Omega produces improved ecosystem conditions, renewable biofuels, and clean water through the use of waste products and non-invasive algae

Economy I/L

Anthropogenic dead zones causes losses of billions of dollars-hurts local economies

United Nations Development Programme 13 [United Nations Development Programme, “OCEAN HYPOXIA – ‘DEAD ZONES’”, May 2013, http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/Environment%20and%20Energy/Water%20and%20Ocean%20Governance/Oceans%20and%20Coastal%20Area%20Governance/OCEAN%20HYPOXIA%20ISSUE%20BRIEF.pdf]

Its Impacts on Ecosystems and Economies During the last few decades, anthropogenic inputs of excess nutrients into the coastal environment, from agricultural activities and wastewater, have dramatically increased the occurrence of coastal eutrophication and hypoxia. Worldwide there are now more than 500 ‘dead zones’ covering 250,000 km 2 with the number doubling every ten years since the 1960s. The economic costs to fisheries, tourism and other coastal livelihoods are already in the many tens of billions of dollars annually and will only continue to increase in the ‘business as usual’ scenario. OCEAN HYPOXIA Definition:  Reduced oxygen in the ocean, detrimental to living organisms. Causes:  Excess anthropogenic nutrients, especially fertilisers such as nitrogen and phosphorus, fuels phytoplankton growth. As it dies, phytoplankton sinks to the bottom where it is decomposed by bacteria that use up oxygen.  Stratification of water with the warmer less salty estuarine water forms a lens above the denser, more salty, colder water on the bottom layers of the ocean, reducing the circulation of oxygen-rich surface water to lower levels. Effects: Hypoxia Has Caused Major Changes in Structure and Functions of Ecosystems  Mass mortality of fish and benthos  Changes in species composition  Changes in trophic relationships  Decrease in biodiversity and species richness  Decrease in fisheries production  Increase in harmful and noxious algal blooms

Dead zones hurt the both the environment and the economy

Boyd and Pierce 10 [Christopher A. Boyd-Assistant Extension Professor, Coastal Research and Extension Center, Troy Pierce, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Gulf of Mexico Program Office, “The Hypoxic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico “, 2010, http://msucares.com/pubs/publications/p2583.pdf]

The Hypoxic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico and What It Means to You. Since at least the 1950s, a zone of low dissolved oxygen has been forming in the northern Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Occurring primarily in the summer, this zone stretches from the Birdfoot Delta in Louisiana westward to the upper Texas coastline (Figure 1). This zone of low oxygen is called the hypoxic zone, or more commonly, the “dead zone.” “Hypoxic” means there are extremely low levels of oxygen in the water that can harm ocean animals. When the water is hypoxic, ocean animals cannot breathe. Shrimp, crabs, and bottom-dwelling fish are most at risk of oxygen depletion and possible death because low oxygen levels are usually closer to the bottom. This dead zone creates both environmental and economic consequences, including reduced commercial and recreational fish harvest; increased fuel costs for boats having to travel outside of the low-oxygen zone to find fish, shrimp, and crabs; and changes in species composition. The hypoxic zone varies in size each year; it has been as large as the state of Massachusetts (more than 8,000 square miles). The northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone is the second largest in the world. Hypoxic zones have been measured worldwide since the 1980s. The hypoxic zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico is located in the most productive commercial and recreational fishery in the contiguous United States. According to the National Ocean Economics Program, the commercial domestic landings for the Gulf of Mexico weighed in at more than 1.4 billion pounds valued at greater than $689 million in 2007. The hypoxic zone is created when nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, and organic carbon enter the Gulf of Mexico in amounts too great for the normal food chain to use or break down. The nutrients enter with freshwater inflow from the Mississippi River watershed (Figure 2). The Mississippi River watershed includes 31 states and two Canadian provinces. The runoff from the watershed is essential for maintaining productive fisheries, marshes, and barrier islands. However, excessive nutrients and organic matter can potentially decrease the biological diversity of this region. The principal human contributing factor that increases nutrient supply is stormwater runoff from cities and lawns, sewer treatment facilities, industry, and agriculture. Figure 4. Low oxygen event along the shores of Mobile Bay, Alabama.Sources of Pollution There are two main types of pollution that enter the Mississippi River watershed: point and nonpoint source pollution. Point source pollution is well-defined effluent discharged by way of a pipe, channel, or conduit (Figure 5). The major point source contributors are municipal sewage plants, power plants, paper mills, feed lots, textile mills, and mineral mining areas. Non-point source pollution is storm water runoff that accumulates pollution from a broad area. Nonpoint source pollution is caused by urban, agricultural, and construction runoff, and air pollution (Figure 6). Increased levels of nitrogen and phosphorus from point and non-point pollution can produce algae blooms. Soil erosion into streams and rivers increases turbidity (cloudy water), reduces water depth, and smothers benthic species. Increased amounts of organic matter from leaf particles and dead plant material will increase microbial activity, which can further increase demand for oxygen. Point sources of pollution are regulated through the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). A permit is required, and the water often must be treated in order for its quality to comply with NPDES permit limitations before it is discharged. Nonpoint source pollution is harder to regulate because it is difficult to define its source and to improve regulations on parties responsible for it. Best management practices tend to be incorporated into agricultural, construction, and other sectors’ business plans. The best way to work with homeowners is through environmental education to assure they understand the possible environmental impacts of products they use in their lawns and gardens. Figure 5. Point source pollution. Figure 6. Non-point source pollution.

