The Red, White, and Green

As the debate rages on about corn as a sustainable source of fuel for our country’s green energy future, a new report released yesterday by the US Geological Survey may help trace the pollution trail from the corn ethanol industry, as well as others. For the first time, the USGS has identified the top 150 polluting watersheds in the Mississippi River Basin that are the cause of the annually occurring 8,000-sq.-mile “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, an area roughly the size of New Jersey that is so devoid of oxygen, it cannot support marine life.

According to data released last year by the USGS, commercial fertilizers and animal manure from farmland are the cause of 70 percent of the pollution — namely, excess nitrogen and phosphorus — that is responsible for the dead zone. Corn raised for ethanol, in particular, has been pinpointed as a polluter because it is a fertilizer intensive crop, although proponents of corn ethanol point to newer strains (read: genetically modified) of corn that require less pesticides, as well as increasingly efficient farming methods that require less fertilizer.

Ranking of Total Phosphorus Yields Delivered to the Gulf of Mexico (USGS, April 2009)

Ranking of Total Nitrogen Yields Delivered to the Gulf of Mexico (USGS, April 2009)

The USGS report, however, will hopefully lead to more specific measures to target the pollution. “States that have watersheds listed in this report now have have a better sense of where action can be taken to reduce their contribution to the dead zone while also reducing pollution to their local waters, ” says Susan Heathcote, water program director for the Iowa Environmental Council. “The Environmental Protection Agency needs to take the lead to focus federal resources to solve both local water quality problems and the national dead zone in the Gulf.”

For the EWG’s full story, click here.

For a link to the USGS report, click here.

–Jennifer Grayson

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