Alan Vicory:  Welcome, everybody.
Good morning.
My name's Alan Vicory.
I am at the podium here.
I saw on the placard there...That hat is...In
fact, I serve as Chairman of the Water Environment
Federation's Government Affairs Committee.
I'm here in that context.
I probably also need to advise that my income
derives from Stantec Consulting, where I'm
a Principal in that firm.
I also have a 40year background in water,
principally with the Ohio River Valley Water
Sanitation Commission.
Most of you know that organization as ORSANCO.
I was the Chief Engineer and Executive Director
of that organization for about 25 years.
A lot of what was done at ORSANCO was monitoring,
quite frankly, in the case of that agency,
for the Ohio River Valley, the Ohio River
and its tributaries.
I have a long background in water quality
monitoring and all of its dimensions.
On behalf of the Water Environment Federation
and all of the cosponsors, including the NortheastMidwest
Institute, I want to thank you for coming
to this Congressional briefing this morning.
For over a decade, WEF and other cosponsors
have worked with the USGS and the National
Water Quality Assessment Program to bring
important water quality information to you
here, on Capitol Hill.
Today's briefing is about monitoring.
For the next hour, maybe hour and a half,
we're going to focus on monitoring...Monitoring
analysis, I should note...And specifically,
monitoring for nutrients and pesticides.
Editorial from the podium.
Monitoring assessment, in my view, I call
it the "fundamental among the fundamentals"
in healthcare, health of waters and, actually,
our own personal health.
I'm sure a few of us have had our blood pressure
taken.
I have my blood work done every two or three
months.
That's monitoring.
That is monitoring and assessment.
Without that personal data, I would not know
what my own health is and, compared to previous
measurements, what my health was, where my
health is going, and how you can make decisions
about managing your healthcare.
It's no different with water.
The same goes for water.
The fact that it informs decision making really
makes it that kind of fundamental of fundamentals.
In a tough economy, in a world of changing
science and changing technologies, we must
be positioned if you look to make good, smart
decisions.
Monitoring makes ultimately all that possible,
but yet, monitoring programs, at least in
my experience, is the one that requires a
lot of energy actually to protect.
Because in my experience, when the budget
gets tight, one of the first places one will
look is monitoring programs.
It's easy to cut down the number of samples
that you take; you know the laboratory cost
and all that.
But the price of that is almost incalculable.
Again, you're ability to make good decisions.
You can tell that I am passionate about this
issue and I want to thank the USGS and WEF
for allowing me the privilege quite frankly
to serve as your moderator today.
We're going to have two great speakers this
morning from the United States Geological
Survey and NOAA, that are going to address
the topics of, as I mentioned, monitoring.
The result of the program, their data, in
a sense, in a way where we've been, where
we are, and where we're going.
This is important stuff, so listen closely.
My best hope is that when you're back in your
offices this afternoon, you can say, "Boy,
am I glad I went to that briefing.
I learned a lot, perhaps, and I have a greater
appreciation for what ultimately this is all
about."
After each presentation, what I will do as
moderator is invite what I will call presentation
clarifying questions.
If you didn't see something on there that
kind of confused you, you want to graph that.
I want to keep that to a minimum, maybe five
minutes or so, then have Suzanne come up.
Suzanne will be second, and again have a couple
clarifying questions.
After that, hopefully we'll begin a conversation.
I want everybody to have an opportunity to
give their views in a sense, to ask their
questions.
If we run out of time, Lori, Suzanne, will
you be available after the hearing adjourns?
You can collar them if you will, when we adjourn,
but I'm sure some of you have lots of things
to do on your schedules.
That's where we are.
We have a lot of ground to cover.
I would mention also that I look at this briefing
as a bit the last jewel on the crown this
week.
The crown this week was water week here in
Washington, DC.
The first time I think that water week has
been stationed in Washington, where a number
of nongovernmental organizations and professional
organization representing utilities and the
broad spectrum, many of us met as organizations
in Washington, DC.
There have been forums and expositions and
things like that.
I look at this briefing as being that last
jewel, if you will, in the crown of activities
this week in water week.
Hopefully we'll do another one next year,
make it even better and more effective for
you.
I think all of us that have been involved
in water week are interested in any suggestions
you might have for how water week in the future
can work for you better.
Feel free to give me your ideas as you might
have them.
What we're going to do now, is [inaudible
14:55] call on Lori Sprague to give us kind
of a presentation on NAWQA, National Water
Quality Assessment Program, and how it is
illuminating trends in nutrients and pesticides.
