Harkin move kept Agriprocessors plant afloat

Carolyn Hileman - The Voice | December 29, 2008 

A controversial Postville meatpacking plant might have been forced out of business if U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin hadn’t stepped in four years ago to give it a multimillion-dollar boost with federal tax money. The money, nearly $8 million, came from an environmental program from which Agriprocessors normally would have been disqualified. The grant and loan were used to build a sewage-treatment plant that serves only the meatpacker. The environmental program, run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is designed to help small towns improve their sewage systems. The new sewage-treatment plant is technically owned by Postville, but it doesn’t serve the town’s residents. Department administrators say that fact usually would have prevented it from receiving money from the program. But Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, used his influence to exempt the project from those rules in 2004.

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