In an op-ed article appearing this month in NOLA, SNRE Professor Don Scavia talks about the Gulf of Mexico dead zone: its natural and political causes and two possible paths to resolve the annual problem. This year's zone, at 6,800 square miles, would have been larger if not for Tropical Storm Don stirring the waters.

These huge dead zones are part of a pervasive problem that remains intractable under current policies: excess nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) pollution from diffuse, mostly agricultural sources, wrote Scavia, an aquatic ecologist and environmental engineer who is also the Graham Family Professor and director of the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute. In addition, he serves as special counsel to the U-M President Coleman on Sustainability.

It's time to admit that incentive-based, voluntary actions have not worked and that new approaches are needed, he writes. Two paths are possible. Along one, EPA and state agencies use their authority to regulate businesses and sewage treatment plants to reduce nutrient pollution. At the same time, Congress gives EPA and states power to require agriculture to use better management practices to reduce pollution.

Along another path, Congress recognizes current Farm Bill programs and funding are failing to protect our nation's waters and redirects significant commodity subsidies to conservation programs targeted to the most polluting regions.

Scavia has studied coastal dead zones for 25 years. He led the first Gulf Dead Zone scientific assessment on behalf of the Clinton White House.