Lori has been a hydrologist with the USGS
for 15 years.
She currently is the surface water trends
coordinator for the National Water Quality
Assessment Program, NAWQA, which collects
information on water chemistry and aquatic
life to provide sciencebased insights on surface
and ground water issues throughout the United
States.
Prior to her work with the NAWQA program,
she researched nutrient trends in the Chesapeake
Bay Watershed.
The effects of drought and urbanization on
stream quality in Colorado, and watershed
modeling in the Missouri River Basin.
I've seen her presentation, both of the presentations,
and it's at a technical level that even I
can understand.
I'm an engineer, I think you will find it
fascinating and Lori let me give the podium
to you, for your presentation.
Thank you.
Lori Sprague:  Good morning.
I think everyone in this room appreciates
the valuable resource that our rivers and
streams are.
They provide drinking water, they provide
irrigation for crops, they provide habitat
for aquatic life, and plenty of recreational
opportunities.
They're also under continual pressure from
urban and agricultural pollution.
Since passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972,
the federal government has spent billions
of dollars on urban and industrial waste treatments
and on conservation practices that are designed
to reduce the amount of agricultural pollution
in runoff.
State and local governments spend billions
more each year.
Recently though, the EPA has reported that
over half of the nation's stream miles have
ecosystems that are in impaired condition.
In order to understand the return on our investment
and to more effectively manage our water resources
in the future, we want to understand how and
why water quality has been changing over time.
In 1991, the USGS began monitoring the nation's
water quality through its National Water Quality
Assessment Program.
One of our major goals has been to assess
trends in water quality.
We focused our initial analyses on two important
groups of contaminants, nutrients and pesticides.
Now we're in the process of expanding our
analyses to sediment, carbon, salinity, and
aquatic life.
Today I'm going to focus on our results from
nutrients and pesticides to tell you what
we've learned about how they've been changing
and what we know, and what we don't know about
why they've been changing.
I'm also going to focus on the Mississippi
River Basin, which covers about 40 percent
of the country.
It covers a wide range of climatic influences,
urban and agricultural influences, so in that
way it's representative of the entire country.
Many of the lessons that we've learned there
can be applied throughout the United States.
I'm going to start with nutrients, and as
their name suggests, they are essential for
healthy for plant and animal populations,
but at high levels, they can degrade water
quality.
Recent reporting by the states to EPA indicates
that over 7,000 stream reaches in the United
States are not meeting water quality goals
because they're too contaminated for basic
uses like fishing and swimming.
Here are a couple of examples of problems
with elevated nutrients.
High nutrients can cause excessive growth
of algae, and when those algae die it causes
low dissolve oxygen in water which is also
known as hypoxia.
We have hypoxic conditions in many of the
nation's estuaries including Puget Sound,
Chesapeake Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico.
The largest hypoxic zone in the country and
the second largest in the world is in the
northern Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of
Louisiana and Texas.
I'm going to talk a little bit more about
that shortly.
High nutrients also cause problems in drinking
water supplies.
For example, this past summer, we saw record
nitrate concentrations in the Des Moines and
the Raccoon River in Iowa.
Those are the two main water sources for the
Des Moines Water Works.
The concentrations of nitrate were about 20
milligrams per liter in those rivers which
is twice the EPA maximum contaminant level
for nitrate in drinking water.
To treat the water to come into compliance
with that standard cost rate payers an extra
$900,000.
Nationally, the largest source of nutrients
is fertilizer use in agricultural and urban
areas, followed by animal manure, and the
atmosphere.
Since 1945 the use of commercial fertilizers
has increased by tenfold.
That's in response to an increase in the application
rate and in crop acreage.
Animal manures remain relatively stable; inputs
from the atmosphere have nearly doubled.
On average, about 16 percent of the nitrogen
that hits the land surface from these sources
is not taken up by crops and ultimately reaches
rivers and streams.
We know that there are other important sources
of nutrients that are not as well tracked
over time.
This includes discharges from waste water
treatment facilities and septic systems.
We do know that those sources have generally
increased over time in this period as the
population of the United States increased
by about 150 million people.
A detailed understanding of how each of these
sources has changed over time is really critical
to be able to explain the causes of nutrient
trends that we're seeing in streams and rivers.
To help us understand the effect of those
changing nutrient inputs over the last century,
we analyze nutrient data that had been collected
from stream in the United States early in
the 20th century.
