3623

Visit to a stinking, smelly town

The rush to biofuels is quite foolish in my opnion because to use an even more precious commodity that none of us can live without--water--plus grain which will raise the price of food for everyone, seems like the epitome of foolishness when stored fuel from vegetation is in the ground in coal and oil. The Greenies aren't interested in saving the planet or even giving us cleaner air--unless they can kill the people in the process so it returns to . . ?

But here's an article by Linda Devore, a local reporter from Fayetteville, Arkansas, who traveled with a group to inspect the successful ethanol plant in Lexington, Nebraska. Her town wants to get on the new cash cow for rural areas. Upon arrival she's almost knocked down by the horrible odor, primarily from the Tyson plant. She writes about the four essential needs for ethanol to work: water, corn, rail and roads.

"The Lexington plant is able to buy all of its corn locally. It comes in by the truck load--about 100 a day--all day long.

Water. Lexington sits on the largest natural aquifer in the United States. They use about a million gallons of water per day and their used water is processed through the city's expanded waste water treatment plant across the road.

Rail. The plant sits within a few hundred yards of the main east-west rail line running through Nebraska, and has built its own rail yard where a couple of dozen tanker cars sit--that is also being expanded.

Roads. Lexington is on I-80 and the industrial park where the plant is located has wide highway roads connecting to I-80 about 2.5 miles away.

The Cornhusker Lexington people were shocked--and remain puzzled throughout the evening--by two things we told them about E85's plans to build a plant in Fayetteville. First of all, they couldn't believe that it would be built so far away from the corn supply used to keep it running continuously 24/7. It was clear that they take great pride in the scheduled arrival of trucks throughout the day--every day--from local corn growers. It is a major logistical concern and critical to the plant's efficient operation.

The other thing that caused them to nearly burst out laughing was E85's plans to build as many as ten ethanol plants at one time. Understanding that the Vogelbusch Technology people from Austria, who also supplied the distilling technology for Lexington, is only the beginning of the plant construction process and project engineering firms must be hired to oversee the process--they will be talking about that one in Lexington for months. They don't believe it can or should be done. They said it can't be done--the resources don't exist and even Frucon--the large project management group that E85 says they will use doesn't have the resources. They found their plant severely strained the resources of their project management people.

More on those conversations later--so much more. But just briefly, when we returned to our hotel that evening and stepped out of the car we had another big surprise. Apparently the meat processing plant was doing their nightly cleanup and had stopped producing awful smells. Instead, we smelled brewery--ethanol. Maybe mixed a little with the other industrial smells of the area--but clearly ethanol. 2.0 miles from the plant site. Air was still--very little wind. 37 degrees--COLD.

Next morning, breakfast at the local diner--spoke with more local residents. A theme developing. Everyone agrees the whole town smells, but as to the ethanol: woman say it STINKS like stale beer and men say it SMELLS like beer. The guys don't think it's so bad. Women like it less."

A million gallons of water a day; a hundred trucks a day--all for a small plant that employs 37 people. We've already got people trying to drain the Great Lakes to supply water for agriculture and drinking in the west. Do we really want biofuels?

NIMBY!