The Food and Environmental Reporting Network released a striking report this week (Sept. 18) describing how industrial agriculture and climate change are fueling massive blooms of toxic algae:
Blooms have closed lake beaches or led to swimming advisories from Vermont’s Lake Champlain to Dorena Reservoir in Oregon and from Florida’s Caloosahatchee River to Wisconsin’s Lake Menomin. In addition to the health risks, the blooms take an economic toll. An estimate by Walter Dodds of Kansas State University conservatively puts the annual cost of freshwater algal blooms at more than $1 billion from lost recreation and depressed property values.
A slide show of horrific images of water tainted by agriculture pollution accompanied the report.
The report noted that no federal agency tracks the occurrence of freshwater algal blooms, but experts say they’re getting worse, driven by fertilizer and manure running off farm fields and into lakes and streams. Earth’s warming climate multiplies the effects.
Dead zones in the oceans are also a direct result of the farm chemicals that pour off agricultural land. The most notorious is the one in the Gulf of Mexico, which g... Read more
