Those who contaminate waterways are often fined by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. (Photo courtesy of the Iowa DNR)
An eastern Iowa company that applied more than 1.5 million gallons of manure to a field and contaminated a nearby creek in 2021 did not take steps to stop the contamination after it was discovered, according to state regulators.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources recently fined Cat-Nip Ridge Manure Application, of Lone Tree, $8,000 for the incident.
The company was hired to inject manure from a hog confinement south of Bloomfield into the soil of a field in October 2021, a DNR order said. After the work concluded, another company that manages the facility reported that water was flowing from tile lines that drain the field.
A DNR officer went to the field the next day and noted pools of manure on the field’s surface. He saw manure had been applied to the area of a surface tile intake and also close to the edges of the field, where there was manure runoff.
Further, manure that went into the underground tiling discharged onto land and through a culvert. An unknown amount of manure went into a nearby creek.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says short-term exposures of aquatic life to ammonia nitrate in concentrations of 17 parts per million can be toxic, and the DNR says much lower concentrations of less than 3 parts per million can cause fish kills in certain situations.
Tests of the contaminated creek water revealed ammonia concentrations of more than 100 parts per million along with a significant amount of bacteria. Lab tests noted E. coli concentrations of up to 2.4 million in less than a half cup of water. That’s about 10,000 times the safe limit for swimming at state beaches.
No fish kill was reported as a result of the creek contamination. At the time, the DNR said there was very little water in the creek, which joins with others to flow into the South Wyaconda River. A test of the river water revealed significantly lower concentrations of ammonia of 0.6 parts per million.
The DNR officer who investigated the incident told Cat-Nip Ridge and the company that operates the facility — Seaboard Foods of Iowa — that manure on the surface of the field needed to be mixed into the soil to prevent further creek contamination. About a week later, the creek still had signs of contamination.
“The elevated pollutants indicated that no actions had been taken by Cat-Nip Ridge to stop or cleanup the manure release,” the DNR order said.
In November 2021, the department sent notices to Cat-Nip Ridge and the owner of the facility — Woodford Creek Farms — that detailed the water quality violations and said further enforcement action was forthcoming.
A recent agreement with Cat-Nip Ridge levied a fine of $8,000. There has not been an order in regard to Woodford Creek. Its facility — one of many it owns across the state — has about 4,500 swine, according to DNR records.
In 2019, Cat-Nip Ridge was ordered by the DNR to develop written procedures related to transferring and applying manure after its equipment spilled manure into another small waterway. It took immediate steps to contain the manure and was not fined for that incident, DNR records show.
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