The Indiana Department of Natural Resources found an estimated 1,000 dead fish in the Duck Pond on Monday.
Water tests are pending to determine the cause, but officials say the dumping of an unidentified chemical might have killed the fish.
Rich Huyck, director of the Muncie Bureau of Water Quality, said a company from Indianapolis was pumping a substance into a storm sewer nearby Monday afternoon. He said he couldn't reveal the company's name or the chemical it was pumping until test results are in.
The storm sewer the company was pumping into connects to a concrete pipe that dumps into the pond.
Officials from the Muncie Bureau of Water Quality, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources followed the concrete pipe in the Duck Pond to the storm sewer where the company had been pumping.
Officials told the company to stop all pumping; the company wasn't aware the sewer led to the pond, Huyck said.
Though officials can prove the company was pumping, they don't know if this killed the fish. The equipment the company used was rented Monday, but the fish looked as though they had been dead for two to four days, Huyck said.
The water did have a lack of oxygen, which might have caused the fish deaths, but something had to consume the oxygen, Kevin Kenyon, associate vice president of Ball State's Facilities Planning and Management, said.
Huyck said water from the pond and the concrete pipe was also tested. Results will be in Thursday.
Kenyon said he could not remember a previous time when this happened at the Duck Pond, which is located near the intersection of Bethel and McKinley avenues.
"Right now we need to work on getting rid of the fish before they start to smell," Huyck said.
Rick Conrad, Fishers Biologist with the Muncie Bureau of Water Quality, said the dead fish consisted of mostly carp and green sunfish.
Kenyon said there is no reason to think the university had something to do with the fish deaths, but he said whoever did should be held responsible.
The water, if contaminated, will clean itself naturally, and the fish who had originally migrated to the pond will replace themselves, Kenyon said.
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