Feds to fund Mississippi clean up from Minnesota to the Gulf

The river that begins as a trickle in Itasca State Park and ends 2,350 miles later at the Gulf of Mexico will get a $320 million infusion from the federal government to improve water quality.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a program Thursday that will provide the money over the next four years to Minnesota and 11 other states in the Mississippi River basin.

Calling the river "a critical national resource," Vilsack said the Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative will attempt to reduce excessive nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from farms that enters the river through its tributaries and creates a "dead zone" each summer in the Gulf of Mexico. The nutrients cause vast algae blooms that eventually die, sink to the bottom and are consumed by bacteria that rob the water of most of its oxygen.

In 2009, the dead zone covered about 3,000 square miles, slightly larger than Delaware. Although the zone was somewhat smaller than in other recent years, scientists and environmental leaders have expressed alarm since the 1990s about the large amounts of chemicals moving through the river and the repercussions on the gulf's ecosystem.

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