Task force to monitor water quality in Mississippi River Basin

The Mississippi River / Gulf of Mexico watershed nutrient (hypoxia) task force is planning to start two new efforts to monitor, investigate, and reduce the overflow of nitrogen and phosphorus across the watershed and prevent the deficiency of oxygen in water.

The joint federal, state and tribal force, chaired by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and State of Iowa have formed the Mississippi River Monitoring Collaborative to evaluate the progress for reducing nutrients runoff from the agricultural fields, urban and industrial sources.

The Mississippi River Monitoring Collaborative team is working to identify streams with long-term nutrient monitoring and stream flow records, and has thus far collected over 670,000 nutrient data records from 12 states in the Mississippi River Basin.

The data will be evaluated to understand how better the conservation policies in different areas is working out and where new strategies have to be implemented to reduce nutrient overflow.

Hypoxia task force co-chair and EPA Water acting assistant administrator Nancy Stoner said locals, along with farmers, ranchers, and other sources, are investing in conservation projects on their lands in the basin.

"Working together to expand monitoring will give us critical insight into the progress of conservation projects and help us improve activities on the ground and in the water," Stoner added.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), who is also a member of the task force, is planning to update its technical standards to improve the monitoring of the water quality and measure the amount of nutrients entering the basin from the farm fields.

The task force was established in 1997 and consists of five federal agencies, 12 states and the tribes within the Mississippi / Atchafalaya River basin to reduce and control hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Image: Mississippi River in the US. Photo: Christine Karim.