Despite promises to fix it, the Gulf dead zone is growing. [View All]

[Maddy McCall]

Source: Chris Kirkham, West Bank bureau NOLA.com

Every late spring, it forms 12 miles off the Louisiana coast and lasts for months: a sprawling, lifeless band of water known as the "dead zone."

Shrimp trawlers steer clear, knowing the low oxygen in this part of the Gulf of Mexico makes it uninhabitable for fish and other marine life. It starts at the mouth of the Mississippi River and can extend all the way to the Texas border, many years growing to the size of Connecticut.

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In 2001, the federal government, nine states and two American Indian tribes signed an agreement that, among other things, pledged to cut down on nitrogen in the river by 20 percent to 40 percent and reduce the size of the dead zone to 1,930 square miles by 2015. Last year, the dead zone measured more than 6,600 square miles, and early predictions for this year point to it being even larger.

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"When states don't get money to do something, it becomes an unfunded mandate. It's not even really a mandate," said Len Bahr, a Louisiana representative on the hypoxia task force and a science adviser in Gov. Kathleen Blanco's Office of Coastal Activities. "What the feds have done is they've kicked the can down the road."



Read more: http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/06/despite_promises_to_fix_it_the.html