‘There’s a Red Flag Here’: How an Ethanol Plant Is Dangerously Polluting a US Village

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January 11, 2021

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by Carey Gillam (The Guardian) … But unlike most of the other 203 US ethanol plants, AltEn has been using seed coated with fungicides and insecticides, including those known as neonicotinoids, or “neonics”, in its production process.

Company officials have advertised AltEn as a “recycling” location where agricultural companies can rid themselves of excess supplies of pesticide-treated seeds, a strategy that gave AltEn free supplies for its ethanol, but also left it with a waste product too pesticide-laden to feed to animals.

Instead, AltEn has been accumulating thousands of pounds of a smelly, lime-green mash of fermented grains, distributing some to farm fields as a “soil conditioner” and accumulating the rest on the grounds of its plant.

It is that waste that some researchers say is dangerously polluting water and soil and probably also posing a health threat to animals and people. They point to testing ordered by state officials that found neonics in AltEn waste at levels many times higher than what is considered safe.

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State officials have cited the plant for “non-compliance” of various rules designed to prevent pollution, and said in the October letter that they were worried that AltEn was not properly disposing of the waste and noted the possibility of contamination of “short-term and longer-term surface water and groundwater”.

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After fielding multiple complaints, the Nebraska department of agriculture ordered AltEn to stop distributing its waste to farm fields. But that has meant that more and more has been piling up on site at the ethanol facility or washed into its lagoons. AltEn has also started incinerating some of the waste and storing “biochar” in bags outside on plant property, a practice that further worries area residents.

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The European Union banned the outdoor use of neonics clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam in 2018, and the United Nations says neonics are so hazardous that they should be “severely” restricted. But in the US, neonics are widely used. READ MORE

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