Secretary of the Interior Stewart l. Udall said today his Department is making intensive efforts to pinpoint the immediate and long-term effects of serious pollution on the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers that already has killed at least 2,000 waterfowl, plus and undetermined number of fish, beavers, muskrats and other wildlife.
Studies underway, Secretary Udall said, will assist in determining whether there will be further danger to fish and other aquatic life from depleted oxygen levels in backwater areas when oil, which has been responsible for the pollution crisis, oxidizes during the warm summer months.
The problem began last December 9 when an oil pipeline broke at the Richards Oil Company storage facilities in Savage, Minn., southwest of Minneapolis and St. Paul, dumping about 1, 400,000 gallons of crude oil into a marshy impoundment on the south bank of the Minnesota River, about five miles above its confluence with the Mississippi. Cold weather temporarily confined the oil.
Six weeks later, a 3,000,000-gallon soy bean oil tank owned by the Honeymead Food Products Company in Mankato, Minn., farther southwest of the Twin Cities area, burst and spread oil over city streets and surrounding land to depth of three feet. Disposal of the oil by dumping into the Blue Earth River was halted by the Federal Government. Efforts then were made to dispose of it in a ravine on a private farm six miles south of Mankato.
However, the oil from the ravine seeped into a nearby creek, then into the Blue Earth River, to the Minnesota River and finally, with warming weather, into the Mississippi itself.
Meanwhile, warmer weather freed the crude oil near Savage, and by the last week in March both the soy bean oil and crude oil were draining into the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. Federal, State and local official concentrated remedial actions at Spring Lake—a backwater area where large numbers of migrating waterfowl stop.
On April 1, Federal wildlife officials attempted a large-scale baiting operation to keep the migrating waterfowl from the deadly contaminated water. They were only partly successful. Despite the efforts of dozens of volunteer citizens working day and night in “Operation Duck Rescue”—trying to clean and keep alive hundreds of dying oil-soaked ducks—Federal officials now estimate that as many as 2,000 ducks were killed by the oil.
In announcing Department of the Interior effort to find out the answers to questions about future effects of the pollution, Secretary Udall noted that the process—roughly comparable to the organic breakdown of sewage in a treatment plant.
Attorneys of the Department also are studying the conditions that led to the pollution problem, Secretary Udall said.
“The possibility of large-scale river pollution from oil storage tanks, pipelines, and other similar facilities is of great concern to us in the Department of the Interior,” Secretary Udall said, “especially as such pollution may endanger parts of the National Wildlife Refuge system and vast areas of the Nation’s water areas. We believe such incidents are preventable.”
“We have an obligation to protect fully the national interest in such cases of large scal pollution,” he added. “If this disaster had struck in a waterfowl wintering area, the entire resource of the Mississippi Flyway could have been endangered.”
Conferences already have been held among representatives of the Department of the Interior, Minnesota state officials, and U.S. Public Health service representatives to develop possible measures for preventing similar incidents in the future. These include safety devices on oil-storage tanks, revetments and dikes around storage areas, improved skimming devices for removing oil from matter surfaces, and zoning arrangements on river flood plains.
Secretary Udall said the Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service laboratory at LaCrosse, Wis., is speeding its studies of the pollution. The laboratory is operated by the Service’s Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife
Department biologists noted that the heroic rescue efforts to save the oil soaked ducks were made against staggering odds. Cleaning of the ducks robs them of vital oils needed to keep the afloat and warm. When the natural oils are removed, the ducks are vulnerable for several weeks.
