Fish Kill Event - Otter Creek

At approximately 3:30 AM this morning (9/5/2022), 44 rail cars of a Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) train derailed near Hampton, IA in Franklin County. The derailment caused an estimated two or three tanker cars carrying liquid asphalt to rupture and release a portion of their contents into Otter Creek (Note: the NRC report said Buffalo Creek). FO2 staff have been on-scene since this morning and report that the majority of the impact upon the creek is confined to the first 100 yards of the release, as the asphalt solidified relatively quickly upon release. Booms and absorbents were deployed earlier this morning to contain the released asphalt material and while there has been some associated sheen observed further downstream, the creek currently has low/slow flow and the sheen has not travelled extensively.

A small number of dead fish (30ish) have been observed in the immediate spill area, but several live fish were observed just 100 yards downstream of it. Multiple agencies are responding to assist with monitoring and cleanup, including EPA region 7. At the time of this writing, both EPA and UPRR environmental staff are on scene and DNR Fisheries will be/have been notified of the fish kill. Updated information will be provided as the incident investigation continues.

The total asphalt released is estimated at 65,000 gallons. Over 410 tons of asphalt and impacted sediment have been removed from Otter Creek and disposed of to date at the Landfill of North Iowa. Clean-up work on the east side of the bridge (downstream) is now mostly complete (the attached pic is from last week). Work on the west side of the bridge will continue this week. There was a small fish kill (about 50 specimens collected to date) that included two lampreys. Water monitoring has continued to show little downstream impact, other than high turbidity for a time while the impacted area was dewatered to aid in asphalt removal. The dewatering methods have been updated to improve this. EPA also continues to have a presence at the site and is monitoring clean-up. After the stream clean-up is completed, the next phase will be disposing of the damaged rail cars that are currently staged on CRP ground near the derailment area. The rail cars will likely not be completely disposed of until around November. Daily briefings by the remediation contractor (GHD, Chicago) with federal, state, and county officials are taking place.