Corn Pollution And The Dead Zone

I’ve bitched about ethanol production several times.  It almost would seem to others that I have it out for corn.  In actuality, I really do like corn.  The pollution that it creates just annoys me to no end.  I’ve actually heard stories a few years ago about how this pollution affects Mississippi River towns. 

Here’s how it works.  Corn is predominantly fed nitrogen-based fertilizers - in huge doses.  The fertilizer doesn’t just feed the corn.  It seeps into the ground water and then flows into the Mississippi River.  The midwest is a hot-bed of corn production and with prices where they’re at - corn is booming.  That means fertilizer is booming.  So this polluted ground water eventually flows to the river from field after field.  Eventually the river hits the ocean at the Mississippi Delta. 

The nation’s corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, it makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf, where it contributes to a growing “dead zone” - a 7,900-square-mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs and shrimp suffocate.

That so-called “dead zone” is growing.  Not only is the water being damaged and species being affected, but now the fishermen can’t fish the area, either. 

We might be coming close to a tipping point,” said Matt Rota, director of the water resources program for the New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group. “The ecosystem might change or collapse as opposed to being just impacted.”

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that up to 210 million pounds of nitrogen fertilizer enter the Gulf of Mexico each year. Scientists had no immediate estimate for 2007, but said they expect the amount of fertilizer going into streams to increase with more acres of corn planted.

Well that’s just friggin great.  Fantastic. 

Source: AP