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Two companies that have had environmental troubles with manure in
recent years have another such problem in south-central Minnesota.
State pollution officials confirmed Wednesday that a manure spill
occurred two weeks ago near the ValAdCo co-op's hog-raising
operations near Olivia and destroyed part of a sugar beet crop on an
abutting farm.
Estimates of the spill vary widely, from 10,000 gallons to more
than 100,000 gallons.
Eddie Crum, ValAdCo's CEO, said that the spill was relatively
small and that the company hasn't had previous problems transporting
its manure. "We regret that anything occurred, but it was not
any kind of hazard to the environment, and the damage to the crop in
the ground is easy to make right," he said.
The cooperative, which has seven facilities in Renville County
and includes about 120 farmers, markets between 4,000 and 5,000 hogs
weekly.
The accident apparently occurred when liquid manure was being
piped through a six-inch hose from a large basin, or lagoon, on
ValAdCo's property to be spread on a farm about two miles away.
The piping contractor for ValAdCo was Winfield Ag. Enterprises
Inc. of Olivia, said officials at the Minnesota Pollution Control
Agency (MPCA). A hole in the hose caused manure to fill a county
ditch and to spread several inches deep across about an acre of
sugar beets on property, owned by a different farmer, that wasn't
supposed to be fertilized.
MPCA district manager Myrna Halbach said there were no signs that
the manure reached a creek about a half-mile away. Although
ValAdCo's Crum said the site of the spill is now "as good as
new," Halbach is concerned that nitrogen in the
manure-saturated soil may seep down to contaminate groundwater that
lies a few feet below. "If we get a heavy rainfall, we could
have problems," she said.
Halbach said a contractor would probably plow straw or sawdust
into the soil within the next day or two to absorb and bind with
some of the excess nitrogen.
Mike Tisdell, the farmer whose land was flooded by the manure,
said that he was away on vacation when the spill was reported and
that his sons specifically told ValAdCo's manure-handling contractor
not to clean up the spill without permission from Tisdell or one of
his partners.
Despite that warning, Tisdell said, a cleanup company came onto
his property the next day with a bulldozer and scraped the manure,
sugar beets and six inches of topsoil off an acre of land and hauled
it away.
Tisdell was formerly a major shareholder at ValAdCo, but he left
the co-op and sued it for fraud in a case that is still pending.
Tisdell said he plans additional legal action over the recent manure
spill and over how the cleanup was handled.
Tisdell disputes the company's claim about the size of the spill.
The ground was dry, he said, and it would have taken "100,000
gallons or more" of liquid manure to saturate the soil several
inches below the surface.
ValAdCo has had several problems related to odor and air quality
from its lagoons, which were declared a potential threat to human
health earlier this year in a Minnesota Department of Health memo.
The co-op has covered its 14 lagoons and made other changes to
reduce complaints, Crum said.
ValAdCo's contractor, Winfield Ag., had at least two previous
spills in the fall of 1998, Renville County officials said.
Winfield's owner, Roger Kingstrom, also had a manure accident on his
own hog farm three years ago, in which 70,000 to 100,000 gallons of
liquid manure overflowed a holding pond, crossed a field and spilled
into Beaver Creek. That spill contaminated about 19 miles of the
waterway and killed nearly 700,000 fish. Kingstrom pleaded guilty to
criminal charges of not notifying officials about that incident for
three days.
Kingstrom declined to comment on the recent accident.
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