Those data only exist for a small number of
streams, fewer than 20, but they tell us as
you might expect that conditions today are
very different than they were a century ago.
In the streams that we looked at, concentrations
are now much higher.
As an example, you can see here that nitrate
concentrations in the Illinois River increased
steadily since 1920 corresponding to an increase
in population and fertilizer application in
urban and agricultural areas.
While the Clean Water Act in 1972 mandated
limits on discharges from point sources like
waste water treatment plants, it did not address
diffuse nonpoint sources like runoff from
urban and agricultural areas.
The watershed of the Illinois River has both.
It has numerous large cities as well as intensive
agricultural.
Now nonpoint sources are the largest source
of nitrogen to the river.
Because we didn't regularly monitor streams
throughout the 20th century, and because we
didn't monitor every stream, we don't have
detailed knowledge of how things changed over
time.
The national water quality assessment program
along with monitoring by EPA and others now
provides more consistent and widespread monitoring
of the nation's streams.
We should have a better understanding of how
conditions are changing nationally and should
be getting a better understanding of what's
been causing those changes.
In our first national assessment of nutrient
trends using recent monitoring data go ahead
and animate this we found that total nitrogen
concentrations in US streams remains stable
or increased in 84 percent of the streams
that we looked at.
There were decreases in only 16 percent of
the streams, and the same is true for phosphorus.
The stable and upward trends are an indication
that efforts to limit nutrients hadn't had
a widespread effect by 2003.
We have more recent data for the Mississippi
River Basin, so our more recent analyses provided
an updated look at nitrogen trends and a more
detailed understanding of what's been causing
those trends.
In 2010 the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico
was about 7,700 square miles which is about
the size of New Jersey.
That hypoxic zone threatens the commercial
and recreational fisheries in the Gulf that
bring about a billion dollars every year into
the Gulf economy.
It's largely, or primarily caused by nutrients
that are entering the Gulf of Mexico from
the Mississippi River watershed.
An EPA science advisory committee has recommended
that a 45 percent reduction in the nitrogen
and phosphorous loading into the Gulf of Mexico
that's a reduction of almost half is going
to be needed to reduce the size of the hypoxic
zone to the goal that's been set by the Mississippi
River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Task Force.
To help achieve that reduction, we spend billions
of dollars every year on urban storm water
controls, agricultural conservation practices,
and upgraded waste water treatment technology.
Even with those efforts, we saw mixed results
in the basin, but over half the sites nitrate
loads were increasing between 1980 and 2010.
In particular, the loads in the Missouri River
and the Upper Mississippi River increased
by about 50 percent during those 30 years.
That was more than three times the increase
we saw at any other site.
We had seen some recent signs of progress,
however, nitrate loads in the Illinois and
Iowa Rivers, and this is in the heart of the
Corn Belt, decreased by about 15 percent during
this period with much of that decreasing occurring
in the recent decade after years of stable
or unchanging conditions.
Even with those decreases, overall in the
basin, the nitrate loading into the Gulf of
Mexico from the Mississippi River increased
by 14 percent between 1980 and 2010.
As a result of that continued increase, federal,
state and local governments are intensifying
their efforts to implement conservation practices
and upgrade waste water treatment facilities.
Each of the states in the basin are developing
a nutrient reduction plan, and USDA is working
with producers to voluntarily implement conservation
practices in areas where we expect there to
be the greatest loading entering local waters
or ultimately the Gulf of Mexico.
Determining the effects any past or future
conservation efforts, in addition to any kind
of source changes that are happening in the
Mississippi watershed, is challenging because
of the number of nutrient sources and how
much they are changing over time.
Also because of the fact that we don't have
detailed information on how each of them has
been changing over time.
In 2002, we estimated that the largest sources
of nitrogen to the Gulf of Mexico were agricultural.
Fertilizer, manure, and legume crops.
In particular, farm fertilizer was about 40
percent of the total.
That compares to 14 percent for urban sources
like waste water treatment facilities and
runoff from roads and lawns.
All of these sources are simultaneously changing
over time, some of them are changing more
than others and they may be changing in different
directions.
They all combine together to determine the
trends in water quality that we see in the
streams and rivers.
It's not just the sources that are driving
trends one way or another, changing climate
and changing management practices can also
have an effect.
For example, we may have a sustained shift
in crops from soybeans to corn which can increase
fertilizer application.
