Kentucky to develop water pollution plan to curb ‘dead zone’

Posted on April 25, 2013 by admin

Apr. 19, 2013   |  

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MSD is expanding capacity of its Floyds Fork treatment plant, improving its ability to remove nutrients from wastewater. MSD officials will be giving a multi-state and federal task force a tour of the construction on Friday. This photo is from 2012. JOHN SOMMERS/SPECIAL TO THE COURIER-JOURNAL.

Written by

James Bruggers

The Courier-Journal

KY pollution 2 

 

Nutrient pollution comes from farm and lawn fertilizer, pet and livestock waste, runoff from roads and houses, faulty septic systems, and treated sewage. It turn waters green with algae, contaminate drinking water, pollute waters for swimming and fishing and contribute to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone.

 

 

Kentucky’s top environmental regulator on Thursday said his agency was drafting a statewide plan to control pollution that causes algae blooms around the state and contributes to an oxygen-depleted “dead zone” as far away as the Gulf of Mexico. Continue reading →

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Asian carp pose bigger threat than previously assumed

Posted on March 21, 2013 by admin

 (Wednesday, March 20, 2013)

The reproductive habits of the Asian carp, which is invading Midwestern waterways, are more adaptable than researchers had assumed, new research finds.

“We need to recognize that these species have greater flexibility … than perhaps we originally thought, so we probably need to be prepared for them to become established in a wider range of ecosystems than we originally expected,” said Reuben Goforth, assistant professor of forestry and natural resources at Purdue University and leader of the study.

The non-native species eats enormous amounts of plankton, pushing out native fish. Researchers are concerned that as the carp population spreads, it poses a risk to the $7 billion Great Lakes fishing industry.

Goforth’s team looked at Indiana’s Wabash River, where officials constructed a fence to block the carp from swimming from the Wabash into the headwaters of the Maumee River, a Lake Erie tributary.

Researchers found Asian carp eggs in parts of the river that were thought to be too narrow or slow-moving for carp spawning. They also found eggs drifting in the water as late as September. In the past, researchers thought carp spawning ended in July.

The research was published in the journal Freshwater Biology (AP/Fargo Forum, March 19).

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Is Anyone Paying Attention? We’ve Lost 9.7 Million Acres of CRP Land in Five Years

Posted on March 14, 2013 by admin

By K. McDonald on March 7th, 2013     SWCS Conservation NewsBriefs

The amount of land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), at 27.1 million acres, is down by 26 percent, or 9.7 million acres in the past five years, to a 25 year low. During this same time period, corn acreage has increased by 13 million acres. Farmers are once again planting crops on marginal lands “fencerow to fencerow” to cash in on today’s high commodity prices. CRP payments haven’t risen to compete with crop returns, and the program itself is being whittled away by Congress.

 

The Conservation Reserve Program exists to provide land owners with some financial incentive to idle their land, which in turn benefits the environment while providing commodity price support by reducing surplus production. But now, ethanol policy makes that curb of surplus production unnecessary. The original CRP legislation, the Food Security Act of 1985, set a goal of enrolling over 40 million acres into the program by 1990 but that has never been reached and is now falling sharply. The laws regulating the program have been tweaked many times since begun in 1985, being tugged and pulled by various special interests. Prior to the CRP, we had “set aside acres” in the 1970′s and “soil bank” acres in the 1960′s. Continue reading →

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States Benefit from Economic Impact of Hunting

Posted on March 6, 2013 by admin

 March 4, 2013

NEWTOWN, Conn. — The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) has released a major new report documenting the importance of hunting activities to the U.S. economy. NSSF is the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industry.

Produced by Southwick Associates, the report, Hunting in America: An Economic Force for Conservation, provides detailed information on 40-plus categories of U.S. hunting-related expenditures, which grew 55 percent, as well as state-by-state statistics for number of hunters, retail sales, taxes and jobs. The report notes an overall nine percent increase in hunting participation between 2006 and 2011. The money hunters spent in 2011 resulted in $87 billion being added to the nation’s economy and supported more than 680,000 jobs nationally.

“The major growth in spending by hunters is good news for businesses throughout the country, particularly small businesses in rural areas,” said NSSF President and CEO Steve Sanetti.

Beyond their impact on businesses and local economies, sportsmen are the leaders in protecting wildlife and habitats. When you combine license and stamp fees, excise taxes on hunting equipment and membership contributions to conservation organizations, hunters contribute more than $1.6 billion annually to conservation.

“Hunters are without peer when it comes to funding the perpetuation and conservation of wildlife and natural habitats,” said Sanetti.

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Biofuels Converting U.S. Prairielands at Dust Bowl Rates

Posted on March 1, 2013 by admin

By Joe Hitchon

WASHINGTON, Feb 23 2013 (IPS) – The rush for biofuels in the United States has seen farmers converting the United States’ prairie lands to farms at rates comparable with deforestation levels in Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia – rates not seen here since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

A new study finds that, between 2006 and 2011, U.S. farmers converted more than 1.3 million acres of grassland into corn and soybean fields. Driven by high crop prices, biofuel subsidies and a confluence of other factors, states like Iowa and South Dakota have been turning some five percent of prairie into cropland each year, according to the report’s authors, Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University.

The researchers suggest that farmers are growing crops on increasingly marginal land, in part because the federal government offers subsidised crop insurance in case of failure. In Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, for instance, corn and soy are planted in areas that are especially vulnerable to drought. Continue reading →

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