On September 7, 2023, the Flatwater Free Press published an investigation by reporter Yanqi Xu into the groundwater underneath the hog operations owned by Nebraska's governor.

Jim Pillen is the largest pork producer in Nebraska. He and his family have owned or operated at least 108 livestock facilities since 1993. As governor, he has not sold his business holdings.

Of those 108 facilities, only 27 were required to have groundwater monitoring wells. Sixteen of those 27 recorded nitrate levels above 50 parts per million.

The federal safe drinking water standard is 10 parts per million.

One farm — CRB Finish, in Holt County — recorded 445 parts per million. That is nearly 45 times the EPA standard for safe drinking water. An expert quoted in the investigation put it plainly: if a monitoring well reads 400 parts per million and there are drinking water wells nearby, "that should be a 911."

The review also identified about a dozen Pillen Family Farms operations that violated state livestock waste rules over three decades — housing more hogs than permitted, failing to report wastewater discharge into wetlands, and turning in groundwater test results late.

Why nitrate matters in Nebraska

This is not an abstract regulatory dispute. Nearly one-fifth of Nebraska now has groundwater nitrate above 5 parts per million — the third-highest share in the United States.

High nitrate in drinking water has been linked to colorectal cancer, thyroid disease, and neural tube birth defects. Nebraska has the seventh-highest pediatric cancer rate in the country.

Roughly 85% of Nebraskans use groundwater, and people in the country drink from private wells. When nitrate moves through the ground, it moves toward those wells. That is the whole reason the state requires monitoring in the first place — and the reason the numbers Xu found are alarming rather than merely embarrassing.

What the governor said

Pillen was asked about the findings four days after publication. He did not dispute a single number. Here is his answer, on KFAB radio:

"Number one, I didn't read it. And I won't. Number two, all you got to do is look at the author. The author is from communist China. What more do you need to know?"

Yanqi Xu grew up in Guangzhou and studied in Beijing before moving to the United States in 2017. She earned a master's degree from the University of Missouri, did data reporting at the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting and the Investigative Reporting Workshop, and was awarded a U.S. visa reserved for those with "extraordinary ability."

None of that is a rebuttal to a nitrate reading, and neither is where she grew up. That is the point. Faced with test results from his own family's monitoring wells, the governor of Nebraska went looking for a reason his constituents should disregard the messenger.

Flatwater Free Press executive director Matt Wynn defended Xu's record in a column headlined "Governor's comments about FFP reporter infuriating, dead wrong." "As an employer, that infuriates me," he wrote.

The conflict he never resolved

Governors regulate industries. This governor owns one of them.

The state's environmental agency — since July 2025, the Department of Water, Energy, and Environment — enforces the livestock waste rules that apply to hog operations. Pillen appoints its director. He also owns the farms — he did not divest when he took office.

That arrangement doesn't require proof of a specific favor to be a problem. It means that every time the state has to decide how hard to press a large hog producer on groundwater, the answer is being given by an agency the largest hog producer in the state supervises.

And the response to scrutiny tells you how that's likely to go. A governor who says of an investigation into his own farms "I didn't read it. And I won't" has told you exactly how much oversight he intends to invite.

The pattern

This is the same reflex we documented in his telephone town hall this January, where Pillen called Nebraskans who criticize him "libtards" three times in an hour and his staff stepped in before he could answer reporters who asked about it.

Criticism arrives; the governor attacks the person delivering it; his office declines the question. Different subject, identical move.

The difference here is what's at stake. The town hall was about a slur. This is about what is in the water.

The bottom line

Sixteen monitored hog operations tied to Jim Pillen's family business recorded nitrate above 50 parts per million, and one hit 445 — nearly 45 times the federal safe drinking water standard. About a dozen of the family's operations were found to have violated state waste rules.

Nebraska's governor, who still owns the business, refused to read the findings and told Nebraskans to dismiss them because of where the reporter is from.

Nebraskans deserve a governor who answers the question about the water. We deserve better.

Source

Yanqi Xu, "Pillen's Water: High nitrate detected on hog farms owned by Nebraska's governor" — Flatwater Free Press, September 7, 2023, in collaboration with Investigate Midwest. Photo illustration by Hanscom Park Studio, via Flatwater Free Press.