(Des Moines, Iowa) –  A report from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources shows an ethanol-producing facility in northeast Iowa expelled excessive pollutants into the air for several years that can cause cancers and other health effects. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports the DNR recently issued an administrative order with regard to the POET Bioprocessing plant near Shell Rock. The Order says “Actual harm to the environment and public health likely occurred” at the facility, which makes about 140 million gallons of ethanol each year, along with other products from the leftover materials of the fuel production. The excessive pollution was tied to one of those additional products: a protein ingredient for animal feed.

The facility’s previous operator, Flint Hills Resources, installed the equipment that is used to extract the protein and began operating it in July 2020, the DNR order said. However, part of the system lacked sufficient pollution controls, which was discovered by POET in August 2023. POET had purchased the facility about two years earlier, but did not sample the emissions. Mark Fields, a unit leader for the DNR’s Air Quality Bureau, said Flint Hills had underestimated the amount of pollutants in the ethanol-production leftovers that are used to produce the protein. Those pollutants were then expelled during the protein processing.

The POET facility near Shell Rock produces about 140 million gallons of ethanol each year and other products. (Photo courtesy of Google Earth)

Fields said the issue was discovered with a similar system in another state, and POET shut down the production line and notified the DNR. The company later routed those emissions into an existing pollution-control system at the plant and fixed the problem. But emissions tests after the production line was reactivated revealed the extent of the excessive pollution in the previous years: Its volatile organic compounds emissions were 27 times its permitted limit, and emissions of a hazardous, cancer-causing compound — acetaldehyde — were nearly nine times the limit.

POET agreed to pay a $10,000 administrative fine, the DNR order said. It also will pay nearly $43,000 in fees that it owed the state for its under-reporting of emissions in 2021 and 2022.