Last August the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” – an area of low oxygen (hypoxia) that can kill fish – is the largest ever measured. At 8,776 square miles, it is an area about the size of New Jersey. Scientists have determined that the dead zone is caused by nutrient pollution, primarily from agricultural and developed land runoff into the Mississippi River. Central Illinois contributes more than its share, with University of Illinois researchers concluding in 2015 that agriculture contributes 80 percent of the nitrate-nitrogen that flows into the Mississippi from Illinois. “The tile-drained areas of central and northern Illinois are the largest source of nitrate,” says a government report. As they say, we have met the enemy. …
 
Concern about the dead zone has spawned the Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy Policy Working Group, the Illinois Best Management Practices Council and a dozen other groups and task forces geared toward keeping fertilizers and pesticides in soil and out of lakes and rivers. The busiest group close to home is the Lake Springfield Watershed Resource Planning Committee. Last week Barbara Mendenhall, manager of the latest EPA grant to improve water quality in the Lake Springfield watershed, was implementing the group’s latest big idea for moving soil conservation from theory to practice – a first-time “ladies-only” meeting of women landowners. Ranging in age from 30 to 90, the widows, wives, heirs and some active farmers were “tickled to death” to get their questions answered without men around to dominate the discussion.  “Women tend to be more conservation-minded,” Mendenhall said, but they’re usually not the ones to implement the strategy. So some of the talk was about how to get the men who rent their ground to do what they want done.
 
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