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Nitrate News -- July, 1999

Maryland sees worst fish kill in a decade (Environmental News Network, Friday, July 2, 1999) Maryland has seen its worst fish kill in more than a decade along two tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay, where at least 200,000 fish have died this past week, officials said Friday.  Saying the size of the fish kill — which included yellow perch, menhaden, silversides and catfish — indicates that the bay faces severe environmental problems, state officials warned that conditions may get worse unless a drought that has held rainfall at 10 inches below normal this year comes to an end.  "It's the worst we've seen since the mid-1980s," said Quentin Banks, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, who hastened to add that the 200,000 figure could be a low estimate.  "That is our best guess," he said. "The problem we have, frankly, is that fish sink after a certain period of time. Fish die, then after about 24 hours they float. Then they sink. So the numbers could be higher."  Dead fish surfaced in the upper reaches of the Magothy and Patapsco rivers, both bay tributaries in Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties. There have also been unconfirmed reports of fish kills across the bay on Maryland's Eastern Shore.  Environmental officials were quick to say the kills had nothing to do with the toxic microorganism Pfiesteria, which in 1997 caused a rash of fish kills and human health problems that frightened consumers away from Chesapeake Bay seafood.  "The fish did not have lesions or any other type of anomaly," said state environmental specialist Charles Poukish.  Officials blamed the kills instead on a buildup of nutrients, mainly phosphorus and nitrogen, which create algae blooms that deplete oxygen in water. Some sections of the tributaries have seen dissolved oxygen disappear completely.  In the past, droughts have enhanced water quality by limiting nutrient-rich runoff from farms and land developments. But officials said this time low rainfall has choked rivers and creeks of the water needed to flush heavy concentrations of the nutrients out from shallow creeks and coves.  Copyright 1999, Reuters, All Rights Reserved

Drought Behind Huge Md. Fish Kill (NY Times on-line, By The Associated Press, July 3, 1999) ARNOLD, Md. (AP) -- Some 200,000 fish in two Chesapeake Bay tributaries have died in the past week, one of the state's worst fish kills in years and one authorities are blaming on a regional drought.  The deaths in shallow creeks and coves of the Patapsco and Magothy rivers are due to low oxygen levels in the water, state officials said.  Such widespread oxygen depletion has not been seen in more than a decade, said Charles Poukish, an environmental specialist with the state Department of the Environment.  The deaths affected all fish species living in the affected areas, including menhaden, silversides, perch, mummichogs, pickerel, catfish and sunfish. Most were young, between 2 or 3 inches long.  Officials have ruled out the influence of Pfiesteria piscicida, a toxic microbe blamed for wiping out huge numbers of fish in the Chesapeake Bay.

US beach closings soar in 1998 (Environmental News Network, Friday, July 16, 1999, By Reuters) U.S. beach closings and safety advisories rose by 75 percent in 1998 to a record 7,236, largely reflecting pollution caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon, an environmental group said Thursday.  California accounted for 3,273 of the closings and advisories, due to heavy El Niño rains in Southern California, according to the annual report on the water quality of lakes and oceans by the independent Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). California had 1,141 beach closings and advisories in 1997.  El Niño is the common name for a regular eastward migration of warm water from the tropical western Pacific Ocean. It is blamed for setting off weather patterns that cause flooding, droughts and storms across the globe. "Heavy rains, such as those in California last year, wash contaminants into the beach water and the bacterial levels can skyrocket," said Mark Dorfman, author of the report.  In 1997, there were 4,153 U.S. beach closings and advisories.  Sarah Chasis, spokeswoman for the NRDC, told a news conference that the increase in the reported number of polluted beaches could also be explained partly by a rise in the number of localities providing reports to the council.  "More states and local governments are monitoring and participating in the surveys, so we're seeing a more comprehensive picture of beach water quality than ever before," she said.  "Although we're pleased to be getting more information, the number of advisories and closings indicate that too little is being done to prevent pollution."  The report labeled six states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oregon, Washington and Texas — and Florida's Panama City Beach as "beach bums" for failing to establish a regular monitoring program.  Cape May, New Jersey; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; the Outer Banks in North Carolina and Old Orchard Beach, Maine were among beaches cited for having a good monitoring and public notification program.  Unsafe bacteria levels caused mainly by sewage and stormwater accounted for 63 percent of beach closings last year, the report said.  Antiquated sewer lines can leak or break down, and population growth can overtax sewer systems and cause overflows and ruptures during heavy rainfall.  The report cited San Diego, where in 1998 sewage spills accounted for 88 percent of the beach closings in the county.  According to several studies, gastroenteritis, an inflammation of the stomach and intestines, is the most common illness after swimming in polluted waters.   Copyright 1999, Reuters, All Rights Reserved