Yet at the same time, be implementing agricultural
conservation practices like buffer strips
that are designed to trap and reduce the amount
of nutrients that are reaching streams.
We may have improved irrigation technology
that are reducing the amount of nutrients
in runoff, but also be increasing tidal drainage
which can accelerate the movement of nutrients
to streams.
In urban areas, we may be implementing storm
water controls that help reduce the amount
of nutrients reaching streams, but also increasing
impervious areas like parking lots and roads
which move water and nutrients more quickly
to the stream.
Just like with the sources, determining the
individual influence of those factors on water
quality requires as detailed knowledge of
how they're changing over time.
A source that's often overlooked when evaluating
the causes of trends in nutrients is the transport
of nitrogen through ground water to streams
which occurs on a very different timescale
than surface runoff.
When nitrogen is on the land surface, it can
reach streams pretty quickly through surface
runoff, or it can be transported the stream
through ground water.
Depending on the path that ground water takes,
it can take anywhere from days to decades
or even centuries for the nitrate to reach
the river.
That can cause a delay between changes on
the land surface and the response of water
quality in the streams.
That can contribute to a misallocation of
pollution sources in TMDLs, or misunderstanding
of the effectiveness of management practices.
In the Mississippi River, we've looked at
how nitrate concentrations have changed under
different stream flow conditions to help us
understand runoff versus ground water.
This figure is showing nitrate concentrations
at high stream flows in the Mississippi River
near where it enters the Gulf of Mexico in
May, which is one of the main fertilizer application
periods in the watershed.
During high stream flow, that's when a lot
of the water in the river is coming from surface
runoff.
That concentration decline that you see there
is an indication that we may be making progress
in controlling nutrients in surface runoff.
In contrast to that, there's been an increase
in nitrate concentrations at low stream flows
when much more of the water in the stream
is coming from ground water inflows.
That's a sign that nitrate concentrations
in ground water are increasing and contributing
to increasing nitrate in the river.
Because of the slow movement of nitrogen through
ground water, the change at low flow may actually
be a reflection of fertilizer application
and land management practices from many years
ago.
Similarly, we may not see the effects, or
the full effects, of today's management practices
until many years in the future.
Now I'm going to show you what we found for
trends in pesticides.
Pesticides of course provide a range of benefits
including increased food production and a
reduction in insectborne disease, but their
use in the environment also raises concerns
about possible adverse impacts.
They are used in the environment primarily
in agricultural areas on crops, and orchards,
and also in urban areas on lawns, gardens,
and roadways.
Once they're in the environment they can effect
humans, aquatic life or wildlife if they reach
toxic levels.
A USGS assessment of pesticide concentrations
in streams found that 57 percent of agriculture
streams and 83 percent of urban streams had
one or more pesticides that exceeded benchmarks
that have been established by EPA for the
protection of aquatic life.
Far fewer streams exceeded the human health
benchmarks.
It was about 10 percent for agricultural streams
and seven percent for urban streams.
Just like with fertilizer, total pesticide
use for agriculture has dramatically increased
over the 20th century.
Between 1930 and about 1980, there was nearly
a tripling of total pesticide use.
It's dropped a little bit after 1980 in response
to stabilizing herbicide use and a decrease
by about half in insecticide use.
That's largely in response to the introduction
of new pesticides that were more potent and
required smaller application amounts.
Trends in the use of individual pesticides
can vary pretty widely from these national
patterns.
There are also pesticides that are used in
small quantities nationally, but they're very
important locally depending on the kind of
crops or pests that are present.
For example, from these maps, are showing
the use of the herbicides atrazine and DCPA
in 1992.
Atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides
in the country and it's used primarily on
corn in the Midwest.
DCPA is an herbicide that's used primarily
on vegetables and other specialty crops.
It's used in smaller amounts over a smaller
area.
The change in these two herbicides also differed
over time.
Atrazine use has remained fairly stable between
1992 and 2011, but the use of DCPA decreased
in the Southeast and the Midwest and increased
a little bit in the Northwest.
Understanding these kinds of changes is critical
to being able to explain how they're affecting
trends in pesticides.
Unlike nutrients, pesticides only have one
major source in the environment, and that's
their use in urban or agricultural areas.
Their application rates are highly regulated.
We're able to make a more clearcut connection
between changes in pesticide use and changes
in pesticide concentrations in streams.
Pesticides can also be affected by many of
the same management factors that I mentioned
earlier for nutrients.
