The Corporation, The Scientist and The Fish
/The Corporation, The Scientist and The Fish
In my previous post, I explored the process by which invasive fish species found their way into irrigation reservoirs, canals, and ditches throughout Northern Colorado during the late-nineteenth century. It’s a story of how farmers, entrepreneurs, and fish culturists altered the ecosystem to fit their economic and cultural prerogatives. Unfortunately, like so many other human manipulations of the natural world, the results were not always as they had intended. The next chapter brings corporations and science into the story....
When biologist Max Ellis waded into the icy waters of Fossil Creek Reservoir on December 30, 1917, dead fish surrounded him on all sides. That year, executives at Great Western Sugar contracted Ellis to study the impact of the waste byproducts it dumped into the reservoir and several other locales within the South Platte River watershed. For two weeks in December 1917 and January 1918 Ellis and two assistants conducted their fieldwork at several sites in rural Northern Colorado. At some locales, they observed fish suffocating in a competition for dwindling oxygen. In others, Ellis and his assistants found themselves in killing fields where lifeless fish floated across the watery landscape. In still others, they experienced an eerie emptiness resulting from streams stripped of all aquatic life, the evidence dispersed downstream. In each case, Ellis identified fermented beet pulp, a byproduct of Great Western's sugar-refining operations, as the principal culprit.[1]
Max Ellis was uniquely qualified to assess the impacts of Great Western’s pollution in 1918. Four years earlier, as a new biology professor at the University of Colorado, he wrote Fishes of Colorado, the definitive work on the subject. In it, he identified twenty-four native and twenty-one invasive fish species that mingled in the South Platte Watershed as it arced in a northeasterly direction through the Northern Colorado Plains. During his frequent fish surveys, Ellis evaluated aquatic habitat by measuring whether the quantity of dissolved oxygen in a body of water was suitable for healthy populations. He was particularly concerned about the consequences of indiscriminate dumping of industrial effluent into local streams, identifying examples of how wastes from mines and mills had suffocated fish populations in Colorado. So, when Ellis found himself surrounded by a sea of lifeless fish, he understood both the science and the circumstances.[2]
When Great Western commissioned Max Ellis to investigate the impact of its waste byproducts on the South Platte Watershed, the company was riding the crest of rapid industrial growth. From 1901-1903, entrepreneurs and Northern Colorado farmers took advantage of high protective tariffs, federal and state investments, a favorable climate, and compatible farming practices to build six beet sugar processing factories and plow up over 30,000 acres to grow the sucrose-laden vegetable. By 1917, the company operated thirteen factories and produced more sugar than any region in the United States. Since beets were bulky, perishable, and required copious quantities of water for irrigation and processing, it was critical that Great Western and its growers situated themselves within close proximity to local rivers and to each other. Access to flowing water facilitated cultivation, processing, and disposal.[3]
Beet sugar factories in northern colorado built from 1901-1927. graphic created by Philip riggs.
Understanding the environmental impact of that disposal requires some knowledge of the process by which beets became sugar. As thousands of contract laborers harvested beets each fall, growers transported them to factories with soil still clinging to them.[4] That soil contained un-composted manure, bits and pieces of beet tops, potash, and an untold quantity of microbes. Great Western estimated that this “trash” accounted for 1-2% of beets’ total weight. Upon entering the factory via a series of flumes, Great Western flushed this trash into adjacent streams. To extract the sugar, factory employees machine-sliced beets into narrow discs called cossettes, pressing them to release the sugar-rich juices. The company distributed the spent cossettes, or beet pulp, which consisted of the fibrous portion of the beet from which sugar had been extracted, in two ways. It sold some pulp to beet growers who used it primarily to feed livestock and flushed the remainder into adjacent streams. Great Western took no further responsibility for its effluent.[5]
As Max Ellis’ research showed, that effluent was overwhelmingly responsible for the fish kills he observed in 1917 and 1918. Ellis made physical observations and took water samples in eight locations over the course of a week. They included the inlets and outlets of multiple reservoirs, three natural streams, and at least one canal and one irrigation ditch. In waterways upstream of company effluent, Ellis observed healthy populations of native and invasive species. Below sites where Great Western released its pulp waste and in reservoirs connected to company canals and sewers, the story contrasted sharply. Ellis described “foul” and “turbid” waters punctuated with dead fish. In a rather evocative observation, Ellis and his two assistants stated that “these dead fish were so abundant that a single cake of ice 13 inches square contained over 20 small fish.” Describing one macabre scene, Ellis wrote that “all of the fish were covered with masses of heavy slime, which hung in festoons from the fins and gills.” Excavating their stomachs, researchers observed that the dead fish had not eaten in 36-48 hours.[6]
Ellis then took his field work into the lab. He exposed multiple fish species to varied concentrations of beet pulp wastes. Depending on the dilution, fish suffocated in a period ranging from two hours to eight days. Under laboratory-controlled conditions, the researchers had a closer view to the physical consequences of oxygen deprivation. Describing the mucous that developed on the fish, they observed that it first formed over the eyes, then appeared in irregular spots on the fins until it covered the entire body. Eventually the mucous was so thick that “it would be peeled off fishes’ bodies in strips.”[7]
Due to the confidential nature of Ellis’ study, Great Western’s response to it is difficult to gauge. The company employed a host of experts with general science knowledge and extensive training in the chemical processes needed to refine beets into sugar. It should come as no surprise then that Sidney Osborn, Great Western’s Head Chemist, received Ellis’ 1918 report. The report also named four chemists from the Fort Collins, Greeley, and Loveland factories who aided Ellis and his assistants. Only two others are known to have handled the report. What we do know is that the report never saw the light of day and that the company made no substantive efforts to address its impacts on local watersheds for the next three decades.[8]
As for Max Ellis, we’ll hear from him again. A few years after his study for Great Western, he took a position at the University of Missouri, eventually working for the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife on the Missouri River watershed. There, he would pioneer studies that strengthened the causal links between industrial wastes and water pollution. Eventually, those would provide the scientific foundations for holding companies like Great Western accountable for their effluent. I’ll tackle that in a future post….
Endnotes
[1] Max Ellis, “Report of the Investigations Concerning the Pollution of Streams and Reservoirs by the Various Sewages from the Factories of the Great Western Sugar Company,” February 25 1918, Records of the Great Western Sugar Company, Agricultural and Natural Resources Archive, Colorado State University.
[2] Ellis, Fishes of Colorado, (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1914).
[3] Charles F Saylor, Progress of the Beet - Sugar Industry in the United States in 1901 (Washington: G.P.O., 1902), 27–42; Dena Markoff Sabin, The Colorado Beet Boom, 1899-1926: Growth and Development of the State’s Sugar Industry (Arvada, CO: Western Heritage Conservation, Inc., 1981), 20–21; May, The Great Western Sugarlands, 44–60; Bartow J. Elmore, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015), 80–82; Geraldine B. Bean, Charles Boettcher: A Study in Pioneer Western Enterprise, (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, n.d.), 44–60.
[4] Sarah Deutsch, No separate refuge: culture, class, and gender on an Anglo-Hispanic frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
[5] Great Western Sugar Company, Technology of Beet Sugar Manufacture: A Textbook Describing the Theory and Practice of the Process of Manufacture of Beet Sugar (Denver, Colo., 1920), 21–30.
[6] Ellis, “Report of the Investigations.”
[7] Ellis, “Report of the Investigations.”
[8] Ellis, “Report of the Investigations.”