This year's low-oxygen "dead zone" along Louisiana coast covers 5,052 square miles, an area the size of the state of Connecticut but about 800 square miles less than the 2013 dead zone, according to a week-long survey released Monday. 
 
 The finding, by a team of scientists led by Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium Director Nancy Rabalais, is within the range estimated in late June by scientists who based their prediction on measurements of the amount of nutrients carried in May by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers. The dead zone is mostly caused by excessive nitrogen, mainly from Midwest agricultural runoff. 
 
 Based on the 2014 results, the five-year average size of the low-oxygen area is 5,543 square miles, which is almost three times larger than the target set by a federal/state Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force in 2001 as part of a national effort to reduce the size of the dead zone. The task force goal of reducing the low oxygen zone to 1,991 square miles, or 5,000 square kilometers, was reconfirmed in 2008, but has never been met. 
 
 "The Mississippi River discharge levels and associated nutrient data, supplied in May by the USGS, pointed to an average size hypoxia area based on the inputs which fuel mid-summer's dead zone algal growth," Rabalais said in a separate news release issued Monday by NOAA. 
 
 "If the heavy rains in the Upper Midwest in June and the record high nitrate concentration in the Mississippi River at Baton Rouge on July 18 had coincided with a later survey, chances are that the area would have been larger," she said. "The high phytoplankton biomass and large area of fresher water would have eventually led to more bottom-water hypoxia." 
 
 This is the 30th year that Rabalais' LUMCON team has measured the size of the Louisiana dead zone. Louisiana State University and Florida State University scientists participated in this year's cruise. 
 
 The research was paid for by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency's Gulf of Mexico Program and the National Science Foundation. 
 
 The size of the low-oxygen area drew an immediate response from several environmental groups that have sued the Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to get the agency to adopt regulations that would reduce nutrients flowing into the Mississippi by adopting numeric standards for the amount of nitrogen flowing in the river. 
 
 "We keep being told by both regulators and industry that a hands-off approach to dealing with the algae pollution fueling the Dead Zone is working just fine, but the Dead Zone is clearly not going away," said Ann Alexander, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "As we've seen this week with the drinking water problems in Toledo, we need to take the algae pollution problem more seriously and get tough about regulating it." 
 
 Alexander was referring to a ban on the use of tap water that the city of Toledo instituted on Sunday after toxic algae was found in the city's water supply. The algae was tracked to blooms in Lake Erie that scientists believe have been fueled by similar nutrient runoff from agriculture operations and from sewage treatment plants. 
 
 "Unfortunately, states and EPA have generally been ignoring or opposing efforts to get more stringent measures in place to deal with the nutrient problem in the Mississippi River basin and nationwide, most recently in their opposition to our lawsuit filed in Louisiana aimed at getting water quality standards in place as a first step to getting this mess cleaned up," Alexander said. 
 
 Matt Rota, senior policy director with the New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network, which is one of the plaintiffs in the nutrient lawsuit against the EPA, criticized Louisiana officials, including Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, for actions they've taken to block some EPA nutrient regulation proposals. 
 
 "While it is known that Louisiana is not one of the top contributors of Dead Zone-causing pollution, that is where the biggest impacts are felt," Rota said. "Despite this impact, Louisiana is simply not doing enough to make upriver polluters stop polluting the Gulf. 
 
 "Louisiana and other Mississippi River states are years behind in developing numeric criteria for nitrogen and phosphorus pollution," he said. "We see most of the Mississippi River states dragging their feet, claiming that voluntary actions alone can clean up the Dead Zone. If the past decade of 'Action Plans' and 'reduction strategies' is any indication, this simply isn't working. 
 
 "It is obvious that if the states don't want to address this issue, EPA must act, and regretfully we aren't seeing significant action from EPA either." Rota said. 
 
 State Department of Environmental Quality officials overseeing nutrient pollution regulations were unavailable for comment on Monday. 
 
 In a Monday news release, the scientists said this year's low-oxygen zone is located in two separate areas, with the largest one stretching across central and southeastern Louisiana between the Atchafalaya and Mississippi rivers. The smaller area is located off southwestern Louisiana. 
 
