SCOTTSBLUFF, Neb. (KOLN) – A Nebraska woman faces 41 charges after dozens of dogs were rescued June 5 from her home in Scotts Bluff County.

The Scotts Bluff County Sheriff’s Office was called to a home east of Scottsbluff around 2 p.m. for a report of possible animal abuse. According to court records, a dog from the home had been seen on Highway 26.

When deputies arrived, they contacted the owner of the dogs, 75-year-old Jody Staman. While speaking with Staman outside the home, a deputy saw numerous small dogs in wire cages. Further investigation found some of the dogs did not have food or water, and several were breathing heavily and appeared stressed. Dogs that did have water had bowls filled with algae, vegetation and mud. The dirt floors were covered in dog feces.

Staman told deputies she used to sell the dogs but stopped around 2020. She said she originally had 30 dogs and one puppy.

Deputies later returned with assistance from Nebraska Game and Parks and members of the Panhandle Humane Society. Court records state 40 live dogs and one dead puppy were collected from the property. Another puppy, which was in poor health, was taken to the Wildflower Animal Cottage.

Deputies and PHS staff described the conditions as “deplorable,” with the residence covered in dog and rodent feces. In some areas, animal feces were more than one foot deep. In most areas, it was impossible to take a step without stepping in feces.

Staman was charged with 40 counts of cruel neglect of an animal and one count of cruel neglect of an animal resulting in death.

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Emma Bullerman is spending her summer riding around in fields with her dad, and she’s thrilled about it. It’s not just for fun, either — she’s interning for the Prairie Plains Resource Institute and working alongside her father to conserve Nebraska grasslands. 

“Prairie Plains has literally been in my life since I was born. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a grasslands nepo baby,” Bullerman said. “My dad is the restoration director, so even as a kid I would be out helping him in the field.” 

Today, Emma is taking a more active role in aiding her dad’s work to restore native prairies. 

“A lot of my summer will be in the truck with him driving across Nebraska to collect the native grassland seeds that we put into our restoration sites,” she said. “Basically, I’m just learning the ropes of everything that goes into grassland restoration.” 

As a teen, Bullerman thought she wanted to do anything but follow her dad’s footsteps. Eventually, a few stalled paths helped her rediscover her love for her hometown. 

“In high school and coming into college, I really thought I wanted to leave Nebraska and do something totally different from my dad,” she said. “I tried a few other directions, but pretty quickly could tell that I wasn’t passionate about them. I took a semester off, and then my boss at Prairie Plains reached out about helping with social media.” 

It didn’t take long for Bullerman to catch the bug for conservation work and switch her major to fisheries and wildlife, the same degree program her father graduated from in 1995. In fact, she is a fourth-generation Husker with strong ties to ag and food science. Her grandfather is Dr. Lloyd Bullerman, a former a professor of food science, microbiology and food safety at the university, and her aunt studied food science at NU as well. 

Getting back to Prairie Plains in her early college years helped Bullerman realize that she, too, had a calling toward this field. 

“Being out in the field with my dad one day, I had a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is what I want to do.’ Finding my way back has been really, really beautiful.” 

Working with her dad, she’s is feeling better than ever about her direction, her hometown and her future in Nebraska. 

“Doing this work and studying at UNL has given me a whole new perspective on the state,” she said. “I used to be someone who was like, ‘I want to get out of here after I graduate.’ Restoring prairies and traveling all over Nebraska has helped me see that it’s so beautiful here, I just didn’t take the time to see it before.”

The future of data centers in Nebraska took center stage at a North Omaha town hall Thursday evening.

The event was hosted by State Sens. Terrell McKinney and Ashlei Spivey, who alongside Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh sponsored a bill in the Nebraska Legislature that looked to help regulate data centers.

Parts of their bill were adopted and passed in LB1010, which requires reports on annual power usage, water usage and ownership.

“Having this passed in a package showed a lot of bipartisan work,” Spivey told a crowd of attendees at Nelson Mandela Elementary School.

The proposed regulations were shaped in part by Bold Nebraska, an advocacy group focused on eminent domain and clean energy. Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and founder of Bold Nebraska, said before the bill passed there were “zero laws on the books” to address a boom in data centers.

“If one is coming into the community, we wanted to make sure that there were some basic transparency things in place,” Kleeb said.

Political discussions around data centers heated up in recent months following reporting by the Flatwater Free Press that showed Google is considering a data center in Nebraska that could require more than three times the amount of power the entire city of Lincoln uses at peak demand in the summer.

The Nebraska Legislature recently passed another bill, LB1261, that allows private developers to build and own power plants to serve a large industrial customer, including data centers. That bill was proposed by the governor’s office and celebrated by Gov. Jim Pillen.

“Our state is once again taking a bold and strategic step – one that will create an environment that attracts business and multibillion dollar investment, while legally preserving Nebraska’s unique and consumer-friendly public power model,” Pillen said at the time.

At Thursday’s town hall, McKinney called LB1261 “the bogeyman bill.”

“It’s a bill that the governor pushed through the legislature to allow for data centers to create their own power,” McKinney said. “It’s a bill that I stood on the floor and said this is going to harm our communities.”