Rock Creek beet mystery solved

By Nate Poppino, Times-News writer
Monday, November 17, 2008 5:26 PM CST

TWIN FALLS, Idaho - The mystery of the floating sugar beets is solved.

Wind and rain from early November storms apparently pushed roughly 100 to 200 cubic feet of beets into Rock Creek from a site southeast of Twin Falls, said Sonny Buhidar, the Department of Environmental Quality regional water quality manager. The beets were piled near the edge of the creek, he said on Friday.

“It just gave,” he said of the pile.

Buhidar received calls about beets littering the creek on Nov. 3 and began searching for the bulk of them after confirming the tip. But he had little luck, he said, until a Nov. 6 Times-News story prompted several more calls.

The owner of the property where the beets were piled had used them as cattle feed and fertilizer, Buhidar said. The beets were too small to be processed for sugar, and the pile also included parts of beets trimmed off during processing. Such beets are often reused by farmers and ranchers, he said.

“It’s not a bad practice at all,” Buhidar said.

The man was cooperative, he said, and has both moved his pile back from the edge of the creek and cleaned up most of the beets left in the water. Both the Idaho Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued emergency permits and waivers for the work.

DEQ officials did not share the man’s name, but said he was initially unaware of the problem and was anxious not to be embarrassed publicly.

Some beets are sure to still be in the creek, Buhidar said — it would be “almost impossible” to remove every one. Large amounts of beets can be a threat to water quality, he said, affecting the oxygen content of the water as they fall apart and stirring up dirt and other substances.

The few that are left will be pushed to the sides of the creek by low-hanging branches and other obstacles, and sliced apart by rocks, he said.

“By January or February, we won’t have anything left,” he said.

The unusual case illustrates the power the public has to help out DEQ, Buhidar said. He encouraged anyone with water or other environmental concerns to contact the agency: 208-736-2190 or to visit the Twin Falls office at 1363 Fillmore St.

“We have more eyes out there, and that’s really helpful,” he said.

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