WASHINGTON — The federal government announced Wednesday the
formation of a new Mississippi River Monitoring Collaborative
project to help prevent the growth of low-oxygen dead zones in
the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. The Mississippi River/Gulf of
Mexico Watershed Nutrient (Hypoxia) Task Force is launching the
new effort to monitor reductions in nutrients — nitrogen and
phosphorus — put into the watershed through Midwestern farming
runoffs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has a member
on the task force, also is preparing to update its technical
standard for water quality monitoring to better measure the
amount of nutrients coming from farm fields. Nutrient runoff
from agricultural, urban and industrial sources has polluted
waterways for decades and contributed to hypoxic zones in the
Gulf — areas of low oxygen that are largely uninhabitable by
fish and other marine life, according to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. “Farmers, ranchers and other land managers,
with help from federal, state