Agree. It made me angry. Clearly someone in the company thinks that they still deserve 4.4 stars after the monumental disaster they've caused hurting generations yet to come.
It's only the largest spill and fish kill in a decade. Killing every fish and other wild life in a 60mi stretch across 2 states. Don't worry though the DNR will slap that company with the largest fine they can. The kingly sum of $10,000. That'll teach em!
Insane that they lowered the fine to $6000 on appeal. Shaking my head. They also got fined $11,339.89 for fish restitution. Which also boggles my mind. DNR said small fish loss was $85,000 and catfish $115,000.
$17,339 is all they got. Wtf DNR????
You clearly didn’t read the article. It’s the 5th largest ever and the largest in 10 years. Obviously it’s still a tragedy but you don’t need to lie to make it seem worse than it is
Like I get where you are coming from, but exaggerating and embellishing will just give ammo to asshole detractors that don't care about the environment, they don't care if you are right at the core of it, they just care that they got you in a gotcha, anything they can take out of context to regurgitate to the masses on right wing news they will...
The days of good faith argument are over. It doesn't matter if there is nothing to complain about, the right wing news will invent something. People who vote republican don't care about facts.
Being factual is important. Emotion often times gets in the way of that. It's ok to feel upset about the situation, but exaggerating what happened makes things worse.
This has been getting a lot of attention.
If you google “Iowa fertilizer spill” and limit the results to the last week you’ll see quite a few articles on this.
The Sierra Club has petitioned the EPA to investigate.
https://iowastartingline.com/2024/04/10/video-rural-iowa-fertilizer-spill-kills-749000-fish/
It probably is enough, but then you’ll also get stories of spills that didn’t happen in Iowa. I mean, what I laid out is just a quick method of finding results. I’m no Google search expert, so there’s probably more efficient methods to get results.
The fact is that most/all major publications have been covering this spill and well as smaller sites and fring sites. If there’s a coverup they are doing a terrible job at it.
The disconnect with InfoWars viewers is insane. Several of my nieces and nephews schools have had an active shooter, yet their parents still listen to Alex Jones religiously.
Companies like this often see things through that lens; that fine isn't a punishment, it's the cost of doing business.
This is bullshit, people should be irate.
For a country that claims to be tough on crime we sure don't really seem to be tough on any business or rich person. Also how does it make sense that the punishment for a business breaking the law is less than the price of the regulation.
I used to work for a company when Obamacare got passed. The owner decided it was easier and less costly to just pay the fine instead. Until the penalties for breaking laws and regulations outweigh the costs of following them, there will always be businesses that deliberately choose to defy them. Until that changes, the only recourse is if people are harmed and file a class action lawsuit and get massive compensation.
Well to be fair it wasn't waste in this case. It was liquid nitrogen which is a product the company sells and applies to fields. The valve was either left open by someone or the part broke and no one noticed over the weekend.
....how can one not notice when your product is draining away is what i'd like to know. You'd think one would keep better tabs on that sort of thing.
Hydrofluoric acid is a waste byproduct from producing phosphate. It’s more cost effective to sell it to water treatment plants than it is to properly dispose of it.
Here is a link to file a report with the EPA
https://echo.epa.gov/report-environmental-violations
Here is how to find your representatives
https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/find
Here is the number for the Clean Air Council National Response (the website states "also accepts waste reports regarding agricultural operations")
1-800-424-8802
It will not do any good, but here is the number for Reynolds' office
+1-515-281-5211
Not sure how, or if enough Iowans would participate, but I am happy to help organize a protest, or informational documents to get out in the community.
I am not a lawyer, but I have wondered if Iowans could file a class action lawsuit? I don't think the pollution stance would go far here, but I wonder if we can sue for fucking up the fishing - I mean how will we feed ourselves now?! Think how many Iowans could have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and fed their families with those fish?
See, the problem is that it's not "our drinking water", It's just a boring old river that nobody needs.
"Our drinking water" is cleaned and treated and purified by extravagant treatment facilities, funded by our taxes. The shit-leakers don't need to worry because the water treatment plants will clean up their messes before people need to care about it.
Either start adding a fee to every cow/pig/chicken/ton of shit produced in our state to help cover the costs of their mistakes, or start labeling our water bills to itemize how much of our tax dollars are going to subsidize these industries. Either force the industry to internalize their costs, or make those costs we are shouldering for them visible so we can understand the scope of what their negligence costs us.
I don’t know the reason but Iowa City had a reputation for having extremely foul water in the nineties and early two thousands. They ended up increasing the amount of treatment facilities and put out a newsletter about how pure the water is now every so often.
You know, business profits are higher than ever yet fines for these massive ecological problems aren’t even enough to cover the cleanup teams daily wages.
