What 5,402 Hours Actually Means for the People Who Live There

There is no settlement fund in this order. There is no list of people who got sick. There is no number of families counted, no medical records subpoenaed, no tally of children’s asthma inhalers or elderly neighbors’ hospital bills. The EPA’s document is entirely procedural: a company failed to operate its pollution control equipment correctly, and now it must file some updated paperwork. That’s the legal summary.

But 5,402 hours is not an abstract number. It is a span of time that ran for nearly four years — across winters when windows stayed shut and air circulated indoors, across summers when kids played outside in the heat, across every ordinary Tuesday when people drove past 5945 N. 70th Street in Lincoln without knowing what was or wasn’t burning in that afterburner.

The afterburner at this facility exists for one reason: to destroy hazardous air pollutants before they leave the stack and enter the air that the surrounding neighborhood breathes. Iron foundries emit compounds that are federally classified as hazardous — that’s why the Maximum Achievable Control Technology standard exists, why it was written into law in 1990, and why it was specifically extended to area source foundries like Deeter in 2008. The afterburner’s 1,200-degree minimum is not a suggestion. It is the temperature at which those compounds are neutralized. Below it, they are not.

Lincoln is not an industrial wasteland. It’s a city of roughly 300,000 people, home to the University of Nebraska, home to families who chose neighborhoods in the north part of the city. The plant at N. 70th Street sits in a populated area. The people nearest to it did not receive a notice saying: “We know our pollution control equipment has been underperforming for the past 45 months. We’re working on it.” They received nothing. They filed no complaint that appears in this document. They may not have known there was anything to complain about.

The EPA found out not because of a whistleblower or a community health alert. It found out because it reviewed the records the company itself was required to keep. Those records showed 5,402 hours of sub-minimum-temperature operation. The company knew those records existed. It kept them because the permit required it to. What is unclear from the document is when, if ever, the company flagged those hours internally and asked itself whether it had a legal obligation to report the failure.

What is clear is that the company also failed to submit its semi-annual compliance reports for all of 2021 and the first half of 2022, and failed to submit the results of its own 2021 stack test. These are not minor clerical errors. They are the exact mechanisms by which regulators and the public are supposed to stay informed about what is being released into the air. When those reports go missing, the oversight system goes dark. The community is left breathing on faith.

The order asks Deeter to fix its paperwork and update its permits. It does not ask Deeter to notify the community. It does not require medical monitoring. It does not create a fund for anyone who may have been harmed. The legal machine worked exactly as it was designed to work — as a compliance mechanism, not as a justice mechanism. For the people who lived near 5945 N. 70th Street during those 45 months, the difference between those two things is everything.

“5,402 hours. Across 45 months. That is not a glitch — that is the operating condition of the plant.”

Word for Word: What the Government Found and What the Law Required

These are direct quotes from EPA Docket No. CAA-07-2024-0104, signed August 18–20, 2024. Nothing here is paraphrased.

The Core Violation Finding

“Based on review of the records required to be kept by the operating permit, the EPA finds that Deeter has violated its Class II operating permit and the LLCAPCPR by failing to maintain the minimum temperature required by Section XXXIV(B)(1)(b) of the permit for 5402 hours over a period of 45 months.”
— EPA Compliance Order, Paragraph 26

• This is the EPA’s own finding, drawn directly from the company’s required recordkeeping. The company’s internal logs documented the violation. The EPA did not need a surprise inspection — the paper trail was already there.
• 5,402 hours across 45 months equals roughly 120 hours per month, or an average of about 4 hours per day, every single day, for nearly four years during which the afterburner was operating below legal temperature minimums.
• The violation is of the Class II operating permit and the Lincoln-Lancaster County Air Pollution Control Program Regulations, both of which are federally enforceable components of Nebraska’s State Implementation Plan under the Clean Air Act.

