Does the Gulf’s ‘dead zone’ stir candidates in Iowa?

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Note: This is part of an occasional series by LSU journalism students covering the presidential campaign in Iowa.
Tom Rendon came here to a Sen. Bernie Sanders presidential campaign event and handed out stickers that said, “Water is Life.”
Rendon has been a member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement for over 20 years. The group works on immigration, trade and environmental issues including pollution from large farms that the group believes contaminates the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. 
For Rendon, the hypoxic waters, or “dead zone” problem at the mouth of the Mississippi, is caused mostly by corporate farming and runoff of nitrate fertilizer in Iowa and other states. His hope is that Sanders, the Vermont independent, will have the vision as president to address complex agricultural and environmental problems.
Six months ago the dead zone was about the size of Massachusetts. Its waters have little or no oxygen and it is killing fish and other organisms endangering the livelihoods of those who depend on the Gulf’s seafood.
Adam Mason, state policy director for the Iowa citizens group, said it worked with a lot of communities to stop construction of “factory farms” and combat the pollution he says they produce. According to Mason, Iowa is No. 1 in U.S. hog production with more than 26 million hogs generating over 22 billion gallons of liquid manure that’s dumped untreated onto Iowa farm fields and can runoff into waterways. 
“This liquid manure, in addition to having lots of harmful bacteria, has nitrates and phosphorus, so we see that as a significant contribution to both the water crisis we have here in the state of Iowa as well as the dead zone,” Mason said. 
The Iowa Pork Producers Association believes there is no science to support that pork farming has any relation to the dead zone in the Gulf, according to Dal Grooms, the communications director. 
But in 2018, a group of university studies collaborating with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration attributed the dead zone to nutrient pollution. One study, by the University of Michigan, concluded that “the Gulf’s hypoxic zone is caused by excess nutrient pollution, primarily from human activities in the watershed, such as urbanization and agriculture,” it said in a statement.
University of Iowa researchers concluded that Iowa was responsible for a large portion of nitrate pollution using data collected from 1999-2016. 
The study said Iowa contributed “between 11% and 52% of the long-term nitrate load to the Mississippi–Atchafalaya Basin, 20% to 63% to the Upper Mississippi River Basin, and 20% to 89% to the Missouri River Basin, with averages of 29%, 45% and 55%, respectively.” 
Researchers at Louisiana State University say the low oxygen levels in the Gulf started 50 years ago as a result of Midwest agricultural practices that put high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus into the Mississippi.
NOAA, which measured the dead zone, reported that low oxygen levels have slowed shrimp growth and led to a rise in prices. Acy Cooper, board president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, said the shrimping industry is responsible for more than 15,000 jobs in Louisiana. 
But the issue doesn’t just affect Louisiana. Alabama, Mississippi and parts of eastern Texas also have Gulf coast economies hurt by the shrimp supply slump.
“We don’t have a policy framework that can somehow say, ‘Hey, wait a minute,’ ” Rendon said. “We’ve got to deal with what’s happening in Iowa, because it’s affecting what’s happening in Louisiana.
“We have to have someone with vision about how all these things connect and are willing to have national standards to help address the positions,” Rendon said. 
Rendon believes environmental concerns have been a major focus for Sanders who has released his own version of the Democratic Green New Deal proposal.
Bill Neidhardt, Midwest press spokesman for the Sanders campaign, addressed the importance of focusing on frontline communities affected by environmental disasters.
“One thing that I think really gets ignored when you talk about conservation is how this is an issue of the working class,” said Neidhardt. “Who lives on those coasts? This isn’t McMansions on the beach,’’ he said. 
“You’re talking about people who are working class, who live because of being on the Gulf. So not only is it being poisoned and hurting the economy, but they’re actually losing their land to rising sea levels,” Neidhardt said. 
He added that the Green New Deal goes into redressing those frontline river and Gulf communities that bare the brunt of climate change.
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who until this week was running for the Democratic nomination, say the dead zone is a microcosm of how environmental disasters mostly affect vulnerable communities.
“We have environmental justice issues, with pollution in our waterways and one of the biggest dead zones on the planet right in the Gulf, because all the waste that runs down the Mississippi dumps into the Gulf,” Booker said. “That is another big issue for me, this idea of environmental justice,” he said.
Other Democratic candidates propose tackling water quality issues with tougher enforcement from the Environmental Protection Agency. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota responded to a question about water resources during an interview with Iowa Public Broadcasting, saying that she would review water safety measures repealed by President Trump.
“I think that we also have to have a strong EPA, and we need to replenish that agency again with people who actually care about our environment and enforcing the laws,” Klobuchar said. 

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