Nebraska Environmental Trust Gets Earful About High Number Of Disqualified Grants

By Paul Hammel, Nebraska Examiner:

October 25, 2022

LINCOLN — A state board that hands out grants for environmental projects asked for comments on Tuesday and got an earful of criticism.

A trio of testifiers at a “listening session” lambasted the Nebraska Environmental Trust for disqualifying a larger-than-normal number of grant applicants and, in general, for straying from its mission to “conserve, enhance and restore the natural environments of Nebraska.”

The agency, created 30 years ago, funds environmental, recycling and conservation projects using about $20 million a year in State Lottery proceeds.

“The promise made to the people of Nebraska was to help the environment,” said Lincoln attorney Lorrie Benson. “But there appears to be hostility to funding environmental projects or even the environment in general.”

‘It’s sad’

“It’s sad,” Benson added.

Karl Elmsmaeuser, the executive director of the Trust, said Tuesday’s session was intended to gather ideas on whether the rules and regulations that govern the agency, known as Title 137, should be changed. He said it was not intended to provide responses to comments or criticism.

Phone and email messages left with Mark Quandahl, an Omaha attorney who chairs the Environmental Trust Board, went unanswered Tuesday afternoon.

One member of the 14-member Trust board attended the session. Jeff Kanger of Lincoln asked whether “public access” was an important issue when the Trust considered whether to grant funds for conservation easements.

Easement for trout fishing

Benson said it can be, depending on the nature of the land preserved. She added that it was a “mystery to me” why the Trust rejected a recent grant for a conservation easement to preserve a ranch in the Pine Ridge, a project that included providing public access for trout fishing.

The complaints Tuesday appeared to be the latest grumbling about the Trust, which began two years ago when the board opted to defund a handful of grants for conservation projects and instead send $1.5 million to finance the installation of ethanol blender pumps at service stations.

A lawsuit and formation of a Trust watchdog group followed. More criticism came a year ago after several entities that had received Trust grants in the past, including recycling operations, were deemed ineligible.

Gov. Pete Ricketts, who appoints nine of the 14 members of the Trust Board and hires four of the five agency directors who sit on the board, has defended their actions, citing the importance of ethanol to the state’s economy. Critics maintain that grant decisions are now guided by politics and benefits to farm groups rather than environmental benefits.

46% rejection rate

Among the complaints lodged by the three testifiers Tuesday:

• The Trust is disqualifying an unusually high number of grant applications, even before they are scored on several criteria, including environmental and public benefits, for approval. This year, 40 of 87 grant applications were recommended for disqualification by a Grant Review Committee, including, the Examiner learned, grants for recycling programs and preserving marshes for waterfowl. Last year, 36 out of 118 grant applications were deemed ineligible, a 30% rejection rate compared to a 46% rejection rate this year. Prior to 2021, fewer than a handful of grants were rejected as ineligible each year. “That strikes me as really strange,” said Anne DeVries of Cortland. DeVries, a mechanical engineer, has worked as a volunteer technical reviewer of grant applications — to determine whether a project is feasible — for the Trust for the past 15 years. She said she found one grant application poorly written this year, but it was the first time in a decade.
• “Climate change” isn’t among the criteria considered when awarding grants. “It’s the critical environmental issue of our time,” Benson said, suggesting that a project should be graded higher if it addresses the problem.
• The Trust is no longer awarding all of the about $20 million a year it gets from the State Lottery, holding back about $3 million last year. In the past, less than $200,000 a year was left unawarded. Rob Schubach of Lincoln said he questioned whether the Trust was “rat-holing” funds for a huge project down the road, such as the proposed, 4,000-acre recreation lake between Omaha and Lincoln. He called the lake “a farce” and “lake booze cruise.”
• The public received only a couple of days’ notice for the first listening session in Lincoln. The short notice — the Examiner received a press release Friday — led to suspicions that public input wasn’t really important.

Public hearing required

Six people showed up for the listening session Tuesday in Lincoln and three testified. Three other listening sessions are scheduled: Nov. 9 in Omaha, Nov. 15 in Kearney and a “zoom” session Dec. 5.

Trust officials emphasized that if rule changes are recommended by the Trust Board, they will be the subject of a public hearing, and people will have another chance to testify.

Elmshaeuser said the comments provided Tuesday, as well at the other listening sessions, will be considered by the Trust Board when determining whether changes in Title 137 are needed.

The consideration of possible changes began in May, when the Trust board appointed a committee to look at amendments.

At the time, the board listed 11 concerns about the clarity of current regulations, including the meaning of grant eligibility requirements pertaining to cost-benefits, environmental and economic impact and “private benefits.”

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