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River Conservation Group Applauds Findings of Pew Ocean CommissionRecommendations for Curbing Agricultural Runoff Recognize that America's Oceans Start HereChampaign, June 4: After conducting the first national review of US ocean policies in more than 30 years, the Pew Ocean Commission released its findings today, outlining a new national agenda for restoring the nation's oceans. The Commission, which was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and chaired by former Congressman and White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, spent three years traveling the country to learn about challenges facing the country's oceans and formulating recommendations for addressing them.While overfishing of the nation's fish stocks was identified as the most obvious impact on the marine environment, the Commission found that the greatest pollution threat to coastal marine life if the runoff from excess nitrogen from fertilized farm fields, animal feed lots, and urban areas, including those found far, far away from the coasts. Excess amounts of these nutrients cause massive algal blooms that deplete oxygen in the ocean and cause huge hypoxic zones, or "Dead Zones", such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico which was the size of the State of Massachusetts in the summer of 2002, and where little or no marine life can survive. "Polluted runoff from agriculture in Illinois is not just a problem for Illinois' rivers," said Jean Flemma, Executive Director of Prairie Rivers Network. "It causes problems as far away as the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, while only 7% if the water that flows into the Gulf of Mexico comes from Illinois, 15% of the nutrient pollution comes from here as well. To address the problem of nutrient pollution, the Commission recommended that the EPA and states should establish water quality standards for nutrients, particularly nitrogen as quickly as possible. Illinois EPA is currently in the process of developing nutrient standards, however the agency may not limit nitrogen. Development of nutrient standards will have little impact on the biggest source of nutrient pollution - agriculture. To address that problem, the Commission recommended that the Clean Water Act should be amended to control polluted runoff from agriculture, but that effort could take time. They also suggested that agricultural and other subsidies should be linked to compliance with the Clean Water Act, providing economic incentives to those that reduce their runoff. Also of note, they recommended that Combined Animal Feeding Operations, CAFOs, should be brought into compliance with the current requirements of the Clean Water Act that limit wastewater discharges. "We are pleased that the Pew Ocean Commission has drawn attention to the problems of agricultural nutrient pollution that Prairie Rivers and others have long argued must be addressed. It is important for people to realize that our inability or unwillingness to reduce nutrient pollution here in the Illinois River basin affects not only Illinois' water quality and fisheries, but the health of our oceans and marine life as well, Flemma said." "America's oceans do not start at the coast, America's oceans start here."taxpayers were similarly being charged license fees to fish or paddle in those same rivers. | |