Town Awakes To Vast Tide Of Liquid Manure Hidden Under Snow

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

A valve failure on an icy pipe in Allegan County, Mich. caused liquid cow manure from a dairy farm to seep into local waterways and spread about five miles toward the town of Hopkins, Michigan Live reported.

The Department of Environmental Quality started investigating the spill of otherwordly proportions on Friday after receiving calls from Hopkins residents.

As of Saturday, the manure flow had stopped after authorities were able to plug the pipe, which was buried beneath over a foot of snow.

DEQ analyst Bruce Washburn told Michigan Live that such a leak isn’t typical.

“This type of spill is a rarity,” he said. “It’s pretty much straight manure, not diluted runoff from a field. … We don’t deal with these very often.”

The owner of the dairy farm, John Schaendorf, called the leak an “act of ice.”

“We didn’t want anything like (it) to ever happen,” he said. “We took care of the problem. It’s under control.”

The Allegan County Health Department told people to avoid the creek and river affected by the spill.

Movie still from “The Thing from Another World” (1951) produced by RKO Radio Pictures, via 31 Days of Horror

Latest Livewire
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: