UPDATE – In February, roughly a month after after reporting revealed the dangers of the AltEn plant’s practice of using pesticide-treated seeds, Nebraska state regulators ordered the plant closed.
See this January 10 story in The Guardian, which was the first to expose the dangerous levels of pesticides contaminating a small community in Nebraska and the relative inaction by regulators.
The concerns focused on AltEn, an ethanol plant in Mead, Nebraska, that has been the source of numerous community complaints over the use of pesticide-coated seeds for use in its biofuel production and the resulting waste products, which have been shown to contain levels of harmful neonicotinoids and other pesticides well above levels generally considered safe.
The concerns in Mead are but the latest example of growing global fear about the impacts of neonicotinoids.
See here some of the regulatory documents related to the controversy as well as other background materials:
Analysis of wetcake distillers grains
State response to April 2018 complaints
May 2018 state response to complaints
AltEn Stop use & sell letter June 2019
State letter denying permits and discussing problems
May 2018 list of farmers where they spread the waste
July 2018 discussion of wetcake being treated seed
Sept 2020 letter re spills with photos
October 2020 letter of noncompliance
Aerial Photos of site taken by state
How Neonicotinoids Can Kill Bees
Trends in neonicotinoid pesticide residues in food and water in the United States, 1999-2015
Letter from health experts to EPA warning on neonicotinoids
Letter from Endocrine Society to EPA on neonicotinoids
Neonicotinoid pesticides can stay in the U.S. market, EPA says
Petition to California to regulate neonic-treated seeds
Vanishing Bees: Science, Politics and Honeybee Health (Rutgers University Press, 2017)