Speaker concerned with Mississippi River pollution

As the world's population has increased, there have been more mouths to feed and a need to grow more crops. As a result, more fertilizers have been used, but these fertilizers have polluted areas such as the Mississippi River Basin.\nU.S. Environmental Protection Agency Representative Joseph Schubauer-Berigan spoke to about 30 people Thursday addressing this issue. Schubauer-Berigan's speech was the last in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs' semester-long environmental science seminar series.\nSchubauer-Berigan, more specifically from the National Risk Management Research Laboratory in Cincinnati, was asked to speak by Chris Craft, a SPEA associate professor.\n"Having never heard him speak before, I thought he gave a really good talk," Craft said. "Having never seen him give a presentation before, I thought he really hit the nail right on the head in terms of addressing a national issue relating a lot of resources that ties in the Midwest."\nSchubauer-Berigan's seminar was titled "Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico: Assessing and Managing Risks from Nonpoint Source Pollutants in the Mississippi River Basin." A nonpoint source is one that literally does not have a point. Factories equipped with smokestacks, are considered point sources.\nHypoxia is the environmental term for the absence of oxygen getting to living tissue in water systems as a result of low dissolved oxygen levels, Schubauer-Berigan said. Low oxygen levels occur from overabundant nitrogen amounts, or too much nutrients, getting to plants dwelling in the water. This nutrient excess causes too much algae growth, which results in reduced sunlight and aquatic habitat loss, according to the EPA's Web site at www.epa.gov/.\n"Then, the area isn't useable by the organisms living in the hypoxia areas," Schubauer-Berigan said. \nCraft further simplified this and said, "It's like too much of a good thing."\nHypoxia is caused by excessive amounts of fertilizer. A nonpoint source which contains fertilizer is from the Midwest farming area that runs into the Mississippi river and ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, Schubauer-Berigan said.\nThe nitrogen that enters the Gulf of Mexico comes from sewage treatment plant discharge, storm water runoff in northern cities and nonpoint source pollution, primarily fertilizer used by farmers, he said.\nFarmers worldwide are faced with the problem of needing the fertilizer for their crops but now having to ask, "Do I use less fertilizers and get less crop?" Schubauer-Berigan said.\n"This type of hypoxia is a big issue all over the world," Craft explained. "As population increases, we're turning more land into farmland, and we're using more fertilizer, and all this excess fertilizer is ending up in our aquatic systems."\nThe area of the hypoxia problem is about the size of New Jersey or Delaware off the coast of northern Mexico, Schubauer-Berigan said.\nAlthough hypoxia affects 31 U.S. states, it is most severe in the states near the Mississippi river, which includes the Midwest, he said. The Midwest has the highest nitrogen level yield, and therefore, a higher risk for ground water contamination, Schubauer Berigan said.\nHypoxia is especially harmful for the fish and shrimp industry around the Gulf. Over 1.8 billion pounds of fish is harvested in the region each year, Schubauer-Berigan told.\nShrimp numbers in the Gulf have decreased over the years while nitrogen flux has greatly increased, tripling since the 1950s, he said.\nGovernment agencies have teamed up and organized themselves into a task force to evaluate and assess the hypoxia problem in hopes of decreasing it. The task force's goal is to reduce the amount of hypoxia in the Gulf, which varies yearly, to 5,000 square kilometers. This number is down 3,000 from its current 8,000 square kilometers this year, Schubauer-Berigan said.\n"I thought the lecture was interesting and very well done," said Elizabeth Spalt, a senior who attended the seminar.