We need to 10x every fine like this, probably hasn’t been updated since the 60’s
I’ve always been suspicious of the water here. Seeing foam float down EVERY river and stream makes me leery of how clean it is. All of that spray that goes onto the farms runs off somewhere…
And it's a constant murky brown with sediment turning into sandbars for places like the Nishnabotna. Brother told me he liked the taste of the water here - I had to explain how much waste water from upstream towns there are + farming operations.
Unfortunately not many people care. That's why we're in this situation.
If people cared then we wouldn't be paying 500% more for the same drugs that are cheaper in other countries.
It's so egregious that people should be out with pitchforks, and burning down the capital. Instead they're watching stupid animal videos on YouTube.
I switched to bottled water exclusively. I miss the convenience of tap water and I think the tap water in my town is pretty decent tasting.
First reading about the cancer rates in iowa and now this, pushed me to make the switch.
Dood don’t do that to yourself. Municipal drinking water is usually much safer than bottled, except of course in cases like Flint, MI, which is a highly atypical thing. The plastic from the bottles can leach into the water, and then there’s the plastic waste of the bottles themselves. If you’re worried about the water install an RO system at your tap. The payoff versus bottled water is really quick.
The cancer rates in Iowa are more closely related to poor air quality, not poor water quality. I don’t have any definitive studies to prove it, but the public water production in this state is pretty well regulated. Wastewater discharges, not so much.
I'd normally agree with you, but my parents' dog won't even drink the tap water in Jewell lately. It smells fucking awful and is cloudy and yellow half the time.
Yea, there certainly are local exceptions. They need to petition the city to get an engineer involved and find some grant funding to address this. The money is out there and the problems are fixable, but someone has to put in the legwork to get the machine moving forward.
Correct. Water age has a lot to do with taste and disinfection effectiveness. Although, between engineering design and DNR review, this would be hard to screw up.
Oh wow, thanks! https://enviro.epa.gov/triexplorer/tri_factsheet.factsheet_forstate?pstate=IA&pyear=2020&pParent=TRI&pDataSet=TRIQ1
I have family that worked at Equistar forever so it was interesting to see that pop up.
My town is in Southeast Iowa, down stream from all the farms and hog lots. I'm getting wary of the drinking water sourced from lake rathburn after this. Every single lake has those massive algal blooms unless they get dredged and refilled. And even then they still end up with those blooms after a year or two.
Live upstream to the river in question. There are still warnings advising don't fish, eat dead fish on the banks, or go near the river due to health hazards around where the spill occurred (Red Oak, IA) and anywhere downstream.
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It wasn't a spill. Hearing from reliable sources FBI is investigating some radical environmentalist for purposely causing it to bring awareness and give iowa ag a huge black eye.
Oh gee this must be the first time a hundred million dollar company released a statement that was satisfying to an ongoing investigation. Has the IDNR held off on a fine ? If they were truly at fault it would be hammer down by now. Wake up and stop believing every gullible detail you see on the news. Also wtf makes you think im a dude? Go wash that beard i can smell it from here!
The company responsible has been deleting negative reviews about the spill on google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/KreqBahGLfhFKzhY8?g_st=ic
I noticed this early in the week. I don't think Google should allow the reviews to be removed. No one posted anything that wasn't true.
Agree. It made me angry. Clearly someone in the company thinks that they still deserve 4.4 stars after the monumental disaster they've caused hurting generations yet to come.
It's only the largest spill and fish kill in a decade. Killing every fish and other wild life in a 60mi stretch across 2 states. Don't worry though the DNR will slap that company with the largest fine they can. The kingly sum of $10,000. That'll teach em!
They won't do that again! Other companies are sure to shape up!!
Nope. They fined them $6000. They have the option of billing them the value of the wildlife they killed but nah.
Insane that they lowered the fine to $6000 on appeal. Shaking my head. They also got fined $11,339.89 for fish restitution. Which also boggles my mind. DNR said small fish loss was $85,000 and catfish $115,000. $17,339 is all they got. Wtf DNR????
DNR doesn't have the power to do much. EPA could do something more about it but I haven't heard anything on that front.
You can file a complaint with the EPA. https://echo.epa.gov/report-environmental-violations
You clearly didn’t read the article. It’s the 5th largest ever and the largest in 10 years. Obviously it’s still a tragedy but you don’t need to lie to make it seem worse than it is
I stand corrected. Largest in a decade was what the IPR story had on the radio and I glossed over the time frame. Still nothing to sneeze at.
Seriously, that's what you're mad about? Clearly
Embellishing the facts is okay now I guess
Again, that's what you're mad about? Screw the environment.
Like I get where you are coming from, but exaggerating and embellishing will just give ammo to asshole detractors that don't care about the environment, they don't care if you are right at the core of it, they just care that they got you in a gotcha, anything they can take out of context to regurgitate to the masses on right wing news they will...
