Tragic accident leads to manure spill

A tragic accident may have concealed the seriousness of a spill in Harrison County more than a week ago.A worker at Furnas County Farms about forty miles north of Council Bluffs was driving a tractor applying fertilizer last Tuesday, September third, when he was killed in a farm accident. The Nebraska-based operation runs a hog lot at the Iowa farm, and applies the manure to farm fields, and after the tractor accident nobody noticed a manure pumping pipeline was ruptured. By the time it was discovered this week, at least half a million gallons was spilled, and there’d been time for it to flow into the Elk Creek, to Willow Creek, from there to the Boyer River and even into the Missouri. It may be too late to tell…DNR testing has turned up high levels of ammonia two miles downstream from the spill but no dead fish.