This note is to bring to your attention an under-reported phenomenon called the "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, a serious environmental issue that bio-fuels afficionado's disregard at the peril to others.
Houston Business Journal reported on page 2A of its June 26-July 2, 2009 edition, the following:
"The fast-growing "dead zone" that will envelop part of the Gulf of Mexico this summer is expected to be one of the largest recorded. According to an annual forecast by University of Michigan scientists, this year's dead zone is estimated to reach between 7,450 and 8,456 square miles - an area about the size of New Jersey - and threatens the health of multimillion-dollar fishery industries. The four largest Gulf dead zones ever measured have occurred since 2001. The biggest of these oxygen-starved, or hypoxic, regions was in 2002 and measured 8,484 square miles. The Gulf dead zone forms each spring and summer off the Louisiana and Texas coasts when oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in bottom and near-bottom waters. Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste - some of it from as far away as the Corn Belt - is the main source of the nitrogen and phosphorus that fuel the growth of algae blooms that in turn creates the Gulf dead zone."
I have been speaking on this issue nation-wide for the past several years. NOAA tracks the problem each year but has no enforcement authority to change what is flowing down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico.