New York Times
Chemicals in Farm Runoff Rattle States on the Mississippi
Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press
Lisa P. Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, right, with
Gordon Wassenaar during a visit to his farm in Prairie City, Iowa.
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
Published: June 2, 2011
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.
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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.
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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.”