KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) – Three companies have agreed to pay $3.65 million in penalties for a pair of ammonia pipeline spills that killed fish in Kansas and Nebraska.

The U.S. Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency filed the consent decree Friday in Kansas City, Kan.

They allege that the pipelines’ owner, Magellan Ammonia Pipeline, of Tulsa, Okla., and Houston-based operators Enterprise Products Operating and Mid-America Pipeline Company were responsible for the two anhydrous ammonia spills.

The first happened in late September 2004 near Blair, Neb., injuring one person and killing an estimated 1,000 fish along North Creek and a golf course pond.

A spill one month later near Kingman, Kan., killed more than 20,000 fish along Smoots Creek.

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