The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is mainly off the coast of Louisiana. This is a screenshot of a NASA animation of changes in the area from 1999 to 2008.

Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has proposed cuts in water pollution regulation that would increase the 5,772-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, the area where fish and other living things must swim away or die.

Andrew Wheeler, Trump’s nominee to lead the EPA, wants to remove thousands of streams, swamps and other bodies of water from regulations approved under former President Barack Obama to curb water pollution.

Scientists think a 45% reduction in nitrate and phosphorus, much of it from fertilizer, running into the Mississippi River is needed to shrink the dead zone, which was the size of Delaware last summer. In 2008, a task force set a goal of reaching that target by 2015 which didn’t happen.

A rule published in 2015 under Obama could have restricted pollution from chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

“For the water […]