FARMERS HOPE LOCKS WILL END AMMONIA THEFT

A half-dozen times in the past year, fertilizer thieves have risked their
eyesight, lungs and lives by illegally tapping into the highly unstable
contents of one of the Walton Co-op's approximately 40 anhydrous ammonia tanks.

Andre Hoyt, branch manager of the co-op, and Reed Priess, his boss at the
co-op's Greenwood headquarters, assume the towable "torpedo tanks" farmers
use to inject super-cooled fertilizer into the soil were hit as recently as
two weeks ago by manufacturers of methamphetamine.

"It's completely beyond me. I don't understand it," Hoyt said Tuesday. "It
seems like people's lives are so empty, they have to start doing that stuff."

Walton's close proximity to southeast Lincoln may help explain its
popularity among anhydrous thieves, but "I don't think I've talked to a
co-op manager in the state who hasn't had this problem," Priess added.

The Greenwood Co-op and its eight locations alone have about 250 tanks in
their inventory. Priess remembers one thief so bold as to try to tap a tank
in broad daylight in Manley.

Especially in the spring and fall, full and partially full tanks are
scattered in farm fields across the state overnight. Fertilizer suppliers
and farmers lose a few gallons at a time to people typically using nothing
more sophisticated than a narrow-topped container and a piece of bicycle
innertube that fits over the tank hose.

Now, much to the satisfaction of Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner and
others, somebody is trying to do something about it.

Kansas City, Mo.-based Farmland Industries has designed a locking device
for the tanks and a company in Topeka, Kan., has signed a contract to
mass-produce Farmland's prototype.

Scott Bolley of Dodge Manufacturing said the results will be on the market
soon. The tamper-proof adapter kits for tanks will sell for $89, including
a $30 key-locked Master Lock the size and shape of a hockey puck.

"This has been a problem pretty much wherever the tanks are located,"
Bolley said, "and more so in the country, where they can tamper with those
things for hours on end."

Farmland produces and sells anhydrous ammonia for agriculture. Spokeswoman
Sarah Schmidt described methamphetamine use and production as "one of the
main issues" in the company's efforts to design a lock.

Wagner and York County Sheriff Dale Radcliff hope the locks will be another
tool to help contain the spread of meth.

"It's slowly worked its way this direction and it hit here a year and a
half ago and it hasn't stopped yet," Wagner said. "And it continues to grow
dramatically."

Radcliff also likes what he hears. "Anything that would help law
enforcement, that would stop the stealing of anhydrous to make
methamphetamine, I think would be great."

Alice Licht of the Lincoln-based Nebraska Agri-Business Association said
its 675 fertilizer-industry members will "do anything to help fight this
thing."

She described the problem of anhydrous theft by meth cookers as "really,
really bad, especially in the Scottsbluff area."

Fertilizer dealers are already using simpler locks, fences and now
motion-detecting lights at tank storage points to improve their odds.

"And still they're losing anhydrous," Licht said, "because they're
bypassing the locking device and opening up the plumbing, which is
horrendously dangerous."