Nutrient Pollution is one of the top sources of water quality impairment in the United States... It is what causes Hypoxic conditions in the Gulf of Mexico, dissolved oxygen sags in streams and lakes leading to fish kills, and that oh so nice carpet of greenish slime that you can sometimes see on lakes in the middle of the summer.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) joked last week that he was "attacked by the environment" following an illness he believes was caused by toxic algae bloom. The 76-year-old ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, a frequent critic of environmentalists, fell ill after taking a dip near his home on Grand Lake early last week. "That night, Monday night, I was just deathly sick," Inhofe told the Tulsa World newspaper about the respiratory illness he contracted. Inhofe had reportedly asked his 13-year-old granddaughter to join him for a swim, but she demurred. "She didn't want to get in that green stuff," he said.
Read the full story here. A
s one environmentalist put it, “Irony can be so ironic.” For the last several years Republicans in both houses have blasted the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to get tough with States and require the development of Nutrient Water Quality Criteria to protect our nation’s waters. The State of Florida has been the poster child for these efforts where the EPA stepped in and promulgated Criteria because the State had not. You can view a recenting hearing of the House’s Transportation and Infrastructure’s, subcommittee on Water entitled "Running Roughshod Over States and Stakeholders: EPA's Nutrients policies".
The base arguments that get made against the development of criteria, are that it will cost a lot (publicly-owned treatment works will need to spend lots of money to take phosphorous and nitrogen out of our waste) or that there isn’t a clear link between nitrogen and phosphorous levels in water and the effects of these levels (they differ depending on a lot of variables about the waterbody, the types of biota, etc.). How can nutrients not be good for you? The real culprit here is non-point source runoff from our own lawns but more importantly from Agricultural activities (copious amounts of fertilizer to row crops, application of manure to fields at unfortunate times during the year, unregulated tile drains underneath thousands of acres of corn which empty dissolved nitrogen into streams through actual pipes, and unproductive lands being put back into production because of the high price of commodities, many of which were held in reserve as buffers to streams and lakes.) Currently the Clean Water Act does not regulate non-point sources, and as such even the development of criteria would do little to improve water quality. However, even this small step is feared by Agribusiness, as it is viewed as a foothold in the door toward tighter regulation in the name of protecting human health and the environment.
Hopefully Senator Inhofe will be fine, as waterborne illnesses are nothing to sneeze at. We’ll see if the case for improving water quality becomes more important as it literally hits his own backyard.