A tank full of a liquid that’s used to make corn sweetener ruptured in eastern Iowa on Monday.
The tank "implosion" happened at about three o’clock in the morning at the Roquette America Refinery in Keokuk. A sidewall in the plant was blown out and much of the fluid in the tank wound up in the Mississippi River.
Officials say up to 200,000 gallons of the sweetener spilled out, but there’s so much water in the Mississippi the fluid poses no threat to plants and fish in the river. There’s no threat to communities that use the Mississippi as a source for drinking water, either, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.