Nebraska Bill to Hold Ethanol Plant Accountable for Hazardous Health Impact
A new bill known as L.B. 1048 is before the Appropriations Committee in Nebraska. The bill would allocate $10 million in federal funds for a research team to study the health impact of the hazardous materials emergency at the site of a former ethanol plant in Mead, Nebraska.
“Our plan is to put together a medical registry that would follow people for perhaps 10 years … in order to see whether there are health effects,” said Eleanor Rogan from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, in a written statement.
The ethanol farm was run by AltEn, a company that spent six years collecting free corn from six major seed companies and pilling the pesticide-coated seed corn on the land in Mead.
This resulted in 16 acres of pesticide-laced corn product and 100,000 tons of waste, with 173 million gallons of chemically tainted water in the nearby retention ponds.
In March 2021, a lawsuit was filed against the plant by the state and the ethanol plant was shut down. Starting next week, a clean-up team is looking to use a capping system previously used in four U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites to try to get rid of the mess.
Nearly 1,000 people who either worked or visited the property were exposed to the waste and pesticides and the researchers intend to survey those individuals.
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