MANURE SPILL - 25,000 gallons
Prestage Farms spilled 25,000 gallons of toxic liquid manure in Hamilton County.
This brings the total of manure spills in Iowa since October 1 up to eight. The recent manure spill, four miles Southeast of Williams, was discovered Monday afternoon by a local farmer who found liquid manure pooling in his field. The factory farm houses 15,000 hogs and is owned by Prestage Farms, a giant out-of-state corporation that owns many factory farms across the state, and is the 5th largest factory farm corporation in the US.
“This multi-million-dollar, out-of-state corporation is profiting off polluting our water, air and land.” Said Keith Kuper, farmer from Ackley. “That’s just not right. This factory farm needs a Clean Water Act permit and the toughest fines possible.”
The investigation into this spill is on-going, but we are asking the DNR to start using the Clean Water Act rule by issuing Clean Water Act permits to the six worst factory farm manure polluters in the past year.
DNR also commented that the factory farm sits unusually far away from the manure lagoon which means the toxic liquid manure has to be pumped a ways from the building to the lagoon. There have been numerous manure spills in the past couple years that have were caused by underground pipes breaking. DNR is currently working to find out if the manure spill reached nearby Tipton Creek.
“This factory farm hadn’t been inspected since 2012, why not? Why aren’t they inspecting factory farms with such an obvious hazard like pumping millions of gallons of toxic liquid manure a great distance?” said Kuper.
CCI members say this spill further proves factory farms are polluters and need to be held accountable for their pollution or be shut down. “We will be monitoring DNR’s response very closely to make sure they issue a Clean Water Act permit and tough fines and penalties.” Said Kuper.
Iowa’s more than 20 million hogs confined in thousands of factory farms produce nearly ten billion gallons of toxic manure every year. There have been more than 758 manure spills since 1996 and Iowa currently has more than 630 polluted waterways.
The six spills we highlighted as needing Clean Water Act permits bring up another threat to Iowa's environment. Three of those six spills were a result of an underground pipeline that transports the manure from the factory farm building to the manure lagoon.
At least three spills were caused by underground broken pipes in the last year - we know pipes break. Not just manure pipes...crude oil pipes too.