A major ethanol refinery on the Illinois River near Peoria has been ordered to fund efforts to restore its wetlands and floodplain after an eight-year legal fight over alleged water discharges up to 40 degrees hotter than permitted, threatening aquatic life.
“Rivers can’t speak in court, so we speak for them,” said Robert Hirschfeld, director of water policy at Prairie Rivers Network.
The nonprofit, alongside Sierra Club, served a notice of intent to sue over repeated permit violations, after which the Illinois Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit in early 2018 at the request of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
“It’s encouraging to see the state work to protect its namesake river,” Hirschfeld said in a Wednesday news release. “Those wetlands will hold floodwater, welcome waterfowl, and remind us that rivers aren’t dumping grounds; they are communities of life that need protecting.”
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In its lawsuit, the state claimed that the Alto Pekin, LLC — formerly Pacific Ethanol Pekin — corn milling plant, which breaks down corn kernels and converts the starch into ethanol for transportation fuels, discharged thermal pollution into the river between January 2012 and October 2017. In waterways, incoming hot water can dissolve oxygen and stress fish, as well as other aquatic wildlife and birds.
Farther upstream in the Chicago River, a similar case began unfolding in 2018 when then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit alleging the cooling system intake structure at Trump Tower siphoned water from the river so powerfully that it sucked in fish and trapped them against its screens, killing thousands, and that the building pumped water back into the river that was up to 35 degrees hotter. Trump Organization will pay $4.8 million to settle that fish-kill suit.
The suit against the ethanol plant also alleged some excess discharges of chlorine and nitrogen ammonia. Alto has not admitted to or denied the allegations, and its parent company, Alto Ingredients, could not be immediately reached for comment.
A consent order filed Aug. 13 requires the alcohol manufacturer to pay a $75,000 civil penalty to the state’s Environmental Protection Trust Fund, as well as pay for a $125,000 wetland restoration project at Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge farther downstream in Fulton County, where over 2,600 acres are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the confluence of the Illinois and Spoon rivers.
In a Tuesday news release, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul called the agreement “an important step that will protect the Illinois River for all who enjoy and rely on it.”
“It’s never been more important that Illinois steps up to enforce our environmental laws as the federal government steps back from its obligations to protect our resources for future generations,” said Jack Darin, director of the Sierra Club’s Illinois Chapter.
The project, to be managed by Ducks Unlimited, a private organization dedicated to waterfowl and wetlands conservation, will replace a water control structure on the refuge’s Wilder Tract to restore natural flood pulses that are crucial to the ecosystem across 320 acres of wetlands by the end of November next year.
The Nature Conservancy has undertaken similar restoration efforts to reconnect the wetlands of nearby Emiquon Nature Preserve to the river. A water control structure between the river and the floodplain allows scientists to replenish and drain the wetlands in a way that mimics nature’s seasonal cycles.
Letting water levels rise within the preserve lets aquatic life such as plants and fish thrive, while lowering levels is good for the soil and the wetland plants growing in it, and lets migratory birds more easily prey on fish.
While other habitats in the area are owned and managed by other conservation nonprofits and state agencies such as the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, many backwater lakes and wetlands are being farmed or on property owned by private waterfowl hunting clubs.
The land’s agricultural use dates back to when Joy Morton, founder of Chicago’s world-famous salt company, financed levee and drainage tiles and ditches in the late 1910s. By 1926, almost all natural lakes and floodplain habitats had been converted to farmland.
Prairie Rivers Network said the agreement resolves water claims, “but not the facility’s overall pollution problem.”
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“Corn ethanol is marketed as clean, homegrown energy, but the record tells a different story: years of alleged permit violations affecting the Illinois River,” Hirschfeld said.
He also pointed to a 2024 report from nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, which found that two years earlier Alto had reported releasing almost 296,000 pounds of acetaldehyde, a hazardous gas and human carcinogen, as well as more than 9,000 pounds of formaldehyde, which can also cause cancer.
“The problem extends beyond Pekin,” Prairie Rivers Network added.
More than 40% of 240 U.S. biofuel plants violated air pollution permits at least once between July 2021 and May 2024, according to the report, and Illinois ethanol plants alone released 2.2 million pounds of hazardous air pollutants in 2022.
“This settlement addresses a serious pattern of river pollution; it is not a clean bill of health for the facility or the ethanol industry at large,” Hirschfeld said. “Communities should not have to trade clean water and clean air for an industry propped up by public mandates and subsidies.”