Last summer, pfiesteria, a mysterious toxic algae bloom, killed about 3,000 fish in two tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay and apparently made about 30 people ill. Like the Cuyahoga River's catching fire in the 1970s, this local event created a national state of panic about water quality. Environmental groups responded with overheated rhetoric, and both President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore have traveled to the shores of the Chesapeake to exploit the Bay as a backdrop for launching a new federal initiative - the Clean Water Action Plan - aimed primarily at curbing livestock-waste runoff. The regulatory portion of this plan will be implemented in July by the EPA.
Indeed, the administration and the environmental lobby have guaranteed us that "nutrients" from manure and fertilizer are the cause of pfiesteria. Scientists, however, are not so certain. For example, the Maryland Blue Ribbon Citizens' Pfiesteria Action Commission, after studying the existing scientific research, reported there is "no demonstrable cause and effect linkage between farm runoff and pfiesteria." The commission went on to report that "toxic outbreaks can occur even if nutrient concentrations are relatively low."
Ironically, the best science on the subject links pfiesteria's toxicity not to pollution, but to fish themselves, and more specifically to a chemical agent in their excreta; it is the presence of prey species that triggers the pfiesteria to turn toxic. In other words, pfiesteria seems to be part of Mother Nature's wonderful, but harsh, big picture plan to balance predator and prey. Indeed, as Prof. Bruce Ames, one of the nation's pre-eminent molecular biologists,has lamented, "we've forgotten about the whole natural world." Perhaps Mr. Ames is too overbearing in his assessment; it seems what we have really forgotten is common sense.
Consider the following lapses in logic on the part of those now pushing for tougher regulation of nutrient runoff.
At a recent Senate hearing, a Commerce Department official testified that our current El Nino-related wet weather "may be favorable for another outbreak" of pfiesteria - a most curious prediction, given that last year's outbreak occurred during a drought year. Indeed, the entire notion that farm-field runoff caused this unique problem last year alone, when the Middle Atlantic experienced a drought - and thus low runoff - is a dubious proposition at best.
The Southern Environmental Law Center maintains that North Carolina's Albemarle and Pamlico sounds are being damaged by runoff from "factory hog farms," despite the fact that there are far more of the Tar Heel State's big hog farms in the Black River watershed - recently rated one of the state's "Outstanding Resource Waters."
Trout Unlimited - proving that hindsight is not always 20/20 - recently recalled the 1993 deaths of several people in the Milwaukee area from Crypto sporidium, a parasite associated with dairy-cattle manure, which had contaminated the city water supply. According to Trout Unlimited, this is more evidence that nutrient contamination is a bigger and longer-running water-quality problem then even imagined. They are forgetting, however, the circumstances of that tragedy. In 1993 the upper Midwest experienced one of the worst floods in recorded history, excepting Biblical accounts. The Crypto sporidium contamination was caused by the catastrophic flooding, which just as tragically claimed scores of other casualties not in any way related to Crypto sporidium.
The truly unexamined irony of today's debate, however, is the environmental lobby's 180-degree turnaround. Within the past 12 months, its national agenda has been topped by efforts to regulate and/or abolish the use of manure as fertilizer, after nearly three previous decades of crusading for more "organic" farming to improve the environment.
To be sure, there is a lack of balance and perspective in our efforts to protect the water. While the EPA tightens existing regulations on the poultry farms of Maryland's Eastern Shore, the region's urban sewage plants continue to dump nutrients into the water. Washington, for example, has a combined storm water and sewage system, as do many cities. Thus, every time there is a rain, there is potential for untreated human sewage to flow into the Potomac River and make its way to the Chesapeake.
In North Carolina, state records show that, during the heavy rains of recent hurricanes, a mere one-half of one percent of all of the state's hog-farm waste lagoons spilled, while a whopping 40 percent of all municipal waste treatment plants discharged raw sewage. Thirty-five cities reported the spillage of 270 million gallons of untreated sewage; 87 other cities simply reported "unknown amounts" - as the EPA does not require municipalities to monitor their release of nutrients.
