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CHS Oil Processing - Site of 1963 Oil Spill (Mankato, Minnesota)

USA / Minnesota / Skyline / Mankato, Minnesota
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(Formerly Honeymead and other company names)

www.chsinc.com

From:
www.pca.state.mn.us/publications/mnenvironment/spring20... :

In January 1963, severe cold caused the fracture of steel tanks containing three million gallons of soybean oil. A tidal wave of oil surged out, inundating many blocks of the city and eventually ending up in the Blue Earth and Minnesota rivers.

The oil flowed into the Mississippi River, where it joined more than a million gallons of industrial oil that had leaked from an oil company onto the frozen river at Savage a month earlier. It was March — four months later — before the Department of Health’s Water Pollution Control Commission (the MPCA’s predecessor) finally succeeded in persuading both companies to stop the continuing drainage of oil into the river.

As the ice melted, Minnesotans were shocked to see an estimated 10,000 migrating ducks dead in floating, oily goo on the Mississippi River near Hastings and Red Wing.
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   44°9'24"N   94°1'53"W
This article was last modified 13 years ago