Donnelle Eller

deller@dmreg.com

Last year's massive bird flu outbreak was "an underlying issue," although not an excuse, for a large waste spill that occurred at a northwest Iowa poultry facility, the company's attorney said Tuesday.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources says Sunrise Farms is responsible for a spill that resulted in 163,000 fish being killed — including 700 sport fish — along 18 miles of stream.

Last year's bird flu outbreak in Iowa and other states "caused substantial production issues that no one had ever dealt with, including Sunrise Farms," said Eldon McAfee, a West Des Moines attorney representing the operation, a unit of Sonstegard Foods, based in Sioux Falls, S.D.

"It was an underlying issue, not to make excuses," McAfee said. "My client ... regrets that we are going through this process."

State officials said a company manager three times denied causing the spill before admitting he asked his staff to dump waste from a tanker into a nearby field that eventually reached Stoney Creek. He said the tank was in the way of contractors who were working at the facility.

The company estimated it could have dumped up to 18,000 gallons of waste water that contained egg wash water, egg shells, soap, acid rinse and manure.

The state said the poultry operation also failed to get construction permits before building two egg-laying buildings in the area.

The Iowa Environmental Protection Commission on Tuesday agreed to refer the case to the Iowa attorney general's office, which can seek stiffer penalties. Iowa DNR's penalties are capped at $10,000.

State attorneys said the company had paid about $26,000 in restitution for the fish killed in the spill.

Sunrise Farms was among the first large poultry operations hit with highly pathogenic avian influenza a year ago that eventually resulted in about 32 million chickens, turkeys and backyard birds in Iowa to be destroyed.

Earlier in the meeting, members of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement chastised the state agency and commission for being too lax on animal operations that cause spills.

The Des Moines-based environmental group said the state experienced 67 manure spills last year from large animal operations, a nearly 40 percent increase from 2014.

The group has called for a moratorium on building new concentrated animal feeding operations, saying the facilities contribute significantly to the state's water quality problems — from high nitrate levels that Des Moines Water Works struggles with to blue-green toxic algal blooms that closed a record number of Iowa beaches last year.

CCI said the state is adding to the problem, approving 474 new livestock feeding operations last year.

They criticized proposed rule changes for concentrated animal feeding operations that the commission approved sending to the public for consideration. Among the changes: The rules would allow open lot feeding operations to market their manure elsewhere in the state.

Producers said the change would improve profitability in tough economic times, and enable fertilizer to be used where it's most needed.

Jess Mazour, a CCI organizer, said the proposal fed into a "get-big-or-get-out mentality. That's what got us into this problem: more concentration."