Des Moines soybean processor fined $20K for years of excessive air pollution

A long-time producer of soybean meal and vegetable oil in Des Moines repeatedly emitted too much air pollution after it expanded its facility several years ago, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Archer-Daniels-Midland Company agreed to pay a total of $20,000 to the state and to install new equipment to correct the problem by late next year, recent DNR orders said.

The ADM facility — which has operated for decades on the city’s northeast side — gets its soybeans by truck and rail, state documents show. It dries the grain, removes its hull and flattens it so that a hexane solvent can extract the oil.

The facility then removes the solvent from the oil and leftover soybean meal for reuse, but some of the solvent contaminates the air.

In 2015, the company sought permission to expand its operation to process an average of 180,000 bushels of soybeans each day. That was an increase of about 16%, according to state records.

When the facility expanded its operations, it did not upgrade a component that removes hexane from the soybean meal. The company estimates that about 85% of its hexane losses were because of that inadequate equipment, the DNR order said.

Hexane is a neurotoxin that can cause dizziness, nausea and headaches if people inhale certain amounts of it, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Those types of exposures typically happen at work. Chronic exposure can cause nerve damage.

The facility’s hexane emissions were found to be excessive for most months of a more-than-four-year period, from October 2018 to April 2023.

In a letter to the DNR in January that reported excessive hexane emissions, ADM said it “will troubleshoot and perform ongoing testing to minimize hexane losses, while we continue to work with IDNR on completing a permit application to resolve the solvent loss issues.”

The DNR also noted that equipment that dries and cools the soybean meal repeatedly emitted too much particulate matter.

Typically, the DNR is limited in its administrative fines to $10,000, but the hexane and particulate matter violations were treated separately with two different agreements that each levied that maximum, for a total of $20,000.

“ADM is committed to operating all of our facilities in a responsible manner and taking appropriate measures to ensure our operations meet environmental permits and regulations,” Dane Lisser, an ADM spokesperson, told the Iowa Capital Dispatch.

A compliance plan that was part of the DNR orders shows that the facility will, in part:

— Expand the capacity for hexane removal from soybean meal.
— Cease the operation of a coal-powered boiler and switch to one that is fueled by gas.
— Install new air-filtration equipment to control dust from the soybean flattening process.
— Increase the heights of several smokestacks.

Polk County, to which the DNR has delegated authority to help regulate air pollution, previously fined ADM a total of $14,000 for test and records deficiencies in 2014 and 2016.

“It was basically documentation violations and a couple permit condition violations,” said Jeremy Becker, the county’s air quality manager. “They submitted a compliance plan to us, which we accepted.”

ADM is a multinational grain processing company based in Illinois that offers a broad range of products and services. It operates several ethanol plants, including two that might connect to a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline in eastern Iowa.