More Help Urged for Mississippi River

EPA needs to more aggressively implement the Clean Water Act to clean up the Mississippi River and shrink the oxygen-deficient dead zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the National Research Council said in a report released last week. EPA needs to broker better collaboration among the 10 states along the Mississippi to monitor and develop regulatory standards for water quality so the river is addressed as a single system. The agency also needs to work with these states to develop a federal cap on the amount of plant nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus compounds, that enter the river and the northern Gulf, the report says. Meanwhile, it says, the boom in biofuels, notably corn-based ethanol, is increasing the urgency for the Department of Agriculture and EPA to work cooperatively on water pollution issues. USDA needs to focus its conservation programs in the Mississippi watershed on farmlands that contribute the most fertilizer and sediment runoff to the river and its tributaries, the report says.