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Mankato schools reject low milk bid from troubled Hastings creamery
Jun. 21—MANKATO — Mankato Area Public Schools will pay about $20,000 more for milk in the next two school years than it would have if the School Board had accepted the low bid among a trio of dairies seeking the biennial contract.
But the cheaper price was offered by a troubled Hastings Creamery that school officials worried might be an unreliable source of milk for the district’s breakfast and lunch program.
“We are recommending that we not go with the lowest bidder,” Finance Director Amanda Heilman told the board Tuesday. “… We are not sure that they are going to be able to satisfy the requirements of the contract.”
The 110-year-old creamery, which was purchased from Plainview Milk Products in 2021 by a group of dairy farmers, has been cut off from the regional sewer system after repeated violations of discharge rules, according to the Metropolitan Council, which operates the wastewater treatment network in the Twin Cities and surrounding communities.
“The ongoing release of prohibited materials is putting the wastewater treatment plant in imminent danger and could compromise the health and safety of the Hastings community,” the Met Council stated to KARE 11 TV, which first reported the story on June 4.
“We have unfortunately recorded six notices of violations of industrial waste permits from the Hastings Creamery in the past seven months. As a result, we are suspending its ability to discharge industrial waste for treatment at the Hastings Wastewater Treatment Plant.”
The Twin Cities TV station reported that the problem involved the level of fats, oils and grease and PH levels of waste coming from the dairy and that the solution would likely involve Hastings Creamery constructing a $900,000 pre-treatment facility at the dairy.
The dairy is currently trucking wastewater to a treatment plant in St. Paul while it seeks permission to resume discharging into the Hastings sewer system, according to the Hastings Journal. But the newspaper reported that the disruption has left some dairy farmers with nowhere to sell their milk, forcing one to dump 80,000 gallons a day into fields and another to dump 60,000 gallons.
The Mankato School Board meeting showed how the problem is also affecting demand for the creamery’s products. Hastings Creamery submitted a bid of $187,708 per year to supply the district’s milk, which was nearly $10,000 less than the bid by Prairie Farms and $32,000 below the bid of Kemp’s.
The board, which had three members absent from Tuesday’s meeting, voted 4-0 to award the bid to Prairie Farms, an Illinois-headquartered dairy cooperative that also won the previous two-year contract over Hastings Creamery and Kemps in 2021.