Clean water dollars flow to rural America (Environmental News Network, Friday, July 16, 1999) Most Americans take clean drinking water for granted. But, for close to 7 million people in the United States, what comes out of the tap isn't necessarily clean enough to drink without worrying about getting sick, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  This is particularly true in rural areas, and to help improve some of these problems, the Clinton administration July 12 announced nearly $210 million in loans and grants for safe drinking water projects in 40 states.  A 1993 outbreak of cryptosporidiosis in Milwaukee, Wis., in which nearly 400,000 people got sick, more than 4,000 were hospitalized and more than 50 deaths (some counts are as high as 100) brought the quality of the nation's drinking water front and center. Since 1994, the USDA has spent nearly $2 billion in more than 1,600 rural communities nationwide. The loan and grant monies just awarded went primarily to rural, impoverished communities, although some was allocated for empowerment zones in urban areas.  Funding for rural areas is vital. At least 2 million rural Americans live with critical drinking water quality and availability problems, including an estimated 740,000 people who have no running water in their homes. Another 5 million are affected by less critical, but still significant, water-related difficulties, according to the USDA. The 1990 census showed that an estimated 1.06 million people in rural areas had incomplete plumbing in their homes. The agency estimates that by the year 2000, this number will have been reduced to fewer than 700,000 people.  In addition to a lack of running water, contaminated water — resulting from chemicals migrating from disposal sites, animal waste running into streams, undersized or poorly protected water sources, contamination by pesticides, urban storm water pollution, inadequate treatment of sewage, a lack of adequate storage facilities, and antiquated distribution systems — is a major threat to public health. Children and the elderly are at particular risk from illnesses caused by unclean drinking water.  The grants and loans awarded Monday go to local governments, public water systems and in some cases the states, which are in the process of completing assessments of all public drinking water systems. The loans and grants announced include:  $24 million for 12 projects serving low-income, rural towns in Appalachia;  $13.7 million for seven projects in seven Empowerment Zones or Enterprise Communities;  $12.3 million for impoverished counties in four Southwest states; and $7.2 million for five projects in impoverished Mississippi Delta communities.  Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

Overpumping Keeps World Food Supply Stable, Report Concludes (NY Times, July 19, 1999, By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS) WASHINGTON -- Overpumping is sucking out too much of the   world's underground fresh water, with a stable world food supply now dependent on an increasing global water deficit, Worldwatch Institute said Saturday.  Annually, the study estimates, 160 billion cubic meters of water is lost to thirsty cities and farms that are not returning it to underground aquifers.  The biggest known losses are in India, China, the United States, North Africa and Saudi Arabia. The lost water would be enough to grow 10 percent of world grain, said Worldwatch, a nongovernment research group funded by grants and sales of its publications.  The use of giant pumps to extract water from ever-deeper in the earth was once viewed as a boon for farmers worldwide. Now, according to water expert Sandra Postel, the report's author, massive pumping intensifies water shortages that threaten to reduce the global food supply, spread hunger and increase social conflict.  "A few years ago, the practice was confined to certain parts of the world and seemed manageable," she said. "Now, we see it occurring across very wide areas over the most important food-producing regions, including in India and China."  The large pumping projects are often subsidized by governments to get needed water to farmers and thirsty cities, she said. Unlike more visible dam projects, they have rarely been controversial.  But what they are doing underground is beginning to hurt, with wells running dry and parts of some cities such as Bangkok and Mexico City showing signs of literally sinking because of ground water drainage, Postel said in an interview.  With world population set to surpass 6 billion in October, the problem of dropping water tables is bound to worsen, she said. Her Worldwatch book, "Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?" says irrigation accounts for two-thirds of global use of fresh water, but less than half the water actually reaches the roots of plants.  Methods are needed to double the efficiency of water use, she said, citing several steps that are working:  Some farmers in India, Israel, Jordan, Spain and parts of the United States use drip irrigation systems that deliver water directly to crop roots. Rice farmers in an area of Malaysia increased water productivity 45 percent by shoring up canals and switching from traditional transplanting methods to direct sowing of seed into the fields. Israel is now reusing 65 percent of its domestic wastewater for crop production, freeing up fresh water for households and industries.

