Editorial: Facts Sometimes Take Time To Emerge

Two particular items caught our attention in recent weeks, each of which involved information that seemed to surface much more slowly than a speeding bullet.

The first is related to ethanol production. A writer to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch questioned recently why it is that information about the enormous amounts of water required to produce ethanol have surfaced so late in the game. If we understood his meaning correctly, he was saying that the people involved in its production have known this for years.

In recent weeks, major stories have been written about those water requirements and about the pollution introduced by farmland runoff due to the increased amounts of fertilizer required to produce the increased amount of corn needed to feed the ethanol plants. In fact we touched on the water problem on April 23 in a column titled “Ethanol: Salvation or Pandora’s Box?”

But there are two sides to the story about what role agriculture plays in producing the dead zone in the Gulf and killing fish and other organisms upriver. For years, farmers have been experimenting with no-till farming, which actually saves soil from erosion. Certain ground cover is left in the field, which enriches the soil and helps prevent runoff. It also has reduced the amount of fertilizer required. Is the problem of runoff solved totally? Of course not. But one must recognize the efforts of those in the industry to adjust their operating procedures to make things better. (Another writer said the Post-Dispatch interviewed him for the story but omitted that fact.)

The Post-Dispatch reported that there are more than a hundred ethanol plants now in operation and 80 more on the drawing boards— this in a nation whose innards are crying out for water. The Midwest has experienced drought for going on eight years. Aquifers are in trouble. And the dead zone in the Gulf covers an area of some 7,000 square miles. We’ve known about the zone for decades. More to the point, we know how it got there!

The second item relates to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. We’re told that the Ninth Ward in New Orleans looks today about the same it did just days after the hurricane.

Journal correspondent Capt. Richard Eberhardt wrote for us on June 18 a report titled “Katrina Report Challenges Conventional Wisdom.” The reason for that, we suspect, is that there was nothing conventional about Katrina. As the American Society of Civil Engineers’ report of nearly 7,000 words explained, the hurricane did register as a Category 5 storm, then dropped down to a Category 3. However, the storm surge remained large. So the coast was not struck by a Category 3 storm surge but by a larger one.

A problem that the WJ has always recognized is that reports issued in the wake of disasters large and small are often flawed. It is the nature of all news organizations to bring to the public all they can about an event as quickly as they can. Obviously, they are influenced by competition and want to be first. So they man their Internet circuits and telephones and begin asking questions of people who ultimately will know most of the answers but may not at the time they are interviewed—especially early on.

Many reports are not completed for years. The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway was a dream in the eyes of many for 75 years or more before plans were drawn up and construction completed. And over that long period of time, articles on the subject appeared in numerous papers. No doubt some were not totally accurate, but in a general sense, the public was kept up to date on progress.

This column involves two ongoing stories—ethanol plants and Hurricane Katrina—for which the final chapters will not be written for years. One by one, month after month, year after year, studies will be completed and reports will emerge. Perhaps we might even learn why government has done such a lousy job in monitoring financial matters in the aftermath of the hurricane.

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