Alt En Update
by Al Davis, Lobbyist
Nebraska Sierra Club
Several years have now passed since the Alt En ethanol plant was closed and the full measure of the catastrophe is still unknown. For those of you who may be new to this venue or are unaware of Alt En, a short background piece is appropriate to bring folks up to speed on the industry.
Farmers purchase seeds which are treated with pesticides when they plant each spring. Seed manufacturers must prepare enough seed to satisfy the needs of farmers but there is always a cushion of seed which is left over. Instructions on the containers the seed is shipped in suggest that the best way to dispose of the seed is to plant it, but that is a solution which really only works for small amounts of the seed and not the vast amount left over after the “sell by” date has passed. Burning the seed is another suggested solution but that must be done under controlled conditions so the pesticide is not released into the air. Therefore that is an expensive proposition and the seed companies were looking for other solutions.
Alt En was conceived by a Kansas City industrialist who was, at one time, Joe Biden’s speech writer. During the 1980s when the pipeline industry was being deregulated that individual bought into the pipeline business and later became interested in trying to design industrial feedlots which would use fecal matter in digesters which would then produce gas to burn boilers which turned seed corn into ethanol. The residue produces a highly nutritious byproduct called distiller’s grain or wetcake and that product is fed to cattle in the feedlot, thus completing the cycle. With great fanfare the Alt En plant at Mead was organized around this principle.
Mead annexed rural land near the community and the ethanol plant received tax increment financing to build the plant at Mead. The plant opened with ribbon cutting and representatives of government and industry were there to praise this new ecological plant. Less than six months later the digestor exploded and the plant closed for several years.
During the period when the plant was closed, the owners developed a new business model. They would use treated seed, given to them by the seed companies, to produce ethanol. Alt En knew at the time that the byproduct was forbidden to be fed to livestock because it was highly contaminated with pesticides and fungicides, so the proposed solution was to apply the wetcake to land as fertilizer.
It is important at this point to state that Alt En had advised the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (now NDEE) of its intent to switch to treated seed and NDEE wrote back that this change was minor and would not trigger the need for an additional hearing. It is also important to acknowledge that the land application of the wetcake was taking place with the approval of the Nebraska Department of Agriculture which had not tested the byproduct before giving them a permit to apply it. Government obviously failed in both of these instances. Ultimately, when NDA did finally sample the byproduct they found it to be full of pesticide and ordered Alt En to remove it from neighboring fields which Alt En did. But Alt En’s solution was not to shut down the plant and clean up their mess. They continued to manufacture ethanol but stockpiled the wetcake on site, along with the wet cake which they had been ordered to remove from neighboring fields.
In 2020, the Guardian Newspaper broke the story of Alt En. Judy Wu-Smart, a bee specialist at the University of Nebraska, had seen a dramatic decline in the survival of her bee colonies on the Eastern Nebraska Research Extension and Education Center (ENREEC). Several residents of Mead had complained of irritation in their eyes and throats, dogs were sick, raccoons were found dead at the piles of wetcake waiting to be land applied. NDEE now ordered AltEn to cease production. In February of 2021, a pipe in one of the digestors broke, flooding nearby fields with pesticide saturated water which flowed onto and across the ENREEC property and a nearby National Guard Training Facility.
Several entities, including the Nebraska Chapter of the Sierra Club, and several individuals formed a concerned citizen’s group called the Perivallon Group which still meets weekly to keep pressure on the state and a focus on the cleanup which is being undertaken there.
A large group of seed companies have spent well over 25 million dollars in an early and preliminary effort to cleanup the mess left behind by Alt En. Part of that cleanup includes actions being taken at the present time. A large “hoop house” on the site has been full of treated seeds since the plant was closed. This seed will now be trucked to Tulsa, Oklahoma to be burned. The seed companies have also been disposing of much of the other accumulated trash at the site and have taken hundreds of loads of trash to the Pheasant Point landfill in Omaha.