Lack of oxygen kills 1 million fish (Environmental News Network, Friday, July 23, 1999 By Associated Press) Nearly 1 million small fish died in a tributary of the Pocomoke River near the Virginia-Maryland line after becoming trapped in the creek and depleting it of oxygen, state wildlife officials said.  The menhaden fish, found Thursday in Bullbeggar Creek, were feared to be casualties of Pfiesteria piscicida, a toxic microbe that in 1997 killed up to 50,000 fish in the Pocomoke and sickened at least 20 people. The microbe has killed thousands more fish in North Carolina.  "The indications are large pools of menhaden swam up this creek, got trapped up in there and oxygen levels fell and they died," said John Surrick, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.  Pfiesteria tears the flesh of fish and causes them to swim in circles and upside down. No fish found Thursday had such lesions.  Tests of creek water samples could be available next week, Surrick said.  Dissolved oxygen levels in water generally decrease in summer because of heat, nutrient enrichment from farm and lawn runoff and high bacterial counts.  The massive deaths of the menhaden, which grow up to two inches, was the largest fish kill in a decade in Maryland, Natural Resources officials said.   Copyright 1999, Associated Press, All Rights Reserved

California development to pioneer water recycling (The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Tuesday, July 20, 1999 By Nancy Vogel) All the water on Earth recycles endlessly between clouds and oceans, but not fast enough for California.  As the state looks to serve another 15 million residents in coming decades, it also is attempting to recycle water on a grand scale. More developments are being built to use water twice, first in the house and second on landscaping, so that most of the water isn't pumped to rivers or the ocean after just one use.  Southern California leads the way, and many cities already use recycled water on golf courses and parks. But in the dry, rolling hills of western El Dorado County, Serrano, a development that will some day contain 4,500 homes, is now burying purple plastic pipe that will allow it to irrigate front and back yards with recycled water. Serrano will be only the second development in California to do so and certainly the largest.  As it is, California recycles about 485,000 acre-feet of water a year -- roughly half as much water as Folsom Lake can hold. By 2020, the state Department of Water Resources predicts, California will recycle three times that amount.  Reusing wastewater on the lawns and shrubs of 3,500 homes in Serrano could free enough drinking water to supply another 2,100 homes.  "This is the last big way you can truly save water," said Albert Hazbun, a civil engineer and consultant who persuaded Serrano developers to use recycled water not just on golf courses but in yards, too.  In a more routine example of water recycling projects, Sacramento County recently broke ground on a $13 million plant in Elk Grove to clean up dirty water enough to irrigate median strips, parks and school grounds in nearby Laguna subdivisions. When finished in 2001, the new plant will put to use about 3 percent of the county's wastewater, which is otherwise treated and dumped into the Sacramento River.  In both cases, water recycling works like this: People flush toilets, run faucets and turn on washing machines. Pipes carry the wastewater to a treatment plant, where it is cleaned to a level just shy of drinking water quality. From the treatment plant, the slightly-less-than-pure water is pumped back to homes, parks and golf courses in purple pipes, distinct from the white or blue pipes that carry drinking water.  