Ron Meador: Can Minnesota Achieve Sustainable Water Use?→

MinnPost:

“Swackhamer has a serious gift for synthesizing complex scientific material in ways that non-specialist listeners can grasp, and it’s paired with matchless expertise on this subject: She directed the University of Minnesota’s Water Resources Center from 2002 to 2014, and led the effort to produce the massive Minnesota Water Sustainability Framework, commissioned with funds from the Legacy Amendment to provide policy guidance for decision-making over the next 25 years.

She has served in leadership roles on scientific panels advising the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the International Joint Commission, and has just begun a three-year term on a National Academy of Sciences panel focused on environmental science and toxicology, recognition of her focus on toxic-chemical pollution. And she does not shrink from controversy. For example, she had much to say about the fraught connections between large-scale agriculture and Minnesota’s water problems, some of it quite provocative.

If we shift from issues of water quantity to issues of water quality, she observed, we see that more than 4,100 lakes and stream sections across the state – or more than 40 percent of the total – are classed as “impaired” because they fail to meet federal quality standards. The major driver of these impairments is excessive inputs of nutrients, primarily phosphorus and nitrates from fertilizers, and the major source of those nutrients is row-crop agriculture.”

Mitch Smith: Conflict between Farm and City Water→

New York Times:

“The flat, endless acres of black dirt here in northern Iowa will soon be filled with corn and soybean seeds. But as farmers tuned up their tractors and waited for the perfect moment to plant, another topic weighed on their minds: a lawsuit filed in federal court by the state’s largest water utility.

After years of mounting frustration, the utility, Des Moines Water Works, sued the leaders of three rural Iowa counties last month. Too little has been done, the lawsuit says, to prevent nitrates from flowing out of farm fields into the Raccoon River and, eventually, into the drinking water supply for roughly 500,000 Iowans. The suit seeks to make farmers comply with federal clean-water standards for nitrates that apply to factories and commercial users, and requests unspecified damages.”

No price signals to farmers for their export of pollution downstream, so other legal means are being explored to address degraded water quality,

Farmers Need to Plant Cover Crops to Reduce Nitrogen Pollution→

Dan Charles, reporting for NPR:

Paul Jasa/University of Nebraska-Lincoln

“Here’s the bigger picture, Carlson says: During the summer, when crops are growing on those fields, they scarf up most of the soil’s available nitrate. The plants need it to grow. And as a result, during that period, there’s usually not much nitrate flowing into streams and rivers.

”Our problem is, we only grow plants for five months out of the year,” she says.

Most Midwestern farmers grow corn and soybeans, which are warm-season plants. And after they’re harvested, for seven long months, from fall until the following spring, nitrate continues to form naturally in the soil. It can be released from decaying plant roots or from microbes, “and if there’s nothing to suck it up, to scavenge it, then it’s going to move,” Carlson says.

Rainfall and melting snow will carry it downstream to Des Moines and beyond. It damages wildlife and fisheries all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Many other rivers and estuaries suffer from similar problems.

We won’t fix this mess by using less fertilizer, Carlson says. “The way to fix this is, we need to have something growing from October to May.””

Human waste can be converted into valuable fertilizer→

Samantha Larson, reporting for National Geographic:

“Most conventional farms invest in synthetic fertilizer, which requires energy to produce and is associated with many environmental problems of its own. But by separating out human urine before it gets to the wastewater plant, Rich Earth cofounder Kim Nace says they can turn it into a robust fertilizer alternative: a “local, accessible, free, sanitary source of nitrogen and phosphorous.””

Closing the waste loop is good natural resource management.

Algae fixes may trigger more lake pollution→

Elizabeth Dunbar, reporting for Minnesota Public Radio: 

“Phosphorus, a nutrient that is washed into Minnesota’s lakes with leaves and lawn fertilizer, can cause algae blooms and poor water quality. But efforts to reduce it in lakes can have an unintended consequence.

According to a new University of Minnesota study published online Thursday in the journal Science, reducing phosphorus can also result in less of the microbial processes that eliminate another unwanted nutrient: nitrogen.

As a result, nitrogen can accumulate in large lakes and lead to nitrogen pollution downstream, the study says.”

Preventing pollution much better than cleaning up Jordan Lake→

Michael A. Mallin and Kenneth H. Reckhow, reporting for the newsobserver.com:

“Jordan Lake is a major drinking water supply for the Research Triangle area and a heavily used recreational area. Over the years, inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus have led to large algal blooms that impair this waterway, causing the U.S. EPA to require North Carolina to devise a plan (called a TMDL – total maximum daily load) to reduce nutrient inputs. Over several years, a variety of stakeholders worked out a plan involving compromise that was signed by Gov. Bev Perdue.

However, the General Assembly is now considering delaying pollutant controls for three years and suggests that using as-yet unidentified technology within the lake proper can clean it up. The best and cheapest way to improve water quality is to keep the nutrients from entering the lake in the first place.”

Nitrogen pollution is widespread in southern Minnesota lakes and rivers, report finds→

Josephine Marcotty, reporting for the Star Tribune: 

“Nitrogen contamination in southern Minnesota is so severe that 27 percent of the region’s lakes and rivers could not be used for drinking water, according to an unexpectedly blunt assessment of state water pollution released Wednesday.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) said that, overall, 41 percent of the streams and lakes in southern Minnesota have excessive nitrogen, which can be toxic to fish and other forms of aquatic life and is the state’s most widespread form of water pollution.”