A livestock operator who has had trouble in the past with environmental violations will get a warning from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources over a manure spill at a north Iowa hog operation. D-N-R environmentalist Glen Carper investigated manure runoff into White Fox Creek from a DeCoster Farms sow unit located about three miles south of Clarion. Carper says he took samples above and below where a tile entered the creek and could make no determination of an impact. Carper says workers had plugged one tile to keep the liquid manure from running into the creek once the problem was discovered. The spill was first reported Friday. Carper says workers shouldn’t have sprayed so much manure on the saturated ground. Carper says he’ll issue DeCoster a notice of violation for applying the liquid manure at a rate that was “too great hydrologically.” He says it overloaded the saturated field and caused a runoff. Since no dead fish were found, Carper says the warning likely be the only D-N-R action.Carper says they’ll notify them of the rule violation and he says they’ve already indicated that they’ll change the way they run their irrigators.
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