Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico
In the environmental arena, "hypoxia" refers to a condition that exists in a body of water when dissolved oxygen falls below healthy levels necessary to support aquatic life. In recent years, researchers have identified an annual phenomenon which occurs off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico each spring. Large areas of oxygen-depleted waters, said to be thousands of square miles, occur on Louisiana's continental shelf. Researchers say that the "hypoxic zone" is caused by nutrients in the waters discharged by the Mississippi River. News media have labeled this annual hypoxic zone "the dead zone," although the area is not dead at all, but teems with life.

According to some research scientists, fertilizers used by farmers is the largest contributor to Gulf of Mexico hypoxia. This conclusion concerns LAP, because if fertilizer use is restricted in an effort to prevent hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, the demand for fertilizer, and for ammonia to make fertilizer, will be greatly reduced, potentially bringing economic hard times on Louisiana's ammonia industry.

LAP believes that federal regulators and research scientists funded by federal grants have reached hasty conclusions on the causes of hypoxia, and that restricting the use of fertilizers on farms would reduce crop yields and likely raise food prices for American families. At the same time, no one can predict whether restricting fertilizer use will have any effect at all on the hypoxic zone. LAP believes the researchers studying hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico have not studied the phenomenon enough to fully understand it, and that federal regulators have reached hasty conclusions in an attempt to "cure" hypoxia, when their own research shows that fisheries and recreational activities in the Gulf have not been adversely affected. In addition, LAP believes that a great deal of misinformation or incomplete information has been circulated in the media on the issue.

The oxygen depleted waters occur only near the bottom, where salt water is sealed off from air circulation by the layer of freshwater from the Mississippi River, which remains near the surface. The surface waters are not oxygen depleted, so the entire zone is not "dead" as is depicted by maps printed in various newspapers across the country. Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico is a bottom-water phenomenon. It does not affect the entire water table.

There could be many factors contributing to the phenomenon that have not been considered, or whose contribution to hypoxia have been too quickly trivialized by researchers and regulators. For instance, hypoxia occurrences are more widespread when spring weather in the northern Gulf of Mexico is calm. Storms produce high waves which mix the oxygen rich surface layer with the oxygen depleted bottom layers, thus alleviating hypoxia.

Also, hypoxia may be more of a natural process than recent reports would indicate. It is likely that hypoxia has always been present in the Gulf of Mexico, but has not been documented until now. Dredging and levying of the Mississippi River to assist navigation and prevent flooding have altered the timing of the River's discharge to the Gulf. As a result, the amount of water reaching the Gulf through the Mississippi River has increased in the last thirty years. The increase can also be attributed in part to a measurable and significant rise in the amount of precipitation falling on the Upper Mississippi River Basin. Although the precise cause of hypoxia has not been established, farmers are taking the problem seriously. Over the past decade, farmers aided by the use of space-age technology have used fertilizers much more efficiently. Farmers produce more corn per acre today using the same amount of fertilizer used 15 years ago. With the aid of the Department of Agriculture, farmers are planting conservation buffer strips along waterways to filter out nutrients before they reach the water. These and other changes in farm practices are reducing nutrient runoff, which is seen by farmers as beneficial even if these measures don't have an impact on hypoxia.

The Louisiana ammonia producers believe that restricting the use of fertilizers as a "solution" to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico would be ill-advised. Such a measure could reduce crop yields and raise food prices across the country, and possibly have no impact on hypoxia. LAP further believes that the federal government should not take action on hypoxia until the phenomenon is shown to have detrimental consequences, which to this point it has not. LAP will oppose any policy to restrict the use of fertilizers as a remedy for hypoxia.