The Permit Language That Was Violated

“The afterburner must be capable of maintaining a minimum temperature of 1200 degrees Fahrenheit (°F) in the area above the charge door after start-up is complete. For the purposes of this operating permit, ‘start-up’ shall mean any period of time during which the cupola is returned to operating mode following a shutdown of the cupola.”
— Operating Permit, Section XXXIV Cupola Requirements (B)(1)(b), quoted in EPA Compliance Order Paragraph 24

• The 1,200°F requirement is not a target range or a best-effort standard. The word “must” makes it mandatory. The afterburner “must be capable of maintaining” that temperature once start-up is complete.
• The definition of “start-up” is significant. The permit defines start-up as the return-to-operating-mode period after a shutdown. Once that period ends, the 1,200°F requirement kicks in with no exceptions. The compliance order notes that the revised permit applications Deeter must file need to “address the definition of start-up and its relation to the cupola blast rate” — suggesting that the definition of start-up may have been a contested or ambiguous factor in the 45-month violation window.
• The permit’s definition issue cuts both ways: if Deeter argued that extended “start-up” periods exempted it from the temperature requirement, the EPA’s order is now closing that argument by requiring clarified permit language going forward.

The Reporting Violations

“The EPA finds that Deeter has violated 40 C.F.R. § 63.10899(c) because it failed to submit the semi-annual reports for 2021 and the first half of 2022 to CEDRI. The EPA finds that Deeter has violated 40 C.F.R. § 63.10899(e) because it failed to submit a 2021 stack test to CEDRI.”
— EPA Compliance Order, Paragraphs 27–28

• CEDRI — the Compliance and Emissions Data Reporting Interface — is the federal system through which the EPA and the public can track emissions compliance at facilities nationwide. Failing to submit reports to CEDRI is not a technical filing error; it means the oversight record simply has no data for those periods.
• The 2021 stack test was actually conducted (the order confirms a stack test on May 4, 2021). Deeter had the results. It simply did not submit them to the federal database as required. The public and regulators were kept in the dark about those results for years.
• Semi-annual compliance reports for all of 2021 and H1 2022 represent a full 18 months of missing compliance data at the federal level — during the same 45-month window when the afterburner temperature violations were occurring.

The “Neither Admits Nor Denies” Shield

“Respondent neither admits nor denies the violations in Section IV of this Order.”
— EPA Compliance Order, Paragraph 48

• This is standard legal boilerplate in consent orders, but it has real consequences. By neither admitting nor denying, Deeter preserves its legal position in any future civil litigation brought by residents, employees, or other parties who may claim harm from the air pollution violations.
• The company did, however, sign the order — which means it waived its right to contest or appeal the order’s issuance, accepted the compliance requirements, and accepted the stipulated penalty structure. The legal shield is narrow: it protects admissions of liability, not acknowledgment of the order’s existence.

“Respondent admits the jurisdictional allegations contained in this Order.” The company says it’s subject to the law. It just won’t say whether it broke it.

Who Bears the Cost When the Afterburner Runs Cold

Public Health

Iron foundries emit hazardous air pollutants specifically regulated under Clean Air Act Section 112. The MACT ZZZZZ standard that Deeter is subject to exists because those emissions pose documented risks to human health. The 5,402 hours of below-minimum-temperature operation mean those pollutants were leaving the stack at higher-than-permitted concentrations.

• Iron foundry operations produce emissions including metallic compounds, particulate matter, and combustion byproducts. The afterburner is the facility’s primary control device for destroying these hazardous compounds before they reach the outdoor air. When it runs below 1,200°F, it operates in a degraded state where destruction efficiency is reduced.
• The facility is classified as an “area source” under the Clean Air Act — meaning it is a foundry located near communities rather than in an isolated industrial zone. Area source MACT standards were specifically created to protect residential neighborhoods that cannot otherwise be separated from these emissions by geographic distance.
• People most at risk from elevated hazardous air pollutant exposure include children with developing respiratory systems, elderly residents, and anyone with pre-existing lung or cardiovascular conditions. The EPA order contains no health assessment of the surrounding population. Whether any of those residents were affected is unknown; no study is required by this order.
• The semi-annual compliance reports and stack test results that Deeter failed to submit would have been the primary mechanism by which health officials and residents could have known there was a problem. Their absence meant no early warning, no review, and no potential for community-level health monitoring during the violation window.

Economic Inequality

Industrial facilities operating under area source permits are disproportionately located in working-class and lower-income neighborhoods. The decision of where to site a foundry and who absorbs its externalities is never random.

