Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Fish kill blamed on dairy farm runoff
Jim Lynch / The Detroit News
Croswell -- Noll Dairy Farm Inc. is not the mammoth agricultural operation many had expected to find at the end of the evidence trail in last week's Black River fish kill.
With only 200 head of cattle and a diversified number of products, the Noll farm is far from the large scale farming operation most often associated with harmful discharges.
But this week, Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality announced Noll Dairy was the source of the contamination that killed perhaps as many as 200,000 fish. Early on in the investigation, state officials suspected the contaminant was manure coming from a farm near the Black River.
"We observed the runoff coming from (Noll Dairy)," said Robert McCann, DEQ's spokesman. "So now we're trying to figure out what the circumstances were that led to that runoff. It flowed into a creek near the farm that led to the river."
For several Department of Natural Resources workers, the sheer number of dead fish that turned up last week was a shock.
Gary Towns of the DNR's fisheries division said last week that "in my 30 years as a fish biologist, this is probably the largest (fish kill) I've ever seen."
Among the species of fish found floating along the banks of the river were smallmouth bass, catfish, northern pike, rock bass, sunfish, suckers, minnows and darters.
Mark Noll of Noll Dairy declined to discuss in detail the events that led to the discharge, but described what happened as an "accident."
The farm, he said, has been in operation since 1925 and had never been involved in a major environmental event. Last year, the Michigan Farm Bureau recognized Noll Dairy for its conservation efforts.
"This is no different than when one of the municipalities' sewer systems overflows," Noll said. "We had a discharge. We're not permitted to do that."
The DNR and the DEQ are considering if any penalties are warranted.
"If we find someone is indeed the cause of this, they're going to be held responsible for it," McCann said.
hmmmmm..... maybe the trout and sturgeon missed this one....
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