Posted September 24, 2013
On Friday, a U.S. District Judge ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has six months to decide whether to set Clean Water Act (CWA) standards for nitrogen and phosphorus in all U.S. waterways or explain why they are not necessary, according to Janet McConnaughey of the Associated Press in an article available here.
The “dead zone” is an oxygen-depleted area in the Gulf of Mexico. Every summer, nutrients feed algae blooms at the mouth of the Mississippi river. “Algae and the protozoa that eat them die and fall to the bottom, where their decomposition uses up oxygen. That creates an area on the sea bottom averaging nearly 5,800 square miles – larger than the state of Connecticut—where there is too little oxygen for aquatic life.”
The lawsuit was filed over a year ago by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other groups, challenging the EPA’s denial of the Mississippi River Collaborative’s 2008 petition to EPA asking it to establish quantifiable standards and cleanup plans for nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, according to an NRDC press release available here. The plaintiffs argued that EPA “had unlawfully refused to respond to the question posed to it, which is whether such federal action is necessary to comply with the Clean Water Act.”
U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey agreed with the plaintiffs, holding that the EPA’s refusal to provide a direct answer was unlawful. The decision does not direct the EPA on how to address the problem, only to make a decision on the issue. The decision is available here.
Kelly Foster, Senior Attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance, said, “It should be apparent that pollution limits are essential to controlling pollution. With this decision, we are hopeful that EPA will finally do what it has long known is necessary to address the Gulf Dead Zone and the staggering number of other fisheries, water supplies and recreational waters decimated by nitrogen and phosphorus pollution across the nation.”
Bradley Klein, senior staff attorney for the Environmental Law & Policy Center, said, “This isn’t just about the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Algae blooms threaten the Great Lakes – and smaller waterways across the nation are being impacted by this huge problem.”
A federal judge in Virginia recently upheld EPA’s plan to set and enforce nutrient standards in the Chesapeake Bay. For more information on this case, a post from this blog is available here.
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