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 roughly 44 times the legal limit for water a person can safely drink. 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.

Most Nebraskans outside the cities drink from 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 complete answer:

"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, completed fellowships in data journalism and investigative reporting, and holds an extraordinary-ability visa issued by the U.S. government — the visa category reserved for people at the top of their field.

None of that is a rebuttal to a nitrate reading, and neither is her birthplace. 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 called the remarks "infuriating" and "dead wrong" in a column defending Xu's record.

The conflict he never resolved

Governors regulate industries. This governor owns one of them.

The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy writes and 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 cut off reporters who tried to ask about it — three times.

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 — roughly 44 times the federal safe drinking water limit. 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 was born.

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 via Flatwater Free Press.