Inside Report for April 30, 2008

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Apr 30, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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With an approved revised action plan for reducing the size of the annual summer “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana scientists, state agencies and others have started to meet on how to take action.

“I wanted Louisiana to be on the forefront,” said Len Bahr, coastal science adviser to the Governor’s Office of Coastal Affairs. “We have the most at risk so we should be as aggressive as any state.”

The dead zone — also known as hypoxia — forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico. It forms when nutrients and nitrogen from fertilizer or urban runoff get into the Mississippi River.

This material ends up in the Gulf of Mexico and helps to feed the growth of small organisms. As these organisms die and decompose, they sink and use up oxygen.

During the summer months, the low-oxygen water fails to mix with more oxygen-rich layers of water near the surface. This oxygen in the water can get low enough that the water can’t support most marine life.

A national group of state and federal representatives has produced two action plans since forming in 1997 with a goal of reducing the size of the dead zone.

The most recent action plan was approved by this Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force by conference call March 27, Bahr said.

That decision prompted Bahr and Doug Daigle, coordinator of the Lower Mississippi River Sub-Basin Committee, to call a meeting of interested scientists and state agency staff April 10.

“We decided to have this meeting and brainstorm,” Bahr said. “We wanted to get the principal stakeholders together to talk about real things we could to do affect hypoxia.”

He pointed out that this was just the first of what is hoped to be a series of meetings that will draw in ideas about what Louisiana can do to reduce hypoxia.

Even though the Mississippi River drains a large area of the country and brings with it the nutrients from farming, storm water runoff and more, Louisiana should have a part in trying to reduce that, he said.

Another issue brought up at the meeting is that the dead zone could get larger as more fertilizer is used upriver for corn-ethanol production.

In addition, Eugene Turner, a professor at the School of Coast and Environment at LSU, said that as corn prices go up, even Louisiana crops could change. For example, around 1990 there was very little corn being grown in Terrebonne Parish, but that could change, he said. More corn means more fertilizer, which means more nutrients in the water and more potential for the dead zone to get larger.