Up to 7,500 gallons of milk spill into Iowa waterway

Linh Ta | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption Thousands of gallons of milk spills into Iowa waterway The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reports up to 7,500 gallons of milks spilled into a western Iowa waterway after a tanker experienced a traffic accident.

A tanker hauling milk in western Iowa left the roadway Sunday evening, resulting in a major spill into an Iowa waterway, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Up to 7,500 gallons of milk spilled out of the tanker due to an accident east of Fontanelle, according to the Iowa DNR.

On Monday, Iowa DNR investigators found milk in a road ditch along Highway 92 flowing through a culvert and into a 1.3 mile-long tributary.

The milk then reached the Middle Nodaway River, which stretches from southwest Iowa to northwest Missouri. There was visible cloudiness in the water 50 yards downstream, according to the DNR.

Zimmerman Transport, based out of Wisconsin, removed the empty tanker and used a vacuum truck on Monday to recover pooled milk from the ditch. However, high flows in the stream prevented recovery downstream, according to the DNR.

It’s unknown how much milk reached the river or how much remains in the tanker.

"It consumes the oxygen out of the water faster than nature will replenish it, so organisms that rely on that oxygen will be stressed," said Dan Olson of the Iowa DNR.

Since milk has a high organic content, it can cause fish kills in streams. Oxygen levels in the stream drop as bacteria break down the milk. When milk concentrations are high, the resulting oxygen sag can kill fish and other aquatic organisms like crawdads and insect larvae, according to the Iowa DNR.

The water was clearing up, but it was still noticeably cloudy on Tuesday, Olson said.

The major wildlife concerns are for the tributary, which was most impacted by the spilled milk, Olson said. So far, he said he has not documented any killed wildlife.