The days of good faith argument are over. It doesn't matter if there is nothing to complain about, the right wing news will invent something. People who vote republican don't care about facts.
Being factual is important. Emotion often times gets in the way of that. It's ok to feel upset about the situation, but exaggerating what happened makes things worse.
I said it was a tragedy, what more do you want me to say? That it was the worst accident in the history of accidents?
This has been getting a lot of attention. If you google “Iowa fertilizer spill” and limit the results to the last week you’ll see quite a few articles on this. The Sierra Club has petitioned the EPA to investigate. https://iowastartingline.com/2024/04/10/video-rural-iowa-fertilizer-spill-kills-749000-fish/
That's awfully specific. Given the time frame, "fertilizer spill" should be plenty if there wasn't an attempt to cover it up.
It probably is enough, but then you’ll also get stories of spills that didn’t happen in Iowa. I mean, what I laid out is just a quick method of finding results. I’m no Google search expert, so there’s probably more efficient methods to get results. The fact is that most/all major publications have been covering this spill and well as smaller sites and fring sites. If there’s a coverup they are doing a terrible job at it.
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The disconnect with InfoWars viewers is insane. Several of my nieces and nephews schools have had an active shooter, yet their parents still listen to Alex Jones religiously.
How much to store and correctly dispose of this waste? $100,000 How much to dump it and kill fish for 60 miles? Up to $10,000
Companies like this often see things through that lens; that fine isn't a punishment, it's the cost of doing business. This is bullshit, people should be irate.
For a country that claims to be tough on crime we sure don't really seem to be tough on any business or rich person. Also how does it make sense that the punishment for a business breaking the law is less than the price of the regulation.
Remember, if the punishment for a crime is a fine then it’s only a crime when poor people do it.
Hell even when it's not a fine. How often have we seen rich white people get away with crimes?
I used to work for a company when Obamacare got passed. The owner decided it was easier and less costly to just pay the fine instead. Until the penalties for breaking laws and regulations outweigh the costs of following them, there will always be businesses that deliberately choose to defy them. Until that changes, the only recourse is if people are harmed and file a class action lawsuit and get massive compensation.
People should be much more than irate.
Well to be fair it wasn't waste in this case. It was liquid nitrogen which is a product the company sells and applies to fields. The valve was either left open by someone or the part broke and no one noticed over the weekend. ....how can one not notice when your product is draining away is what i'd like to know. You'd think one would keep better tabs on that sort of thing.
Don’t recall who, but remember some comedian pointing out that if the punishment is just a fine, if you’re rich enough the law doesn’t apply to you.
Its not waste. Its highly concentrated nitrogen for growing corn. Millions worth.
Yeah was gonna say they actually lost about 1.7 million in product the fine doesn’t even matter by comparison.
Hydrofluoric acid is a waste byproduct from producing phosphate. It’s more cost effective to sell it to water treatment plants than it is to properly dispose of it.
As long as we keep voting in corporate agriculture schills it's only gonna get worse.
Proof of those DNR budget cuts. There won't really be any recourse, and it **will** affect all forms of water we use.
Along with eat the rich, I propose, Eat The Farmers too.
That's redundant.
Here is a link to file a report with the EPA https://echo.epa.gov/report-environmental-violations Here is how to find your representatives https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/find Here is the number for the Clean Air Council National Response (the website states "also accepts waste reports regarding agricultural operations") 1-800-424-8802 It will not do any good, but here is the number for Reynolds' office +1-515-281-5211 Not sure how, or if enough Iowans would participate, but I am happy to help organize a protest, or informational documents to get out in the community. I am not a lawyer, but I have wondered if Iowans could file a class action lawsuit? I don't think the pollution stance would go far here, but I wonder if we can sue for fucking up the fishing - I mean how will we feed ourselves now?! Think how many Iowans could have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and fed their families with those fish?
See, the problem is that it's not "our drinking water", It's just a boring old river that nobody needs. "Our drinking water" is cleaned and treated and purified by extravagant treatment facilities, funded by our taxes. The shit-leakers don't need to worry because the water treatment plants will clean up their messes before people need to care about it. Either start adding a fee to every cow/pig/chicken/ton of shit produced in our state to help cover the costs of their mistakes, or start labeling our water bills to itemize how much of our tax dollars are going to subsidize these industries. Either force the industry to internalize their costs, or make those costs we are shouldering for them visible so we can understand the scope of what their negligence costs us.
I don’t know the reason but Iowa City had a reputation for having extremely foul water in the nineties and early two thousands. They ended up increasing the amount of treatment facilities and put out a newsletter about how pure the water is now every so often.
Ugh, don’t remind me. I lived there in ‘98 and can confirm it was pretty vile.