 The low oxygen area contains less than 2 parts per million of oxygen in water at the Gulf's bottom, a condition scientists call hypoxia. The lack of oxygen kills organisms that live on or in the bottom sediment and can cause shrimp, fish and other organisms that live in the water column to avoid the low-oxygen areas. 
 
 "The number of dead zones throughout the world has been increasing in the last several decades and currently totals over 550," Rabalais said in the LUMCON release. "The dead zone off the Louisiana coast is the second largest human-caused coastal hypoxic area in the global ocean." 
 
 A combination of physical and chemical processes cause the low-oxygen conditions. 
 
 Rainwater in the Midwest captures nitrogen fertilizer as it flows across farmland into small streams and rivers and eventually into the Mississippi and Atchafalaya. 
 
 As it exits both rivers into the Gulf of Mexico, the fresh water tends to stay on top of the saltier Gulf water until mixed by storms or hurricanes. 
 
 The nutrients act as food for huge blooms of algae along the shoreline. When the algae dies, it sinks to the bottom and decomposes, with the decomposition process turning oxygen into carbon dioxide, dropping the oxygen levels to near zero. 
 
 "The amount of nutrient loading from the river increased considerably in the 1960s as a result of more intense agricultural activity in the watershed," the scientists' release said. While the amount of nitrogen in the river has stabilized in recent years, it's still increasing, and the amount of nitrate among the nutrients in the water also is increasing. 
 
 The higher nitrate levels are consistent with higher levels of phytoplankton algae being measured in the Gulf waters where hypoxia is occurring, the news release said. 
 
 "Reducing the size of the hypoxic area requires, therefore, changes in land use," the news release said. "Pilot projects and recent development have demonstrated that this can be done for crops with benefits for farm communities, soil health, erosion reduction, and without compromising yields or profit." 
 
 Researchers warned that the continuous flow of nutrients, year after year, also results in some of the nitrogen being stored in sediments, where it can be released in later years, adding to the nutrients causing algae blooms. 
 
 Rabalais' team found that the discharge of water from the Mississippi this year was near the long-term average since 1935, and that there was a slightly lower nitrate concentration measured this year at Baton Rouge. However, the amount of water flowing out of the river just before the three-week measurement period was slightly above average and the nitrate concentration had reached a near-record high. 
 
 "The late burst of nutrient loading and freshwater discharge generated lush conditions for phytoplankton growth off the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers," the researchers said. They added that the effects of that growth were exacerbated by recent wind and current directions that pushed Atchafalaya River water to the east, where it joined with Mississippi River water between the two river mouths. ||||| Researchers who annually measure the oxygen deprived "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico have recently found that this year it is nearly as large as the state of Connecticut. That's three times larger than an anticipated 2015 target size. (Photo : Pixabay) 
 
 Researchers who annually measure the oxygen deprived "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico have recently found that this year it is nearly as large as the state of Connecticut. That's three times larger than an anticipated 2015 target size. 
 
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 The Gulf Dead Zone is a huge swath of the Gulf of Mexico just west of the Mississippi River Delta that is nearly devoid of oxygen and proportionally saturated with nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. 
 
 Containing barely any oxygen, these regions become absent of "commercial quantities" of shrimp and fish, according to the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMC). A LUMC assessment of the Dead Zone this year showed that it has grown to an average 5,500 square miles over the last five years. And while this growth falls into recent models based on current nitrogen measurements, it is still three times larger than the environmental target set by a federal task force in 2001, dedicated to keeping the zone controlled. 
 
 So what exactly makes a dead zone? According to the LUMC and the NOAA, dead zones are created by hypoxia (oxygenic depletion) and occur naturally all over the world - including in the fjords, deep basins and near intense upwelling systems. However, research has found that their occurrence in shallow coastal regions has increased in the last few decades as the result of human activities. In fact, it is thought that the Gulf Dead Zone is the second largest unnatural (or unnaturally augmented) dead zone in the world, with pollution coming from the Mississippi Delta bullying oxygen out of this environment. 
 
 "While it is known that Louisiana is not one of the top contributors of dead zone-causing pollution, that is where the biggest impacts are felt," Matt Rota, Senior Policy Director for the Gulf Restoration Network, said in a recent statement. 
 
