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Report sheds light on water quality; states must monitor pollution better

Thirty-five years after the passage of the Clean Water Act, a new study says state and federal governments need to coordinate their efforts to protect the water of the Mississippi River.

The study released Tuesday by the National Research Council calls on the Environmental Protection Agency to coordinate the efforts affecting the river and the northern Gulf of Mexico where its water is discharged.

Runoff from Minnesota’s and Wisconsin’s cities and farm fields carry sediment and nutrients into the Mississippi. These pollutants combine with others from the 10 states that border the 2,300-mile river and contribute to a dead zone in the gulf.

The report points to a lack of a centralized monitoring program, limited interstate collaboration, urbanization and agricultural runoff from Midwest corn production as compounding factors.

“The limited attention being given to monitoring and managing the Mississippi’s water quality does not match the river’s significant economic, ecological and cultural importance,” said research committee chairman David Dzomback.

Norman Senjem agreed. He’s the Mississippi River basin coordinator for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and is currently three years into a five-year water quality study of Lake Pepin.

Individual states tend to see the river as a federal zone, so it gets ignored for water quality programs and funding, Senjem said.

Pollutant standards also vary from state to state and some may have a parameter for one pollutant a bordering state doesn’t, said Rob Burdis, an aquatic biologist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources who monitors the Mississippi River near Lake City year-round for the U.S. Geological Survey.

U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, said the report highlights the need for better cooperation between states and federal agencies.

“The Environmental Protection Agency clearly needs to make the health of the river a greater priority,” he said in a press release, “and work alongside states in better regulating the sediment and nutrient flow.”

Kind also said a bill he authored, the Upper Mississippi River Basin Protection Act, would effectively improve water quality using a public-private approach. The bill has passed the U.S. House and is pending a hearing in the U.S. Senate.

Betsy Lawton, a staff attorney with Madison-based Midwest Environmental Advocates, was more explicit.

“EPA’s policy allowing states to drag their feet must stop now,” she said. “EPA must require states to comply with the Clean Water Act and adopt nitrogen and phosphorous pollution limits to protect our nation’s most vital river system.”

In recent years, actions have reduced much point-source pollution, such as direct discharges from factories and wastewater treatment plants.

But the report notes that many of the river’s remaining pollution problems stem from nonpoint sources, such as fertilizers and sediments that enter the river and its tributaries through runoff. Nutrients from fertilizers create water-quality problems in the river itself and contribute to an oxygen-deficient “dead zone” in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Most pollutants in the Winona and La Crosse portion of the Mississippi come from the Minnesota River, Burdis said. Nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous are at the highest rates Burdis has seen in his 17 years of monitoring.

A cubic city block of sediment pours into Lake Pepin each year from the Minnesota River, filling it in at 10 times the rate as 200 years ago, Senjem said.

While some sediment and nutrient runoff comes from urban development along blufftops as in La Crescent, the vast majority is a result of farmers planting more row crops like corn rather than alfalfa to meet the ethanol demand, said both Burdis and Senjem.

“Because of climate change and more intense storms like that flood, getting that heavy rain on a highly-altered landscape that isn’t as resilient as pioneer times,” Senjem said.

The National Research Council is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent organization chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific matters. The study was sponsored by the McKnight Foundation of Minneapolis.

This story contains information from the Associated Press. Contact Reporter Amber Dulek at 507-453-3513 or amber.dulek@lee.net.

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