Who’s to Blame for the Dead Zone

  • It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of the state of Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of NASA)

About 40% of the continental U-S drains into the Mississippi River. It sends water – and pollution – from across the country into the Gulf of Mexico. A new study shows just who the worst offenders are. Gabriel Spitzer has the story:

Transcript

About 40% of the continental U-S drains into the Mississippi River. It sends water – and pollution – from across the country into the Gulf of Mexico. A new study shows just who the worst offenders are. Gabriel Spitzer has the story:

All the pollution creates a dead zone in the Gulf nearly the size of New Jersey.

Nitrogen and Phosphorus pour in and fertilize big algae blooms.

When that stuff decays, it sucks oxygen out of the water, and makes it impossible for most fish to live there.

US Geological Survey researchers say most of the problem comes from farm runoff, but the single biggest source is sewage from Chicago.

Albert Ettinger with the Environmental and Law Policy Center says Chicago water managers have to catch up with their neighbors.

“They’re gonna have to look at treatment systems which take nitrogen out of the water, and bring phosphorus down to one milligram per liter. It’s done in Milwaukee, it’s done in Cleveland, it’s done in Detroit.”

Chicago’s Metropolitan Water Reclamation District say they haven’t had a chance to look closely at the study yet, so they don’t want to comment on it.

But they don’t like being singled out.

For The Environment Report, I’m Gabriel Spitzer.

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New Dishwashing Detergent Ban

  • Phosphorus has been banned from laundry detergents, but has not been banned from dishwasher detergents (Source: Piotrus at Wikimedia Commons)

Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:

Transcript

Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:

Well, there are dead zones in other places, including the Great Lakes.

One of the big culprits is phosphorus. It seeps into the water, and promotes the growth of
algae that chokes out other species.

Phosphorus was removed from laundry detergent back in the 1970s. But that was back
before there were a lot of automatic dishwashers, so dishwasher soap wasn’t part of the
ban.

Now, regulators are starting to catch up.

Michigan just joined at least 8 other states that have ordered phosphorus to be phased out
of dishwasher detergent.

The manufacturers aren’t arguing – some have already started eliminating phosphorus in
their products.

But there are still plenty of other ways that phosphorus is leeching into lakes, rivers, and
streams. The most common cause is agricultural fertilizers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rick Pluta.

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Dead Zone Pollution Goes Unchecked?

  • It is predicted that the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of the state of Massachusetts (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Environmental groups are
petitioning the government to limit
pollution from farm fields in states
that drain into the Mississippi River
and its tributaries. The pollution
contributes to a so-called ‘Dead Zone’
in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Transcript

Environmental groups are
petitioning the government to limit
pollution from farm fields in states
that drain into the Mississippi River
and its tributaries. The pollution
contributes to a so-called ‘Dead Zone’
in the Gulf of Mexico. Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Nine groups from states bordering the Mississippi River are calling for standards
to limit nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. The main source of the chemicals
is runoff from farms.

Attorney Betsy Lawton is with Midwest Environmental Advocates.

She says it’s been ten years since the Environmental Protection Agency said it
would make states in the Mississippi Basin protect and clean up the waters.

“EPA has long held that it would step up and take action when states failed to do.
It has set several deadlines for states to take this type of action and limit this
pollution but has let the states slide from those deadlines.”

The nitrogen and phosphorus flow down the Mississippi into the Gulf Dead Zone
– an oxygen depleted area of about 8,000 square miles – or the size of the state
of Massachusetts.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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States: More Money Needed to Shrink Dead Zone

  • A shrimp boat. Shrimp can't survive in the oxygen-depleted water in the Dead Zone so the EPA is trying to control runoff. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The EPA has revised a plan to control polluted runoff from 31 states that
contribute to the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. But states say there needs to
be more money too. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

The EPA has revised a plan to control polluted runoff from 31 states that
contribute to the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. But states say there needs to
be more money too. Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Fertilizers such as nitrogen and phosphorus run off farm fields in
the Mississippi River basin. The nutrients then wash down the river, leading to
excessive algae growth in the Gulf of Mexico. That creates a dead zone of
20,000 square kilometers that harms shrimp and other species.


An EPA task force has released a plan that puts the states in the lead role for
cutting nutrients. But panel member Russell Rasmussen says what’s missing are
the billions of dollars needed to shrink the Dead Zone by the stated target of
75%:


“There just haven’t been the resources brought to bear to achieve that goal and it
doesn’t look like they’re going to be there between now and 2015.”


The EPA says major environmental progress in the Gulf is less a question of cost
and more about public-private partnerships.