 "Currently we are seeing the impacts of nitrogen and phosphorous pollution, not only off the Louisiana coast, but throughout the country," he added. "From undrinkable water in Toledo to a 4,000 square mile toxic Red Tide looming off the coast of Florida, it is obvious that current efforts to reduce harmful nitrogen and phosphorous pollution are not adequate." 
 
 Rota associates unnatural dead zones with the oxygen deprivation caused by some harmful algae blooms. 
 
 However, despite initiatives launched by conservation groups and the Environmental Protection Agency, it is important to note that Louisiana legislation has recently tried to remove the state's Gulf Waters from their "impaired waters list," citing contradictory scientific work that claims that, at least in part, the Gulf Dead Zone may be a natural occurrence. ||||| A record-breaking, New Jersey-sized dead zone was measured by scientists in the Gulf of Mexico this week—a sign that water quality in U.S. waterways is worse than expected. 
 
 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today that this summer’s dead zone is the largest ever recorded, measuring 8,776 miles. This is more expansive than the nearly 8,200 square-mile area that was forecast in July. Since monitoring began 32 years ago, the average size of the Gulf’s dead zone measured in at 5,309 square miles. 
 
 The Gulf of Mexico hypoxic or low-oxygen zone, also called a dead zone, is an area of low to no oxygen that can kill fish and other marine life. It’s primarily caused by an excess of agricultural nutrients that flow downstream and into surface waters, stimulating harmful algae. 
 
 To record the new measurements and assess the severity of low oxygen levels in the Gulf, scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) embarked on their 31st mid-summer hypoxia research cruise in July. Even with reported numbers as large as they are, the team of scientists said the entire area of the dead zone couldn't be mapped due to an insufficient number of workable days on the ship. There was more hypoxia to the west, and the measured size would have been larger if there was more time for researchers to work. 
 
 "The results from this year reflect the nitrate flux into the Gulf, which was high," says Nancy Rabalais, a research professor at LUMCON who helped lead the cruise. "It's a matter of addressing the sources of the nitrate—where they first start—which is in a field of agricultural crops." 
 
 Did Gulf Spill Boost "Dead Zone"? 
 
 This year’s large size is mainly due to heavy stream flows in May, Rabalais continued, which were about 34 percent above the long-term average and carried higher-than-average amounts of nutrients through Midwest waterways and into the Gulf. (Read “Heavier Rainfall Will Increase Water Pollution in the Future”) 
 
 Preliminary reports from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) align with the observation, estimating that 165,000 metric tons of nitrate–about 2,800 train cars of fertilizer—and 22,600 metric tons of phosphorus flowed down the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers into the Gulf of Mexico in May. 
 
 There are many alternative ways to farm using sustainable agriculture, Rabalais added. Those types of practices can reduce the flux of nitrogen, and they can be economical and beneficial to farming communities. 
 
 "It's a small-scale effort right now that needs to be addressed more formally by the agricultural community," she says. "I don't want to see the dead zone get any larger—it's large enough, and it's way higher than the target size we want to see." 
 
 What’s Flowing Downstream 
 
 The Gulf’s hypoxic zones are caused by excess nutrient pollution, primarily from human activities such as agriculture and wastewater treatment. 
 
 Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste is the main source of the nitrogen and phosphorus, which stimulate an overgrowth of algae that sinks and decomposes in the water. The resulting low oxygen levels are insufficient to support most marine life and habitats in near-bottom waters, posing a serious threat to the Gulf’s fisheries. 
 
 The Gulf dead zone can slow shrimp growth, leading to fewer large shrimp, according to a study led by Duke University. Additionally, the total catch of shrimp could suffer, meaning higher costs at the marketplace and loss of jobs for fishermen, equating to an economic ripple effect on fisheries. 
 
 “The Gulf’s summer hypoxic zone continues to put important habitats and valuable fisheries under intense stress,” says Rob Magnien, director of NOAA’s Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research. “Although there is some progress in reducing nutrients, the effects of the dead zone may further threaten the region’s coastal economies if current levels remain.” 
 
