The Grass Doctor

How to clean up large liquid fertilizer spills?

How do people clean up liquid fertilizer spills that go into storm drains or like creeks? Is there some sort of special way of chemical they use to stop wild life from dying?

Public Comments

1. The function of fertilizer is to make things grow, not kill them. If the product moves to a storm drain or creek, the product gets diluted.
2. Other than picking it up. no. It can cause too much plant growth in some lakes and streams, which can be harmful to animal life, but in most cases it's a temporary problem. There are some ponds and lakes in the midwest that are surrounded by farm fields that have become pretty choked with algae, but it's easy to blame the fertilizer on this problem.. it also occurs in places without fertilized farm fields near them if they have natural erosion.
3. You must use sawdust, burlap weenies, and absorbent sheets to soak up the fertilizer. I always use concentrated Alaskan Fish Fertilizer to feed my plants. If I spill some, it does not matter. Skunks, bums, and possums eat it like it was caviar.
4. You do everything you can to dam it up and absorb it and not let it get into drains and waterways. After it gets into water, well then it's largely a matter of dilution. For example ammonia is pretty toxic to fish, nitrate is not near as much a problem. If you have a river with any flow at all, the fertilizer is diluted to levels that won't cause kills in a very short distance. Anyway back to the cleanup, you dam it and then you can suck it up and what soaks in you remove the soil and spread it on fields and you replace the soil it's pretty straight forward really. Marv
5. The biggest problem with fertilizers getting into water ways is that it encourages too much growth of algae and micro-organisms. These micro-organisms use up all the oxygen which in turn kills the fish. In addition, it can make the water unsafe to drink for humans especially infants and causing something called blue baby syndrome. The measure of how much oxygen is used up is test called biological oxygen demand (BOD). If it is already in the water way, the best thing to do is to try to keep the oxygen levels up by using large mechanical aerators or in moving water by creating as many waterfalls as possible.
6. Lots and lots of plants. Marshland absorbs all types of pollution (and fertilizer) in large amounts and keeps it from heading down river to do more damage.