For the Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Dish Detergent Makers Fight Phosphate Bans

Dishwashing detergent manufacturers are visiting states to try to keep them from banning phosphorous in their products. Lester Graham reports phosphorous is polluting some waterways:

Transcript

Dishwashing detergent manufacturers are visiting states to try to keep them from banning phosphorus in their products. Lester Graham reports phosphorus is polluting some waterways:


Too much of the nutrient phosphorus means too much algae growth. When the vegetation dies, it sinks, rots, and robs the water of oxygen, causing a dead zone. It was a common problem until phosphorus was banned in laundry detergent in the 1970s. Phosphates are still allowed in dishwashing detergent.


Steve Lentsch is with the company Ecolab. It’s the world’s largest dishwashing detergent manufacturer, supplying hospitals, schools and restaurants that use commercial dishwashers.


“And phosphorus is an essential ingredient to the dishwash detergents to ensure that the dishware becomes sanitary, and clean, of course.”


Ecolab, Proctor and Gamble, and other detergent makers say without phosphates, people won’t be satisfied with the results. But environmentalists say increased use of dishwashers is contributing to an increased occurrence of dead zones in lakes and estuaries.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Fertilizer Makers Cut Back on Phosphorus

Two major manufacturers of fertilizer are cutting the amount of phosphorus in their products by half. Fred Kight reports the move should help reduce water pollution:

Transcript

Two major manufacturers of fertilizer are cutting the amount of phosphorus in their products by half. Fred Kight reports the move should help reduce water pollution:


Phosphorus is a major source of water pollution in many parts of the country. It can create algae blooms. When these blooms die off they rob the water of oxygen, often killing underwater plants and animals.


Scotts Miracle Gro is one of the companies cutting back on phosphorus. Rich Martinez is the chief environmental officer for Scotts. He says the problem occurs when the product doesn’t go where it’s intended:


“We did it as our part of contribution to a reduction in phosphorus losses – material moving off target that might end up in the water.”


Officials from Lebanon Seaboard say they’ll also reduce the amount of phosphorus in their fertilizers. Martinez says gardeners will probably see the new, lower phosphorus products on shelves by next spring.


For the Environment Report, I’m Fred Kight.

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Growing Dead Zone Cause for Concern

Scientists say the size of this year’s dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is bigger than average. It’s grown to more than 65-hundred square miles in size. The GLRC’s Mark Brush explains:

Transcript

Scientists say the size of this year’s dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is bigger than
average. It’s grown to more than 6,500 square miles in size. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mark Brush explains:


Each spring, scientists measure the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution coming
down the Mississippi river. The excess nutrients mostly come from farm fields and
sewage treatment plants in the Mississippi river basin. The nutrients cause algae blooms
in the Gulf of Mexico which eventually rob the water of its oxygen.


Dave Whittall is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He says
the dead zone has a big impact on the region’s ecology and economy:


“That whole area where we don’t have oxygen, nothing can live there, so this is an area
the size of the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island put together where you have no
aquatic life essentially.”


Government officials are working toward a goal of cutting the size of the dead zone by
half in the next nine years. And they’re looking to farmers and cities to help them with
that goal.


For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.

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Ten Threats: Green Lawns, Dead Lakes

  • A blue-green algae bloom. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

The experts who identified the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes for us
say nonpoint source pollution is one of the worst threats. That’s
pollution that doesn’t come out of a pipe but instead is washed from
streets and farm fields… and lawns. Americans use at least three million of tons
of fertilizer on their lawns every year. But the same compounds that make for a lush,
green lawn can make a stinky, slimy mess when they get washed into lakes and rivers.
Sarah Hulett looks at efforts to limit the amount of lawn chemicals that make their way
into the waterways:

Transcript

In our series, Ten Threats to the Great Lakes, we’ve been looking
at environmental problems affecting the health of the lakes. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham is guiding us through the
issues one-by-one:


The experts who identified the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes for us
say nonpoint source pollution is one of the worst threats. That’s
pollution that doesn’t come out of a pipe but instead is washed from
streets and farm fields… and lawns. Americans use at least three million of tons
of fertilizer on their lawns every year. But the same compounds that make for a lush,
green lawn can make a stinky, slimy mess when they get washed into lakes and rivers.
Sarah Hulett looks at efforts to limit the amount of lawn chemicals that make their way
into the waterways:


When newspaper headlines decried the death of Lake Erie in the 1970’s, Americans got
familiar with a new enemy of the environment. Scientists named phosphorus the major
culprit in the lake’s decline. And the reaction went a long way toward cleaning up the
lake: billions of dollars went into upgrades for wastewater treatment plants to reduce
phosphorus from sewage. And phosphate detergents have been mostly phased out of use.


