Poison in Nebraska
The AltEn Disaster
At Mead, Nebraska, an ecological disaster has taken place with many fingers being pointed but few real solutions. How we got here is a story which is fascinating, infuriating and frightening. It’s a story of greed, the triumph of money over morality, of death and injury. And it’s a story of incompetence and negligence. In short, a witches brew of the frailties of the human condition.
AltEn began as a vision for a cleaner future. A feedlot was established on the site whose design enabled the retention of most of the manure generated by the cattle in pits below the feeding stations. This manure is mixed with water (or stillage as explained later) in a giant digester tank where the natural decaying process produces methane gas. The gas is piped from the digester tanks and burned as a fuel to boil water which is mixed with the appropriate yeasts and grain to create ethanol. Once refined, the ethanol is sold, the stillage off the ethanol production returns to the digester tank and what remains of the grain is called distiller’s grain or wet cake. It is a very palatable and nutritious feed which then returns to the feedlot to be fed to the animals which will later be sold as beef. And any solids remaining in the digester tanks can be land applied for fertilizer. AltEn opened to grand fanfare about twenty years ago, with a ribbon cutting, speeches by the leadership of Nebraska’s farm organizations and a visit by the Governor. It was a massive investment in the “future” of cattle feeding, the efficient marriage of technology, the environment, and an old industry looking to improve its image and reduce the cost of beef. Government, too, had a hand in the investment at AltEn since the village of Mead had annexed farmland and provided tax increment financing to the company when it constructed the plant.
Within six months of opening an explosion occurred in one of the digesters. The company was highly leveraged and a bankruptcy soon followed. The plant sat idle for several years while the bankruptcy court reviewed the web of LLCs which made up the entity. Finally Dennis Langley, the original owner who had once been a speech writer for Joe Biden and had made his fortune in the gas pipeline business, purchased the entity out of bankruptcy. After a few years the plant was ready for operation.
The owners of AltEn recognized an opportunity in converting pesticide treated seeds into ethanol. Treated seeds are purchased by farmers all across the United States. Pesticides and fungicides are applied to the outside of the corn as a dust and portions of that dust are taken up by the plants after they germinate. These low-level pesticides inhibit insects from eating them. Some, called Neonicotinoids, are a derivative of the tobacco plant whose nicotine content makes tobacco unpalatable for most insects. Each year seed companies produce millions of tons of excess treated seed which must be destroyed once the “sell by” date has passed which is costly for the companies.
In 2012, AltEn notified the State of Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality that they were going to begin using treated seeds in the manufacture of ethanol at the plant. AltEn also notified NDEQ that they would be unable to feed the wetcake produced to animals in the feedlot since the seed company labels clearly prohibited feeding the residue to livestock because of the side effects. NDEQ replied that this was simply a “minor change” in their permit and the modification would not require a public hearing.
Given the green light to produce ethanol from treated seeds, the plant began doing just that. A few months later residents of Mead began noticing a putrid, acrid, rotting odor generated at the AltEn plant and began complaining to public officials. The complaints fell on deaf ears. As time went by, more and more seed companies donated their seed to AltEn, saving them the disposal costs and the company was producing 24 million gallons of ethanol annually. In late 2020, AltEn solicited business in a promotional ad stating they processed 98% of all treated seeds in North America!
Because the wetcake was high in organic matter AltEn promoted it as a soil conditioner and began land applying it to fields around the plant, even doing so at the University’s Eastern Nebraska Research Farm (or ENREC) using a permit issued to them by the Nebraska Department of Agriculture. They also entered agreements with neighboring landowners to apply some of the excess stillage produced in the distilling process to nearby farm fields.
Meanwhile area residents noticed that something had changed. They began to cough, their eyes burned, their throat hurt and the smell permeated the community—on the playgrounds at school, at the local football field, in the parks and neighborhoods. One Mead area resident spent hundreds of dollars on a sick dog who had encountered some of the applied wetcake and had a bad reaction. Dead raccoons were located near a pile of wetcake on a farm field. Complaints piled up at NDEE but the “business as usual” response was that AltEn was “in compliance” with their work.
AltEn had received permits from the Nebraska Department of Agriculture to land apply the wetcake. When NDA finally tested the wetcake in 2019 they found levels of clothianidin at over 85 times the maximum limits permitted by law and a “cease and desist’ order was issued. AltEn was ordered to reclaim the wetcake applied, over 33,000 tons at several locations, and remove it which they did, stockpiling it back on their own lot. But the business continued to operate and the wetcake continued to accumulate on the AltEn site as the clock kept ticking. Today the stockpiled wetcake covers 16 acres of land south of Mead and would top Memorial Stadium if piled on the football field.
