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Lance Nacio’s family has made its living fishing along the coast of Louisiana’s Terrebonne Parish for three generations. He’s continuing the family business, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult.

Nitrogen and phosphorus are flowing from the Mississippi River Basin into the Gulf of Mexico, creating an oxygen-void area along southern Louisiana and eastern Texas over 18 times larger than Chicago.

Fish, shrimp and other commercial species swim farther from the coast to escape, and those that can’t move fast enough die. Fishermen must follow, spending more time and money to sail away from this “dead zone” with dicier odds of a good catch.

“It’s costly for fishermen because we struggle to catch fish, and we have to go deeper into the Gulf to get out of the dead zone,” said Nacio.

This virtually lifeless expanse, which was first discovered in the 1970s, has caused up to $2.4 billion in damages to Gulf fisheries and marine habitats every year from 1980 to 2017, according to a 2020 study.

Illinois has been one of the top contributors to the problem. All the state’s waterways feed into the Mississippi River, so millions of pounds of nitrogen and phosphorus-rich discharge from wastewater treatment plants, urban stormwater drainage and agricultural runoff eventually make their way to the Gulf. Increased precipitation associated with climate change is accelerating the flow of these pollutants.