• The compliance order imposes no monetary penalty. The stipulated penalties built into the order (between $150 and $500 per day per violation) apply only to future non-compliance with the new permit application deadlines — not to the 45 months of past violations. Deeter faces no fine for what has already happened.
• The legal maximum penalty under Clean Air Act Section 113 is up to $57,617 per day per violation, per the Debt Collection Improvement Act inflation adjustment cited in the order itself. The order documents three separate categories of violation (temperature, semi-annual reports, stack test submission). Theoretically, the aggregate penalty exposure was enormous. In practice, this order leaves the company with zero financial liability for the documented violations.
• Workers at the facility breathe the same air as the surrounding community — often at closer range. Iron foundry workers face occupational exposures to metals and particulates that the afterburner is partly designed to control. If the afterburner was underperforming for 45 months, workers were inside that production environment for every hour of it.
• Neenah Foundry is the parent company of Deeter Foundry. Neenah Foundry is a large industrial manufacturer with multiple facilities nationwide. The compliance costs imposed by this order — filing revised permit applications — are trivially small relative to the operational scale of a national manufacturing company. The people who lived near this plant for 45 months have no equivalent capacity to absorb whatever health costs may have resulted.

What the Numbers Say About How This Was Resolved

What You Can Do About It

The compliance order is now a public document. Deeter has 180 days from the order’s effective date to file revised permit applications with the Lincoln-Lancaster County Permitting Department. That window is your window, too.

Who Is Responsible

• The order was served via email to Craig LeNoble (craig.lenoble@groupnei.com), listed as the Respondent’s contact. GroupNEI appears to be the administrative or management entity connected to the facility. The order does not name individual corporate officers or board members of Neenah Foundry Company by title or name beyond this contact point.
• Neenah Foundry Company is the parent corporation. Its leadership and board are public information and can be researched through the Wisconsin Secretary of State business records and SEC filings if applicable.
• The EPA order was signed by David Cozad, Director, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 7, on August 18, 2024, and filed by Milady Peters on August 20, 2024.

Watchlist: Agencies with Jurisdiction and Authority

• EPA Region 7 (Lenexa, KS): The issuing authority for this order. Contact Sara Hertz Wu (hertzwu.sara@epa.gov) or Chris Appier (appier.christopher@epa.gov) with questions or community concerns about the Lincoln facility. EPA retains concurrent enforcement authority even after state delegation.
• Lincoln-Lancaster County Air Pollution Control Agency: The local authority that issues and renews Deeter’s operating permit. This is the body that will receive the revised permit applications Deeter is required to file. Public comment periods during permit revision are a legal opportunity to demand stronger monitoring and community notification requirements.
• Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE): Nebraska accepted delegation of the MACT ZZZZZ standard on July 1, 2013. State-level enforcement authority exists alongside the EPA’s concurrent authority.
• EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO): This is the public database where CEDRI reports and compliance history are visible. Search for Deeter Foundry / Neenah Foundry at echo.epa.gov to track whether future required reports are actually filed.
• EPA CEDRI Database: The specific system where the missing semi-annual reports and stack test results were required to be filed. Future submissions will be public. Watch for the corrected filings.

What Residents and Organizers Can Do Right Now

• Demand community notification language in the revised permit applications. The permit revision process is the single point where residents have formal standing to insist that future violations trigger direct notice to surrounding neighborhoods, not just regulatory filings.
• Contact the Lincoln-Lancaster County Air Pollution Control Agency and ask when the permit revision docket will be open for public comment. Request to be added to the notification list for any public hearing on the Deeter permit application.
• Connect with environmental justice organizations in Nebraska, including the Nebraska Environmental Justice Network and the Sierra Club Nebraska Chapter, which track industrial pollution permits and can support organized comment campaigns during public review periods.
• Request air quality monitoring data for the N. 70th Street area from the Lincoln-Lancaster County APC Agency and from the Nebraska DEE. Ask specifically what monitoring was conducted near the facility during the 45-month violation window and what results are available.
• Document health patterns in your neighborhood. If you or neighbors near the facility experienced elevated rates of respiratory issues, consult with a physician and consider contacting a community health organization or environmental attorney. The absence of a study does not mean harm did not occur — it means harm was not measured.
• Use FOIA to get the complete records. The 5,402 hours of temperature data came from the company’s own required logs. Those logs can be requested from the EPA and from the Lincoln-Lancaster County APC Agency under the Freedom of Information Act and Nebraska’s public records laws. The full temperature log would show exactly which dates and shifts ran cold.