But now that regulators have gotten a handle on the phosphorus coming from the most
obvious sources, they’re left with a much more difficult task: reducing phosphorus from
countless smaller sources that together add up to a lot of pollution.


One of those sources is lawn fertilizer. And Glenn Short says it’s easy to see what
happens when that fertilizer gets washed into the lake where he lives.


(sound of ducks quacking and waves)


“You have this, like, green slime floating all over the top of the lake water. Just pops up
everywhere and it can fill the entire lake surface – especially in the calmer bays. It can be
just miserable for swimming and things like that.”


Short sits on the board of the Lake Sherwood Association, in southeast Michigan. His
neighbors asked him to lobby the township to pass a ban on phosphorus fertilizer to
reduce the algae that takes over the lake in the summers. But he says at first, he was
reluctant to do it.


“I’m like any other homeowner. I don’t want government telling me what to do with my
own property. If I want a really nice lawn, I felt that I should be able to have one.”


But he started doing some research. And he found that enough phosphorus will
eventually kill a lake.


“Over a period of time, you get more and more organic material growing, you kill it off,
you just start filling up your lake. And eventually you have no lake anymore. You just
have a wetland. Well, I like my lake. I mean, I live on a lake. I like to use my lake.”


So Short drafted an ordinance to ban fertilizers containing phosphorus, and his township
board passed it. Several other local governments in the region have also enacted limits or
outright bans. And the state of Minnesota has statewide limits on phosphorus fertilizers.


It’s an approach the landscape industry calls unnecessary.


Gary Eichen is with Mike’s Tree Surgeons in southeast Michigan. It’s a company that’s
signed onto an initiative aimed at environmentally responsible lawn care.


(sound of spreader)


The company uses zero-phosphorus fertilizer on almost all the lawns it treats. Back at the
office, Eichen says the problem isn’t the chemicals – it’s that most homeowners don’t
know how to use them.


“They purchase from a source that is not educated in what the products are. He goes
home and starts going through this giant label on the back, and most of it might as well
be Egyptian hieroglyphics. He has no idea. So he ends up over-applying or incorrectly
applying.”


Eichen says there would be far fewer problems with runoff if homeowners left fertilizing
to the professionals. And he says it’s tough for the experts to stay in business when
there’s a patchwork of local ordinances to regulate chemicals like phosphorus.


But that’s exactly what the Environmental Protection Agency is asking communities to
do. Brad Garmon of the Michigan Environmental Council says that kind of bottom-up
regulation presents some challenges.


“It’s very difficult to see what’s working and what’s not, and to chart success. And I
know that a lot of the state programs are re-evaluating right now to see if the approach
they’ve been using over the last five or ten years has been working.”


It’ll take at least another five to ten years for Glenn Short to see the results of his
community’s phosphorus ban. The lake he lives on is part of a river system that
eventually dumps into Lake Erie. But he says just like that Great Lake, it’ll be worth the
wait and the effort to see his small lake bounce back to health.


For the GLRC, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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Ten Threats: Dead Zones in the Lakes

  • These fishermen at Port Clinton, Ohio, are a few miles away from the dead zone that develops in Lake Erie every summer... so far, most fish can swim away from the dead zone. But the dead zone is affecting the things that live at the bottom of the lake. (Photo by Lester Graham)

One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is nonpoint source pollution. That’s pollution that
doesn’t come from the end of a pipe. It’s oil washed off parking lots by storms, or pesticides and
fertilizers washed from farm fields. Nonpoint source pollution might be part of the reason why
some shallow areas in the Great Lakes are afflicted by so-called dead zones every summer.

Transcript

In another report on the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes series, reporter Lester Graham looks at a
growing problem that has scientists baffled:


One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is nonpoint source pollution. That’s pollution that
doesn’t come from the end of a pipe. It’s oil washed off parking lots by storms, or pesticides and
fertilizers washed from farm fields. Nonpoint source pollution might be part of the reason why
some shallow areas in the Great Lakes are afflicted by so-called dead zones every summer.


Dead zones are places where there’s little or no oxygen. A dead zone develops in Lake Erie
almost every summer. It was once thought that the problem was mostly solved. But, it’s become
worse in recent years.


