With heavier than normal snow and rain events this year it’s not surprising that the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay would be the end recipents of extra runoff.  Ironically, a couple of centuries ago the extra influx of natural nutrients would have been a boon for these productive estuaries. But today that extra runoff is laden with unfiltered urban, industrial, and agricultural pollutants that cover these aquatic nurseries with a deadly toxic blanket.

In an article released by Trout Headwaters Inc , “Restoring Nature’s Water Filter: How Streamside Vegetation Can Save the Gulf of Mexico,”  we discussed of how nature’s filters are designed – diverse, streamside, woody vegetation that slows and purifies water before it enters streams and rivers – and highlighted the threats to these filters resulting from both development and agriculture along the nation’s streams and rivers.  Restoring nature’s water filter across the watersheds feeding the bays is the only permanent, sustainable solution.  

Read more about 2011 dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay from the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/alarming-dead-zone-grows-in-the-chesapeake/2011/07/20/gIQABRmKXI_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend

and in the Gulf of Mexico in the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/14/gulf-dead-zone-predicted-largest-in-history_n_877188.html

Tags: bay, buffer, chesapeake, dead zones, filter, gulf of mexico, natural, nature, ocean, oceanic, riparian, rivers, streams, strip, water, zone