Fisheries I/L

Dead Zones threaten to kill fisheries in populated areas because of the oxygen depletion

Clayton, Mark. "'Dead Zones' Threaten Fisheries." Questia Trusted Online Research. Questia, 27 May 2004. Web. 15 July 2014.

In midsummer, the northern Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi River empties into it, may shimmer like any other swath of sea. But a few score feet below, bottom-dwelling fish and other creatures struggle just to breathe.¶ This area - one of the world's biggest coastal "dead zones" - is rapidly being joined by a growing number of "hypoxic," or oxygen- depleted areas around the world. At least 146 such zones have been documented through 2000 - from the northern Adriatic Sea to the Gulf of Thailand to the Yellow Sea, according to a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report released in March. And their number has been doubling every decade since 1960, it adds. At risk: coastal fisheries near the most populous regions.¶ A handful of efforts are under way that could mitigate the effects. But because of lag times involved, the problem is likely to get worse before it gets better.¶ "I'm convinced this is going to be the biggest environmental issue in the aquatic marine realm in the 21st century," says Robert Diaz, a marine biologist and professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, who coauthored the study undergirding the UNEP report. "It won't take too much for these annual lower-oxygen events to expand throughout the year and actually eliminate fisheries."¶ Dead zones often grow where populations grow. But the real driver is the spread of nitrogen, many observers say, caused by runoff of nitrogen-based fertilizers, sewage outflows, and nitrogen deposits from burning fossil fuels. Some waters remain oxygen-depleted year- around. In other waters, the problem appears periodically.¶ In the northern Gulf of Mexico, one of the best-known and best- studied dead zones, hypoxia occurs seasonally from April to September. The zone's size depends on the weather and how much flow the Mississippi brings each year. Its waters are laden with fertilizer runoff from farms and lawns across the Midwest. Sewage and fossil-fuel emissions exhaust (from power plants and autos) are also factors, says a 1999 University of Alabama study sponsored by the fertilizer industry.

Fisheries are necessary for 16% of the world’s food; loss of fisheries would be disastrous.

Reichert, Joshua S. "A World without Fisheries?" Seattlepi.com. Seattle Pi, 22 Jan. 2002. Web. 15 July 2014.

