How do findings relate to the Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force Action Plan?
|Back to Top| This effort is high profile for many Federal, State, and regional partners and their decision making related to nutrient management and protection of the Gulf. Findings are directly relevant to the joint federal-state Gulf Hypoxia Task Force, which is revising their Action Plan for Reducing, Mitigating, and Controlling Hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (expected in February 2008). The original Action Plan, issued in 2001, had set a coastal goal of reducing the 5-year running average aerial size of the hypoxia zone to less than 5,000 square kilometers by 2015. The current 5-year average size of the hypoxic zone is 14,644 square kilometers, almost three times the size of the goal. The Task Force is evaluating recommendations by EPA’s Science Advisory Board to set reduction targets of at least 45 percent for both nitrogen and phosphorus in an effort to shrink the size of the hypoxic zone and meet the goal for 2015.
