As ethanol demand grows, so does ‘Dead Zone’ in Gulf of Mexico

U.S. farmers this spring planted the most acreage with corn since 1944, after demand for ethanol pushed the grain’s price to a 10-year high.

That has increased the level of farm waste flowing into the Mississippi River basin, which scientists blame for creating a pocket along the Louisiana coast where shrimp and other sea life cannot survive.
The Gulf of Mexico’s so-called Dead Zone is expected to cover a record 8,543 square miles, or 22,126 square kilometers, this year and stretch into waters off Texas, said Nancy Rabalais, chief scientist for a study team at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Researchers are measuring the zone this week from boats.

“This is an area the size of New Jersey or potentially bigger where nothing can live,” said Matt Rota, a program director at the Gulf Restoration Network, a coalition of environmental and civic groups. “If this were happening in the middle of the country, people would be outraged.”

Corn fuels the zone because it requires more nitrogen-based fertilizer than crops like soybeans, said Eugene Turner, a Louisiana State University oceanographer. Nitrogen and other nutrients eventually reach the Gulf of Mexico, feeding microscopic organisms that deplete oxygen levels as they die and decompose on the sea floor. Shrimp and fish suffocate unless they escape.

Ethanol, a form of alcohol made from vegetable matter, is distilled mostly from corn in the United States. It was at the center of President George W. Bush’s plan to reduce reliance on imported oil.

The Dead Zone, also known as a hypoxia zone, is an annual phenomenon that lasts several months and usually peaks around late July. Discovered in the 1970s, it may have existed for a century. The area has about doubled in size since scientists began studying it in 1985.

The zone could be catastrophic for the northern Gulf of Mexico’s $2.6 billion-a-year fishing industry, Rota said. At some point, he said, the zone might extend too far out for any shrimp or other creatures on the sea floor to escape.

International Herald Tribune