Thousands of gallons of manure spills into Crawfordsville creek

CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ind. -- Environmental officials were investigating how thousands of gallons of hog manure spilled into a central Indiana creek, killing most of the fish for four to nine miles.\nThe spill began Monday after a six-inch cap blew off a lid on a manure lagoon at Pohlmann Farms near Crawfordsville, about 40 miles west of Indianapolis, and spilled into Little Sugar Creek.\nThe spill was not discovered until Tuesday night, when a neighbor called state officials to report seeing dead fish, officials said.\n"We don't know how big the plume is, but what it flushes through kills everything," said Ron Posthauer, sanitarian for Montgomery County. "This is by far the worst that I've seen."\nThe Indiana Department of Environmental Management, along with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, was trying to determine the extent of the contamination and the number of dead fish.\n"I feel sorry that this happened," farm owner Klaus Pohlmann said Wednesday as crews pumped manure from a ditch into a tanker truck.\nAluminum caps on the lagoon will be replaced with stronger stainless steel caps "so this can never happen again," he said.\nThe amount of waste the farm produces will be reduced because it is selling some hogs, he said. The farm now has about 14,000 hogs, down from the 29,000 reported to the state in 2000.\nThis is the farm's third spill in three years. Pohlmann Farms paid a $24,000 penalty and $14,173 in damages for allowing manure to spill into the creek in 2001 and 2002.\nIn 1992, the farm paid a $17,000 penalty and $11,727 in damages for spills in 1989, 1990 and 1992.\nDepartment of Environmental Management officials planned to meet to consider possible penalties over the latest spill, agency spokeswoman Cheryl Reed said.