Under the new agreement, the Service provides a full-time coordinator who maintains an office in Vicksburg, Mississippi. This office provides the Committee's member agencies with a focal point for planning and coordinating, on an ecosystem basis, a variety of natural resource management business in the lower Mississippi alluvial valley.

     The Committee was chartered under a constitution signed by 11 conservation and water quality agencies in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee to manage the river's natural resources in these states. Because the Mississippi River generally forms boundaries between states rather than flowing completely within them, no individual state has the management authority or funding to deal with natural resource problems that transcend state boundaries. Although water quality problems may originate in the upper reaches of the river, they frequently affect downstream states, as well as the Gulf of Mexico.

     The Committee has already made some significant strides in focusing public attention on the major environmental problems in the lower Mississippi alluvial valley and the necessity of planning on a basin-wide scale to resolve them. The organization was recently awarded a $19,000 grant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to compile a metadata catalog that identifies agencies operating Geographic Information Systems in the lower Mississippi alluvial valley. This catalog, which is available from the coordinator, will provide resource managers with an important planning tool in their efforts to develop an ecosystem management plan for the lower Mississippi River.

     The Committee is also working with state environmental quality agencies and the EPA to develop a basin-wide, water quality enhancement plan. A key component of this plan will be the development of non-point source pollution abatement strategies that will be developed and implemented on a watershed basis. The reduction of nutrients originating from non-point source pollution within the lower Mississippi River watershed is critical to decreasing the low dissolved oxygen condition (hypoxia) that occurs annually in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening marine fishery resources.

     To be successful, the development of fisheries restoration, enhancement, and water quality improvement plans must occur concurrently within the lower Mississippi alluvial valley. To achieve these goals the Committee plans to work cooperatively with the agricultural, navigation, and manufacturing industries to increase their involvement in the management of Mississippi River resources.