Judy Wu-Smart is a specialist in the culture of beekeeping. Dr. Wu-Smart maintained several bee colonies on ENREC property near the AltEn plant. In 2017, Dr. Wu-Smart saw the loss of every bee colony on the property. That happened again the following year and again the following year. Dr. Wu-Smart began to notice irregular and erratic behavior among the bee colonies. It was obvious to Dr. Wu-Smart that something in the environment must be contributing to the sickness in her bee colonies. She began to document this erratic bee behavior and noticed it in other insects as well and shared her concerns with friends.
On January 10th, 2021, the Guardian Newspaper broke the story of AltEn in a broad and scathing attack on both the plant itself and the regulators who failed to protect the environment. Dr. Wu-Smart’s work was prominently featured in the story, and on January 23, 2021, Senator Bruce Bostelman introduced LB 507 which prohibited the use of treated seed in the manufacture of ethanol if the byproduct could not be fed to livestock. NDEQ also issued an order to AltEn to cease production of ethanol at the plant for the immediate future.
At the February hearing for LB 507, several individuals testified in support of the bill. Former Senator Loren Schmit, a 24 year veteran of the Legislature and a man considered to be the grandfather of the ethanol industry in Nebraska indicted NDEQ. Senator Schmit told the committee that Nebraska had been approached by seed companies over 30 years earlier about using the treated seeds in the manufacture of ethanol and that NDEQ and the ethanol industry had rejected that request soundly.
Then came the freakish cold weather of mid-February, 2021. A digester line in the plant froze and burst, dumping 4 million gallons of pesticide saturated water into creeks which ran across University ground as well as the nearby National Guard camp before eventually emptying into the Platte River.
As spring arrived, a concerned citizens group formed to exert pressure on the state to resolve the crisis. The Perivallon Group joined with the Nebraska Sierra Club and Bold Nebraska to conduct a town hall meeting in Mead after NDEE backed out of an earlier commitment for one, sighting the Attorney General’s lawsuit against AltEn which had been filed on March 1. Many individuals attended the town hall in Mead, expressing their frustration with NDEE and the entire fiasco at AltEn. The Perivallon Group also began digging through the many complaints listed on the NDEE website.
Because the scope of the environmental damage is so extensive at AltEn, the Perivallon Group drafted a Legislative Resolution which called for the Legislature to appoint a Special Committee made up of members of multiple standing committees to do a thorough assessment of the environmental damage in Saunders County The study includes an examination of the regulatory failures, the financial damage, the potential damage to humans and animals, as well as efforts to examine possible criminal activities which may have taken place. Senator Carol Blood agreed to carry the LR after other senators declined. The LR was introduced late in the session and was not heard at the time, but a public hearing was finally held on the LR on February 24th.
Senator Blood put together a second town hall meeting in Mead during the summer which produced more anger and frustration about the lack of action. Residents felt that NDEE was stonewalling them about the agency’s plans for the AltEn plant. Following the second town hall meeting, a select committee of Mead residents was chosen by NDEE officials to meet behind closed doors with representatives of NDEE.
And the work of NDEE to stonewall continued at the hearing on February 24th when the chosen committee testified that a special committee of the Legislature was “not needed” and that NDEE was resolving problems in an effective and timely manner. Senator Bostelman introduced LB 1102 in January of 2022 which ostensibly beefs up the authority of NDEE to police and monitor businesses. But at that hearing Mr. Macy stated that he “already had the authority” to act on AltEn. IF he had the authority then why didn’t he use it years earlier?
We constantly hear businesses complain that they are overregulated. Many regulations are ridiculed as unnecessary and costly, but it is because of bad actors like AltEn that regulations must be vigorously enforced and strenuously followed. The attempts of NDEE to “coach AltEn to compliance” were never going to happen. The company has mechanics liens filed against the property which date back to 2015. They have paid no property taxes for several years, falling into arrears. They have been permitted to sell off much of their equipment, dismantle their biochar unit and sell that, and even tried to sell pesticide saturated biochar as recently as December, 2021. There is no bottom to the behavior of the executives who ran AltEn and were willing to foist an environmental disaster on Saunders County, Nebraska for money which is probably sitting in offshore banks. Which is more astounding, the scope of the damage caused by the plant or the unmitigated gall of the managers who tried to get away with it (and did for several years)?
Meanwhile, NDEE is relying on the seed companies to clean up the site. The seed companies lay out what they intend to do and the state simply accepts what they say, fearful that the seed companies may walk and leave the state with the bill.
At the LR 159 hearing, Jim Macy stated that it would take 3 to 5 years to cleanup just the AltEn site. An audible gasp was heard in the room. Mead residents are still unclear about what will be done, how it will be managed and when they can expect their lives to return to normal. And the damage surrounding the AltEn plant is unknown, except that pesticides have been detected in well water near Ashland and a pond six miles downstream from AltEn saw a 100% kill of all fish and invertebrates living in it.
