On the weekend of March 9-11, 2024, a NEW Cooperative employee left a fertilizer valve open that polluted the East Nishnabotna River in Iowa with nearly 265,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen. It was reported that this leak killed almost all of the aquatic life 60 miles downstream, naming it one of the worst river contaminations in Iowa’s history. It was estimated that the fertilizer leak killed more than 750,000 fish in Iowa and Missouri, and it wasn’t until the contaminated water flowed into the Mississippi river that it was diluted enough to stop wreaking havoc on the aquatic life inhabiting it. There have since been continuous operations to remove the contaminated soil surrounding the shoreline. NEW Cooperative could face upwards of $10,000 in fines for this environmental disaster.
Picture this alternative series of events if NEW Cooperative had chosen to use services, such as Gripp, to help manage their operation. Before this farm employee finished up his job for the day, he received a reminder from his phone to check the valve status. Even if he didn’t see the reminder on his phone, the orange Gripp tag on the valve would have reminded him that he was supposed to check the valve status. He’d pull his phone out of his pocket, open up his camera app, and scan the QR code on the Gripp tag. This would provide him with a link to this valve’s asset page, where the employee would be able to track the valve status. Before documenting the status in Gripp, he would do a quick check and notice that it was left open, prompting him to close the valve. He would then note the valve’s status as “closed” in Gripp, which would document the time, date, and name of the employee changing the status, and the fertilizer would have been kept safely where it belongs.
Gripp recognizes this tragedy as something preventable with our services. The leakage was due to failure to check the pipes for debris and maintain cleaning services. Because of this, it was harder to detect an open valve. The real question is when were the pipes last cleaned or checked? Implementing Gripp would easily solve this problem by using lightweight tracking and allowing NEW Cooperative to set reminders for its employees for things that are easy to forget or lose track of, such as routine pipe checks.
Gripp has multiple options for tracking activity on your farm operation. One of those includes checking the statuses of things such as equipment usage, location, valve statuses, oil levels, etc. Anything that you need to track, Gripp can do it for you. Something as harmful as this incident could have been prevented with a simple routine status check and a reminder for the employee to check it. It requires little effort to document information in Gripp that could help you prevent potential accidents and save your operation from a costly disaster later down the road.