GOM Dead Zone This Year Size Of CT, RI Combined; Cleanup Goals Reset To 2035

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The 2015 "dead zone," an area of dangerously low-oxygen water in the Gulf of Mexico along Louisiana's coast, is bigger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, and ranks as the 11th largest since mapping began in 1985. The news came Tuesday (Aug. 4) as researchers with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University released results of this year's measurement.

They concluded this year's dead zone extended over more than 6,400 square miles, more than three times the goal of voluntary federal and state efforts to cut down nutrients that feed the dead zone. That's also about the same size as the combined islands that make up the state of Hawaii.



EDIT

Including 2015, the average size of the low-oxygen zone off Louisiana's coast during the past five years was 5,543 square miles, which is three times larger than a goal set by the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force of reducing its size to below 1,930 square miles by 2015.

That goal was set in 2008 by the task force members: five federal agencies, 12 states and Indian tribes located within the Mississippi and Atchafalaya river basins. They have been trying a variety of voluntary programs aimed at reducing nutrients in the river, through innovative farming methods that use less fertilizer, the planting of grassy buffer strips and wetlands that capture nutrients before they enter waterways, and improvements in urban and rural sewage treatment methods. In February, the task force announced that it had reset the clock for its goal, and would now hope to reduce the low-oxygen zone to less than 2,000 square miles by 2035.

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http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/news/default.asp?XMLFilename=201508071251.xml

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1. "Reset"