AltEn made a dumping ground of Nebraska, polluting our land, air, and water. Every Nebraskan should be outraged that our state government went along with and supported that destruction. Our children’s future depends on vigilance.
AltEn began as a vision for a cleaner future. A feedlot was established on the site whose design enabled the retention of most of the manure generated by the cattle in pits below the feeding stations. This manure is mixed with water (or stillage as explained later) in a giant digester tank where the natural decaying process produces methane gas. The gas is piped from the digester tanks and burned as a fuel to boil water which is mixed with the appropriate yeasts and grain to create ethanol. Once refined, the ethanol is sold, the stillage off the ethanol production returns to the digester tank and what remains of the grain is called distiller’s grain or wet cake. It is a very palatable and nutritious feed which then returns to the feedlot to be fed to the animals which will later be sold as beef. And any solids remaining in the digester tanks can be land applied for fertilizer. AltEn opened to grand fanfare about twenty years ago, with a ribbon cutting, speeches by the leadership of Nebraska’s farm organizations and a visit by the Governor. It was a massive investment in the “future” of cattle feeding, the efficient marriage of technology, the environment, and an old industry looking to improve its image and reduce the cost of beef. Government, too, had a hand in the investment at AltEn since the village of Mead had annexed farmland and provided tax increment financing to the company when it constructed the plant.
Within six months of opening an explosion occurred in one of the digesters. The company was highly leveraged and a bankruptcy soon followed. The plant sat idle for several years while the bankruptcy court reviewed the web of LLCs which made up the entity. Finally Dennis Langley, the original owner who had once been a speech writer for Joe Biden and had made his fortune in the gas pipeline business, purchased the entity out of bankruptcy. After a few years the plant was ready for operation.
The owners of AltEn recognized an opportunity in converting pesticide treated seeds into ethanol. Treated seeds are purchased by farmers all across the United States. Pesticides and fungicides are applied to the outside of the corn as a dust and portions of that dust are taken up by the plants after they germinate. These low-level pesticides inhibit insects from eating them. Some, called Neonicotinoids, are a derivative of the tobacco plant whose nicotine content makes tobacco unpalatable for most insects. Each year seed companies produce millions of tons of excess treated seed which must be destroyed once the “sell by” date has passed which is costly for the companies.
In 2012, AltEn notified the State of Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality that they were going to begin using treated seeds in the manufacture of ethanol at the plant. AltEn also notified NDEQ that they would be unable to feed the wetcake produced to animals in the feedlot since the seed company labels clearly prohibited feeding the residue to livestock because of the side effects. NDEQ replied that this was simply a “minor change” in their permit and the modification would not require a public hearing.
Given the green light to produce ethanol from treated seeds, the plant began doing just that. A few months later residents of Mead began noticing a putrid, acrid, rotting odor generated at the AltEn plant and began complaining to public officials. The complaints fell on deaf ears. As time went by, more and more seed companies donated their seed to AltEn, saving them the disposal costs and the company was producing 24 million gallons of ethanol annually. In late 2020, AltEn solicited business in a promotional ad stating they processed 98% of all treated seeds in North America!
Because the wetcake was high in organic matter AltEn promoted it as a soil conditioner and began land applying it to fields around the plant, even doing so at the University’s Eastern Nebraska Research Farm (or ENREC) using a permit issued to them by the Nebraska Department of Agriculture. They also entered agreements with neighboring landowners to apply some of the excess stillage produced in the distilling process to nearby farm fields.
Meanwhile area residents noticed that something had changed. They began to cough, their eyes burned, their throat hurt and the smell permeated the community—on the playgrounds at school, at the local football field, in the parks and neighborhoods. One Mead area resident spent hundreds of dollars on a sick dog who had encountered some of the applied wetcake and had a bad reaction. Dead raccoons were located near a pile of wetcake on a farm field. Complaints piled up at NDEE but the “business as usual” response was that AltEn was “in compliance” with their work.
AltEn had received permits from the Nebraska Department of Agriculture to land apply the wetcake. When NDA finally tested the wetcake in 2019 they found levels of clothianidin at over 85 times the maximum limits permitted by law and a “cease and desist’ order was issued. AltEn was ordered to reclaim the wetcake applied, over 33,000 tons at several locations, and remove it which they did, stockpiling it back on their own lot. But the business continued to operate and the wetcake continued to accumulate on the AltEn site as the clock kept ticking. Today the stockpiled wetcake covers 16 acres of land south of Mead and would top Memorial Stadium if piled on the football field.
Judy Wu-Smart is a specialist in the culture of beekeeping. Dr. Wu-Smart maintained several bee colonies on ENREC property near the AltEn plant. In 2017, Dr. Wu-Smart saw the loss of every bee colony on the property. That happened again the following year and again the following year. Dr. Wu-Smart began to notice irregular and erratic behavior among the bee colonies. It was obvious to Dr. Wu-Smart that something in the environment must be contributing to the sickness in her bee colonies. She began to document this erratic bee behavior and noticed it in other insects as well and shared her concerns with friends.
