(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Environmental Protection Commission is referring an alleged water pollution case to the Iowa Attorney General’s office. E-P-C Attorney Bradley Adams says Southwest Iowa Renewable Energy (SIRE) is illegally released sludge from its wastewater treatment facility near Council Bluffs into the Missouri River. He says they got a complaint August 25th of an orange sludge being released into the river. “On August 26th, Field Office 4 investigated the complaint and observed an orange wastewater discharging from the effluent pipe, orange coloration of the riverbank where the sludge deposits formed, and also orange sludge deposit buildup and the water beneath the effluent pipe,” he says. There was no fish kill found, but Adams says the sludge could harm wildlife. He says SIRE had been trucking the sludge away from the site.

“Beginning in March of 2025, SIRE began intentionally discharging the holding tank’s untreated clarifier sludge to Missouri River in violation of the facilities NPDES permit. According to Sire’s director of operations, approximately three-thousand of wastewater were discharged into Missouri every other day for a six-month period, beginning March of 2025 through August of 2025,” Adams says. Adams says SIRE sought to avoid the fees for trucking away the waste. “D-N-R estimates that sire avoided approximately 53-thousand dollars in disposal costs that other similarly situated businesses would pay. And, this is a clear and deliberate attempt to circumvent the law to save money,” he says. Adams says the D-N-R can only issue a penalty of up to ten-thousand dollars, and says by forwarding the case to the Attorney General, the state can seek a bigger penalty.

SIRE C-E-O Eric Fobes says they were trying to avoid the the truck traffic from hauling the material away. “It was never our intent to subvert a cost. We are not after cost savings of that magnitude at the plant. This is too small. It was more of an ease of execution not to haul it off site,” Fobes says. Fobes says his staff thought the discharge in the river was allowed. “Based on the permit as written, our team believed that sending backwash water to the permitted outfall was allowed. This was obviously a mistake. We now understand the department’s interpretation under the general water quality rule, and we respect that interpretation,” he says Fobes says they have made changes to do a better job of handling the requirements of the permit. He asked the Commission to not send the case to the Attorney General based on their response. “We acknowledge it happened. We are remorseful that it happened. I think we have learned a valuable lesson in that process. We’ve bolstered our internal compliance,” Fobes says.

The Commission voted to refer the case to the Attorney General with just two commissioners voting no.