Slurry spill

Automatically stored draft

In the Swiss village of Wittenbach (canton of St. Gallen), just a few kilometers from the Vorarlberg border, several thousand liters of liquid manure leaked into two streams on Monday evening. A child had previously started a slurry pump.

At around 7 p.m., the St. Gallen emergency call center received a report that the Chrobelbach and Hofenbach streams were polluted. As it turned out, a child on a farm in Wittenbach had pressed the switch on a slurry pump. As a result, several thousand liters of acrid excrement were pumped onto the forecourt of the farm and then flowed into the Chrobelbach via a gutter. From there, the toxic mixture then found its way into the Hofenbach.

The fire department then tried to contain the damage and set up a stream barrier, and fresh water was also supplied below this barrier. However, this came too late for countless fish: the entire stock was wiped out over a length of several hundred meters, and even a few kilometers further on, dead fish were still washing up on Tuesday morning.