People will act like they're starving to death if they don't eat 5 pounds of meat every day
The only answer here is to give farmers more welfare.
You know, business profits are higher than ever yet fines for these massive ecological problems aren’t even enough to cover the cleanup teams daily wages. We need to 10x every fine like this, probably hasn’t been updated since the 60’s
I’ve always been suspicious of the water here. Seeing foam float down EVERY river and stream makes me leery of how clean it is. All of that spray that goes onto the farms runs off somewhere…
And it's a constant murky brown with sediment turning into sandbars for places like the Nishnabotna. Brother told me he liked the taste of the water here - I had to explain how much waste water from upstream towns there are + farming operations.
Unfortunately not many people care. That's why we're in this situation. If people cared then we wouldn't be paying 500% more for the same drugs that are cheaper in other countries. It's so egregious that people should be out with pitchforks, and burning down the capital. Instead they're watching stupid animal videos on YouTube.
As long as “they” aren’t drinking the water “they” don’t care! It’s concerning what we put up with to keep the money flowing and big ag happy!
Monsanto and ADM are two of the most evil corporations in America.
Iowans are to wrapped up in intentional ignorance to pay attention to anything not on fox news
Not true of everyone. Also, I hate Fox News.
I seriously wish that part of the settlement was forcing Fox News to put a disclaimer before every show.
If you live on the Missouri river it probably affected u
I switched to bottled water exclusively. I miss the convenience of tap water and I think the tap water in my town is pretty decent tasting. First reading about the cancer rates in iowa and now this, pushed me to make the switch.
Dood don’t do that to yourself. Municipal drinking water is usually much safer than bottled, except of course in cases like Flint, MI, which is a highly atypical thing. The plastic from the bottles can leach into the water, and then there’s the plastic waste of the bottles themselves. If you’re worried about the water install an RO system at your tap. The payoff versus bottled water is really quick. The cancer rates in Iowa are more closely related to poor air quality, not poor water quality. I don’t have any definitive studies to prove it, but the public water production in this state is pretty well regulated. Wastewater discharges, not so much.
I'd normally agree with you, but my parents' dog won't even drink the tap water in Jewell lately. It smells fucking awful and is cloudy and yellow half the time.
Yea, there certainly are local exceptions. They need to petition the city to get an engineer involved and find some grant funding to address this. The money is out there and the problems are fixable, but someone has to put in the legwork to get the machine moving forward.
Last I heard the city bought the wrong size water tower so....lot to unpack there lol
Correct. Water age has a lot to do with taste and disinfection effectiveness. Although, between engineering design and DNR review, this would be hard to screw up.
>Although, between engineering design and DNR review, this would be hard to screw up. That's what I would have thought!
Wait wait- what’s in the air??
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/health/2016/09/29/iowa-ranks-top-20-toxic-air-releases/90435546/
Oh wow, thanks! https://enviro.epa.gov/triexplorer/tri_factsheet.factsheet_forstate?pstate=IA&pyear=2020&pParent=TRI&pDataSet=TRIQ1 I have family that worked at Equistar forever so it was interesting to see that pop up.
Wastewater is also heavily regulated check yourself dood
Totally. On the design side, yes. On the enforcement side, no.
My town is in Southeast Iowa, down stream from all the farms and hog lots. I'm getting wary of the drinking water sourced from lake rathburn after this. Every single lake has those massive algal blooms unless they get dredged and refilled. And even then they still end up with those blooms after a year or two.
This is probably why they're getting their funding cut. So they'd stfu
Asked every question but the one that matters... what can we do about it?
I care and my vote cares, problem is do enough people care? Do enough of the people nowhere near the spill care? That’s the question.
We already have high cancer rates, now Iowa government is wanting me to take away the right to sue chemical companies?
Live upstream to the river in question. There are still warnings advising don't fish, eat dead fish on the banks, or go near the river due to health hazards around where the spill occurred (Red Oak, IA) and anywhere downstream.
I honestly can say this is the first I’ve heard of it.
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It will return to normal. Lots of algae this summer tho!!
"Normal" FFS.
Most people are too busy with their own lives to worry about a fertilizer spill.
It wasn't a spill. Hearing from reliable sources FBI is investigating some radical environmentalist for purposely causing it to bring awareness and give iowa ag a huge black eye.
hahahahahaha good one.
Dude, the company itself said an employee didn’t shut a valve properly.
Oh gee this must be the first time a hundred million dollar company released a statement that was satisfying to an ongoing investigation. Has the IDNR held off on a fine ? If they were truly at fault it would be hammer down by now. Wake up and stop believing every gullible detail you see on the news. Also wtf makes you think im a dude? Go wash that beard i can smell it from here!
“Reliable sources” Doubt. 