Expert warns of ethanol pollution

Decisions on growing corn and other feedstocks for the fuel additive are critical, environmental leaders hear.

Iowa policymakers face tough decisions in the coming decades as the ethanol boom threatens to increase chemical and soil pollution in streams and emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, an Iowa State University authority told a state panel Tuesday.

Rick Cruse, director of the Iowa Water Center at ISU, told the governor-appointed Iowa Environmental Protection Commission that decisions on how to grow corn or other crops used to make ethanol will play a huge role in whether the burgeoning biofuels industry is a boon or on ecological bust.
The commission helps write state environmental rules.

“The political machine has said with multiple voices Iowa is, has been or will be the bioenergy capital of the world,” Cruse said. “If done correctly, it could be a Garden of Eden, literally. If it is done inappropriately, it might look like Saudi Arabia desert, with an empty oil field underneath.”

Cruse said that “there could be huge conflicts,” particularly if the nation moves to converting corn stubble, needed to replenish the soil, into ethanol.

That could mean less fertile soil, and much higher soil erosion, for example, he said.

“The feds want to use the residue for fuel,” Cruse said. “The farmers want to sell the residue. The soil needs the residue. This is the conflict. I don’t know if we can overcome it.

Des Moines Register