Scathing review blasts states, EPA for failing to protect Mississippi River
The 10 states that border the Mississippi, including Minnesota, are failing to protect America’s greatest river and its tributaries, resulting in contaminated drinking water, fish kills, unswimmable waters and a 5,000-square-mile zone in the Gulf of Mexico that can no longer support aquatic life.
And the federal government has refused to use its authority to require states to control nutrients from farms and cities that are slowly killing the Mississippi, according to a comprehensive assessment of the river corridor released Thursday.
The scathing review, by 13 state and national environmental groups that make up the Mississippi River Collaborative, is designed as a public outcry to pressure the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do more to protect the river.
EPA officials, responding by e-mail Thursday, acknowledged that nutrient pollution has been rising steadily for the last half century, but said the agency cannot solve the problem in the massive Mississippi basin “with top down federal action.” In part, that’s because much of the nutrient runoff comes from farming, which is not subject to federal law.
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Minnesota and Wisconsin are the only states bordering the Mississippi to set limits for phosphorus, a nutrient from wastewater treatment plants and agriculture that produces algae blooms that can kill aquatic life and contaminate drinking water.
But none of the 10 states has adopted nitrogen or nitrate limits for lakes and streams to protect aquatic life. Minnesota regulators have one in the works, but say they are waiting for the EPA to complete research on its impact on aquatic ecosystems.
More
http://www.startribune.com/review-blasts-states-and-epa-for-failing-to-protect-mississippi-river/401711205/
Also
http://www.msrivercollab.org/11/decades-of-delay-report-urges-epa-to-protect-mississippi-river/