 Runoff nutrient pollution has also been linked to drinking water contamination throughout other parts of the country. A recent report by Environmental Working Group found that in 2015, water systems serving 7 million Americans across the continental U.S. contained unhealthy levels of nitrates. The subsequent consumption of nitrates has been linked to an increased risk of contracting certain cancers, and agriculture is named as a leading source of the pollution. (Watch "Why Care About Water") 
 
 The cause for much of this fertilizer pollution is related to a high demand for meat in the U.S., according to a new report by Mighty Earth, an environmental group. The report blames a small number of businesses for practices that are “contaminating our water and destroying our landscape,” citing areas of native grassland in the Midwest being converted into soy and corn fields to feed livestock. 
 
 "It's very difficult to see how a nitrogen molecule from the upper part of the United States can affect the Upper Gulf of Mexico, I admit that" Rabalais said. "But those same nitrogen concentrations affect the water quality within the watershed elsewhere—in the treatment plants and the well water—and that can cause human health problems and toxic algal blooms, things we definitely don't want." 
 
 Making A Fix 
 
 In its action plan for the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone, the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force recently extended the deadline until 2035 for achieving the goal of a 1,950-square-mile dead zone, which would be roughly the size of Delaware. 
 
 The task force also agreed on an interim target of a 20 percent reduction in the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Gulf of Mexico by 2025. 
 
 Shrinking the annual Gulf of Mexico dead zone down to that size, however, will require a much higher 59 percent reduction in the amount of nitrogen runoff that flows down the Mississippi River, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
 
 Using computer models, researchers analyzed what it would take to reach the longstanding goal of cutting the size of the Gulf hypoxic zone by about two-thirds, concluding that while the goal is still attainable, reaching it will require “bold new approaches” applied on a large scale in upstream agricultural areas. 
 
 "The bottom line is that we will never reach the action plan's goal of 1,950 square miles until more serious actions are taken to reduce the loss of Midwest fertilizers into the Mississippi River system," says University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Don Scavia, lead author of the paper. 
 
 The study reveals that hardly any progress has been made to reduce the amount of nitrogen runoff. Concentrations of the nitrogen compound nitrate found in rivers are the same today as in the 1980s, and despite more than $28 billion in government spending to reduce nitrogen runoff, there hasn’t been a significant reduction in the amount of nitrate washing into the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 “Clearly something more or something different is needed,” Scavia said. “It matters little if the load-reduction target is 30 percent, 45 percent, or 59 percent if insufficient resources are in place to make even modest reductions.” 
 
 Although nitrogen has historically been considered the main nutrient driver of hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, a "dual-nutrient strategy" of reducing both nitrogen and phosphorus appears to be the most prudent management approach, Scavia and his co-authors reported.
– A Connecticut-sized swath of oxygen-deprived waters off the Gulf Coast is a "poster child for how we are using and abusing our natural resources," says one researcher in Louisiana. In its 30th annual survey, the Louisiana Marine Consortium shows the dead zone has shrunk to about 5,000 square miles and may have stabilized, reports Reuters. (It previously measured as many as 8,200 square miles.) Still, the Gulf Coast dead zone remains second in size only to one off Finland; it extends along the Louisiana coastline from the Mississippi River Delta to the border with Texas. Since the 1960s, nitrogen fertilizer, mostly from Midwest cornfields, has been drawn into streams and rivers by rainwater and poured straight into the Gulf via the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, the Times-Picayune explains. There it feeds algae blooms that turn oxygen into carbon dioxide when it decays—poor conditions for fish and shrimp. Nitrates and nitrogen levels continue to increase, the scientists say. The EPA has tried to shrink the dead zone to 1,991 square miles since 2001 and isn’t making progress. Environmental groups have sued the agency to force its hand in adopting needed regulations to reduce harmful runoff. "We keep being told by both regulators and industry that a hands-off approach … is working just fine, but the Dead Zone is clearly not going away," one attorney tells the Times-Picayune. Louisiana legislators claim the dead zone is natural and want to remove its Gulf waters from the "impaired waters list," reports Nature World News. Activists say similarly harmful algae blooms in both Ohio and Florida prove current efforts aren’t working. (In other bad news about algae blooms, toxic blooms are so common in Ohio that summertime swimming bans are "routine.")