Fair use, etc http://www.express-news.net/auth/ennews/ap/texas/d0772.html "EPA recommends cut in fertilizer to aid Gulf of Mexico By PHILIP BRASHER= AP Farm Writer=

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fertilizer and manure runoff into the Mississippi River should be cut sharply to repair the oxygen-deprived ``dead zone'' in the Gulf of Mexico, the government said Thursday. A report by the Environmental Protection Agency urges Congress to provide financial incentives to Midwest farmers to curb fertilizer use and take other steps to prevent runoff from getting into the Mississippi and its tributaries. The plan recommends reducing nitrogen runoff into the Mississippi by 30 percent. Every year an area of the gulf as big as New Jersey becomes depleted of oxygen, or ``hypoxic,'' and now fish, shrimp and other species ``are significantly less abundant'' in the dead zone, the report said. Congress will rewrite federal farm programs over the next two years. Environmentalists hope the EPA plan will spur lawmakers to steer some farm aid into land-retirement programs, wetland restoration and other methods of reducing farm runoff. ``The substantive debate about the causes of hypoxia and cost-effective solutions to hypoxia is now over,'' said Scott Faber, a spokesman for the advocacy group Environmental Defense. ``Today's plan makes it crystal clear that the vast amount of nitrogen reaching the Gulf comes from polluted runoff and farmland.'' Existing farm programs encourage the use of fertilizer because payments are tied to crop production, he said.

Farm groups would fight any attempts in Congress to restrict the use of fertilizer.

``You can't just cut your inputs (use of fertilizer) and make your farm survive,'' said David Salmonsen, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

He said the 30 percent reduction in runoff recommended in the EPA plan may not be realistic.

The Agriculture Department estimates it would cost taxpayers $3 billion to compensate farmers for income losses they would incur in reducing their use of nitrogen fertilizer by 20 percent.

In 1999, a White House study concluded that the most cost-effective way to protect the gulf would be to reduce fertilizer use by 20 percent and to restore 5 million acres of wetlands that could trap nutrients before they reach the Mississippi and its tributaries. The gulf's ``dead zone'' doubled in size to about 7,000 square miles after widespread Midwest flooding in 1993, but has fluctuated annually since then, depending on water flows in the Mississippi. Algae thrives on the excess nutrients and hogs the oxygen in the water that is needed by fish, shrimp and other aquatic life. The Mississippi drains water from about 40 percent of the United States and carries more than a million tons of nitrogen. More than half of the nitrate pollutants in the river originate north of where the Ohio River empties into the Mississippi, according to the EPA report.

-- tex (tex@tex.com), January 18, 2001