At Serrano, the purple pipes will be linked to front and back yard sprinkler systems. There will be no way to attach a hose to the system, so the only way a person could drink the recycled water would be to stick their head in the sprinkler spray, said Hazbun. There have been no known health problems linked to recycled water projects that meet state standards.  And recycled water is practically drought-proof. So long as people use tap water, they'll generate wastewater that can be put to use again on landscaping.  And that means, at least in Serrano, "your lawn will always be green," said Hazbun.  It means, too, that the El Dorado Irrigation District will have to draw less water from the American River to supply the thousands of new homes sprouting across El Dorado Hills.  That's critical to a district that has been struggling to get rights to more water and can't easily shift what water it does have without expensive pumping.  "The water situation in El Dorado County is very precarious," said EID general manager William Hetland. "Serrano recognized that."  Several years ago the developers of Serrano paid about $9 million to add filtration to EID's wastewater treatment plant on Deer Creek, about five miles from Serrano, so that it could generate recycled water. The recycled water is actually cleaner than what EID had been discharging to Deer Creek, and will be paid for entirely by the people who buy homes in Serrano.  In Elk Grove, at Sacramento County's wastewater treatment plant, reused water will ease pressure on south Sacramento County's badly depleted groundwater. More importantly, said Cecilia Jensen, water recycling program manager for the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District, it may eventually be cheaper to not dump wastewater back into the Sacramento River than to meet the tighter wastewater quality standards expected in coming years from state and federal regulators.  "It may be more cost-effective to recycle water and use it locally," said Jensen, "than to construct a billion-dollar treatment plant only to treat water and throw it away."  Both Sacramento County and Serrano officials are prepared for a tough sell to prospective home buyers and residents. They have drafted detailed question-and-answer pamphlets about how recycled water is treated and the safeguards that keep potable and recycled water from ever mixing. Both are also designing lessons for teachers in nearby schools -- an attempt to influence their youngest customers.  Once they understand how water recycling works, people generally accept recycled water, experts say, but acceptance is not without limits. In San Diego earlier this year, for example, residents balked at a "toilet-to-tap" plan to repurify sewage water, store it in a lake and use it again for drinking water. The City Council halted the plan.  So far at Serrano, where the first 67 lots to include connections to recycled water went on sale this month, buyers seem not just unfazed but pleased by the feature, said Cheri Regan, sales manager for home-builder JTS Communities.  Of the 19 lots she has sold so far, she said, "I haven't had one negative response -- not one."  "Everybody says good for Serrano," said Regan. "The way they explain it to you, it's two completely separate systems. People aren't worried about it."   Copyright 1999, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.  Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, All Rights  Reserved

DEADLY ALGAE LINKED TO GATOR DEATHS: (Greenlines #928, 25Jul99) The Orlando Sentinel 7/22 reported scientists identified a toxic blue-green algae from Australia as a likely cause of wildlife deaths in Florida's Lake Griffin.  Hundreds of birds, alligators, fish and turtles have been found dead.  Scientists fear the algae may quickly spread to other bodies of water in the state with similar results.

