THE EARTH IS FLAT AND THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER IS NOT POLLUTED

Well, okay, the earth definitely is round. According to the State of Mississippi, however, the Big Muddy is no longer polluted. On May 24, 2007, Mississippi adopted a new list of “impaired waters” for the state, removing the Mississippi River, among others, from its list of polluted waters.

In the previous list, prepared two years ago, the Mississippi was listed as being polluted due to nutrients, pesticides, sediment/siltation, mercury, and organic enrichment/low dissolved oxygen. I wish I could use this blog space to commend the state for all the work it did in the past two years to clean up the Mississippi. Unfortunately, as you probably guessed, that’s not the case.

What really happened is the state changed the way it looked at the data and came up with some very flimsy evidence to say that the Mississippi is not polluted. For example, the State and EPA argue that even though nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River causes a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, there is no effect from that pollution within the State of Mississippi (an assumption I question). Their assertion is akin to arguing that someone who infects others with the flu is not responsible because the people became ill two days later in their own homes.

Here are some other reasons why removal of the Mississippi is pretty ridiculous:

• Though the Mississippi is listed as being polluted in Tennessee, once it crosses the border into Mississippi, it is suddenly no longer polluted.
• According to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (the same agency that removed the River from its polluted waters list), one should limit consumption of certain types of fish in the Mississippi River due to high levels of mercury, DDT, and toxaphene. If you take Mississippi’s word, even though the fish are contaminated, the River itself is not.

Why would a state want to remove rivers such as the Mississippi from the polluted waters list? Well, for starters, it makes it much easier to issue new permits to pollute a river. In addition, a state and the EPA can say that the nation’s waters are getting cleaner as evidenced by fewer waters on the polluted list. At least in this case, be careful what you believe.

Jeff Grimes is Assistant Director of Water Resources for the Gulf Restoration Network