State Investigating 4.5-Mile Fish Kill in Clear Creek

A dead catfish is evident Wednesday in debris in Clear Creek near Pierce City

joplinglobe.com - by Wally Kennedy - May 28, 2014

‘COMPLETE KILL’

Pierce City, MO. - On May 16, an undisclosed quantity of Alimet, an amino acid compound that Tyson Foods uses as a feed ingredient for its poultry operations in the area, reportedly spilled at Tyson’s feed mill in Aurora.

Tyson workers captured most of the spilled compound and shipped it to its wastewater pre-treatment plant next to Tyson’s poultry-processing plant in Monett. Wastewater from the processing plant is pre-treated before it enters Monett’s municipal waste-treatment plant. Treated water from that plant flows into Clear Creek and is responsible for most of the flow in the creek.

The introduction of the chemical caused “a 100 percent kill” of the bacteria that process the effluent in Monett’s wastewater plant, according to Skip Schaller, utilities superintendent at Monett.

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