Pesticide trends are also affected by each
pesticide's unique chemical properties, which
can affect its persistence and mobility in
the environment.
As an example of that, the insecticide DDT,
which is very persistent in the environment,
is still being detected in stream sediment
and fish tissue decades after it was discontinued
in the 1970s.
Concentrations of more recent, relatively
shortlived pesticides, though, tend to respond
more quickly to changes in use.
For example, concentrations of the herbicide
metolachlor either decreased or stayed the
same in most of the major rivers that we looked
at between 1997 and 2006.
The same pattern was true for a number of
other major pesticides that we looked at.
The declines closely correspond to declines
in their annual use, confirming that changing
use is an effective strategy for controlling
pesticide contamination in streams.
This was particularly true for metolachlor
due to the introduction of a more potent reformulation
of metolachlor in 1997 that required lower
application rates.
I'm going to show you one site in a bit more
detail.
This is the Wabash River in Indiana, which
is a typical agricultural stream in the Corn
Belt.
You can see the correspondence between the
decrease in metolachlor use in red and the
decrease in metolachlor concentration in black.
As in many other streams, we saw decreases
in both use and concentration during this
period.
There are other potential contributors to
that decline in concentration including agricultural
conservation practices.
But we can't definitively establish the effect
of these conservation practices because we
don't have data on how they've changed over
time.
While we can pretty reasonably estimate agricultural
use of pesticides from available survey data,
pesticide use in urban areas is not routinely
tracked.
We have to use information on changes in regulation
and the introduction or discontinuation of
pesticides to help us understand what's causing
changes in urban streams.
For example, in 2000, the EPA and insecticide
manufacturers reached an agreement to phase
out the residential uses of the insecticide
diazinon.
That resulted in decreasing sales of diazinon
for home and garden use and a corresponding
increase in replacement pesticides.
As a result of that, also, there were widespread
declines in diazinon concentrations in streams,
which you can see in the map here.
I want to show you, again, a more detailed
look at a site in the Corn Belt.
This is an urban stream, Salt Creek, in Illinois.
There was a pretty clear downturning in diazinon
in Salt Creek between about 2003 and 2006,
which began just after the phase out of indoor
residential uses of diazinon and continued
during the phase out of outdoor residential
uses.
This was about a 90 percent concentration
decline in this stream.
As I mentioned, paired with that declining
sales of diazinon, we saw increasing sales
of replacement pesticides like fipronil.
We also saw widespread increases in fipronil
concentrations in streams.
This is a pattern that we've seen repeatedly
where we have a decline in concentrations
of one pesticide corresponding to increases
in concentrations of its replacement.
Regular monitoring is going to be required
to know if those replacement pesticides are
reaching streams in less toxic amounts.
We also regularly reevaluate the pesticides
that we're targeting for monitoring, because
use changes so quickly and there are continual
introduction of new pesticides to the market.
Based on these results, we've reached some
important conclusions about nutrient and pesticide
trends.
We've learned some lessons about what they
tell us for managing water quality in the
United States.
First, nitrate loading to the Gulf of Mexico
from the Mississippi River increased 14 percent
between 1980 and 2012.
This is increasing problems with the hypoxic
zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
The causes of that are difficult to determine.
We know that there have been decreases in
some parts of the basin and increases in other
parts.
There is evidence that one contributor to
the increase is increasing concentrations
in groundwater that's flowing into the Mississippi
River and its tributaries.
That can be causing delays between management
practices being implemented in the watershed
and the response of the water quality in the
rivers.
In contrast to that, concentrations of many
of the pesticides that we monitored have declined
or stayed relatively stable between the late
1990s and 2008.
Pesticide concentrations are strongly controlled
by use, so if use goes up, concentration goes
up, and vice versa, if use goes down, concentrations
go down.
Because pesticides only have that one major
source in the environment, we've been able
to make more clearcut progress in managing
pesticides in streams.
What are the lessons that we've learned for
managing water quality?
First, when it comes to managing sources,
reducing pesticide use reduces concentrations.
Although some pesticides may respond more
slowly than others if they're more persistent,
controlling use is a proven strategy.
It gets more complicated for nutrients like
nitrate, because there are so many factors
and so many sources effecting nutrients.
We may see a decrease in one source that gets
masked by an increase in one or more other
sources.
Also, the slow movement of nutrients through
groundwater can delay a stream's response
to cleanup efforts for many years.
