End the Ethanol Charade

Field/Orchard/Plantation Crops/Residues, Maryland, Opinions

August 30, 2011

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by Karen Hosler (The Baltimore Sun) Karen Hosler writes that the great environmental hope has been exposed as a hoax; conservation is a better bet than magic elixirs

…At best, ethanol enthusiasm has always been muted in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. There’s lots of corn grown here, and corn’s been the main stock for making ethanol. But the farms are small, not suited to the factory-style production of the Midwest. Plus, the Delmarva poultry industry provides a strong market for local corn.

As further evidence that corn-based ethanol is a bad local investment, the bay commission noted in a 2007 report that the bay watershed is the only major corn-producing region in the country without an ethanol plant. The two plants that opened since then in central Pennsylvania and Hopewell, Va., have now gone belly up. Federal subsidies didn’t save them.

Forget the lack of benefits, though. Encouraging more local acreage to be planted in corn presents very real dangers to the Chesapeake Bay.

Worst among them would be the loss of forests that now cover nearly 60 percent of the bay watershed’s 64,000 square miles and contribute far fewer pollutants than any other land use, and the loss of buffer zones near streams. READ MORE and MORE and MORE (Response)

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