United States of Hypoxia


A different sort of bountiful harvest:

...a new government report says that nine states in the Mississippi River Basin contribute most of the nutrients in the northern Gulf of Mexico that threaten the viability of the nation's largest and most productive fisheries.

The U.S. Geological Survey report examined factors contributing to excessive levels of nutrients in the Mississippi River that create areas of hypoxia -- low oxygen levels -- resulting in the large dead zone that forms off Louisiana's coast every summer. The zone kills bottom-dwelling organisms in the Gulf...

Midwest farms were named as the major culprits in another study released Tuesday by Yale University concerning high carbon dioxide levels in some portions of the Mississippi River. The report said that Midwestern farms sent water into the Mississippi equal to the size of five Connecticut Rivers during the past 50 years. The higher water levels are responsible for the increases in carbon dioxide levels, the Yale report said.

"It's like the discovery of a new large river being piped out of the Corn Belt," said Pete Raymond, lead author of the study and associate professor of ecosystem ecology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Researchers said the carbon dioxide is changing the chemistry of the river's water and is a threat to marine life.

And for the record, I don't post this, per se, as any sort of "Eff You" to the Midwest. Instead, it's to note that there's no such thing as "those people down there," or "up there" or wherever--we are ALL part of the United States, and what affects one locale/state/region can and often does affect us ALL. Oh, to be sure, there's a part of me that wants to deliver a merry old "why-don't-you-shove-it...and-your-little-dog-too" to those whom I'll call internal isolationists, but the truth is that even if I COULD do that, it'd be like using an atom bomb to do a scalpel's work.