Last year was a devastating year in regards to the Gulf of Mexico. If anyone reading this is living in a bubble, that is when the Deepwater Horizon exploded and spewed oil into the gulf for more than a month before it was finally stopped. However, in the overall scheme of things, the oil was just the latest in a yearly cycle that affects the Gulf in a negative way. Since the 1970's, the Gulf of Mexico has experience yearly dead zones near the mouth of the Mississippi River created by runoff from farms upstream. This happens every spring after flood waters rush down the Mississippi, carrying all the extra fertilizer and manure with them and dumping them into the Gulf. This year is expected to be the worst year so far with record flooding occurring due to excessive rains and all the run off from melting snows over the winter. The main contaminants in the run off are nitrogen and phosphorous. The nitrogen comes primarily from fertilizer used in corn and soybean crops and the phosphorous from manure. These two chemicals feed the algae at the mouth of the river creating enormous algal blooms in the Gulf. As these algal blooms die and decompose, they suck the oxygen from the surrounding water forcing any wildlife away. At its worst, bottom feeders and marine life incapable of relocating die off and struggle to come back the year after. How big can a dead zone be? Well, in 2002, the largest dead zone yet was recorded reaching approximately the size of New Jersey. If you look at the map on the article linked to this blog, you can see that the dead zone hugs the entire cost of Louisiana.
While the flood waters primarily devastate the upper reaches of the Mississippi and the farmer's whose land is inundated with water, the fishermen downstream in the Gulf are also directly affected. The oil last year had a devastating impact on the shrimping industry, but what we don't hear about is the yearly effect that the algal blooms have on the shrimpers. Shrimp have difficulty re-locating around dead zones and are directly affected by this spring run off. Altogether, nine states contribute to the chemicals that are carried downstream each year. So what is being done about this? Not that much altogether. The EPA is not really getting involved and incentives and efforts to reduce this pollution are not having that large of an impact. A few small areas are improving, but overall, farming continues the way it has for decades. This is not an easy situation to solve. Our population continues to grow and continues to crave foods based in corn and soybean production. These crops are a necessity and as such, any effort to reform farming techniques must be done so with our growing population in mind. We must find a balance between mitigating pollution in spring run off in the Mississippi and enabling production of these crops to remain unharmed. One of the ideas that is being passed around is to educate farmers on better and more effective ways of using the fertilizer where it will be utilized more by the crops and little to no excess will make it into the waterways and consequently into the Mississippi and eventually the Gulf.
For those of us not living near the Mississippi or the Gulf of Mexico, it is difficult to take any of this seriously. We crave our food, whether it be shrimp from the gulf or corn and soybean products, and for most of us, we don't care how it gets onto our dinner plates as long as it is readily available. What makes it even more difficult to pay attention to or care about these situations in the Midwest are that we are all dealing with a slowly recovering economy and have bigger concerns than pollution and dead zones. However, if more of us don't start caring, the food on our dinner plates could be directly affected. And lets all be honest, for those of us not living in that region, what can we honestly do to help mitigate what is going on? If we press for changes, we will probably be lambasted for not understanding the true nature of the problem and for meddling in the livlihood of others. We could contact our representatives and ask them to press for changes in the government, but how much good will that really do. It takes months if not years for any changes to take effect in government and by that time, the problem could be much worse. Perhaps the best alternative, while not direcly impacting the problem in that region, is to work on the environmental problems that we have in our own areas. We all deal with a certain amount of pollution in our land and waterways, regardless of where we live. This will eventually impact all of us if left unchecked. We need to consider future generations for once and the world that they will inherit. All it will take to change things are little steps taken by a lot of people, slowly changing the mentality of people around you and making a positive impact on the environment that you live in. Today, even start by picking up one piece of garbage off the ground or street that is not yours. That little step could go a long way in the long run. If you do that every day, that is 365 pieces of garbage that will not be lying around our streets and towns. Today, lets all start to make a positive impact on our environments.
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