The New Threat to Our Water: Waste Runoff From Farms and Development is Killing the Nation’s Rivers

by Joshua Reichert

Originally published in the Greensboro, NC News & Record on 4/5/98.

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As recently as a decade ago water pollution was easy to see, easy to smell. During the summer of 1987, toxic waste, dead dolphins, sewage and hypodermic needles shut down beaches all along the Eastern Seaboard.

Today, improvements in municipal sewage treatment and other reforms under the Clean Water Act have eliminated much obvious pollution like the fish-killing phosphorous detergents that used to leave bubbling scum lines along America's river shores. Despite these improvements, however, 40 percent of the rivers and streams in America are still too polluted to swim or fish in. Moreover, a new generation of water pollution linked to booming coastal agriculture and development may prove especially difficult to deal with.

An estimated 32 billion gallons a day of runoff from farms, factories, and urban streets are overloading America's coastal waters with nutrients, causing algae blooms that starve fish of oxygen, increasing the frequency of toxic red and brown tides, and feeding deadly outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, a bizarre microbe known as the ''cell from hell.'' According to the EPA, roughly 60 percent of all polluted runoff entering U.S. waterways comes from farms. This includes phosphorous, nitrogen and other nutrients found in fertilizers and pesticides, as well as cattle and hog manure. A recent U.S. Senate Committee report noted that U.S. farms generate 130 times more animal manure than the entire population of the country produces in waste each year.

Recent symptoms of polluted runoff include a 7,000 square mile ''dead zone'' off the Texas and Louisiana coasts and Pfiesteria outbreaks in Maryland and North Carolina.

Only recently discovered, ''Pfiesteria piscicida'' has a life cycle of 24 known stages, at least four of which are toxic. It can lie harmlessly on the bottom of coastal bays and estuaries feeding on bacteria and algae. But when triggered into its toxic state, pfiesteria can kill a healthy fish within three minutes. Humans exposed to toxic pfiesteria are subject to short-term memory loss, disorientation and persistent fatigue, diarrhea and nausea.

Scientists have found compelling evidence to suggest that when nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are washed off the land into the sea, they create an environment that triggers the transformation of Pfiesteria to its toxic stage.

Maryland's Department of Agriculture recently estimated that the state's fishing industry lost as much as $ 40 million in sales due to consumer reluctance to buy seafood following a Pfiesteria outbreak in the Chesapeake Bay last summer. These losses, added to growing concerns about water quality, prompted the Maryland governor to unveil a multi-million dollar plan in January aimed at controlling nutrient runoff from agriculture. Now President Clinton and the EPA have joined a host of concerned state and local officials in proposing corrective action.

In February, President Clinton launched a new Clean Water Initiative that calls for improved monitoring of water pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorus, along with placing buffer strips along 2 million miles of streams to trap fertilizer and manure. And in early March, the EPA announced a follow-up plan to increase regulation of large livestock farms, treating them like factories and other waste-producing industrial sites. Over a seven-year period, the EPA will require farmers to develop waste disposal plans, obtain pollution permits and undergo inspections to ensure compliance.

However, without widespread public support these much needed measures may be stymied.

And while the president's 1999 Clean Water budget includes a 35 percent increase in funding earmarked to reduce pollution runoff, that funding will have to win approval from a reluctant Congress. Four years ago, the Clinton Administration sought to strengthen provisions dealing with runoff, only to be blocked by anti-environmental interests in Congress.

Presumably, most lawmakers now understand that the threat is real, and that the American people want and expect government to take the steps necessary to protect their health, livelihood and the environment from pollution emanating from huge livestock farms. Perhaps now they will support laws that are up to the job along with the funding needed to enforce them.

Joshua Reichert directs the Environment Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts.