Strawberry Point dumps sewage due to rain

The northeastern Iowa city of Strawberry Point is dumping 750-thousand gallons of waste a day into a local creek as the lagoons at the city wastewater treatment plant are flooded with rainwater. An environmental specialist with the Manchester D-N-R office says the lagoon walls would collapse if the sewage was not bypassed. He says part of the problem is that groundwater from the city sanitary sewer system is entering the wastewater plant along with the sewage. Officials will be checking Fenchel Creek, and the Maquoketa River to see what type of impact the bypass has on the creek and the lake at Backbone State Park.