Scientists: act now on Gulf of Mexico's dead zone

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Scientists have issued a report urging immediate government action to reduce urban and Midwest farmland runoff blamed for feeding an 8,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oxygen-deprived pool of water has grown alarmingly off the mouth of the Mississippi River.

A report was issued yesterday by the National Research Council, a scientific and technology non-profit institution created by Congress. It exhorted the federal government to take quick steps to avoid a tipping point and avert an ecosystem collapse similar to what has happened in the Chesapeake Bay and Denmark's coastal waters.

The report called for the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture to join in creating a Mississippi River Basin Water Quality Center to coordinate efforts. Pilot projects should be directed at reducing nitrogen and phosphorous runoffs.

Scientists say the low-oxygen zone is created by massive algae blooms that consume oxygen in waters off Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. That makes it harder for organisms to survive, robbing them of reproductive energy needed to continue life in those waters. The low-oxygen condition is called hypoxia.