Florida lake pollution persists despite cleanup (By Cyril T. Zaneski, The Miami Herald, Tuesday, July 27, 1999) “Lake Okeechobee, the liquid heart of South Florida, is sicker than ever today, despite a decade-long cleanup of big dairy farms that remain its primary polluters and the economic pillar of the agricultural counties at the lake's northern tip.  Loads of nutrients from animal wastes washing into the lake last year hit their highest level since 1983, proving that pollution control efforts that cost farmers and state taxpayers more than $33 million and put 19 farms here out of business have fallen dramatically short.  Farmers and business leaders in Okeechobee County are worried that another round of pollution controls could cost more than$1 billion and devastate the remaining 30 dairies here and in neighboring Highlands and Martin counties. Almost all the dairies, which supply most of South Florida's milk, moved to land around the lake from rapidly urbanizing Broward and Dade counties in the 1950s and 1960s.  "At the present time, if they put in the kind of pollution standards they're talking about, we'd just throw our hands up,'"' said Louis "Red'"' Larson, president of Larson Dairy Inc., which spent $6.5 million redesigning its four farms in the lake watershed in large part to meet current pollution rules.  "Now they want the water cleaner than rain,'"' he said. "We know we can't meet that.'"'  But conservationists who have seen the lake's clear water turn muddy brown in the last 30 years say there is little choice but to tighten pollution regulations and launch a cleanup as rapidly as possible.  "Business as usual is killing our lake,'"' said Carroll Head, a retired computer analyst who leads Friends of Lake Okeechobee, an organization of conservationists and sportsmen. "We need change and we need it quickly or we're going to lose this national treasure.'"'  Lake Okeechobee, which ranks second in size only to Lake Michigan in the United States, is the primary supplier of water during dry spells for the Everglades, South Florida's farms and millions of residents of booming coastal cities. It is also critical to regional flood-control strategies and a mecca for recreational and commercial fishing.  But the 730-square-mile lake has been the target of abuses for more than a century, beginning with efforts to dredge drainage channels in the 1880s and continuing until the present as a waste lagoon for agricultural fertilizers. The pollution began mainlining into the lake in the 1960s when the Army Corps of Engineers turned the lake's main tributary, the Kissimmee River, into a canal and drained wetlands that had previously cleansed wastes from farms and ranches.  Beyond the pollution, the region's reliance on the lake as a reservoir for water supply and a place to store flood waters during exceptionally wet periods has also begun to take its toll. The lake is completely enclosed by earthen levees built in the wake of the 1928 hurricane that killed about 2,000 people in flooding on the lake's shore.  Hundreds of acres of marshes and underwater grass beds that provided habitat for fish and wildlife the lake is famous for worldwide have been killed in recent years by South Florida's water managers, who have kept water levels at unhealthy depths during several years of heavier-than-average rainfall.  The lake's health worsened as one scientific team after another began pumping out report after report warning that dramatic action was needed to keep the already over-fertilized lake from choking on wastes. But government responses have fallen short.  Now, spurred by outraged conservationists and sportsmen and a lawsuit by the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, state and federal agencies have offered new proposals that help avert what appears to many as a looming ecological train wreck. Among them:  Lowering water held behind the lake's dikes to levels that would allow drowned marshes and grass beds to revive themselves. The Corps of Engineers, which built the network of levees and flood gates that have controlled the lake for more than a half century, is holding public meetings to discuss the proposal this week.  New pollution rules being proposed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which was shoved into action by the Earthjustice lawsuit, would require that water flowing into the lake be more than 70 percent cleaner than is currently allowed. The department announced last week it would issue a pollution-control permit by Oct. 1 to the South Florida Water Management District, the agency which operates the flood gates that let water flow in.  Reservoirs and a series of deep wells for storing water would be built around the edges of the lake under a $7.8 billion proposal drawn up by the corps for replumbing all of South Florida and restoring the Everglades. The idea of the plan is to relieve the lake of its environmentally damaging use as a reservoir.  None of the proposals promise to swiftly fix what ails the lake. All come with their own environmental, technical and economic complications.  For example: There is widespread support for changing management schedules to allow a lower lake level. But the plan would send more fertilizer-laced water into the Everglades until the state finishes construction of waste-filtering marshes in 2003. The polluted water is causing irreversible changes to vegetation in the Everglades, damaging wildlife habitat.  "We expect an additional 2,890 acres of Everglades to be impacted and we're not going to stand for that,'"' said Gene Duncan, the top environmental official for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians. The tribe's lands in the Everglades would be affected directly by water that would violate the tribe's strict new water quality standards, he said.  