It's called the Mississippi River Restoration and Resilience Initiative is a government program that would work the same way the Great Lake Restoration Initiative did for states surrounding the inland seas.
Introduced last June by Minnesota representative Betty McCollum, the Initiative looks to clean up the River by cleaning up what goes into it.
"The Mississippi River is treated like the nation's sewer," says Matthew Rota, Senior Policy Director for Healthy Gulf, an scientific advocacy group looking to find ways to stop the progression of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, a biological wasteland of deoxygenated water containing all the chemical and fertilizer runoff that spills out of the Mississippi delta.
This year's dead zone, though smaller than in years past, is still the size of Connecticut.
"One of the goals of the MRRRI is looking at floodplains and maybe trying to see where we can give the river and tributaries a little more space," says Rota. "So we don't have these catastrophic floods and droughts, that are as extreme and we're going to be seeing more of with climate change."
The initiative allows federal agencies, states, trusts, and Native American tribes, all to work together in directing funding for projects.
This includes allocating money for plans and programs to clean up around areas where chemicals are making their way into the water.
"It costs money to implement those, so this could potentially help give farmers funds to some of these things that could reduce nitrogen-phosphorus fertilizer pollution and make sure that it stays on the fields as opposed to flowing into the Mississippi River."
One aspect about the river is how it is viewed and distinct differences between the Upper and Lower Mississippi: "The Upper Mississippi is looked at in a much more recreational manner. Then once you get to where the levees start basically, it becomes much more of an industrial river. People don't pay as much attention to it except when there's a flood threatening."
Sectioning off the river for attention has been tried before, with different states attempting their own programs that just work in the short term. The MRRRI stresses that the entire river basin needs close attention.
The three-hundred million dollar budget for the initial funding of the river project would put money into four categories: improving water quality, restoring habitats, reducing the presence of invasive species (plant and fish), and creating natural infrastructure to protect against flood damage.
Ultimately the additional benefit to the MRRRI is a reduction in the size of the dead zone in the Gulf.
"Programs like the MRRRI and others including just looking at how we farm, how we use the river, continue too. So we can actually meet the goal of reducing the size of the dead zone to a manageable area."
Management of initiative and its programs and projects would be under the umbrella of the Environmental Protection Agency. Hundreds of millions of dollars in funding would be given to groups working in the 10 states along the river.
Upwards of 35% of the money would be directed towards disadvantaged and low-income communities and communities of color. These communities, which we've seen in Louisiana, bear the brunt of the effects of the polluted waterway.