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Brown trout, other species devastated by pair of incidents in southwest

Farm manure spills blamed in massive fish kills

By LEE BERGQUIST
lbergquist@journalsentinel.com

Posted: July 31, 2004

Loyd - Two massive fish kills have been reported in southwestern Wisconsin, and state officials say it will take years for the damaged waters to recover.

Fish Kills Photo/Michael Sears Steve Dickey shown with his son Derek, 11. Both fished Willow Creek (background), just down the road from their home near Loyd before a manure spill killed the fish. Quotable It will come back. But my kids will be grown and gone before it does. - Steve Dickey Top Trout Streams The top five trout streams in southern Wisconsin: 1. Big Green River, Grant County 2. Castle Rock Creek, Grant County 3. Willow Creek, Richland County 4. Blue River, Grant County 5. Black Earth Creek, Dane County Source: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Manure Spills Blamed Graphic/Bob Veierstahler Fish kill

The Department of Natural Resources is putting the blame in both cases on cow manure that leaked into local streams and killed thousands of fish.

Fish kills are not uncommon, but DNR officials said they are shocked by the extent of the damage to a highly prized trout stream in Richland County and portions of the Pecatonica River in Lafayette County.

Manure has long served as an important source of nutrients for soils. But when applied in excess or improperly, the waste pollutes groundwater and local waterways.

The pollution cases once again are squaring sportsmen and environmentalists against the farm community. The two sides have battled each other for years, especially as farms have grown larger and animal waste disposal has become more difficult.

Officials believe that 90% or more of the brown trout - almost 700 trout in all - were wiped out along almost 12 miles of Willow Creek, and less than a mile of adjoining Smith Hollow Creek, after manure was spread on a field July 15 before a heavy rain.

Also dead: smaller fish such as creek chub, sucker and sculpin, and aquatic bugs, all food sources for the trout.

The Willow is a magnet for trout fishermen, drawing anglers from around the Midwest. The DNR says it is one of the top five trout streams in southern Wisconsin.

To the south, on the Pecatonica, thousands of fish were killed on 30 miles of the river and 10 miles of a tributary, Otter Creek, after a farmhand on July 20 left a pump unattended, spewing tens of thousands of gallons of liquid manure across a field and into Otter Creek.

The length of that kill is the longest in southern Wisconsin in more than 30 years, according to the DNR.

By Thursday, the DNR had found more than 2,000 dead fish - 27 different species - on the Otter and Pecatonica. Many more are believed to have died.

DNR fisheries biologist Gene Van Dyck said it will take two to three years for the fish population to recover on the Pecatonica, an easy-flowing river that draws canoeists and where the channel catfish is king.

Catfish, walleye and smallmouth bass are known to have been killed by the spill, the DNR said. Nine- to 12-pound walleyes were found dead. Two flatheads - 20 and 35 pounds - also were killed by the spill, the DNR said.

Van Dyck estimated it could take six to eight years for the cold-water Willow and Smith Hollow streams to return to their former splendor. He called the devastation "the most complete trout kill that I've seen during my last 36 years in southwest Wisconsin."

Anglers mourn loss

On Wednesday night, as the sun fell over the meandering Willow, a fox jumped through the tall grass, a handful of turkeys pecked at the ground and deer outnumbered dairy cows. Bald eagles have returned to the valley, and one of them was perched in a dead snag, looking for a meal.

"What's going to happen to them if there aren't any fish left?" asked Steve Dickey, who is one of the locals who fishes here.

Dickey said a dozen or more trucks are camped out along the stream before opening day of trout season, with license plates from Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa and Indiana.

"Guys tell me they come here because it's a chance to catch a big fish," he said.

The DNR's Van Dyck found dead browns that were 6 and 8 years old - long-lived fish that benefited from DNR restoration work and catch-and-release regulations.

Dickey and his two sons, ages 16 and 11, have pulled large browns from the stream for years.

Instead of a fly rod, Dickey uses a bobber and fly, or a night crawler, and hooks big trout, 18 to 20 inches long, while out-of-towners with $1,000 worth of equipment look on with envy.

"It will come back," he said. "But my kids will be grown and gone before it does."

His 11-year-old, Derek, fishes the Willow about 10 times a month, and following his dad's instructions, used a night crawler after a rain to catch some of his biggest browns. He feels "bad," he said. "It's not a great thing."

The Willow and Smith Hollow are fed from springs that flow from limestone hills that provide cold and clean water - two requisite characteristics of a top-flight trout stream.

The valley is a gift of nature. But the Willow was aided at considerable public expense.

