POSTVILLE --The rolling hills of Northeast Iowa, home to farm fields and bucolic pastures, might seem like an unlikely front in a battle over cleaning up Iowa's waterways.

But a bitter dispute surrounding the city of Postville and wastewater running into a nearby creek has residents and officials pointing fingers and feuding over how harmful the discharge is to the environment.

Hecker Creek near the city has been described as Gatorade green by those who want to see it cleaned up. Over the decades, the creek that flows into the Yellow River has served as depository for wastewater from packinghouses once treated in Postville's lagoon system.

During worse times, the creek was also known as Blood Creek when it ran red because of discharge from the town's slaughterhouses.

After years of watching what they believe is the deterioration of the creek and the Yellow River it flows into, landowners and citizens banded together. The group they formed, Northeast Iowa Citizens for Clean Water, has waged a legal battle against the city and Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking plant and Postville's largest employer.

The group is also taking on the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which it alleges has allowed the city to discharge overly polluted water into Hecker Creek. Chloride discharged from the city's wastewater system comes in part from Agriprocessors, which uses salt in its kosher processing.

A new $10 million wastewater treatment plant in Postville sits idle while the matter is sorted out in court.

Environmentalists from across the state are waiting to see how the DNR resolves the Postville problem as the state is set to move forward with stricter water quality standards.

Rich Leopold, director of the Iowa Environmental Council, is frustrated with the Postville case, because it appears the state was establishing rules to accommodate Agriprocessors. And he believes the Postville situation could set precedent in the state's water clean-up efforts.

The opposing forces in Allamakee County are distinct.

"It's obviously a very high quality resource, and it's a very nasty pollution situation, so you have two kind of extremes there," Leopold said.

A city official and lawyer for Agriprocessors are defending their actions, pointing out they follow wastewater guidelines established by the state.

"Agriprocessors has accepted DNR's permit limits," said Jay Eaton, an attorney for the company.

Eaton added the company has made a "substantial" financial commitment to the new treatment plant.

Unique resource

Hecker Creek feeds into the Yellow River, a cold-water trout stream, one of a handful nestled in the Northeast Iowa landscape and treasured by anglers. The streams are fed by underground springs, creating cool temperatures even through summer months and providing higher levels of dissolved oxygen that support trout and other cold-water species.

Hecker Creek is lined in many places by limestone slopes that are a feature of the karst topography found in the northeastern part of the Iowa.

Jerry Anderson, a lawyer representing the citizens group and a professor of environmental law at Drake University, said a high salt content in the water can kill aquatic life.

And he said Hecker Creek runs directly into groundwater, which means the wastewater could contaminate wells.

"I'm surprised that people aren't more upset about it because … it amounts to a death sentence for these waterways," Anderson said.

Others come to the defense of Agriprocessors and the city.

Farmer and state Sen. Mark Zieman, a Republican from Postville, said the Yellow River is in better shape now than in previous decades. He farms along the river's banks and says conservation efforts, including buffer strips, terracing and no-till practices to reduce soil erosion, helped.

"When I look at that river, and I know what that river used to be like when I grew up, and we have cleaned up our waters a lot," Zieman said.

His trucking company does business with Agriprocessors, which he said is a key industry in his region of the state. The company employs about 700 people in a town with a population of just 2,500.

Zieman is disappointed people who want to improve waterways are delaying the opening of a new treatment plant that could help do just that.

"I find that terribly ironic," he said.

Cleaner water

John Schultz and Dave Smith, two retired farmers, are founding members of Northeast Iowa Citizens for Clean Water, which formed two years ago.

A defining moments for Smith was witnessing the effects of a fish kill on the Yellow River in March 2000. That day, he noticed a number of bald eagles in the trees and walking on the ground near the riverbank. Then he saw all of the dead fish they were feeding on.

"Some of those eagles were so full of fish that they wouldn't fly," Smith said.

An investigation into the 2000 fish kill by the DNR blamed improper operation of the city's treatment lagoon system.

Schultz and Smith grew up on farms near Postville, and their families still own land in the Yellow River valley. A historical marker notes where Smith's great-great-great-grandfather, Rueben Smith, made his home, one of the first white settlements near the Yellow River.

Smith takes issue with the idea the river near his family's farmstead is cleaner now than when he was growing up.

"In the '50s, when I was a little kid, we'd catch trout out here in Yellow River. Today, I don't know if there's any fish there at all," Smith said. "Is that an improvement?"

Schultz is chairman of the Allamakee County Soil and Water Conservation District, which he has served since 1986. He has monitored waterways, including a smaller cold-water spring that runs through his family's property, and he is disturbed by what he found.

Schultz said tests of the spring discovered elevated levels of chloride, a pollutant he suspects is coming from the city's treatment system through Hecker Creek. He's also concerned the loss of wastewater through a sinkhole in the creek could end up contaminating the underlying groundwater.

Postville's public works director, Gary Simmons, said the new plant will significantly reduce the amount of chloride and pollutants sent to the stream. Efforts have also already been made, Simmons said, to reduce the amount of salt or chloride that leaves the lagoon.

"I think that the lagoon water we have out now can be improved substantially by the treatment plant. Is it the end-all answer? No, but it's a beginning. It's a good start," Simmons said.

Environmentalists aren't convinced the new plant will significantly cut down on chloride levels, and say the limit set by the DNR is too high. The permit would allow nearly 17,700 pounds of chloride, or more than 8.8 tons, to be discharged into the small creek every day.

The citizens group won its first round in court against the DNR, which issued a permit and variance that allowed for relaxed chloride standards for the proposed wastewater treatment plant. The group argued the permit violated state and federal law as well as DNR rules by allowing a new discharge into a "losing stream," a stream where water seeps into groundwater.

A Polk County District Court judge ordered DNR officials to provide an explanation of their decision.

Steve Williams, a senior environmental specialist with the DNR who has worked on the Postville case, said the department is not required by federal or state law to study how the environment might be impacted before issuing a discharge permit. He added he couldn't talk about the reasons the permit was issued while the matter is in litigation.

"I don't feel free to get into commenting on those kinds of details," he said.

EPA acts

The citizens group has also taken its battle to the federal level, filing a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids for what members allege are continuing water discharge violations by Agriprocessors. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency joined the group's suit in seeking penalties against Agriprocessors, alleging the company violated the federal Clean Water Act.

The Iowa Turkey Products, now closed, also discharged water into the lagoon system. That plant burned down in 2003, and the city of Postville reached settlements before the lawsuit was filed.

EPA attorney Pat Miller said the extent of the alleged violations and the fact the incidents led to a fish kill interested the federal agency in the Postville situation.

"In this case, there were two very significant industries in a small town, and sometimes the ability of small towns to keep up with the needs of big industries and to handle those issues -- there's some disparity there," Miller said. "And Postville is certainly not the only place where this has happened or has the potential to happen."

Agriprocessors denies the allegations, and its attorney, Eaton, maintains the relationship works.

"I believe the city of Postville has tried hard to operate its industrial wastewater treatment lagoon system in a way that accommodates and treats the wastewater generated by the industries that contribute wastewater to that system," Eaton said.

A trial date is set for October 2006.

Contact Charlotte Eby can be reached at (515) 243-0138 or chareby@aol.com.