms to reduce
this pollution for a decade and have only seen the dead zone get bigger.”
Environmental Protection Agency officials
said they had no immediate plans to force the issue, but farmers in the
Mississippi Basin are worried. That is because only six months ago, the
agency stepped in at the Chesapeake Bay, another watershed with similar
runoff issues, and set total maximum daily loads for those same pollutants
in nearby waterways. If the states do not reduce enough pollution over
time, the agency could penalize them in a variety of ways, including increasing
federal oversight of state programs or denying new wastewater permitting
rights, which could hamper development. The agency says it is too soon
to evaluate their progress in reducing pollution.
Don Parish, senior director of regulatory
relations for the American
Farm Bureau Federation, a
trade group, says behind that policy is the faulty assumption that farmers
fertilize too much or too casually. Since 1980, he said, farmers have increased
corn yields by 80 percent while at the same time reducing their nitrate
use by 4 percent through precision farming.
“We are on the razor’s edge,” Mr.
Parish said. “When you get to the point where you are taking more from
the soil than you are putting in, then you have to worry about productivity.”
Dead zones are areas of the ocean where
low oxygen levels can stress or kill bottom-dwelling organisms that cannot
escape and cause fish to leave the area. Excess nutrients transported to
the gulf each year during spring floods promote algal growth. As the algae
die and decompose, oxygen is consumed, creating the dead zone. The largest
dead zone was measured in 2002 at about 8,500 square miles, roughly the
size of New Jersey. Shrimp fishermen complain of being hurt the most by
the dead zones as shrimp are less able to relocate — but the precise impacts
on species are still being studied.
The United States Geological Survey has
found that nine states along the Mississippi contribute 75 percent of the
nitrogen and phosphorus. The survey found that corn and soybean crops were
the largest contributors to the nitrogen in the runoff, and manure was
a large contributor to the amount of phosphorus.
There are many other factors, of course,
that determine what elements make it from crops into river water, for example,
whether watersheds are protected by wetlands or buffer strips of land.
John Downing, a biogeochemist and limnologist
at Iowa State University, said structural issues were also to blame. Many
farms in Iowa, he said, are built on former wetlands and have drains right
under the crop roots that whisk water away before soils can absorb and
hold on to at least some of the fertilizer.
Still, overapplication of fertilizers
remains a key contributor, he said. “For farmers, the consequences of
applying too little is much riskier than putting too much on.”
Hemmed in by the antiregulatory mood
of Congress and high food costs, the Obama administration has looked to
combat Mississippi
River pollution through an
incentive program introduced in 2009 by the Department of Agriculture that
encourages a variety of grass-roots solutions, from wetlands creation to
educating farmers on just-in-time application.
The Mississippi
River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative provides
$320 million in grant money, which has so far been spread among 700 projects
in 12 states, projects proposed by farmers, environmental groups and local
governments. So far, the department says the results are quite promising.
Phosphorus and nitrogen found in surface runoff from 150,000 acres enrolled
in the program have decreased by nearly 50 percent.
That amount of land is just a drop in
the bucket for the vast Mississippi watershed, but Agriculture Secretary
Tom Vilsack thought it was promising enough to invite the administrator
of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa P. Jackson, to visit one of
the farms in the program.
“There is fear, real fear, in Iowa that
we’ll take what we’re doing in Chesapeake Bay and transfer it here without
regard to what’s already happening on the ground,” she said during her
trip in April, adding she appreciated the opportunity “to ensure that
isn’t our approach.”
Mr. Vilsack said that farmers had come
a long way toward understanding their effect on ecosystems downstream and
that what they needed were government incentives and creation of private
markets — where, for example, farmers who do a lot of conservation could
receive payments from farmers who do not — to help them improve environmental
safeguards while they also keep food production high.
“A lot of folks are basing criticism
and concerns on the way agriculture was, not the way it is now,” Mr. Vilsack
said in a phone interview. “We as a nation have an expansive appetite
for inexpensive food. To produce more, you have to turn to strategies like
chemicals and pesticides.”
That stance infuriates Dave Murphy, founder
of Food
Democracy Now!, an Iowa nonprofit
that advocates for smaller organic farms. He argues that voluntary programs
are a subterfuge.
“As is standard in Iowa and other states,
voluntary regulation by the polluters and the industry themselves is the
preferred method of getting around any serious environmental enforcement,”
he said.
Even some farmers do not disagree. Chris
Petersen, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, which represents small farmers,
said the country’s policy were not working. “We’ve been trying to do
this for years, and we are just not turning the corner.”
This article has been revised to reflect
the following correction:
Correction: June 3, 2011
An earlier version of this article
used an incorrect spelling of a chemical that runs off into rivers from
crop fertilizers and animal manure. It is phosphorus, not phosphorous.