Paul Hammel / Nebraska Examiner
Bill Butler of NewFields, pictured in May 2023, points to a pair of huge storage sheds that were being emptied of pallets, boxes and other refuse left behind by the former operators of the AltEn ethanol plant. The facility is just north of Mead, west of Omaha.
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Paul Hammel
Nebraska Examiner
MEAD — The removal of a massive pile of contaminated waste grain from the AltEn ethanol plant is now projected to be completed by the end of 2025, officials doing the cleanup said Tuesday.
Representatives of the Facility Response Group said that after a yearlong “pilot project” to test how to remove the material, called “wet cake,” about one third of the estimated 150,000 tons of grain has been transported to a landfill near Omaha.
About 37,400 tons of wet cake were solidified and trucked to the Pheasant Point Landfill near Bennington this summer. So far, a total of 47,608 tons of wet cake – or 2,240 truckloads – have been hauled from the former AltEn ethanol plant as of Sept. 20.
“It’s been a busy summer of trucks hauling the wet cake off site and the FRG is encouraged by the work being done,” said Bill Butler, a senior engineer with NewFields, which is managing the cleanup for a group of seed corn companies that are funding the work.
Mead community pleased
Bill Thorson, chairman of the Mead Village Board, said the cleanup is progressing faster than the community expected.
“So far, we’re pretty pleased with how it’s going,” Thorson said, adding that the village has not fielded complaints about foul odors from the site.
“It’s not like when the place was running,” he said.
Former State Sen. Al Davis, who is with a group monitoring the AltEn cleanup, said Tuesday that he remains concerned that any rainfall is creating new contamination because a spray-on shield covering the wet cake pile is cracked in some locations.
The AltEn ethanol plant garnered national headlines after it was learned that chemically coated, expired seed corn was being used to produce ethanol, rather than typical field corn. After local landfills stopped accepting the waste grain byproduct from the ethanol plant, it began piling up on the property.
The putrid odors emitted by the pile – estimated to cover 14 acres – prompted citizen complaints and led to concerns about public health and contamination of groundwater and nearby streams.
Plant closed in 2021
The State of Nebraska ordered the plant’s closure in February 2021 after a leak spilled millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater into a nearby stream and neighboring land, killing fish in a stock pond miles downstream.
The company that owned AltEn had failed to comply with several state directives to properly clean up the wet cake pile as well as wastewater lagoons.
Butler told the Examiner that a more efficient process was discovered during the pilot project in which the wet cake was mixed and solidified with bentonite using mechanical excavators. Then, the mixture is encased in plastic in the bed of a truck before being transported to the landfill. The portion of the pile that was disturbed is sprayed with a mortar-like coating each night in a further effort to reduce odors and dust, he said.
Work will be suspended from about mid-November until spring because the wet cake cannot be effectively mixed during freezing weather, according to Butler.
He did not know how much has been spent so far to clean up the site.
“It’s a big dollar amount for sure,” Butler said.
Other activities planned through spring 2025, according to the cleanup officials, include treatment of water in the wastewater lagoons, groundwater testing and removal of the lagoon liners.
So far, more than 100 million gallons of water have been treated at a treatment plant at the AltEn site, officials said, and an estimated 38 million gallons have been applied on about 1,100 acres of land nearby.
Water treatment on site is expected to be completed by the end of this year, with land application to continue in 2025 until all treated water is applied.
The website alteninfo.com details efforts made to clean up the site.
