The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has issued a "Second Request for Comments on Amendments being Considered for Waste Treated Seeds Rules Governing Solid Waste and Hazardous Waste, Minnesota Rules, Chapters 7035 and 7045; Revisor’s ID Number R-04806."
Why is this important?
Last spring, Bluestem reported in Omnibus environment bill aims to ‘correct past wrongs, prepare for future,’ committee chair says that new regulations on pesticide treated seed were in HF2310.
One of the provisions in the now new law?
TREATED SEED WASTE DISPOSAL RULEMAKING.
The commissioner of the Pollution Control Agency, in consultation with the commissioner of agriculture and the University of Minnesota, must adopt rules under Minnesota Statutes, chapter 14, providing for the safe and lawful disposal of waste treated seed. The rules must clearly identify the regulatory jurisdiction of state agencies and local governments with regard to such seed. Additional Department of Agriculture staff will not be hired until rulemaking is completed.
What's the problem with treated seeds that are "waste" and can no longer be planted?
Readers may remember the cautionary tale told in Bluestem's 2021 post, MNHouse Ag Committee approves proposed rules for disposal of pesticide-treated crop seeds:
As the Session Daily article below notes, an ethanol plant in Mead, Nebraska, became an environmental disaster after "millions of gallons of toxic water that spilled on Feb. 12-13, 2021, and 84,000 tons of distillers grains from treated corn seed piled on its property that is considered too toxic to feed to animals or spread on fields," as DTN's Chris Clayton reported last April in Nebraska Ethanol Plant Turns into Environmental, Legal Disaster.
There's more in Nancy Gaarder's Omaha World Herald story, Mead residents say ethanol plant is spreading 'poison' and making them sick. . . .
Hansen pointed to the incident in Nebraska for why the proposed legislation is needed.
“The seed that was unused was shipped, and we had testimony last year, shipped from Minnesota to Nebraska along with all the other states around there, and it was used for the production of ethanol,” Hansen said. “So what this bill simply does, as amended, is it says you can’t use it to make ethanol. … Until we pass a law to say you can’t use it for ethanol, you could because there’s not a law there.”
And the poisoning wasn't just harming people, The Fern's Dan Charles reported last week in Buzzkill:
On May 20, 2020, [Judy Wu-Smart is an entomologist at the University of Nebraska] sent an email to an official at Nebraska’s Department of Agriculture, asking for advice. Tim Creger, the department’s pesticide program manager, wrote back with a revelation. He explained that just two miles north of her bee hives, there was a factory making ethanol from discarded corn seed that was coated with neonicotinoid insecticides. Ethanol factories are giant distilleries that consume corn. The grain is ground up, soaked in water, and fermented, releasing alcohol. What’s left, a mash called distillers grains or wet cake, normally goes into cattle feed, along with nutrients recovered from the stream of liquid waste.
But this plant, run by a company called AltEn, was different. It functioned as a disposal site for unsold seed corn, all of it coated with pesticides. Some of the biggest names in the seed business, including Monsanto (which was later acquired by Bayer), Syngenta, and Pioneer, were sending AltEn thousands of truckloads of excess inventory each year. It was cheaper than alternative ways to dispose of this toxic waste.
AltEn fed all of the pesticide-coated corn into its fermentation tanks. It created normal ethanol, but the byproducts, such as wet cake, were loaded with pesticide residues, which couldn’t by law be fed to cattle. It was piling up in strangely green-hued mounds. According to tests that were carried out later, a single ounce of this wet cake contained enough neonicotinoid insecticide to kill hundreds of thousands of bees on contact. AltEn had persuaded a few nearby farmers to spread some of it on their fields as fertilizer. The pesticide-laced liquid waste, meanwhile, filled giant rectangular ponds.
Nebraska’s environmental regulators had known about this almost from the very beginning, but for most of that time they’d paid little attention to the ecological impact. They didn’t think those risks were covered by the regulations they were assigned to enforce. They had released little information about AltEn’s pesticide problem to the public. . . .
It's not just PFAS poisoning Americans.
Want to be part of the rulemaking? The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is currently accepting public comments on rulemaking relating to waste-treated seeds–seeds that have been treated with pesticides. These comments will help inform future rulemaking and legislative action.
Here's the Second Request for Comments on Amendments being Considered for Waste Treated Seeds Rules Governing Solid Waste and Hazardous Waste, Minnesota Rules, Chapters 7035 and 7045; Revisor’s ID Number R-04806. Don't let the bureaucratic language discourage you from commenting,
The MPCA has posted helpful information on its Proposed Rules: Waste Treated Seeds webpage. The page includes access to an online form for comments.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency published the above notice in the December 26, 2023, State Register. The public comment period for this notice closes at 4:30 P.M. on Tuesday, January 30, 2024. The notice contains links to related documents and is available by visiting the Waste Treated Seeds Rule webpage at: https://www.pca.state.mn.us/get-engaged/waste-treated-seeds
In a previous Request for Comments (RFC) on this rulemaking published in the State Register on August 28, 2023, the MPCA asked for comment on the waste treated seeds rule under possible parts 7035.3700 – 7035.3900. If you submitted comments to the original RFC, those responses will still be considered along with the responses to this second RFC; you do not need to resubmit comments.
The main purpose of this second RFC is to expand the range of amendments from parts 7035.3700 – 7035.3900 identified in the first RFC to include chapters 7035 and 7045. Doing so helps to ensure that amendments being considered for waste treated seeds can be included throughout chapters 7035 and 7045, where appropriate, as the MPCA develops the rule amendments.
The MPCA is required to undertake this rulemaking to comply with Laws of Minnesota 2023, chapter 60, article 3, section 28. The MPCA requests comments on its possible new rules. The MPCA is considering rules that provide for the safe and lawful disposal of waste treated seed. The rules will clearly identify the regulatory jurisdiction of state agencies and local governments with regard to such seed. The MPCA has previously published some guidance regarding management of waste treated seeds in April, 2022, in MPCA fact sheet #w-hw4-51, available on the MPCA’s website at https://www.pca.state.mn.us/sites/default/files/w-hw4-51.pdf.
The guidance in fact sheet #w-hw4-51 was based only on the MPCA’s application of existing solid waste and hazardous waste rules and did not create any new requirements. The MPCA may consider the guidance and interpretations in this fact sheet in the development of these possible new rules specifically governing waste treated seed.
Please consider commenting.
Photo: Waste left over from processing ethanol sat in piles outside the AltEn Ethanol plant near Mead. The heaps created a strong odor in the area and left people and pets sick, residents said. Photo by Anna Reed, Omaha World-Herald.
Related posts
- Omnibus environment bill aims to ‘correct past wrongs, prepare for future,’ committee chair says
- MNHouse Ag Committee approves proposed rules for disposal of pesticide-treated crop seeds
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