Red Oak Co-op says warm weekend led to massive Iowa fertilizer spill

It was an unseasonably warm weekend that finally allowed fertilizer to flow at a Red Oak farmers' cooperative in March.

Employees at the NEW Cooperative site in southwest Iowa had worked for days to ready a tank of urea ammonium nitrate that had crystallized over the winter. When they left the site on March 8 -- having not yet unclogged a distribution line that connects to the 500,000-gallon tank -- they didn't realize that a valve was left open on that line.

At some point over the weekend -- when no employees were present -- the warmth cleared the blockage. The tank released an estimated 267,000 gallons before workers noticed the spill when they returned Monday morning.

That is the explanation NEW Cooperative recently submitted to state regulators of what caused one of the worst known river contaminations in Iowa.

The precise start of the spill was unclear. National Weather Service data show that the weekend began cooler than usual in Red Oak but warmed into that Monday.

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The fertilizer flowed over land and through a stormwater drain into a ditch that directed it into the East Nishnabotna River. It killed nearly all the fish and other aquatic life for about 60 miles downstream into Missouri until its confluence with the Missouri River.

The fish death toll was estimated to be nearly 800,000.

NEW Cooperative said it typically does not have employees at the Red Oak site on the weekends during that time of the year. Crop planting was more than a month away.

The Fort Dodge-based cooperative made the disclosures recently in a "hazardous conditions" report to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Those reports are typically required within 30 days of an event like the fertilizer spill, but its report was delayed because cleanup at the site took months.

Workers built berms and dams to prevent further river contamination after the spill was discovered, and the city closed a flood gate through which the creek passes.

About 1,600 tons of contaminated soil and more than 200,000 gallons of contaminated water were removed from the site and spread on fields in the area.

NEW Cooperative declined a request Thursday to elaborate further on the situation, including what steps it might have taken to prevent a similar spill from happening again.

"At this time we have no information to share," said Gary Moritz, a spokesperson for the co-op.

Typical fertilizer tanks at Iowa co-ops are not required to have leak detection systems because they are surrounded by barriers that are designed to contain leaks, said Don McDowell, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.

In the case of the Red Oak spill, the leak occurred outside of that containment area.

Penalties not yet clear

The state's Environmental Protection Commission in May referred the matter to the Iowa Attorney General's office for litigation.

That's because the DNR determined that its maximum administrative penalty of $10,000 was insufficient. The department's referrals to state attorneys often result in negotiated settlements that are not publicly disclosed in court documents until they are finalized.

The state's largest fish kill of more than one million fish -- the result of a co-op's fertilizer spill into the Floyd River in northwest Iowa in 2002 -- resulted in a $150,000 fine, according to DNR records. About $120,000 of that was repayment for the value of the dead fish.

The East Nishnabotna spill killed fewer but more-valuable fish in Iowa, such as catfish and bass. The total value of the fish is about $226,000, DNR records show.

The Attorney General's office declined to describe the status of its litigation with NEW Cooperative: "We have received the referral but cannot comment beyond that at this time," said Alyssa Brouillet, a spokesperson for the office.

In Missouri, the state Water Protection Program has determined a fine for "the loss of aquatic life" in the final 10-mile stretch of the Nishnabotna, but an investigation of the incident is ongoing, said Joe Clayton, a program manager for that state's Department of Natural Resources.

Clayton declined to disclose the penalty amount because it has not been finalized and said his department might also refer the incident to the Missouri Attorney General’s office.

It's unclear how much money NEW Cooperative spent to mitigate the spill. The fertilizer that leaked from the tank might have been worth more than a half million dollars, based on fertilizer costs at the time.

The turtles survived

The Nishnabotna spill annihilated aquatic life downstream from the Red Oak cooperative. DNR officers found dead fish, frogs, mussels and snakes.

A sampling to determine the health of the river's ecosystem is set for September, said John Lorenzen, a fisheries management biologist for the department. It will look for fish, mussels, aquatic insects and others.

Lorenzen said anecdotal reports from anglers and other people at the river show that fish have returned.

"I'm optimistic that our fish community is recovering relatively quickly," he said.

And the department's recent turtle trapping in the river showed comparable populations upstream and downstream of the spill site, which was on the west edge of Red Oak. The fisheries staff had worried that the fertilizer might kill turtles that buried themselves in the riverbed for the winter.

"It looks like our turtle population was not impacted by the spill, which is great news," Lorenzen said.

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