Despite this, the EPA still blames agriculture - particularly livestock - for more than 60 percent of the nation's water-pollution problems. However, as the American Farm Bureau has reported, EPA's data are "so severely flawed and scientifically invalid" as to lead to "misinformed and misdirected" clean-water policy. According to a Farm Bureau analysis of EPA's National Water Quality Inventory - a process whereby states report data to EPA - the state water-quality agencies, as well as the EPA, admit to surveying rivers and streams primarily where they suspect pollution problems, yet they still do not find significant impairment more than 60 percent of the time.
In all, according to closer inspection of the EPA data, a total of only 6.4 percent of total U.S. river and stream miles are impaired - and that is using inconsistent and, in many instances, unscientific survey methods, with a good dose of double- and triple-counting.
The environmental lobby and the Clinton administration are correct in asserting that America needs a rewrite of its clean-water law - but not the reform they are proposing. Rather, any changes to the Clean Water Act should be based on the following four basic common-sense principles:
First, define pollution. Not all nutrient runoff is bad. Marine life depends on nutrients to grow. In Louisiana, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries reports that efforts to decrease the nutrient level in the Mississippi River "may impact the food web of the Northern Gulf and decrease fisheries production." Likewise, not all heavy metals are bad. Recent experiments at the Moss Landing Marine Station in California showed that dumping controlled amounts of iron filings in the ocean created a 40-fold increase in zooplankton, the first link in the aquatic food chain. Our laws should not presuppose science, but instead be based on the latest science.
Second, pinpoint the sources of pollution. Nutrient runoff does indeed come from agricultural sources, but more comes from urban sewage. Municipal waste-water treatment plants remove only part of the nitrogen in city sewage. On the other hand, many farms - especially in the Middle Atlantic region - already are under strict no-discharge regulations. The same cannot be said, however, of suburban lawns, flower gardens and golf courses - also big users of fertilizer. They are sources of nutrient runoff, as are auto emissions and salt treatment for icy sidewalks and streets. Farmers, however, are less than two percent of the population; politically, it is easy to pin the blame on them, but if farms are not the cause of pollution - as much evidence suggests - imposing all the regulations EPA can imagine will not result in cleaner water.
Third, keep perspective on the economic cost of regulation. Proponents of stricter water regulations often site the economic impact pollution has - or could have - on the fishing industry. In Maryland, for example, we are told by environmentalists that fishing is approximately a $400 million industry. They do not mention that farming in the state is more than 20 times larger - an $11 billion industry that employs 14 percent of the work force. To be sure, the environmental lobby's newfound concern for bottom-line economic costs is a ruse to draw attention away from the government's spending spree. Before the passage in 1972 of the Clean Water Act, then-Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel estimated that the nation's waters could be cleaned up for $10 billion total spending on the part of industry, state and federal sources. Today, more than a quarter-century later, the federal government is still spending $24 billion per year on environmental programs - and the environmental lobby is asking for another $3 billion in Clean Water Act spending. How long until we "break the bank" to the point we cannot afford to pay for well-targeted research and reasonable enforcement of responsible clean-water laws?
Fourth, monitor water quality. The U.S. Geological Survey indicates that we have consistently monitored no more than 30 percent of our nation's waters since the passage of the original Clean Water Act in 1972. And, as the Farm Bureau's analysis of that data has shown, we have no reliable measure of water quality. Sen. Olympia Snowe, Maine Republican and chair of the Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oceans and fisheries, recently said that pfiesteria and water-quality problems are "certain" to "grow worse." However, with all due respect to the Senate, she can never know if she was right because we as a nation do not monitor our efforts and their effect on our waters. Imagine a health-care system in which doctors were not required to monitor a patient's progress, but yet continually prescribed new treatments. Such a system would be costly, ineffective and probably ultimately harmful to the patient, yet that is the type of system we have in place to protect our environment, with predictable results.
The bottom line: If pfiesteria is another "wake-up call," then we should be most alarmed that, in more than two decades since the Cuyahoga River fire, we have spent more than $1.5 trillion on clean-water programs, and yet we still do not understand where pollution comes from, what it does, how much we have, and how we can prevent more. It is time for a new approach.
Dave Juday is an agricultural market analyst and adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues.
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