The latest report from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Hypoxia Task Force concludes farmers and ranchers are making progress in reducing nitrogen runoff in the Mississippi River watershed, but additional efforts are needed to meet phosphorus load reduction goals.
The task force, which brings together federal agencies and 12 member states, has set the interim goal of reducing both nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the Mississippi River basin by 20% by 2025 and by 45% by 2035. The latest data indicates states have already met the 20% reduction goal for nitrogen, but total phosphorus loads have increased.
The HTF met in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Dec. 6 to discuss progress on – and obstacles to – improving water quality and reducing the hypoxic zone. At the meeting, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, who serves as the states’ co-chair of the task force, highlighted different actions taken by states in cooperation with public and private partners to make improvements that positively impact water quality and reduce nutrient runoff. But he also noted there is more work to do.
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“States are also developing or enhancing dedicated funding sources that can help build and sustain the momentum,” he said.
Naig called on federal partners to work toward finding common-sense solutions as Iowa and the 11 other states in the HTF deal with inefficiencies and bottlenecks that slow down or hamper progress.
“States face permitting, process and approval challenges that either needlessly slow us down or prevent us from acting entirely,” Naig said.
Courtney Briggs, senior director of government affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation, said as part of the task force’s work, it is important to explore the science explaining why nitrogen and phosphorus are behaving differently in the environment. “We need to follow the research on identifying natural sources of phosphorus that are contributing to [phosphorus] loads, such as stream bank erosion,” Briggs said.
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