Second, aside from the direct influence of
pesticide use changes, we have not seen widespread
and consistent improvements in either nutrients
or pesticides in response to the investments
that we've made over the years in stormwater
controls, agricultural conservation practices,
or waste water treatment upgrades.
Those practices may have had a positive effect.
We might have seen larger increases if they
hadn't been present, but the lack of widespread
declines suggest that reductions from those
management efforts are either being offset
by other things, or we're not doing enough.
Without improved data on where and when specific
strategies or source changes are occurring,
we can't reliably determine their effect on
trends in water quality.
That is the greatest barrier that we have
right now to fully explaining the causes of
the water quality trends that we're seeing.
USGS is working with other agencies to develop
those data where they're available.
We work with state regulatory agencies who
compile fertilizer sales data annually to
get that information.
We work with USDA, for example, to get livestock
manure and crop acreage information from the
Census of Agriculture.
There are other data sources that we need
information on that are either unavailable
or they've been collected so inconsistently
over time that we can't use them in our assessments.
To determine the most cost effective and efficient
approaches to managing water quality in the
future, we need to improve the national tracking
of all major sources, management factors,
and other influences on water quality and
pair that with continued and enhanced longterm
monitoring of rivers and streams.
Thank you for your attention.
Alan:
All of this water we have flows through the
estuaries.
Appropriately we're going to bring to the
podium, now, Suzanne Bricker or NOAA's National
Centers of Coastal Ocean Science.
She's head of the National Estuarine Eutrophication
Assessment; I wanted to get that right.
This assessment has produced a national picture
of eutrophication impacts, causes, and forecasts
of future changes in 1999 and again in 2007.
Her work has a strong focus on the development
of tools for the use in guiding successful
management of coastal eutrophication.
We're going to close this loop, if you will,
along the water of the coast and with an understanding
of some PowerPoints that Suzanne is going
to show us.
Suzanne, thank you for coming.
Suzanne Bricker:  Thank you.
Hi, good morning everyone.
Thanks for coming and I especially want to
thank the USGS for inviting me, because for
one thing it does close the loop.
What I will be talking about today is the
end point of what Lori was talking about,
the nutrients...
I will be talking only about nutrients also,
but they are coming down from the watershed
and where I start my research is where her
research ends.
I'd like to tell you about our National Estuarine
Eutrophication Assessment.
Most importantly, I would like to highlight
the collaboration that we've had with USGS.
Without their work that you've just seen highlighted,
we wouldn't be able to put the story together
which I'm just about to tell you.
Our study of nutrient pollution, also called
eutrophication, looked at mutually related
water quality conditions and also the loads
or the reasons for those conditions that...The
USGS data that they generously shared with
us was how we looked up loads.
Then we also tried to look at and forecast,
knowing what we know, what might happen in
the future in 20 years.
OK, there we go.
Although my focus is the US, I wanted to share
this slide because the legislation that we
have here, for instance, the Clean Water Act,
which mandates monitoring, assessment, management...
Because nutrients are such a concern here,
that is shared by legislation and paralleled
by legislation everywhere.
Here we have some listed on this slide from
Europe, because it's a concern everywhere,
it's a global problem.
As an example, if you look at this, this is
a map of Europe and the important thing to
see here is that the red dots are confirmed,
impaired waters from nutrients and the yellow
dots are areas of concern.
This is recognized as an international problem
right now.
Actually, we have done some work so that we
can share information about how to assess
and also how to manage internationally.
What does it look like?
Well, here's some pictures.
These are pictures that you've actually have
probably seen in your travels.
What these show actually is algal blooms,
which are the first step of nutrient related
problems.
Algal blooms can lead to low dissolved oxygen.
Low dissolved oxygen can lead to problems
with fish kills and other kind of, what they
call, "stinky beach," in some places.
In addition, excessive algal blooms, as you
see here in the bottom, in flora, in the picture
on the left corner, can shade out and kill
sea grasses, which are habitat for fish, so
that causes a problem with fish diversity
and abundance.
There's also a problem with toxic pollutants.
These are all problems that occur all over
the US coastline.
This is recognized as a national problem in
addition to being international.
In our recertification assessment, we developed
an index to look at conditions using the indicators
that I just talked about.
The algal blooms, the lower dissolved oxygen,
and losses of sea grasses, and harmful algal
blooms, and toxic blooms.
We evaluated 141 US estuaries and we evaluated
in the early 1990s and then again in the early
2000s.