For decades, the operating assumption among marine biologists, fishery managers and policymakers has been that the world's catch of ocean fish has been rising, and that fisheries were keeping pace with increased demand from a growing global population.¶ The assumption was based entirely on statistics gathered by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the international agency that tracks such numbers. It now appears the assumption is wrong.¶ In fact, as was recently reported in the science publication Nature, the opposite has been true. Since the late 1980s the world's fish catch actually has been declining by about 800 million pounds per year rather than increasing by 700 million pounds as was previously reported. Not only are we exceeding the ocean's capacity to provide fish, but if current trends continue, within two or three decades many of the world's commercial fisheries will be extinguished.¶ To compile its annual list of the world's fish catch, the FAO relies on numbers provided by individual countries. For years these numbers showed that the world's catch was rising slowly. What authors of the Nature study found, however, was that China was significantly overreporting the size of its annual catch.¶ In China, the centralized socialist system rewards officials with promotions on the basis of reported production increases, thereby providing an incentive to report ever higher catch levels. Once the Chinese catch statistics were adjusted for accuracy, it turns out that the global catch is actually declining, and that for years we have been catching more fish than the oceans can replace.¶ Earlier in this century, the bulk of the world's fishing focused on species high in the food chain -- tuna, cod, swordfish, hake and salmon. Many of these fisheries, such as North Atlantic cod, are severely depleted. The loss of the cod fishery in New England and the maritime provinces of Canada provides a textbook example of fishery mismanagement. The decline of this fishery, which resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, was due to the unwillingness of both the U.S. and Canadian governments to reduce fishing quotas in the face of scientific evidence that stocks were collapsing.¶ As cod and other species have declined, fishing fleets around the world have turned their attention to the more abundant species lower on the food chain. Boats have targeted the enormous populations of schooling forage fish such as capelin and menhaden, which are primarily used for fishmeal to feed chickens, pigs and other domestic animals. Now, however, even these populations of smaller fish, which are critical to the marine food web, are declining.¶ The collapse of the world's fisheries is more than an environmental disaster. At present, more than 54 million people worldwide earn their living directly from fishing. Unless steps are taken soon to address the problem of overfishing, a great many of these people will lose the livelihood upon which they and their families depend.¶ The implications for global food security are even more serious. Fish provide 16 percent of the animal protein consumed by people worldwide. In many developing countries, the percentage is higher. In Asia, for example, fish represent 26 percent of the continent's animal protein intake. In Africa, the figure is 17 percent. (In North and Central America, by contrast, the figure is just 7 percent.) At present rates, scientists project that by 2020 the per-capita consumption of ocean fish will be half of what it was in 1988. Significant reductions of such a crucial protein source from the diet of billions of people worldwide will exacerbate problems of malnutrition, disease and political unrest.¶

AT: Artificial Wastelands CP

Artificial wastelands are unsuccessful in replicating the processes of natural wetlands- making them failures for performing necessary runoff filtration.

Schneider, Keith. "Michigan Land Use Institute." Guess What! Fake Wetlands Don't Work :. Michigan Land Use Institute, 1 Aug. 2001. Web. 15 July 2014. .

