The wet conditions in Iowa have caused issues with the handling of human and animal waste. Department of Natural Resources Environmental Specialist, Doyle McKeever, says they got an anonymous report last week of manure runoff reaching Storm Lake.
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McKeever says they traced runoff to manure application on fields at Don Jackson’s Pike Farms cattle feedlot. He says Pike had been spreading manure for three days.
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McKeever says Pike is going to stockpile the manure until the conditions are better for applying it to the land. Ice covering the lake prevented them from knowing if there were any dead fish. He says producers have had issues with finding the right time to apply manure without it getting into waterways.
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The Iowa D-N-R reported earlier in the week that there were “several” wastewater discharges from city treatment plants. A spokesman in the Des Moines field office says rapid snow melt and rainfall overwhelmed city treatment plants causing several communities in northwest, western and southern Iowa to report wastewater discharges.