January 23, 2001

The Environmental Protection Agency, nine other federal agencies, nine states along the Mississippi River, and two tribes have developed an action plan to reduce the size of the "dead zone," a large, oxygen-starved area of the Gulf of Mexico which officials say threatens the nation's most productive and valuable fishing grounds.

The plan establishes a goal of reducing the so-called "dead zone" by cutting its size by half by 2015. They also have agreed to develop strategies to reduce nutrients entering the Gulf, particularly the amount of nitrogen, by 30%. The plan calls for continued research and monitoring to better understand this problem and use the information as a basis to modify the goals and actions as may be necessary in the future.

Every summer along the Texas-Louisiana portion of the Gulf of Mexico, certain nutrients, especially nitrogen, drain down from the Mississippi River into the Gulf and decrease the oxygen supply to aquatic organisms. This area becomes a "dead zone," because some organisms die while others flee the area. The decrease in oxygen, called hypoxia, affects an area that over the last five years has averaged 5,454 square miles off Louisiana's coast. This area has traditionally been one of the nation's most productive fisheries.

The decrease in oxygen is primarily the result of excess nitrogen from the 31-state Mississippi River drainage basin. A significant portion of the nutrients entering the Gulf from the Mississippi River come from human activities: discharges from sewage treatment and industrial wastewater treatment plants and storm water runoff from city streets and farms. Nutrients from automobile exhaust and fossil fueled power plants also enter the waterways and the Gulf through air deposition to the vast land area drained by the Mississippi River and its tributaries.

About 90% of the nitrates entering the Gulf come from runoff. About 56% of the nitrates enter the Mississippi River above the Ohio River. The Ohio basin adds 34% of the nitrates. High nitrogen loads come from basins receiving wastewater discharges and draining agricultural lands in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, southern Minnesota, and Ohio.

Under the pan, states, working as river-basin committees, would have flexibility to develop the most effective, practical measures to reduce discharges of nutrients and remove them from their waters. The strategies are expected to rely heavily on voluntary and incentive-based approaches for dealing with agricultural runoff and restoring wetlands. The pan calls for new resources to fund these activities.

The plan and additional information are available on EPA's Office of Water Web site at: http://www.epa.gov/ow under "What's New."