Truck Spills 2,500 Gallons of Hog Waste
A semitractor tanker hauling about 6,000 gallons of liquefied hog manure tipped over, spilling half of the waste along an eastern Indiana highway, police said.
An estimated 2,500 gallons of the hog waste spilled from the truck in Wednesday’s accident but the environmental impact appears to have been minimal, said Steve Polston, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
“Mostly, the environmental impact is to the soil at the site of the incident. About 100 gallons might have spilled into a ditch,” Polston said.
Driver Robert Thompson of Morgantown was turning onto Indiana 67 from a county road when the tanker’s tires left the road, causing it to unhook from the rig and flip onto its side about 20 miles northeast of Muncie, Jay County sheriff’s Deputy Mitch Sutton said.
The truck, owned by Wagler Transportation Inc. of Nashville, was removing the waste from a confined hog feeding operation to spread onto farm fields as fertilizer.
Sutton said the Redkey fire department built a dike to contain the manure, which was then pumped into another Wagler tanker that was hauling manure in the area.
Wagler is expected to excavate the contaminated soil and spread it on farmland.