SCOR Symposium Nutrient Over-Enrichment in Coastal Waters: Global Patterns of Cause and Effect

Environmental and Economic Aspects of Nutrient Pollution

Nitrogen, Phosphorous Are Culprits
While hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico is a major concern, it is just one aspect of the overall problem of nutrient over-enrichment in the U.S. coastal and inland waters. During the Washington, D.C., conference, scientists and policy makers resented an overview about over-enrichment, which can lead to eutrophication, harmful algal blooms, changes in marine biodiversity and other problems.

Speakers discussed the primary sources of this over-enrichment. These include fertilizers for agricultural application (whose annual usage worldwide is anticipated to increase, particularly in developing countries), animal feeding operations, urban runoff and atmospheric deposition. In marine ecosystems, nitrogen is of primary importance as a casual factor and in the control of eutrophication, while excess phosphorous input is a major cause for eutrophication in fresh water systems, according to the U.S. National Academies.
During the first two days of the conference, scientists set the stage for contemplating potential further action to deal with the problem. Policy makers and politicians -including New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman- addressed the symposium on its final day.

Among the symposium speakers, Robert Horwath of the nonprofit Environmental Defense noted that human activities globally are having a far greater influence on the amount of nitrogen availability tan on the amount of production of carbon dioxide. Howarth, who served as chair of the National Academy's Committee on the Causes and Management of Eutrophication, added that, globally, the nitrogen cycle is the most altered of the natural chemical cycles, and that 60% of coastal rivers and bays in the United Sates are mildly to severely degraded by an excess of nitrogen.

Don Anderson of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts provide an overview of the different types and increasing numbers of harmful algal blooms (HABs). These include the red tide currently affecting the coast of Texas, the Pfiesteria piscicida outbreaks in Maryland and Virginia since 1997, and other HABs that have affected various parts of the globe. "There is no question that we have more HABs and higher economic costs ver the last 20 to 30 years," he said.

Anderson made a conservative economic estimate tat the cost of HAB outbreaks to the United States is $50 million per year. He said that while a number of HABs likely are natural events, human activities including pollution and increases aquaculture could also be at fault.
Other speakers focused n how over-enrichment may affect resources such as coral reefs or fisheries, or certain regions, such as Europe or Australia.

N.J. Governor and Precautionary Principle

The final day of he conference was lately devoted to policy makers and politicians.
Governor Whitman, who chairs the Pew Ocean Commission, began with a plea. She jokingly asked the scientists to stop referring to the hypoxic area in the Gulf of Mexico as being "New jersey-sized."
On a more serious note, she recognized the importance of sound science in this arena and urged scientists to continue gathering the data needed to support policy decisions, and to become more involved with helping to make those decisions.

Science, she said, as played an important role in improving America's environment - from targeting toxic and point-source pollution to designing control strategies to helping the public recognize the causes of non-point pollution and the damage it can lead to along coasts.

Whitman said that science often proceeds at a slower pace than policy making and requires sufficient finding. She called for a precautionary approach to environmental protection, which included recognizing that prevention is easier than later repair, and that the absence of scientific certainty on a topic is not an excuse to take no action.

The great challenge for environmental policy, she said, is "How can we meet our industrial needs without jeopardizing the health or our environment and, ultimately, ourselves?"
"Part of the solution lies with you, the scientific community," she said, noting that scientists need to help policy makers and the public understand the importance of natural resources and the threats posed by human activities.

"Lastly--and this is the hard part--you need to help prioritize the threats and come up with cost-effective strategies to address them," she told the audience. "This will be critical if we policy makers are to maintain public trust for the actions that we take."

EPA Takes on Non-Point Sources

Several members of the Clinton Administration also spoke about the need for addressing over-enrichment of coastal waters and for scientists to become more involved wit policy making.
Charles Fox, Assistant Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water, who received praise for his efforts in helping to work out the recent Baton Rouge agreement, said he spends so much time dealing with thee issue of over-enrichment of waters that he has become the EPA's "assistant administrator for eutrophication."

Efforts to implement the federal Clean Water Act (CWA), which was passed in 1970, have focused primarily on developing technical standards and water quality-based standards for controlling pollution which have helped to considerably reduce point sources of pollution, according to Fox. Technical fixes, he noted, will continue to be important in dealing with point sources, including the proliferation of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Only 20-40% of the approximately 20,000 largest such facilities in the nation have adequate CWA permits, he said.

Fox added that a different provision included in the CWA to deal with non-point source pollution is now taking on increasing importance. A provision for setting total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) of different pollutants in various water bodies is where the future of eutrophication solutions will come out of the Clean Water Act." He said, adding that improving nutrient levels in bodies of water is one of the primary reasons for setting TMDLs.

Call for Scientists' Involvement

Rosina Bierbaum of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) outlined a number of scientific assessments that have been conducted during the Clinton Administration, including the soon-to-be-released national assessment on climate change. She echoed Whitman's point that scientific uncertainty is not a reason t fail to act, and that scientists need to become fore involved with the policy-making process.
Bierbaum said that before she came to Washington, D.C., on a Congressional Fellowship 20 years ago, she was perfectly happy studying bivalves and not keeping up with current events. Now, however, she said that with science at the center of so many environmental issues--including water resources, land use and climate change--it is important for scientists to become "civic scientists" and to share their views with policy makers and politicians.

"If you don't tell then," she said," the elevator operator on their way to vote [on legislation] will tell them."
The Symposium on Over-Enrichment of Coastal Waters: Global Patters of Cause and Effect was sponsored by the EPA, the U.S. Geological Survey, NOAA, the National Science Foundation and the Electric Power Research Institute.

The meeting was convened by the U.S. National Committee for the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography and the Estuarine Research Foundation.
The symposium was a follow-up to the publication of a June 2000 book, "Clean Coastal Waters: Understanding and Reducing the Effects of Nutrient Pollution," which was prepared by the National Academy's Committee on the Causes and Management o Eutrophication." Additional information about the book, published by the National Academy Press, is available online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/982.tml.
Another reference document is "Hypoxia: An integrated Assessment in the Northern Gulf of Mexico," prepared by the U/S. National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. It is available online at the Web site: http://www.nos.noaa.gov/products/pubs_hypx.html.