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Mississippi River
Gulf of Mexico
Watershed Nutrient
Task Force

Hypoxia Task Force

The Hypoxia Task Force and its 2015 Report to Congress

The Hypoxia Task Force (HTF) is a partnership of 12 states, five federal agencies and a
representative for tribes that works collaboratively to reduce nutrient pollution in the Mississippi/
Atchafalaya River Basin (AAARB) and the extent of the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth
of the Mississippi River.

On behalf of the HTF, EPA recently submitted a Report to Congress and the President, as called
for by the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act of 2014. The report describes
significant actions taken by the HTF, summarizes keys to success and lessons learned, and provides
recommendations for how the Task Force will continue to implement or revise its 2008 Action Plan.

Significant actions taken by the HTF
to implement the 2008 Gulf Hypoxia
Action Plan:

•	Each HTF state has developed a
first-ever nutrient reduction
strategy through stakeholder
participation. These strategies serve
as the cornerstone for implementing
nutrient reductions in each state.

•	The federal members of the HTF
have developed a unified federal
strategy to guide technical and
financial assistance to states and
continued science support.

•	The HTF is successfully expanding
partnerships with organizations with
similar goals, including most
recently an agreement with 12 land
grant universities to reduce gaps in
research and extension/outreach
needs in the AAARB.

Keys to success and lessons learned by the HTF

include:

•	The value of cooperatively developing and
implementing nutrient reduction strategies.

•	The need to forge state and basin-wide partnerships
to implement nutrient reduction strategies.

•	Maximizing results requires:

o Planning at a watershed scale;
o Identifying critical pollutants, their sources,

and means of transport;
o Using appropriate models to plan for and

evaluate implementation;
o Using appropriate modeling and monitoring
designs to evaluate conservation outcomes;
o Striving to understand farmers' attitudes
toward conservation practices and working
with them to offer financial and technical
assistance; and
o Sustained assistance to and engagement
with agricultural producers following their
adoption of conservation systems.

HTF Recommendations in the Report to Congress:

•	Continue to implement the 2008 Action Plan: its most important recommendations remain valid.

•	Accelerate implementation of actions in the 2008 plan while refining specific approaches as
better science, tools and policy innovations become available.

•	The HTF has revised its deadline for achieving its goal of reducing the size of the Gulf hypoxia
zone to 2035, set an interim milestone for lead reduction (2025), and will track progress toward
reducing nutrient loads from point and nonpoint sources.

•	The HTF will track long term environmental conditions and trends using broad-scale statistical
surveys and a network of site-specific monitoring stations from many partners and collaborators.

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Members of the Task Force

Distribution of bottom-
water dissolved oxygen July
28-August 3, 2015 (west of
Mississippi River delta).

Black line indicates dissolved
oxygen level of 2 mg/L,

Data: Nancy R. Rabalais,
LUMCON, and R. Eugene
Turner, LSU. Credit: NOAA.

Total Nitrogen Wastewater
Treatment Plants

Total Phosphorus

Fertilizers (Farm)
41%

Atmospheric
Deposition

26%

Wastewater
Treatment Plant:
13%

Forests and Deeply Weathered
Wetlands	Loess

3%

Fixation and Other
Legume Sources

Manure (Confined)
10%

Fertilizers (Farm)
27%

Instream Channels
14%

USGS SPARROW model estimates of sources of total nitrogen and total phosphorus transported from
Mississippi River Basin to Gulf of Mexico (Robertson and Saad 2013)

State Agencies

Arkansas Natural Resources Commission

Illinois Department of Agriculture
Indiana State Department of Agriculture
Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship
Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection
Louisiana Governor's Office of Coastal Activities

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality
Missouri Department of Natural Resources
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency
Tennessee Department of Agriculture
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

Federal & Tribal Agencies

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
U.S. Department of Agriculture
(Research, Education, and Economics
Natural Resource Conservation Service)
U.S. Department of Commerce
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
U.S. Department of the Interior
(U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency
National Tribal Water Council

Visit the website to learn more about Hypoxia and Task Force activities and successes:

http://www2.epa.gov/ms-htf

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds (4501T)
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20460
E-mail: ow-hypoxia@epa.gov, Twitter: www.twitter.com/EPAwater

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