Nebraska towns shelling out millions to treat nitrate

Jul 15, 2023

Art Tanderup, a retired teacher who now farms near Neligh, tries an infrared scanner that measures how much nitrogen the corn stalks contain in an University of Nebraska-Lincoln test plot in June 2022. Concerned about nitrate, Tanderup attended this education event hosted by the Bazile Management Area to learn more about how to use nitrogen fertilizer more efficiently.

Editor's note: This is the fourth part in a series of stories examining high nitrate levels in Nebraska's water. This is a follow-up to previous stories that were published in the Daily News last month.

***

Marty Stange was grasping for solutions to keep 25,000 residents safe — and a city's budget from breaking.

It was 2015. Multiple wells providing water to the central Nebraska city were testing high for nitrate.

Hastings, like all cities, is legally required to keep the nitrate level under 10 parts per million — the level the Environmental Protection Agency has long deemed safe for human consumption.

Back in 2011, one Hastings well had tested at a nitrate level of 19.5 ppm, nearly double that limit.

Stange, the city's longtime environmental director and water manager, had already shut off some wells when they passed that threshold. More were nearing it.

"I did a forecast of how much nitrates were going to be in the wells," Stange said. "By 2016, we would not have enough (water) to meet our … demand."

Nebraska's groundwater is becoming increasingly laced with nitrate, the invisible contaminant that causes blue baby syndrome and is linked to various cancers. And small towns, cities and rural Nebraskans are increasingly getting stuck paying the tab — forced to choose from a series of costly fixes that still don't solve the problem.

Some 59 of Nebraska's 598 community water systems — roughly 10% — have tested nitrate levels higher than the EPA standard at least once since 2010, according to a Flatwater Free Press analysis. Towns have invested in multimillion-dollar clean water projects that many experts fear are Band-Aids that might stop working before the projects are even paid off.

For Hastings, the most robust solution, a citywide filtration system, wouldn't come cheap: $45 million, give or take.

So Stange and his team treated part of Hastings’ water, injected it back into the Ogallala Aquifer, then supplied the blended water to city residents.

The cost: Roughly $15 million.

And the price tag for high nitrate is going up. The state will likely fund roughly $49 million in water projects that will serve only 18,000 residents just this fiscal year, according to a Flatwater Free Press analysis of state records.

And it's historically even worse for those, like farm families, living outside city limits. These Nebraskans are often on their own to test their water and install a treatment system, although various governments have recently taken steps to defray those costs.

In all, some 67 public water systems in Nebraska, including 11 small towns, have installed costly water filtration systems.

Others are grasping for cheaper solutions. They are drilling new wells, connecting to a neighboring city's water supply — and wondering how long any of this will work.

"We're taking money out of people's pocket," Stange said. "As someone who's trying to say, ‘I want to be the best I can for the community's public health,’ do I just on a whim raise water rates? That's a tough position."

* * *

Nebraska towns like Hastings find themselves forced into an unenviable cost-benefit analysis.

Hastings’ water hovers just below the EPA limit for nitrate. But scientists have identified a correlation between high nitrate and higher risks of health conditions at even lower levels.

It would cost more — far more — to reduce the nitrate further, Stange said.

Towns around Hastings also are struggling to solve the problem.

Trumbull connected a water main to Hastings. The $480,000 project, paid for by Hastings and Trumbull, included a water tower and 8 miles of pipe.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave Trumbull a loan for the work, noting it made more sense to connect to Hastings instead of Trumbull paying for its own treatment plant.

"Communities our size are going to become more regional water systems," Stange said. "We think the city of Hastings would really benefit … with the idea that we would be able to supply water along the Highway 281 corridor."

That's not an option everywhere. Prosser, 20 miles northwest of Hastings, was too far away to connect to the larger city's water system. Ten years ago, Prosser first crossed the EPA nitrate limit. Village leaders hosted town hall meetings and discussed solutions.

The first patch: Providing bottled water to each of the village's 79 residents.

The newest fix: Installing a reverse osmosis filtration system in each home.

The ever-present goal: Trying to avoid the installation of a community-wide treatment system, which can easily cost millions.

Nitrate isn't taken out of water by a normal home filter, like a Brita.

It requires a more complex and pricey treatment system.

