Editorial: Ethanol: Salvation or Pandora’s Box?

For years, proponents have argued that ethanol is the answer to our dependence on foreign oil. Will the boom in ethanol production across the United States lessen our dependence on foreign oil while at the same time open Pandora’s box by polluting and draining away precious water supplies?

Repeatedly in this column we have warned that proponents of any new system or product must count the cost of their proposal. In other words, will “something” be more trouble than it is worth? Are we so determined to produce ethanol to solve our woes that we are blind to the disadvantages? Now we are beginning to debate the staggering water requirements. That was not the case in 2005.

We reported in July of that year that researchers at Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley concluded that it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. The researchers said an ethanol mandate would “have negligible impact on oil imports.” At the time they disputed industry claims that the use of 8 billion gallons of ethanol a year would allow refiners to use 2 billion fewer barrels of oil. The numbers are getting too big for us, but one thing we do know is that in the 1970s, when interstate speed limits were reduced to 55 mph., oil use dropped precipitously.

From a different tack, we have never been able to prove or disprove the claims of one critic who said that ethanol produces more pollution than it prevents by displacing MTBE (methyl ter-butyl ether) that has been seeping into groundwater across the nation from gasoline storage tanks.

Back to our original point, however, the production of ethanol requires water in such quantities as to be breathtaking.

Chad Smith, who runs the Nebraska office of the advocacy group American Rivers, was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as saying, “Right now we’re hurtling headlong into this ethanol craze, and discussions about water supply are barely on the radar screen even though water is a limiting factor for just about everything we do in this state.” It is a limiting factor for other states as well.

We have had our disagreements with American Rivers, but Smith’s comment is right on. Water is the staff of life. One can survive many days without food but few without water. Agriculture depends upon it.

No one questions its value.

Moreover, reports have been published nationwide for decades about the diminishing supplies of groundwater in this country’s aquifers.

The cost of ethanol production, as it relates to water, is now in the headlines. Gulfstream Bioflex Energy, LLC, is proposing a Missouri plant that would require 1.3 million gallons of water daily to produce fuel based on corn. The ethanol industry says it takes about three gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. (That’s not true at all plants. A Granite Falls, Minn., plant requires four gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol.) The plant would discharge 400,000 gallons per day of contaminated water by spraying it on the land surrounding the plant, where it would seep back into the ground. A retired state conservation officer who lives in the area said the water in his wells has dropped 60 feet over the last 10 years. And that is without ethanol.

As it relates to the towing industry, there is potential for moving the base stock (corn), the ethanol, or the cattle-feed byproduct. But is the potential for profit blinding us to more serious realities?

The Post-Dispatch report says there are already 115 ethanol plants in operation across the nation. Another 80 or more are under construction, and more are planned.

If we have calculated correctly, the report shows that the annual ethanol output in the five states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas and Nebraska alone totals more than 4.38 billion gallons. Based on a 3:1 water ratio, that would require 13.1 billion gallons of water, some drawn from aquifers (via wells) lakes and rivers. We don’t even have enough water to support navigation on the Missouri, and we worry about endangered species. How much contaminated water would be fed back into the ground?

The advent of ethanol has farmers now receiving much higher payments for corn. Some states are evaluating whether they will become corn importers or remain exporters. Indiana is considering the possibility of having to revamp its entire transportation system.

The federal government has bought into ethanol production. Perhaps President Bush’s trip to Brazil to negotiate the purchase of ethanol makes more sense than trying to produce our own. But then there are those 115 plants in operation, 80 more under construction, and more on the way, aren’t there?

It may already be too late to stop a trend that could break our water banks. Nevertheless, shouldn’t we give some thought to it?

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