mississippi river basin

Sluggish progress on reducing nutrient runoff into the Bay marks an inconvenient truth, but offers lessons for others seeking to clean their watersheds.

Worsening local effects on health and recreation in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin are spurring action on problems that also cause the Gulf of Mexico’s chronic “dead zone.”

This summer’s “dead zone,” a low-oxygen area where the river empties into the sea, could span 5,827 square miles across the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana has the power to call for change.

Around 175 million tons of freight travels on the Mississippi River each year, and from the river’s headwaters to southern Illinois, a series of locks and dams guide barges through the journey.Traffic is only increasing, but the locks and dams have aged far past their life expectancy. Even functioning properly, they slow barges down, and shippers and commodity groups fear a worse infrastructure breakdown is on the horizon.

The black carp, one of four invasive species of carp in North America, has made it into the Mississippi River basin.

A hotter atmosphere is causing rain to fall in harder bursts, pushing back planting seasons and drowning crops. At the same time as human-driven climate change is juicing precipitation, Corn Belt farming practices such as installing underground drainage tiles and leaving fields bare after harvest are changing how water moves across the landscape and into waterways.

Staying put in the face of flooding can be dangerous and is growing increasingly costly. Property taxes are the largest source of tax revenue for local governments in most states, but property value declines as flood risk increases. Local governments have doubled their infrastructure spending while federal funding remains relatively flat. The federal government covers about 40% of water and transportation construction, but states are left to maintain it.