On January 10th, 2021, the Guardian Newspaper broke the story of AltEn in a broad and scathing attack on both the plant itself and the regulators who failed to protect the environment. Dr. Wu-Smart’s work was prominently featured in the story, and on January 23, 2021, Senator Bruce Bostelman introduced LB 507 which prohibited the use of treated seed in the manufacture of ethanol if the byproduct could not be fed to livestock. NDEQ also issued an order to AltEn to cease production of ethanol at the plant for the immediate future.
At the February hearing for LB 507, several individuals testified in support of the bill. Former Senator Loren Schmit, a 24 year veteran of the Legislature and a man considered to be the grandfather of the ethanol industry in Nebraska indicted NDEQ. Senator Schmit told the committee that Nebraska had been approached by seed companies over 30 years earlier about using the treated seeds in the manufacture of ethanol and that NDEQ and the ethanol industry had rejected that request soundly.
Then came the freakish cold weather of mid-February, 2021. A digester line in the plant froze and burst, dumping 4 million gallons of pesticide saturated water into creeks which ran across University ground as well as the nearby National Guard camp before eventually emptying into the Platte River.
As spring arrived, a concerned citizens group formed to exert pressure on the state to resolve the crisis. The Perivallon Group joined with the Nebraska Sierra Club and Bold Nebraska to conduct a town hall meeting in Mead after NDEE backed out of an earlier commitment for one, sighting the Attorney General’s lawsuit against AltEn which had been filed on March 1. Many individuals attended the town hall in Mead, expressing their frustration with NDEE and the entire fiasco at AltEn. The Perivallon Group also began digging through the many complaints listed on the NDEE website.
Because the scope of the environmental damage is so extensive at AltEn, the Perivallon Group drafted a Legislative Resolution which called for the Legislature to appoint a Special Committee made up of members of multiple standing committees to do a thorough assessment of the environmental damage in Saunders County The study includes an examination of the regulatory failures, the financial damage, the potential damage to humans and animals, as well as efforts to examine possible criminal activities which may have taken place. Senator Carol Blood agreed to carry the LR after other senators declined. The LR was introduced late in the session and was not heard at the time, but a public hearing was finally held on the LR on February 24th.
Senator Blood put together a second town hall meeting in Mead during the summer which produced more anger and frustration about the lack of action. Residents felt that NDEE was stonewalling them about the agency’s plans for the AltEn plant. Following the second town hall meeting, a select committee of Mead residents was chosen by NDEE officials to meet behind closed doors with representatives of NDEE.
And the work of NDEE to stonewall continued at the hearing on February 24th when the chosen committee testified that a special committee of the Legislature was “not needed” and that NDEE was resolving problems in an effective and timely manner. Senator Bostelman introduced LB 1102 in January of 2022 which ostensibly beefs up the authority of NDEE to police and monitor businesses. But at that hearing Mr. Macy stated that he “already had the authority” to act on AltEn. IF he had the authority then why didn’t he use it years earlier?
We constantly hear businesses complain that they are overregulated. Many regulations are ridiculed as unnecessary and costly, but it is because of bad actors like AltEn that regulations must be vigorously enforced and strenuously followed. The attempts of NDEE to “coach AltEn to compliance” were never going to happen. The company has mechanics liens filed against the property which date back to 2015. They have paid no property taxes for several years, falling into arrears. They have been permitted to sell off much of their equipment, dismantle their biochar unit and sell that, and even tried to sell pesticide saturated biochar as recently as December, 2021. There is no bottom to the behavior of the executives who ran AltEn and were willing to foist an environmental disaster on Saunders County, Nebraska for money which is probably sitting in offshore banks. Which is more astounding, the scope of the damage caused by the plant or the unmitigated gall of the managers who tried to get away with it (and did for several years)?
Meanwhile, NDEE is relying on the seed companies to clean up the site. The seed companies lay out what they intend to do and the state simply accepts what they say, fearful that the seed companies may walk and leave the state with the bill.
At the LR 159 hearing, Jim Macy stated that it would take 3 to 5 years to cleanup just the AltEn site. An audible gasp was heard in the room. Mead residents are still unclear about what will be done, how it will be managed and when they can expect their lives to return to normal. And the damage surrounding the AltEn plant is unknown, except that pesticides have been detected in well water near Ashland and a pond six miles downstream from AltEn saw a 100% kill of all fish and invertebrates living in it.
AltEn made a dumping ground of Nebraska, polluting our land, air, and water. Every Nebraskan should be outraged that our state government went along with and supported that destruction. Our children’s future depends on vigilance.
