Goal is to shrink Gulf dead zone, but that's not happening
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Decades of work haven’t shrunk the oxygen-depleted “dead zone” that forms each year in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana and Texas.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting that this year's will be about the 35-year average. That's nearly triple the goal for reducing the area with too little oxygen for marine animals to survive.
Combining models developed by five universities resulted in a forecast of about 5,364 square miles (13,893 square kilometers), NOAA said in a news release. That’s a hair lower than the five-year measured average of 5,380 square miles (13,934 square kilometers) and about 15% smaller than last year's measurement.
In 2001, a federal-state task force set a long-term goal of reducing the dead zone, or hypoxic area, to 1,900 square miles (4,920 square kilometers) — about 35% of the current average.
“The action plan to reduce the size of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone was established over 20 years ago, yet this year’s forecast is comparable to the 35-year average zone,” said the University of Michigan's Don Scavia, who leads one of several research teams working with NOAA.
“Clearly, the federal and state agencies and Congress continue to prioritize industrial agriculture over water quality,” Scavia, professor emeritus at the School for Environment and Sustainability, said in a news release on the university's website.
The Gulf dead zone is largely created by urban and agricultural runoff and discharges of nitrogen and phosphorus to the Mississippi River, which drains 41% of the continental United States. In the Gulf of Mexico, the nutrients feed an overgrowth of algae, which die and sink to the bottom, using up oxygen from the ocean floor up as they decompose.
Fish, shrimp and crabs can swim away. Animals...