ENTERPRISE, Minn. – Investigators have looked into a 2,800-gallon ethanol spill from a trafficc accident as a cause of a major fish kill on Rush Creek. The sequence of what happened, however, is suspicious:
July 23 (10:10 a.m.): A semi-truck hauling ethanol and a farm tractor collided six miles south of Utica. A hazmat team corralled and removed as much ethanol as possible.
July 23 (3 p.m.): Horrific storms swept the area, generating a tornado 20 miles south and dropping four to five inches of rain places.
July 25: An angler belonging to Trout Unlimited reported a massive fish kill on Rush Creek.
July 26: State investigators found dead fish, hundreds of them, mostly covered in silt on the creek bottom.
Carly McGinty, the Winona County feedlot officer, said a link between the ethanol spill and the fish kill was only tenuous. A ridge separates the spill and the Rush Creek’s south tributary, McGinty noted. Locals know, however, that the area is interlaced with underground karst formations with ever-changing water movements as the water table rises and lowers.
Rush Creek. Rushes line the upper reaches of the creek’s south branch, hence the name Rush Creek. South of Utica.
From creek bottom. Trout as long as 27 inches not uncommon from Rush Creek.
Ethanol profile
Ethanol is a grain-based alcohol used in vodka and other liquor and also as a low-cost additive to gasoline . Ethanol is easily absorbed into permeable surfaces. Because it’s corrosive, ethanol cannot be transported by pipeline.
What next in ID’ing fish kill source?
By the time that investigators learned of the kill, it was too late for conclusive autopsying. Also, the contaminant, whatever it was, had been washed downstream, probably all the way to the Root River, and impossibly diluted. The investigation has narrowed to the south branch of Rush Creek – a five-mile stretch from the Utica area down to the Enterprise ghost town on Interstate 90. Investigators have collected water samples and macroinvertebrate from the creek bed. Manure management records have been summoned from 60 farmers.