One big reason for the difficulty in fixing Lake Okeechobee is that the lake, in no small part because of the levees that have turned it into a gigantic soup bowl, is incapable of flushing its pollutants.  State scientists had predicted that as pollution from dairies and cattle ranches in the lake's 4,600-square mile watershed declined, the lake would begin to improve.  But it turned out that even though pollution flowing in has declined over the course of the state-mandated dairy cleanup, the lake continues to be fouled by pollutants dumped in it over the decades.  The primary pollutant, phosphorus, settles on the lake bottom. Waves that roll across the lake stir up the muddy bottom and raise concentrations of phosphorus in the water to record highs and spur frequent unhealthy blooms of algae. Scientists who planned the pollution cleanup a decade ago failed to account for this phenomenon.  Phosphorus levels in the lake water are now three times higher than they were in the early 1970s, said Herb Zebuth, a water quality specialist for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Phosphorus concentrations in the lake water measure 120 parts per billion or more, compared with 40 parts per billion then.  "What we know now is that you shouldn't put another molecule of phosphorus in that lake if you want it to improve in our lifetime,'"' Zebuth said.  Zebuth's agency is proposing a permit that would require that water entering the lake through the water management district's gates contain no more than 40 parts per billion phosphorus within five years, down from the current 180 parts per billion.  Not all the water meets the current standard. Often water flowing into the lake from the Kissimmee River, Taylor Creek, Nubbin Slough and Fisheating Creek is at least five times more polluted than is allowed.  "Even if all the water coming into the lake is at 40 parts per billion, it'll still take the lake another 50 years before water in the lake meets pollution standards," Zebuth said.  And then there are additional problems with the mud on the lake's bottom. That mud is itself a pollutant that poured into the lake as wetlands upstream were converted to farming and ranching during the last 40 years. The lake's bottom was historically a hard, white sand. It is now covered by mud piled as deep as three feet.  Wind whipping across the lake is now stirring up flecks of mud that cloud the water, preventing sunlight from reaching sensitive grasses underwater and smothering young aquatic animals. The mud has also built a massive berm on the lake's west side that is blocking access of fish to the wetlands behind it.  In addition to proposals for restricting pollution flowing into the lake, officials are considering other options, including dredging out the sediment. The complication is that the fine silt would be stirred up by the attempted dredging and could worsen pollution problems.  Regardless of whether dredging turns out to be an option or not, pollution controls must be tightened, Zebuth said.  "You need something that will say: 'You are legally bound to do this,'"' Zebuth said. "People tend to measure their effort by what's expected of them."  Conservationists and farmers have a problem with the permit proposal, but for different reasons.  David Guest of Earthjustice filed the suit that forced the state to begin work on the new permit this spring. Guest sued after learning the state had not issued the district a permit for discharges into the lake since 1983.  Guest said the proposed permit must have a specific schedule and specified funding sources for construction of pollution-filtering marshes or plugging drainage ditches that flush filthy water toward the lake. The schedule specified in the permit would be enforceable with fines.  "Obviously, it's going to take a large number of things to happen to solve this problem in five years," Guest said. "But we're not talking about new technologies; we're talking about improving farming methods. And it can be done on a schedule.  "That should not be too much to require, given that the second largest lake in the United States is on the edge of complete destruction.'"'  A group of business leaders, farmers and ranchers all acknowledged last week that stricter measures are needed to protect the lake. But none want those measures outlined in a strict timetable in the permit.  Frank "Sonny" Williamson, a cattle rancher and former chairman of the water management district's governing board, said there's not enough information about what needs to be done to meet the proposed new standard.  "There's no question that we have a problem, but there is a question about how we get to the solution," Williamson said. "We'll make a lot more progress if we focus on the problem and work together ... than if we start off with the regulatory whip."  The Larson Dairy spent millions of dollars and went through years of trial and error with various pollution controls on its property before finding what worked.  "Instead of waiting for the state to come up with regulations, we moved ahead," said Ed Smith of Larson Dairy. "We didn't really know what would work. It was more or less trial and error."  The Larson farms that meet the discharge standards do so with a variety of measures. On two farms, they keep cows indoors most of the time and flush their wastes into a network of three treatment lagoons. Wastes settle out as water passes from one lagoon to the next. The dairies use the cleaned water for irrigation and flushing wastes in the barns.  