Ethanol Pushers

Tax breaks eventually make their way to consumers — but only those who are willing to take their own ethanol trip. Kansas residents and companies that buy flex-fuel vehicles designed to run on gas or E85 — and show proof that they've pumped 500 gallons of E85 into their tanks — can get a sizable credit from the state. From 2001 through the latest numbers from 2005, the program credited ethanol consumers more than $240,000 in state cash.

On the other side of the state line, a much-publicized 10-percent mandate will make all Missourians ethanol consumers. In 2008, when all gasoline sold in the state will contain 10 percent ethanol, Missouri will become the third state in the country with a captive commercial market for the 10-percent blend.

Of course, the oil industry lines its bulging pockets with government handouts, too. Ethanol subsidies pale in comparison with the staggering amount of taxpayer money that's pumped into petroleum resources.

But if we're really trying to break our addiction to oil, it would make more sense to invest in something that's really a cure.

At least ethanol is better for the environment. That's the message politicians and the agriculture lobby hope will hook consumers.

But major environmental groups aren't buying the green-fuel hype.

"The 'green fuels' idea comes from corporations like ADM, for example, really green-washing their image, and the politicians from the farm states," says Bill Griffith, chairman of the Kansas Sierra Club. "The environmental community knows corn-based ethanol is a dead end."

The biggest problem is the fertilizer.

On average, farmers put down 140 pounds of nitrogen and 60 pounds of phosphorous fertilizers to grow one acre of corn. The chemicals don't just fertilize the corn — they feed algae blooms that suck up oxygen in streams and lakes, driving away fish and other aquatic life. In Iowa, the nation's leading ethanol producer, the state's Department of Natural Resources reported in 2005 that nitrogen and phosphorous levels in the water were as much as 10 times the level appropriate for Midwest streams. The city of Des Moines has the largest water-treatment system in the world to deal with the fertilizer residues, but still issues regular "blue baby alerts" during the spring planting season, cautioning parents to avoid giving tap water to infants.

Ethanol can't even be sold as an all-American fuel, because 40 percent of nitrogen fertilizers are imported from overseas — including the Middle East.

The need for fertilizer will only increase as the number of corn-planted acres jumps by nearly 8 million between 2006 and 2010, according to the University of Missouri-Columbia's Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute.

Then there are the herbicides — particularly atrazine. It's banned in Europe and regulated as a possible human carcinogen in the United States. Its most recent claim to fame: a growing body of research that the chemical has had bizarre sex-changing effects on amphibians. Despite those concerns, the 2005 USDA Crop Chemical Survey reports that more than 65 percent of the nation's corn acres were doused with atrazine to control weeds.

And corn farmers are deeply dependent on fossil fuels: diesel, to fire up the tractors that plant crops and the combines that harvest them; propane, to dry the grain before transport; gasoline, for the trucks that drive the corn to grain bins and then to the ethanol plant.

Fossil fuels and corn production are, in fact, intimately connected.

"When we talk about energy with our growers, it's not necessarily just about ethanol," Sue Schulte, spokeswoman for the Kansas Corn Growers Association, recently told an auditorium full of concerned Johnson Countians who had gathered for a forum on energy independence. "It's about diesel. It's about natural gas. It's about a whole range of energy issues. So, in addition to pushing for increased biofuels development, we're also pushing for more domestic natural gas, more gasoline, any kind of resource we can use to produce our crops, as well."

The plants that refine corn into ethanol aren't clean, either. Take Missouri's Golden Triangle. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources cited the plant for air-quality violations nine times between May 2002 and July 2005, costing Golden Triangle a $4,000 penalty in 2003. In mid-2005, Golden Triangle paid a $30,000 fine for violating the Clean Air Act, and the U.S. Department of Justice and the EPA ordered it to install $2 million worth of technology to reduce its emissions of pollutants.

The plants also consume massive amounts of water — an average of 750,000 gallons a day. Earlier this year, residents in Hayne, Kansas, opposed the construction of an ethanol plant in their community, mainly because they were concerned about the availability of water. In addition, communities with ethanol plants must contend with discharges of industrial pollutants such as sulfates, chlorides and suspended solids into local waterways.

Science in the field has been hot with arguments about whether the process of creating ethanol is a worthwhile use of resources. The most recent study broke in July, when researchers at the University of Minnesota published an analysis in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluding that ethanol creates just 25 percent more energy than it takes to produce it — a notably "small" gain, in their opinion, given the wide environmental impacts.

As Griffith points out, the industry may be able to advertise ethanol as a green fuel for the short term. But it will soon become more evident that the resource-guzzling, water-polluting process isn't doing any favors for the environment.