Ethanol’s troubles have sapped the dreams of an Indiana town

Reporting from San Pierre, Ind. — The air smells clean and sweet off the sprawling corn and spearmint fields, but for this unincorporated town of 156, it is the smell of failure: the failure to reap the rewards of the ethanol boom.

Construction crews were scheduled to start digging up the sandy soil next spring to make way for an ethanol distillery plant in San Pierre. The plant promised to revive the town’s economy, bring high-paying jobs to one of Indiana’s poorest counties and double its tax rolls, a scenario that has played out repeatedly in struggling towns across the Midwest over the last three years.


But last month, the developers of the San Pierre plant announced that the $62-million deal was dead. Banks involved in the project had cut off their lines of credit. Desperate calls to dozens of other financial institutions led to the same answer: No.

Already battered by other market forces, the ethanol industry has been hit hard by the banking world’s credit crunch, and the seemingly bright future of corn-based biofuel has been cast in doubt.

LA Times