The trends that Lori showed actually correspond
very nicely with the decade of change that
we see between the two studies.
This map shows conditions actually in the
early 2000s, all around the US coastline.
Red and orange are highest levels or worse
case impacts based on a combination of those
indicators.
White dots or squares indicate that where
we do not have data.
I would like for you to keep that in your
mind that there are some places that we cannot
evaluate.
Upward arrow means then it improved from early
'90s to early 2000's.
Downward arrow means that their conditions
worsened.
Two things to note is that, is that if you
look at the Middle Atlantic region, you'll
see a lot of red.
Typically, where you see the worst problems
are in places where population or animals
are focused.
As an example, the Middle Atlantic region.
If you look down at the Gulf of Mexico, you
see that red dot?
That's exactly the outflow from the Mississippi
River, where also called, "The Dead Zone,"
by some people.
As Lori had said, Mississippi River drains
something like 50 percent of the US.
The majority of estuaries evaluated that you
see have a moderate to high level of nutrient
related problems or degradation in their water
bodies.
Overall conditions have remained the same,
if you look in the table at the bottom.
Between the early 1990s and the early 2000s.
Somewhere between 65 to 70 percent of estuaries
have moderate to high level of impacts in
both time frames, despite the efforts to reduce
loads.
We saw that they have actually been increasing
nutrient loads according to Lori's research
in that same time frame.
That's actually very concerning.
The largest sources that relate to areas of
impact, where we see impact, are from nine
point sources.
Specifically from agricultural runoff.
That's the largest source of nutrient related
impacts.
How do we know this?
We know this because the USGS generously shared
their data and analysis with us and that we
can then overlay that with where we see water
quality problems.
This next slide is the other part of what
we look at which is trying to see what may
happen in the future, say 20 to 30 years down
the road.
Given what we know about present conditions,
what we know about existing and planned management
measures, and also expected changes in population
and land use.
You can see, again, the in the white squares,
are places we don't have enough data to make
the evaluation.
The red and orange are places where we expect
conditions to worsen in the future.
Green and blue, we expect places to improve
in the future.
In yellow, they remain the same.
From those systems we've been able to evaluate.
We see that most are expected to worsen.
The number expected to improve, if you look
at the tables on the bottom, has actually
increased from the 1990s study to the 2000
study.
I like to think that that is indicative of
the attention that we are now paying to management
of nutrients and that we're feeling more hopeful
and actually seeing some results that loads
would decrease and that we will see improvements
in water quality.
This slide shows, in a different way, the
changes from the early 1990s to the early
2000's.
Again, we have a large number on the right
hand side, the blue bar, that we cannot make
an evaluation with.
The green bar shows the number of estuaries
that have improved.
The red bar estuaries that have worsened.
It's interesting, but if you can see exactly
the same amount worsened and improved.
For the most part, conditions have remained
the same, in most estuaries.
I like to think that this, because we're of
our management, that we're able to hold the
line against really terrible degradation.
We know that the improvements are from nutrient
management, mostly from point sources because
they're more cost effective and also more
easily implemented than nonpoint sources,
which are the biggest concern right now.
The worsening conditions were attributed to
continued population increased and associated
humanlevel activities in coastal water sheds.
The fact that conditions in most estuaries
have remained the same despite our management
efforts, even though they would probably be
a lot worse if we didn't implement management,
it is still cause for concern.
I have to say here, again, the USGS nutrient
monitoring modeling and analysis were critical
and key to putting together our story here
so that I could share that with you today.
I borrowed a slide from the USGS so that I
can highlight about the need for the kind
of work that they're doing.
This shows the top 20 Mississippi River basin
water sheds contributing the largest amounts
of nitrogen to the Gulf of Mexico.
I didn't say earlier, but we're sticking only
with nitrogen for time and also because that's
the nutrient that is usually the most troublesome
in marine and fresh waters.
In order to make progress on improving our
estuarine water quality, as we've seen, we
need to do that, what we need to understand
is what nutrient sources are and what areas
are contributing the largest amount of nutrients.
That information will help us to target our
management.
That is exactly the information that USGS
provides us.
You can see here, in the colors, that the
models can be used to identify what nutrient
sources and areas contribute the most.
In this case, to the Gulf of Mexico to that
red dot which we call "The Dead Zone."
The dark areas or the darker areas are the
areas where there's higher contribution of
nutrients.