Because so many citizens were affected by the acrid doer of the wetcake on site, the seed companies gathered all the wetcake together and piled it on bare ground on 16 acres of land at the site. They then hired helicopters and trucks to spray a product called “posi-shield” on the wet cake to encase it and to stop the stench. That effort has been somewhat successful in stopping the odor, but the organic nature of the product as it decays under the posi-shield has caused the development of cracks in the product and water sitting atop the posi-shield is dark and many suspect it is contaminated.
Now comes the plans to finally remove the wetcake from the site. The current plan is to remove portions of the posi-shield covering and do a pilot project where about 10% of the material would be taken to the landfill in Omaha where it will be entombed. Chris Dunker, a Lincoln journalist, compared the pile of wetcake to Memorial Stadium a few years ago. If compiled on a football field, the wetcake would rise high above the top of Memorial Stadium. That means that there will be thousands of truckloads of material which need to be transported from Mead to Omaha to dispose of the product.
Even when this action is completed there will still be work to be done. At least one well, six miles away, has been flagged as contaminated with pesticides and the permeability of land in the Todd Valley would indicate that the water in the wetcake will soak into the ground and eventually into the aquifer. Surface water which is also contaminated is currently being treated and applied at measured rates to nearby land.
Meanwhile the court cases continue. Alt En has been sued by the seed companies to try and recapture some of their costs. However it seems likely that the owners of the Alt En plant skimmed all the money off the project which they could possibly walk with and that money is sitting in offshore accounts somewhere.
We come to that conclusion in this manner. If a traditional ethanol plant can make money, even though it must purchase the corn which is boiled, then shouldn’t a plant producing ethanol which has no cost in the product make much more? Remember, Alt En has not paid property taxes for years, walked away with $200,000 in funds through the ARPA funds and the company also has a lengthy record of mechanic’s liens assessed against the company by companies who worked there but were never paid.
There are still great unknowns about the plant. Isn’t it possible that the chemicals there will break down and combine to produce other, potentially more harmful, products? And how can long term exposure to the dust from Alt En affect your health? Is it time that citizens rose up and opposed the widespread use of neonictinoids which show only marginal benefit to grain production but are so destructive to the insects on which we depend to fertilize our crops? Too many unanswered questions, but citizens must be aware.
Nebraska Sierra Club
Several years have now passed since the Alt En ethanol plant was closed and the full measure of the catastrophe is still unknown. For those of you who may be new to this venue or are unaware of Alt En, a short background piece is appropriate to bring folks up to speed on the industry.
Farmers purchase seeds which are treated with pesticides when they plant each spring. Seed manufacturers must prepare enough seed to satisfy the needs of farmers but there is always a cushion of seed which is left over. Instructions on the containers the seed is shipped in suggest that the best way to dispose of the seed is to plant it, but that is a solution which really only works for small amounts of the seed and not the vast amount left over after the “sell by” date has passed. Burning the seed is another suggested solution but that must be done under controlled conditions so the pesticide is not released into the air. Therefore that is an expensive proposition and the seed companies were looking for other solutions.
Alt En was conceived by a Kansas City industrialist who was, at one time, Joe Biden’s speech writer. During the 1980s when the pipeline industry was being deregulated that individual bought into the pipeline business and later became interested in trying to design industrial feedlots which would use fecal matter in digesters which would then produce gas to burn boilers which turned seed corn into ethanol. The residue produces a highly nutritious byproduct called distiller’s grain or wetcake and that product is fed to cattle in the feedlot, thus completing the cycle. With great fanfare the Alt En plant at Mead was organized around this principle.
Mead annexed rural land near the community and the ethanol plant received tax increment financing to build the plant at Mead. The plant opened with ribbon cutting and representatives of government and industry were there to praise this new ecological plant. Less than six months later the digestor exploded and the plant closed for several years.
During the period when the plant was closed, the owners developed a new business model. They would use treated seed, given to them by the seed companies, to produce ethanol. Alt En knew at the time that the byproduct was forbidden to be fed to livestock because it was highly contaminated with pesticides and fungicides, so the proposed solution was to apply the wetcake to land as fertilizer.
