Former swine site owners ordered to get rid of 7 million gallons of manure

(Stock photo by Kent Becker, U.S. Geological Survey)

More than 7 million gallons of manure have been improperly kept at a former southern Iowa hog confinement for nearly 10 years, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

In a recent order, the DNR directed the owners of the Albia facility to dispose of the manure by the end of the year or be fined up to $5,000.

The site is owned by Jeffrey and Tina Smith, of Duluth, Minnesota, who operated the confinement with up to about 2,500 swine until 2014, the order said.

That year, the DNR told the Smiths to rid two outdoor lagoons of the manure, but that has not happened. Since then, rainfall has caused one of the lagoons to overflow an unknown number of times, but that is not believed to have caused any serious environmental problems, said Bill Gibbons, a senior environmental specialist for the DNR who has repeatedly visited the site.

“It wasn’t a huge overflow,” he said of one he noted in 2021. “It was like a trickle of overflow.”

There are no rivers close to the facility, which lies just southeast of Albia.

Gibbons estimates that the lagoons hold about 7.5 million gallons of liquid and about 1,800 tons of solid manure material. It could cost many tens of thousands of dollars to dispose of it by spreading it on fields.

State rules require manure to be removed within six months of the closure of an animal confinement.

The Smiths are required to provide status updates of the situation to the DNR every few months. If it isn’t remedied by the end of the year, the DNR said it plans to fine them $1,000 each month for up to five months.

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