The top 20 basins, the top 20 contributors
are those that are highlighted in yellow.
This, I also borrowed from the USGS, what
this shows is a focus on the 20 water sheds
that were outlined in yellow, the highest
contributors.
What I'd like to say about this is that the
USGS models can provide insights about what
sources are contributing the largest amounts,
not just how much and where, but what the
actual sources are.
You see that nonpoint sources and in particular,
farm fertilizer, is generally the largest
source of nutrients that are being transported
from the Mississippi River basin down to the
Gulf of Mexico.
We do see three or four sites where sewage
is still a major source in the water shed,
but for the most part, the improvements to
waste water treatment have actually done a
pretty good job at reducing nutrient sources
from point sources.
These USGS findings are reflective of what
our NOAA assessment found on a national basis,
that the biggest concern for management right
now is nonpoint sources and specifically agricultural
sources.
Knowledge of the location and the magnitude
and the actual source helps us to target nutrient
management actions where they'll have the
greatest benefit in protecting downstream
waters, the Gulf of Mexico, and our other
estuary resources around the US.
Additionally, it helps boosters and managers
to target very limited resources to the places
that we can make the biggest benefit to water
quality.
Again, I have to plug USGS.
The way that they're helping us is to do that
targeting bioresearch that they've done.
I want leave you with a hopeful note.
I want to tell you a story about Tampa Bay.
I will also say that this is simplified.
There are other confounding factors, but the
overall story is this.
From the 1950s to the early 1990s.
Tampa Bay lost about half their sea grasses
on account of nutrient related problems.
The goal from the 1980s was to bring back
sea grasses so that the fish would come back,
and wading birds, and so forth.
Back to the levels that they saw in the 1950s.
What they did is they put three main actions
into place.
Improvements to wastewater treatment plans,
storm water regulations were implemented,
and the phosphate industry developed and also
improved some of the ones they were using,
their practices of, for instance, loading
and unloading fertilizer from the dock to
the boat.
This cost about $30 million a year.
On a side note, if you were looking at trends,
there was a lag in the time that nutrients
were reduced and they began to see the regrowth
of the sea grasses.
That's a little disconcerting.
As Lori showed, it happened in one of her
slides about groundwater.
They did an investigation and, again this
is a simplification, but part of the reason
for that delay was that they have a fairly
large groundwater source of nutrients to Tampa
Bay.
The good news that I'd like to leave you with
is that since the 1980s, because of these
management measures and actions, levels have
been reduced by 60 percent.
There has been a significant and continuing
increase of sea grass acreage.
They're not yet to 1950s levels, but they
have made a lot of progress and there has
been a lot of regrowth.
In summary, what I'd like to leave you with
is this.
About 65 percent of US estuaries that we've
been able to evaluate have moderate to high
level nutrient related or eutrification problems
in their water quality.
Improvements are possible.
We've seen that but the same number of improved
systems, they are counterbalanced by systems
that are worsening.
For the most part, these problems are caused
by nonpoint sources and agriculture is probably
the number one of nonpoint sources that we
have concerns about.
Thus, we believe that management needs to
continue.
One of the more innovative management measures
that are being investigated right now is looking
at in water measures.
One of those is the use of shellfish aquaculture,
because they filter the water and clean it,
as a complement to a traditional land based
nutrient management measures.
They're doing research now in several parts
of the country about that.
The biggest thing I want to leave you with
is that the USGS nutrient monitoring and modeling
has been really critical for us at NOAA to
put this story together and to be able to
say what we can say about what things look
like around the US coastline in terms of water
quality and what it might look like and, more
importantly, what should be done about it.
We've had a very productive collaboration.
I hope that will continue.
The USGS is doing some really fine work that
helps us out a lot.
Thank you very much.
[applause]
Alan:  Thank you very much.
Now, as I mentioned, our presenters Lori and
Suzanne again, thank you, awesome are going
to hang around here, so if you're one that
has something that needs to follow up, they'll
be here for a while.
I want to thank, again, the Northeast Midwest
Institute, Water Environment Federation, obviously
USGS, and NOAA, for making this happen and
for all of you, who are very busy, that took
time out of your day to come down here and
learn about this stuff.
I'm going to say again, I hope that you will
look back to this afternoon and say, "I'm
glad I went to that briefing.
I learned a lot, and if I need to know more,
I know who to talk to."
With all of that, we'll now declare this briefing
concluded.
[applause]
[background conversations]