In Prosser, a reverse osmosis (RO) system treating water at the well would have been a better option, said Michelle Matthews, village board chairwoman. But Prosser simply couldn't afford it..

"It's cost-prohibitive for a small village," she said.

Instead, Prosser treats the water at the consumers’ tap. Every household in the village is required to have a home RO system, which Prosser owns and maintains.

The village received state funding and took a federal government loan to pay for it.

The town's base rate water bill has also nearly doubled, to $52 per month. That's no small sum for many residents on fixed incomes.

Matthews said the community is bracing for a future with even higher nitrate levels.

"When the wells get to like 28 to 30 (parts per million), our RO systems will not bring it down below 10. So, down the road, we're gonna have to do something different," she said.

No Nebraska public water system has racked up more violations than Edgar — 47 since 2010.

First, the city set up an account at its grocery store to pay for bottled water for pregnant and nursing mothers and babies. It then opened a fill station for all residents.

The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy told the village it had to do more.

So Edgar built a line to the nearby town of Fairfield. The cost: $3 million. The city's share: $981,000, to be paid over 20 years.

Installing an RO system for the whole municipality is not necessarily a final solution. Look no further than the 30-year-old system in Creighton in Northeast Nebraska — the first such system installed in the state.

The system now bears an annual operating cost around $500,000. Several multimillion-dollar capital upgrades and repairs have been costly, said Kevin Sonnichsen, water commissioner in the town of 1,147.

In addition, using a reverse osmosis system to treat water is "expensive and wasteful", Sonnichsen said. The city's reverse osmosis plant discharges more than 40,000 gallons of water to the creeks — enough to fill two swimming pools. That's 30% of the source water going to waste.

"Our water rates are a little bit high. But a lot of it is because it costs more to produce water. We have to run it through this system," Sonnichsen said.

* * *

Earlier this year, Gov. Pete Ricketts signed into law a bill that appropriated $4 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding on grants for reverse osmosis systems. Federal infrastructure money also is flowing into Nebraska to aid water quality.

That funding covers only a fraction of the need, according to experts. And it doesn't help Nebraskans like Lori Fischer who live outside of towns and have been paying for high nitrate for years.

Fischer learned about high nitrate the hard way: She used to hand-feed her baby pet cockatiels. But three or four batches of newborn birds kept dying, she said.

Fischer, who lives north of Shelby, tested her water: High nitrate. She blames two deserted feedlots as the likely culprit.

"I started a business and I had to buy reverse osmosis systems. I'm the one that's paying the costs. And I shouldn't have to be the one that pays the costs," Fischer said.

Art Tanderup, who farms outside Neligh, also has installed a reverse osmosis system. He tried several filters and water softeners, but RO has worked best so far, he said.

The installation of the system cost him about $1,500. It costs $360 in annual maintenance.

"It is pricey, but what's clean water worth? And what's health worth?" Tanderup said.

* * *

Even towns that have provided their residents legally acceptable drinking water are grappling with the future. Take Fairbury in southeast Nebraska, surrounded by villages with high nitrate. The city provides water to roughly 5,000 area residents through a partnership with the Little Blue Natural Resources District.

One of Fairbury's wells has tested above 10 ppm a few times in the past decade.

Mayor Spencer Brown has argued the town should be proactive. The city council has proposed drilling new wells, which would cost $10 million in the 3,500-person town.

The council eventually passed, opting for more research.

"When it gets to a critical level, everything is rushed," Brown said. "That is the worst-case scenario: You're backed into the corner."

Stange — and Hastings — is also trying to avoid being forced into action.

On the blueprint of the Hastings’ water treatment facility, an open area is reserved for another treatment plant if water quality gets worse.

Stange, 63, is hopeful that University of Nebraska researchers continue to help towns like his better understand the problem. He hopes that, when he retires, he can hand his successor a water infrastructure built to last.

But the longtime water manager worries about Nebraska's smaller towns. As populations dwindle, he fears that many will struggle with finding water operators.

"We are kind of a little bigger fish in a small fishbowl. What we learn, we're passing it on to some smaller towns that just don't have those resources," he said. "We are all in this together."

The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska's first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter. This article was produced as a project for the University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism's 2022 National Fellowship.

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