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LINCOLN — A Norfolk state senator pitched a bill this week to help his community overcome a stinky problem — a wastewater treatment system that can’t handle all of the waste from two dairy processors in the northeast Nebraska community.
The resulting “infrastructure bottleneck” is hurting economic development in Norfolk and blunting growth of dairy farms in the region, State Sen. Robert Dover told members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee.
“If Norfolk cannot grow, the region stagnates,” Dover said.
But a representative of the Sierra Club said that while helping Norfolk is a worthy goal, the federal grant money Dover is seeking to use should be reserved for its designed purpose: reducing pollution.
“Nowhere in that (federal) grant is there any language recognizing wastewater treatment as an eligible applicant,” said former State Sen. Al Davis, now a lobbyist for the Sierra Club.
Under Dover’s proposal, Legislative Bill 1248, about $38 million of the $307 million Nebraska received under the Biden administration’s “Climate Pollution Reduction Grant” program would be used to help First Class cities, like Norfolk, improve wastewater treatment plants to handle more dairy waste.
In recent months, Norfolk has struggled to find state or federal funding help for an estimated $85 million upgrade of its wastewater treatment plant, according to the Norfolk Daily News.
Norfolk has two two dairy processing plants, Hyland, which produces ice cream, and Actus Nutrition, which makes milk and whey protein ingredients.
Right now Actus, which underwent an $80 million expansion in 2023, is operating at only about two-thirds capacity, the newspaper said, because Norfolk lacks the ability to process all of the plant’s waste products.
The lack of capacity, according to the Flatwater Free Press, led to several fines against Actus for exceeding its permitted discharge, and to complaints about rotten odors. It also launched discussions in Norfolk about expanding the city’s wastewater treatment capacity.
Dover told the Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that about half of Nebraska’s $307 million pollution reduction grant has already been spent and that his bill is contingent on the state getting the rest of the grant money. It’s also contingent, he said, on whether those funds can be used for the purpose of his bill.
Under Dover’s bill, the state would provide 50% of the funding of wastewater treatment upgrades, with the rest of the funds coming locally, either through a city or private company.
A representative of Actus told lawmakers that an analysis is underway to determine how much of the expansion ought to be attributed to his company. Zoran Vrebec, an Actus Vice President, said the firm will pay its fair share of the cost to expand production.
Representatives of the Nebraska dairy industry said the Norfolk company has helped keep dairies open in Nebraska, and solving the wastewater issue would help expansion of the dairy industry.
The Nebraska Department of Water, Energy and Environment is implementing the pollution reduction grants. According to its website, the money has been earmarked for energy efficiency and weatherization projects, community and residential solar energy installations, incentives for precision agriculture and regenerative agriculture, and collection of biogas from livestock feeding operations.
Davis, the Sierra Club lobbyist, said the goal of the federal program is to reduce the state’s “carbon footprint.” He questioned whether the wastewater treatment expansion would do that.
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