A federal judge in Louisiana has given the Environmental Protection Agency six months to decide whether to set federal Clean Water Act standards for nitrogen and phosphorus in all U.S. waterways or explain why they are not needed.
The ruling came this month in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of environmental groups, including the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.
Read an Associated Press article, published in the Washington Post, about the case. In the litigation, the environmental groups seek federal regulation of nitrogen and phosphorus pollutants – many of them from farm fields — that contribute to the oxygen-deprived Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
Read a Star Tribune article about a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency plan to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.