Company will pay $7,500 for McLoud Run fish kill

A holding company has agreed to pay $7,500 for releasing chlorinated water into a Cedar Rapids trout stream in January, killing an estimated 400 fish.

NS Holdings LLC will pay about $5,800 in restitution, most of that covering the loss of 336 trout in McLoud Run, Iowa’s only urban trout stream. The firm, based in Dallas, also will pay $282 for the cost of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ investigation and a $1,500 fine, according to an order made public this week.

The fish killed happened when a pipe broke overnight Jan. 23 in an unoccupied commercial building at 4425 Center Point NE. The city of Cedar Rapids noticed a large flow of drinking water leaving the system around 3:30 a.m. Officials tracked the leak to the former storefront and stopped the flow, but not before about 450,000 gallons of treated water went into the stream, the Iowa DNR said.

When investigators arrived, they found cloudy water and some dead fish. The cloudiness prohibited them from determining how many dead fish were in the deeper pools, but they estimated the spill killed 336 rainbow and brown trout, 61 suckers and seven green fish.

On Jan. 25, the same day this fish kill was reported to the public, the Iowa DNR announced the city of Cedar Rapids would pay $22,000 for a March 2023 fish kill in McLoud Run. In the earlier incident, 1,700 fish were killed when chlorinated water entered the creek because of a city water main break.

McLoud Run, which runs just east of Interstate 380 in Cedar Rapids, has had 13 fish kills since 1997, when the Iowa DNR started stocking it with fish. The creek is fed by a natural spring near the 3900 block of Center Point Road NE, which keeps the water cool enough to support trout.

Cedar Rapids now is considering installing a pressure monitoring system to underground water lines to more quickly identify and stop leaks and breaks.

“We think it would help, especially in that McLoud Run area, to try to minimize the duration of those leaks,” said Roy Hesemann, Cedar Rapids Utilities director.

Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com

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