Public incentives to create ethanol from corn may be fueling not only an answer to the nation’s energy problems, but also a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.

A low-oxygen area virtually uninhabitable by marine life, the zone emerges in the spring and summer. It’s exacerbated by high nitrogen levels and phosphorus, whose sources include agricultural fertilizers. Last year’s dead zone was about as big as Massachusetts. In 2007, more US corn was planted than in any year since 1944, 94 million acres, including 8.4 million in Minnesota.

Although a leading researcher says he can’t prove the ethanol boom is growing the hypoxic zone, he says the zone’s expansion in recent years corresponds with the increase in corn planting and ethanol production. Last fall, he detected the highest nitrate concentrations in the Gulf in 13 years.

“Is corn boom expanding Gulf of Mexico’s ‘dead zone’?” — Star Tribune, 2 June 2008 Read more…