Destroy a natural wetland for a new shopping center? Don’t worry, developers say. State law can require builders to construct an artificial wetland somewhere else that will work just as well.¶ According to a remarkably candid internal audit, however, the Department of Environmental Quality says artificial wetlands don’t work and the state program for overseeing them is a mess. The DEQ’s conclusions about the shortcomings of artificial wetlands are consistent with many other studies that have found manmade wetlands simply do not replace the biological and ecological values of natural wetlands. Rarely, though, has a state agency been as straightforward in assessing the weaknesses of its practices and procedures for wetland protection.¶ Don’t count on it¶ The internal audit, by DEQ water quality specialist Robert Zibciak, revealed how far Michigan’s wetland protection program has strayed from its mission of keeping Michigan’s wetlands — nature’s kidneys — functioning. Mr. Zibciak reviewed 78 permit applications and resulting state orders to build 158 artificial wetlands in 33 counties. His investigation found:¶ • 71 percent of the artificial wetlands were biological failures.¶ • 14 percent of the artificial wetlands the state ordered never were built.¶ • One in five artificial wetlands were so poorly constructed that they actually caused more erosion than they prevented.¶ • Only a third of the companies required to monitor their artificial wetlands actually did.¶ • State inspectors consider just one in five of the artificial wetlands to be “successful.”¶ In response to the report’s findings, the DEQ released a statement citing improvements in its wetland program and blaming previous administrations for weaknesses in enforcing the wetlands law, as well as below-average precipitation during the study period. The report’s author, however, said the agency’s new steps did not work and that the program’s weaknesses were due largely to the DEQ’s overall goal of encouraging economic development at the expense of environmental protection.¶ Campaign promise¶ The rush to satisfy permit applicants comes at the expense of wetland protection, according to the report. “The emphasis is to issue the permits as quickly as possible,” said Mr. Zibciak’s report. Taking the time to gather all the facts “would be very unpopular with the regulated community and unlikely to be acceptable to MDEQ management.”¶ The 1979 wetland law requires the state to issue permits within 90 days. Before Governor John Engler took office in 1991, according to the report, state regulators interpreted the law to mean that the clock began ticking only after they had received a complete application — one with all relevant information from developers. Builders grew frustrated, and complaints about the slow pace of wetland permitting escalated. Mr. Engler campaigned on a message of making government more responsive to its constituents and speeding up the permitting process. Russell Harding, the DEQ’s director, took the campaign promise to heart.¶ Enforcement nightmare¶ According to a September 2000 draft of the internal audit that the Michigan Environmental Council obtained, the DEQ’s front office advised staff members to issue wetland development permits within 90 days irrespective of whether the applicant had submitted all necessary information. The DEQ generally issues such permits on condition that the applicant provide the missing information later, typically within 90 more days.¶ But the state never follows up in most cases on those conditions, Mr. Zibciak reports. The result is a “department-created” enforcement nightmare. “Permit violators that receive no follow-up contact from the MDEQ regulatory staff are sent a clear message by this inaction,” the draft report reads. “That message being that the MDEQ will not follow up on their project, and compliance with their MDEQ permit can be a low priority item or ignored altogether.”

AT: Fertilizer Regulation CP

Runoff regulation won’t solve- enforcement is too expensive and imprecise, and farmers can easily circumvent restrictions through unregistered trading.

American Farmland Trust. [Organization that has issued agricultural studies and reports since 1980] "Controlling Nutrient Runoff on Farms." (n.d.): n. pag. Farmland.org. American Farmland Trust, Aug. 2013. Web. 16 July 2014. .

Direct regulation of agricultural water pollution is difficult, if not impossible ¶ The possibility of directly regulating farms and ranches to reduce NPS has been ¶ proposed numerous times, but social, geographic, economic and political factors make ¶ that difficult, if not impossible. Perhaps the most famous example of the failure of ¶ regulations to control agricultural NPS at a national level was the 1987 attempt in The ¶ Netherlands to regulate and set standards for agricultural nutrient usage (Haskell 2007). ¶ They mandated that all farms maintain government-approved nutrient management ¶ plans and included recordkeeping requirements, taxes on excess manure production ¶ and manure banks. It failed for a number of reasons. They focused on livestock ¶ operations but left cropland virtually unaffected. The restrictions on manure were ¶ unenforceable because transactions would often go unreported. Informal black-markets¶ facilitated the purchase of manure from nearby farms. And it was too expensive to ¶ observe manure application and measuring nutrient loss on a farm-by-farm basis was ¶ too imprecise to legally justify penalties. On the other hand, Denmark also enacted ¶ nutrient management legislation in the 1980s and apparently got the mix right. By ¶ coupling regulatory requirements with incentives, from 1980 to 2006, they decreased ¶ their national surpluses of N and P by 41 percent and 62 percent respectively. Total N ¶ concentrations in 48 streams draining agricultural watersheds decreased significantly ¶ but total P concentrations did not (attributed to legacy P and its resilience in water ¶ bodies) (Maguire et al. 2009). ¶ ¶ Geography, economics and politics make direct regulation of agricultural nutrient ¶ runoff unlikely ¶ Direct regulation of nutrient runoff from farms is highly unlikely in the United States ¶ (Williams 2002). The geographic dimensions make “federally designed, nationally ¶ uniform technology based performance and emissions standards” difficult to implement ¶ without a marked increase in budgeting for individual farm permitting, monitoring and ¶ enforcement. Local variations in weather, soil salinity, and soil erosion potential, ¶ leaching potential, and freshwater availability present further challenges to an effective ¶ national regulatory regime. Variations in crop type, production practices, livestock type ¶ and concentration, use of irrigation, tillage practices, sediment runoff and fertilizer runoff ¶ all contribute to the difficulty of “one size fits all” regulation. Social factors like proximity ¶ to metropolitan area, and surrounding land use also influence farm practices. EPA has ¶ noted that a program of this breadth would make it very difficult to implement and ¶ enforce regulations. ¶ ¶ The economic dimensions of agriculture also pose barriers to regulation. Agriculture in ¶ the United States has vast economic value, yet is dispersed widely across the country ¶ and by landowner. Faced with the rising costs of inputs and equipment, the farm ¶ industry is quickly consolidating. Increased environmental regulation of farms may ¶ reduce their economic viability due to compliance costs. And the political dimensions, ¶ mentioned earlier, that make regulation of agriculture difficult include a consolidated ¶ voting block, strong lobbying and political pressure.

