Cleanup of AltEn site enters new phase, waste could be headed to Omaha landfill

LINCOLN — Cleaning up a mountain of contaminated waste corn at the former AltEn ethanol plant has entered a new phase — one that might send another controversial cargo to an Omaha-area landfill.

Officials with NewFields, the company hired to lead the cleanup, announced plans this week for a pilot project to discover the best, and safest way, to dispose of 115,000 tons of pesticide-contaminated “wet cake” — the waste grain left after the ethanol distilling process. It’s a pile that covers 16 acres, or about 10 square city blocks.

The proposal involves mixing the wet cake with materials that reduces its moisture content, such as Portland cement or fly ash, and then wrapping it completely in plastic — like a burrito — to reduce dust and a putrid smell. Then, it would be transported to a landfill permitted to accept such waste.

Bill Butler, an Atlanta-based senior engineer/partner in NewFields, said that where the wet cake will be hauled has yet to be determined.

Bennington landfill is the closest

But he said that the Pheasant Point Landfill, operated by Waste Management, just outside of Omaha near Bennington, is the closest facility and one of those being considered.

“We’re still evaluating options for that,” Butler said. “We’ll have that soon and once we know, we’ll be communicating that.”

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, truckers hired by Waste Management began hauling away trash, pallets, biocharred grain and other debris left behind in huge storage barns abandoned when the AltEn plant shut down two years ago.

That waste is headed to the Pheasant Point Landfill — which is operated by Waste Management —  and will require 18-20 truckloads a day over five to six weeks.

Butler said that doesn’t ensure that Pheasant Point will be the destination for the thousands of truckloads of wet cake. Removal of the trash left behind is a separate contract, he said, adding that he will not have a timeline for removal of the wet cake until after the pilot project is completed.

But if the wet cake is hauled to Pheasant Point, it will be the second time in recent months that the Omaha-area landfill has received waste from an environmental calamity.

In February, the Examiner reported that thousands of cubic yards of oil-soak soil was hauled to the Pheasant Point Landfill from the site of a crude oil spill on the Keystone pipeline, just across the Nebraska border at Washington, Kansas. The revelation prompted concerns from the Douglas County Board.

Hopes for the pilot project

Bill Thorson, chairman of the Mead Village Board, said he doesn’t know where the wet cake will be hauled, but if he had to bet, he would bet it’s headed to Omaha.

Overall, Thorson said Thursday that he’s encouraged that those handling the clean up are listening to local concerns and progressing toward developing the best plan.

“We’re definitely hoping that the pilot project goes the way we’re thinking it will go so we can get rid of that stuff,” said the village board chairman.

Thorson said that other options, such as incinerating the wet cake on site or at a waste facility in Kimball, were rejected as impractical.

 “We would all have liked to see it gone yesterday,” he said. “But I’d like to see them take the time to do it properly.”

Thorson is part of a group of community leaders who meet regularly with the AltEn Facility Response Group, a group of six seed corn companies who have hired NewFields and are financing the clean-up work. Butler did not have an estimated cost of the work done, but in the past it has been estimated at $23 million. 

Thorson said that local residents, in recent briefings, have been assured that the clean-up work will include removal of any contaminated soil found underneath the piles of wet cake, which were covered with a plaster-like covering a year ago to prevent rains from washing away any pesticide residues.

The same goes, Thorson said, for any sludge beneath the huge, tarp-lined wastewater lagoons at the AltEn site, once the wastewater has been removed.

Butler, in an interview at the site Thursday, said plans for draining the wastewater lagoons — which once held 180 million gallons of polluted water — and what to do with any seed corn left at the site, have not yet been devised.

Still planning

“Right now, we’re still in the process of planning all of that out,” he said.

The AltEn facility drew national environmental concerns since it was revealed two years ago that the plant had, for years, been using seed corn coated in pesticides to produce ethanol.

Typical ethanol plants use harvested field corn, not pre-planted seed that is coated in hazardous chemicals to prevent pests from feeding on the seed or young corn plants.

The leftover “wet cake,” after being used for ethanol, began piling up around the AltEn plant after the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy halted the practice of spreading it on nearby farm fields and after a landfill in Butler County stopped accepting the waste grain.

Putrid smell

Around Mead, a farm town of about 626 people located 25 miles west of Omaha, one can still hear plenty of stories about the putrid, rotting flesh smell that emanated from the plant while it was operating. Some residents reported health impacts to them and their pets.

A year ago, test wells near the AltEn site showed some signs of pesticide contamination, as did tests of dust in homes in Mead.

The plant was closed two years ago after a spill of 4 million gallons of contaminated wastewater from the plant. Traces of pesticides were detected up to six miles away.

“It had a smell of its own,” said Arlene Janecek, as she ran up sales Thursday at the R&K Country Store, just down the road from AltEn.

“It gave me headaches,” Janecek said. “It wasn’t pretty.”

In an update this week, NewFields reported that it had treated 49.4 million gallons of lagoon water at a water treatment facility built at the AltEn site, and that 30.8 million gallons had been land-applied to local farmland as fertilizer through this spring.