As mentioned in today’s news links, the federal Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force released its final strategy and plan for working on Gulf Coast restoration. The video and links mentioned in this article provide more details.
Following extensive feedback from citizens throughout the region, The Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force yesterday released its final strategy (click for PDF copy) for long term ecosystem restoration for the Gulf Coast. EPA Administrator and Task Force Chair Lisa P. Jackson, joined by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenco, Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, and USDA Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Harris Sherman, and officials from the five state region made the announcement today during keynote remarks at the 2011 State of the Gulf of Mexico Summit in Houston.
In the restoration report, the task force adopted four broad goals for its strategy:
- Restore and conserve habitat.
- Restore water quality, in particular reducing the excess nutrients flowing down river systems like that of the Mississippi, and tributaries feeding Texas’ own Galveston Bay, which create an annual low-oxygen “dead zone” in the Gulf.
- Replenish and protect living coastal and marine resources.
- Enhance community resilience to a variety of threats, including storm risk, sea-level rise, land loss, natural-resource depletion and compromised water quality.
The strategy is the first restoration blueprint ever developed for the Gulf with the full involvement of all of the essential parties throughout the region, including the states, tribes, federal agencies, local governments and thousands of involved citizens and organizations. The plan represents a commitment by all parties to continue to work together in an unprecedented collaboration to prepare the Gulf region to transition from response to recovery and address the decades-long decline that the Gulf’s ecosystem has endured. And already to that end the USDA has announced it will provide $50 million dollars to start addressing the nutrient run-off issue.