There is presently a seasonally severe and persistent hypoxia conditions (low dissolved oxygen conditions in bottom waters, generally <2 mg/L) that have been measured on the continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico south of Louisiana for the past decade. The primary cause of this hypoxic zone is high levels of nitrogen from farming practices. It has been shown that the amplitude and timing of the Mississippi flow. The waters that discharge to the Gulf of Mexico originate in the combined Mississippi/Ohio/Missouri watersheds (referred to as the Mississippi River Basin here) which, in total, encompasses about 3,000,000 km2 or about 40 percent of the area of the lower 48 states. We identify a suite of practices that we believe will lower nitrogen in the river sufficiently to significantly reduce hypoxia. These include changes in farming practices, intercepting laterally moving groundwater and surface water from farmland with riparian zones and created and restored wetlands, installation of tertiary treatment systems, particularly treatment wetlands, for the removal of nitrate in major sources of domestic wastewater, use of floodplain wetlands on the along the major tributaries of the Mississippi, and managing existing and planned diversions in the Mississippi River delta for nitrate reduction as well as wetland restoration