Van Dyck estimates that in today's dollars, the DNR has spent more than $1 million buying land and easements over the last 25 years. The agency owns about 500 acres along the two creeks. The DNR has also built wetlands, cut brush to expose more of the creek to oxygen-producing light and laid rip-rap to improve fish habitat.

As word of the fish kills spread, anglers mourned the losses.

"It's heartbreaking," said Susan Fey, president of Southern Wisconsin Trout Unlimited. "It's a very lovely little stream."

Said Tom Bratton of Mineral Point, who lives near the Pecatonica: "I've hunted and fished here my whole life, and I think it's disgusting. The manure should be loaded somewhere else."

One farmer blames the rain

But one of the farmers involved, who farms along Smith Hollow in Richland County, said wet soil conditions have hamstrung farmers since spring.

"To me, this whole issue wouldn't be here if it weren't for the rain," said the farmer, who requested not to be named.

With his manure pit full from all of the rain and manure, the farmer said he had few options when a contractor sprayed the waste on a flat field, buffered by tall grasses, near the stream.

"I don't like killing fish," he said. "I didn't do this intentionally."

"These trout streams are sort of canaries in a coal mine," said Stephen M. Born, co-author of "Exploring Wisconsin Trout Streams: The Angler's Guide." Born is also a specialist on natural resource planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"These fish kills are acute warnings that we are not doing the job, so that our waters are swimmable, fishable and of the high quality that they should be."

Born and others think the state regulations that protect water from manure lack teeth. Madison lawyer Andrew Hanson has taken legal action against some large polluting farms, but he noted that lawmakers provided little of the money that was promised to help farmers after non-point source pollution rules were approved in 2001.

The rules for all but the state's largest farms prohibit farmers from releasing manure directly into streams. But before farmers are required to meet the law, they must write a management plan 70% funded by the state. State officials said almost no money has been made available.

If the DNR can't prosecute the farmers for violating runoff rules, the agency is still contemplating other charges. As of Friday afternoon, no decision had been made. The agency could seek damages ranging from $8 to $26 for every game fish killed.

"It's not going to make the state whole again," said Gordon Stevenson, chief of the runoff management section of the DNR.

The DNR is not identifying the two farmers. In interviews with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the farmers said the spills were accidents.

DNR criticizes pit management

The farmer near Willow and Smith Hollow creeks milks about 100 Holsteins and owns 700 acres where his family settled in 1863. He doesn't fish, but he hunts deer, and the heads of several large bucks line a living room wall.

While many anglers are hopping mad, his story reveals the challenge to farmers trying to find suitable land to spread farm waste during rainy weather. He used a contractor to partially empty his 150-foot-long manure pit in May and then hired him to pump out the pit in mid-July when it was nearly full again.

His fields on hills above the Smith Hollow were impossible to reach. Two other fields contained standing corn and ripe alfalfa. The manure would have damaged the corn and would have made the cattle sick after he chopped the alfalfa and fed it to them.

The next candidate: a flat 15-acre wedge of land near the Willow that the DNR says was sprayed with at least 200,000 gallons of manure. After an inch of rain fell the next day, July16, the manure is believed to have moved through 50 yards of buffer grass to a culvert under a road and into Smith Hollow Creek.

The farmer doesn't believe that much manure was sprayed, and he wonders whether a crew that sprayed tar on a road next to the stream the same day might also have played a role in the fish kill.

But Stevenson of the DNR said that the farmer should have planned better by cleaning out the pit earlier.

"I would question the management of the manure pit," he said.

Other pit built 'in harm's way'

On the Otter and Pecatonica, the second farmer and his son don't deny that it was their manure that spilled into the tributary. The family milks about 300 cows and owns 1,500 acres.

"I'm not proud that it happened," the son said Wednesday afternoon. "Last night I didn't sleep much, and I probably won't sleep much again tonight."

The family has farmed along Otter Creek since the early 1900s. The father and his brother built a $100,000 storage system in 1980 that holds 1 million gallons of manure and looks like a giant backyard swimming pool. But the brothers built it on a hillside that slopes to the creek.

As he smoked a cigarette in the shade, the son said that the spill occurred after a hired man finished filling a tanker with liquid manure, flipped off the switch and drove away to spread it on a field. He said the pump inexplicably turned back on again, perhaps jostled by the movement of the truck, and began spewing out manure at 1,200 gallons a minute until the mistake was discovered a half-hour later.

The farmers said that 20,000 to 30,000 gallons of manure flowed into the Otter, but the DNR says the amount could be a lot more because the fish kill traveled so far. The spill was exacerbated by a gully wash of rain the next day that, according to the father's rain gauge, dumped an inch of rain in 10 minutes.

"It suggests that they should have been more vigilant, especially with it being constructed in harm's way like that pit was," Stevenson said.