The AltEn Ethanol LLC plant just outside of Mead, NE has been using pesticide laden seed corn to create its product. Later it discharged 4 million gallons of pesticide contaminated wastewater generated by the facility when a pipe broke on February 12, 2021.

Great Plains Action Society and Ní Btháska Stand Collective interviewed Mead resident, Jody Weible, who has been actively organizing a resistance to AltEn for years. The Ní Btháska Stand Collective has provided important footage of the site that needs to be seen to be believed. The images are heartbreaking. See the video below.

Conventional ethanol plants utilize field grains as source material, however, AltEn began using seed grains pretreated with pesticide and fungicide. Big-Ag production companies, such as Bayer and Syngenta, have used this plant as a dumping ground for their pesticide-laden toxic waste. The end product after producing ethanol is a toxic solid waste that AltEn has been marketing as ground conditioner until the Nebraska Department of Agriculture issued a cease and desist order. That’s when AltEn began stockpiling tons of this toxic solid waste on their property.

Owner-operators of AltEn Ethanol plant also own and operate Mead Cattle Company on the same premises. Important to note that a Hereford, TX based Champion Feeders acquired a conditional use permit signaling their acquisition of Mead Cattle Company in the beginning of April 2021. The Nebraska Department of Agriculture remains silent on the fact that cattle, intended for human consumption, is most likely grazing on pesticide laden land.

EPA guidelines state that 70 PPB of Neonicotinoids in the environment is a safe level, however surrounding AltEn, the levels measure an outrageous 240,000 PPB.

The breach traveled 4.5 miles over the Todd Valley and Oglala Aquifers, just short of the Platte River where Lincoln’s municipal water intake is located.

The plant began operations in 2015 and local bee colonies started collapsing in 2017. It is estimated that 1.5 – 2.16 million bees have died, just at the University of Nebraska Bee Lab alone.

This catastrophe also occurred after years of serious complaints from local residents about the acrid smell causing nausea, nosebleeds, upper respiratory issues, headaches and discharge from the eyes.

Water is life, but water saturated with hazardous neurotoxic pesticides is a harbinger of death. Tell Nebraska Legislators to pass LB507, which prevents the use of pretreated pesticide-laden grains as source material for the production of ethanol.

Editing and arranging of the following video: Jack Meggers, Anatomical Heart Films

Great Plains Action Society

There’s a red flag here’: how an ethanol plant is dangerously polluting a US village. Situation in Mead, Nebraska, where AltEn has been processing seed coated with fungicides and insecticides, is a warning sign, experts say

The company, called AltEn, is supposed to be helpful to the environment, using high-starch grains such as corn to annually churn out about 25m gallons of ethanol, a practice regulators generally hail as an environmentally friendly source for auto fuel. Ethanol plants typically also produce a byproduct called distillers grains to sell as nutritious livestock feed.

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.

Some of the levels recorded are just off the charts

Dan Raichel

“Some of the levels recorded are just off the charts,” said Dan Raichel, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has been working with academics and other environmental protection groups to monitor the situation in Mead. “If I were living in that area with those levels of neonics going into the water and the environment I would be concerned for my own health.”

There’s a red flag here: how an ethanol plant is dangerously polluting a US village by Carey Gillam, The Guardian, January 10, 2021

Report: Spill From Mead Ethanol Plant Likely 4M Gallons
A report by state environmental officials says a frozen underground pipe that burst last week likely spilled 4 million gallons of wastewater from a troubled ethanol plant in eastern Nebraska.
By Associated Press, Wire Service Content Feb. 19, 2021

On Feb. 12, plant officials reported the accidental discharge that happened after a frozen pipe on the side of a large digester tank burst, releasing manure from the nearby feedlot and thin stillage from the ethanol plant.

Because the plant uses treated seed instead of harvested grain, it’s likely the thin stillage is contaminated with pesticides, which have been detected in the plant’s lagoons and other waste byproducts at high concentrations.