Discontinuing use of fertilizers would be disastrous- necessary for food production

IFDC. "How Have Fertilizers Benefited the World?" Fertilizer FAQs. IFDC, n.d. Web. 15 July 2014. .

About half of the world’s population is alive today because of increased food production fueled by mineral fertilizers. Fertilizers and other inputs (improved seed and crop protection products) give the industrialized countries inexpensive food. For example, the average U.S. farm feeds about 150 Americans for a year, with a balance to export worldwide. U.S. citizens spend only about 10 cents of each dollar on food, so they have 90 cents for other things. Most rural families in Africa spend as much as three-fourths of their income on food. Little is left for necessities such as education of children and health care.¶ The Green Revolution – which generated dramatic increases in food production in Asia and Latin America – occurred because of higher crop yields. These yields were made possible through the use of improved seeds and inputs, particularly mineral fertilizers. The Green Revolution is credited with feeding more than one billion people in Asia alone. The far lower increases in food production in Africa have been gained primarily by bringing marginal land into production. That further threatens Africa’s endangered wildlife and ecosystems.¶ The late Nobel Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug, often called the “father of the Green Revolution,” has called improved seeds the “catalysts that ignited the Green Revolution” and mineral fertilizer [is] the “fuel” that powers [the Green Revolution] it.

AT: Oxygen Pumps CP

Oxygen pumps increase carbon emissions by preventing carbon sequestration.

Carlyle, Ryan. "Have There Ever Been Attempts To Oxygenate Ocean Waters Considered Dead Zones?" Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 12 Dec. 2013. Web. 15 July 2014. .

Marine life does tend to avoid the hypoxic zones, but it’s not a straightforward effect. Dead zones directly decrease Texas shrimp catches, but much less so for Louisiana shrimp catches. The difference is thought to be because the different shrimping seasons catch shrimp at different points in the lifecycle — Louisiana juvenile shrimp move closer to land avoid the hypoxic zone, thus increasing the concentration in shallow trawling regions and therefore fishing yields. On net, dead zones are bad for commercial fishing, but in complex ways.¶ “Dead” zones are arguably better than open ocean, which is nearly lifeless due to lack of nutrients and thus has the opposite problem. If we could transport the excess nutrients away from the coast and to the open ocean, they would be good for the environment. The main issue with eutrophication is that human activity has expanded it beyond the natural level. It tends to encroach into productive fisheries and affect high-productivity shelf zones.¶ Deeper water tends to be less productive anyway, so reducing seafloor oxygen is kind of a mixed bag. Deposition of organic matter onto the seafloor in anoxic conditions is a major natural form of carbon sequestration — it is the source of the majority of the world’s oil deposits. So injecting oxygen to prevent dead zones could have unintended consequences by releasing additional carbon back into the environment.¶ So, it’s a complex subject. We don’t entirely know what will happen if we inject oxygen into dead zones. It could dramatically increase ecosystem productivity, or it could have far-reaching unintended consequences. I’m glad it’s being studied on a small scale for now.