It is important at this point to state that Alt En had advised the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (now NDEE) of its intent to switch to treated seed and NDEE wrote back that this change was minor and would not trigger the need for an additional hearing. It is also important to acknowledge that the land application of the wetcake was taking place with the approval of the Nebraska Department of Agriculture which had not tested the byproduct before giving them a permit to apply it. Government obviously failed in both of these instances. Ultimately, when NDA did finally sample the byproduct they found it to be full of pesticide and ordered Alt En to remove it from neighboring fields which Alt En did. But Alt En’s solution was not to shut down the plant and clean up their mess. They continued to manufacture ethanol but stockpiled the wetcake on site, along with the wet cake which they had been ordered to remove from neighboring fields.
In 2020, the Guardian Newspaper broke the story of Alt En. Judy Wu-Smart, a bee specialist at the University of Nebraska, had seen a dramatic decline in the survival of her bee colonies on the Eastern Nebraska Research Extension and Education Center (ENREEC). Several residents of Mead had complained of irritation in their eyes and throats, dogs were sick, raccoons were found dead at the piles of wetcake waiting to be land applied. NDEE now ordered AltEn to cease production. In February of 2021, a pipe in one of the digestors broke, flooding nearby fields with pesticide saturated water which flowed onto and across the ENREEC property and a nearby National Guard Training Facility.
Several entities, including the Nebraska Chapter of the Sierra Club, and several individuals formed a concerned citizen’s group called the Perivallon Group which still meets weekly to keep pressure on the state and a focus on the cleanup which is being undertaken there.
A large group of seed companies have spent well over 25 million dollars in an early and preliminary effort to cleanup the mess left behind by Alt En. Part of that cleanup includes actions being taken at the present time. A large “hoop house” on the site has been full of treated seeds since the plant was closed. This seed will now be trucked to Tulsa, Oklahoma to be burned. The seed companies have also been disposing of much of the other accumulated trash at the site and have taken hundreds of loads of trash to the Pheasant Point landfill in Omaha.
Because so many citizens were affected by the acrid doer of the wetcake on site, the seed companies gathered all the wetcake together and piled it on bare ground on 16 acres of land at the site. They then hired helicopters and trucks to spray a product called “posi-shield” on the wet cake to encase it and to stop the stench. That effort has been somewhat successful in stopping the odor, but the organic nature of the product as it decays under the posi-shield has caused the development of cracks in the product and water sitting atop the posi-shield is dark and many suspect it is contaminated.
Now comes the plans to finally remove the wetcake from the site. The current plan is to remove portions of the posi-shield covering and do a pilot project where about 10% of the material would be taken to the landfill in Omaha where it will be entombed. Chris Dunker, a Lincoln journalist, compared the pile of wetcake to Memorial Stadium a few years ago. If compiled on a football field, the wetcake would rise high above the top of Memorial Stadium. That means that there will be thousands of truckloads of material which need to be transported from Mead to Omaha to dispose of the product.
Even when this action is completed there will still be work to be done. At least one well, six miles away, has been flagged as contaminated with pesticides and the permeability of land in the Todd Valley would indicate that the water in the wetcake will soak into the ground and eventually into the aquifer. Surface water which is also contaminated is currently being treated and applied at measured rates to nearby land.
Meanwhile the court cases continue. Alt En has been sued by the seed companies to try and recapture some of their costs. However it seems likely that the owners of the Alt En plant skimmed all the money off the project which they could possibly walk with and that money is sitting in offshore accounts somewhere.
We come to that conclusion in this manner. If a traditional ethanol plant can make money, even though it must purchase the corn which is boiled, then shouldn’t a plant producing ethanol which has no cost in the product make much more? Remember, Alt En has not paid property taxes for years, walked away with $200,000 in funds through the ARPA funds and the company also has a lengthy record of mechanic’s liens assessed against the company by companies who worked there but were never paid.
There are still great unknowns about the plant. Isn’t it possible that the chemicals there will break down and combine to produce other, potentially more harmful, products? And how can long term exposure to the dust from Alt En affect your health? Is it time that citizens rose up and opposed the widespread use of neonictinoids which show only marginal benefit to grain production but are so destructive to the insects on which we depend to fertilize our crops? Too many unanswered questions, but citizens must be aware.