The cost of building the new treatment systems and managing wastes more efficiently added about 12 cents to the price of every gallon of milk, Larson said. But the companies were able to stay in business and compete because dairies in northern Florida and Georgia, which have less stringent pollution standards, must spend even more on transportation to reach the lucrative South Florida market.  "We're located in one of the best milk markets in the country," Larson said.  Nonetheless, Larson has problems meeting current discharge standards at one of his farms. That farm has problems because of its soil and its proximity to the Kissimmee River. The company is planning to sell that property for citrus farming.  The idea that more dairy farms could be lost worries many here. Dairy farming contributes about $70 million of Okeechobee County's $100 million agricultural economy. After the dairy rule was imposed in 1989, the county unemployment soared to almost 16 percent in 1992, the highest rate in 23 years. And retail stores reported a 30 percent fall in sales, according to the Economic Council of Okeechobee.  So as officials here are hoping the state considers such impacts when issuing its new pollution rules. They, along with officials at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, are urging state environmental regulators to put together an informal panel to discuss the issues and come up with solutions before issuing a legally-binding permit.  "We're absolutely determined we're going to be a part of the solution here," Williamson said. "But it's absolutely important that we remain viable and strong economically if we're going to help.'"'   Copyright 1999, The Miami Herald  Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, All Rights  Reserved

North Carolina water quality pummeled (Environmental News Network, Tuesday, July 27, 1999)  The recently passed El Niño and La Niña weather phenomena wreaked havoc on the water quality off the North Carolina coast, say researchers at North Carolina State University. These weather events increased rainfall, which increased the discharge of pollutants into estuaries and the Atlantic Ocean.  In the past 10 years, growing human and animal populations have saturated eastern North Carolina ecosystems with nitrogen, phosphate and other nutrients that can be harmful to air, water and land resources. The researchers say historical data on weather patterns and environmental responses suggest that nutrient loading, algae blooms and fish kills are closely tied to El Niño and La Niña events on the state's coastal.  "We know that El Niño and La Niña control rainfall in North Carolina, Florida and in Louisiana, along the Gulf Coast and the southeastern coast," says Dr. William Showers, associate professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at N.C. State. "But this is the first time it's ever been correlated with water quality events."  Showers, doctoral student Jon Karr and a research team presented their findings at the American Geophysical Union spring meeting earlier this month. Karr's paper, "Nitrogen Isotope Tracing of Eutrophication Sources on a Watershed Scale: Neuse River Basin, North Carolina" was nominated for the best student paper honor at the conference.  According to Showers, the chain of events affecting water quality begins with El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) activity. Shifting winds in the Pacific Ocean cause North Carolina's weather to be controlled by storms coming from the Gulf of Mexico, instead of from the north. The result is warm, wet winters during El Niño events and cool, wet springs during the following La Niña events. A major El Niño in 1972 caused a slight change in the cycle and since then fewer and less intense La Niñas have occurred, possibly a sign of global warming, according to Showers.  Showers and Karr compared years of ENSO activity to river discharge figures in eastern North Carolina and found that both El Niño and La Niña events were connected with high levels of river discharge. The river discharge levels, in turn, were directly related to high nutrient flows into the estuaries and to fish kill events in the Neuse River Basin.  "During periods of high ENSO activity, there are more algal blooms and fish kills," Showers says. "There's lots of river discharge. There's lots of nutrients moving into the estuaries. During periods of low ENSO activity, like the mid-'90s, there are a low number of fish kills."  The research team also identified farming and livestock operations in the middle part of the Neuse River Basin as a major source of nitrogen in estuarine systems miles away on the North Carolina coast. Data analysis shows that nutrient loading is heaviest in the Neuse River's central basin, and that non-point sources are responsible for the majority of nutrients. Non-point sources can be agriculture, forest, and residential land, while point sources include municipal sewage treatment plants and industrial sites. Meteorologists are predicting more violent, but less frequent, ENSO-related storms. By using these weather patterns to predict rainfall and river discharge, adjustments can be made to land use policies to take better care of rivers and sounds in the future, said Showers.  According to Showers, a good plan would include reducing nutrient loading and strengthening barriers like wetland and riparian buffers to be more effective during high-discharge periods. Also, farmers and landowners may need to change how they apply animal waste and fertilizer to land as developments continue on sustainable agricultural practices, said Showers.  The research team used existing data on fish kills and nutrient flux from the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources and river discharge data from the U.S. Geological Survey.   Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network, All  Rights Reserved

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