(sound of moorings creaking)


The Environmental Protection Agency’s research ship, the Lake Guardian, is tied up at a dock at
the Port of Cleveland. Nathan Hawley and his crew are loading gear, getting ready for a five day
cruise to check some equipment that measures a dead zone along the central basin of Lake Erie.


“What I have out here is a series of bottom-resting moorings that are collecting time series data of
currents and water temperature and periodically we have to come out here and clean them off and
we take that opportunity to dump the data as well.”


Hawley is gathering the data for scientists at several universities and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. The information helps
them measure the behavior of the dead zone that occurs nearly every year in Lake Erie…


“What we’re trying to do this year is get a more comprehensive picture of how big this low-oxygen zone is and how it changes with time over the year.”


One of the scientists who’ll be pouring over the data is Brian Eadie. He’s a senior scientist with
NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. He says Lake Erie’s dead zone is a place
where most life can’t survive…


“We’re talking about near the bottom where all or most of the oxygen has been consumed so
there’s nothing for animals to breathe down there, fish or smaller animals.”


Lester Graham: “So, those things that can swim out of the way, do and those that can’t…”


Brian Eadie: “Die.”


The dead zone has been around since at least the 1930’s. It got really bad when there was a huge
increase in the amount of nutrients entering the lake. Some of the nutrients came from sewage,
some from farm fertilizers and some from detergents. The nutrients, chiefly phosphorous, fed an
explosion in algae growth. The algae died, dropped to the bottom of the lake and rotted. That
process robbed the bottom of oxygen. Meanwhile, as spring and summer warmed the surface of
Lake Erie, a thermal barrier was created that trapped the oxygen-depleted water on the bottom.


After clean water laws were passed, sewage treatment plants were built, phosphorous was banned
from most detergents, and better methods to remove phosphorous from industrial applications
were put in place.


Phosphorous was reduced to a third of what it had been. But Brian Eadie says since then
something has changed.


“The concentration of nutrients in the central basin the last few years has actually been going up.
We don’t understand why that’s happening.”


Eadie says there are some theories. Wastewater from sewage plants might be meeting pollution
restrictions, but as cities and suburbs grow, there’s just a lot more of it getting discharged. More
volume means more phosphorous.


It could be that tributaries that are watersheds for farmland are seeing increased phosphorous. Or
it could be that the invasive species, zebra mussel, has dramatically altered the ecology of the
lakes. More nutrients might be getting trapped at the bottom, feeding bacteria that use up oxygen
instead of the nutrients getting taken up into the food chain.


Whatever is happening, environmentalists are hopeful that the scientists figure it out soon.


Andy Buchsbaum heads up the Great Lakes office of the National Wildlife Federation. He says
the dead zone in the bottom of the lake affects the entire lake’s productivity.


“If you’re removing the oxygen there, for whatever reason, for any period of time, you’ve
completely thrown that whole system out of balance. It’s all out of whack. It could mean
irreversible and devastating change to the entire ecosystem.”


And Buchsbaum says the central basin of Lake Erie is not the only place where we’re seeing this
low-oxygen problem…


“What makes the dead zone in Lake Erie even more alarming is that we’re seeing similar dead
zones appearing in Saginaw Bay which is on Lake Huron and Green Bay in Lake Michigan.
There, too, scientists don’t know what’s causing the problem. But, they’re already seeing
potentially catastrophic effects on aquatic life there.”


State and federal agencies and several universities are looking at the Lake Erie dead zone to try to
figure out what’s going on there. Once they do… then the battle likely will be getting
government to do what’s necessary to fix the problem.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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Revisiting an International Water Agreement

The United States and Canada are updating a 30 year-old regional water quality agreement. The governments are launching 14 public hearings in both countries to gather ideas. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta:

Transcript

The United States and Canada are updating a 30 year-old regional water quality
agreement. The governments are launching 14 public hearings in both countries to
gather ideas. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta:


The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was initially designed to rid the Great Lakes
of chemicals. In the 1970’s, it resulted in the ban of phosphorus in detergents and other
consumer products. The ban is widely credited with starting to clean up the lakes.


Dennis Schornack is the U.S. chair of the International Joint Commission. He says a lot
of new problems have emerged since the agreement was last updated in 1987.


“Looking to the future, the threats that we have today have changed, one especially
important threat is invasive species. Foreign species have disrupted the food chain in the
Great Lakes.”


Schornack says other issues that need to be addressed include water runoff from streets
and farms that contain pesticides and other chemicals, and lakefront development.


The U.S. and Canada hope to complete an update of the Great Lakes protection
agreement in 2006.


For the GLRC, I’m Rick Pluta.

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