Osage Bio Energy’s proposal to build an Ethanol Plant in Mecklenburg county is bringing plenty of controversy to a small town. Located just outside of Chase City, VA, residents are worried that the plant will bring noxious odors to the rural town and pollute a tributary of Kerr Lake. While it will bring needed jobs to the county with the highest unemployment rates in the state, the environmental and quality of life issues have prompted over 900 people to sign a petition opposing it.
Osage is now requesting a grant that would fund the water line to the plant. According to a New Dominion article, in full production Osage would be using 1.5 million gallons of water a day or enough water for 7500 homes. While under normal weather conditions this amount is deemed acceptable to the Roanoke River Basin Association, the drought in the last few years has already brought water consumption warnings and limits to the region. The question remains whether in years of drought, the water will be available to run the plant and at what cost to other water consumers in the region.
The National Research Council has recently issued a report that ethanol plants could negatively impact water quality and availability. The report cites that water for both plant consumption and water for increased crop production could produce more pressure on water resources.
In addition to water consumption, the report expressed a concern about runoff from the fertilizers and pesticides required to grow crops. The report states
“A possible metric to gauge the impact of biofuels on water quality could be to compare the amount of fertilizers and pesticides used on various crops, the committee suggested. For example, corn has the greatest application rates of both fertilizer and pesticides per acre, higher than for soybeans and mixed-species grassland biomass. The switch from other crops or noncrop plants to corn would likely lead to much higher application rates of highly soluble nitrogen, which could migrate to drinking water wells, rivers, and streams, the committee said. When not removed from water before consumption, high levels of nitrate and nitrite -- products of nitrogen fertilizers -- could have significant health impacts.
The report goes on to list ways that these negative effects could be mitigated such as using waste water, optimizing fertilizer use, injecting below soil surface but all of them seem to be expensive and time consuming. Have we not learned that fast and cheap methods will be the ones used until so much damage is done that it forces government regulation? The hard cold fact is that farmers are so hard pressed that these expensive measures are not financially feasible.
It seems that where ethanol and other bio fuels are concerned, there are as many questions as there are answers not only locally for Mecklenburg County but nationally as Congress continues to support it as an alternate fuel source. For the people locally, it seems a choice between the need for employment in the area and what it will cost to put a few of those people to work.
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