by Cynthia Andre
Rumors begin spreading though Webster County in August of this year. A company from Mt. Vernon, Missouri, it was said, was planning to build an ethanol plant in the county. By September 2006 the rumor had been confirmed, and many of the county’s residents were beginning to raise serious questions about the effects of the plant on their area.
It was no surprise to anyone following the ethanol industry that there were plans to build another plant. Ever since the government began to grant sizable subsidies to this industry to reduce the use of foreign oil (and incidentally secure the farm vote and benefit large agribusiness campaign donors), many plants have been built and many more are in the planning stage.
But observers of the industry and county residents alike wondered why a plant would be built so far from the areas of the state where corn—the plant du jour for making ethanol—is grown and from the markets for the ethanol.
Although there is a large dairy industry in southwest Missouri that might use the waste from the plant for feed (825 tons/day), the company, Gulfstream Bioflex Energy (GBE), denied that was part of their reasons for building a plant in Webster County. Whether the company is also considering building a Confined Animal Feeding Operation in the county to use the waste, as some plants have done, is unknown.
Instead, the company told a county study committee, they were interested in the Webster County site for the “lay of the land,” access to rail and a four-lane highway and proximity to a natural gas pipeline. The fact that the county had no planning and zoning (defeated by voters in 2005), “had never come to mind,” a company spokesman said.
Webster County is a largely rural county just east of Springfield with a population of only 35,000. It is one of the few counties in Missouri where the majority of the residents work outside the county. While the promise of a new industry bringing in 35–45 new jobs and a projected annual payroll of 2.1 million might turn the heads of counties with more resources than Webster, the local citizens did their homework and have been battling the company ever since.
Concerns of the residents have ranged from noise, odor and light pollution to increased traffic and risk of explosions and fire. The most serious concerns, however, center on air and water pollution. The plant will be permitted to emit 100–250 tons of pollutants into the air each year and the residents are aware that many plants in other areas have been found to be in violation of air quality standards and legal action has been required to bring the plants into compliance.
Groundwater pollution is also a major concern for residents in Webster and surrounding counties. The proposed plant will be discharging large quantities water with unknown content on a daily basis and residents are aware that some plants in other areas have polluted nearby streams.
The area is riddled with sinkholes, losing streams and solution channels that act as direct conduits to the underlying aquifer system that provides water for all of southern Missouri and parts of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Adding to the problem, Webster County sits on a high plateau—the second highest area of the state, according to a spokesman for the Citizens for Groundwater Protection, a local group of residents who are seeking to prevent the construction of the plant. Five major creeks and rivers originate in the county, including the already impaired James River, which winds through the heavily populated areas around Springfield and eventually empties into Table Rock Lake. “Whatever occurs here,” he observed, “will affect everyone downstream.”
The Citizens group has, however, chosen the issue of the volume of water used by the plant as the basis for their legal battle with GBE. The company proposes to sink four wells, which will be capable of drawing 880–2000 gallons of water per minute. Questions of volume involve both the possible effects on the 91 residential wells that surround GBE’s proposed well sites as well as on the underlying aquifer system itself.
At the lower end of the range given by GBE, the company would be using as much water as all other major wells in the county combined. At the upper end, they would be using over twice that of all other major users combined.
Put another way, the volume of water used by GBE would equal that used by 21,000 of the county’s residents. Since Webster County is one of the fastest growing counties in the state, this raises concerns about the county’s ability to meet the future needs of its citizens.
The legal battle between the Citizens and GBE began in October 2006 with a temporary restraining order to stop GBE from digging a test well. Attorneys for the company thwarted this attempt by filing a motion to change judges, which is apparently granted in such cases on a one-time basis only. By the time the new judge was appointed by the state and a court date set, GBE had completed its test.
The group then requested that the County Commission restrict all future wells to less than 1000 feet without approval by the Commission. This request was denied, according to a member of the Citizens group, as attorneys for the Commission advised that in a Class III county without planning and zoning, the Commission could not make that kind of decision.
And so the legal battle continues. Because there are no restrictions in Missouri statutes on the volume of water drawn by wells, the Citizens’ case against GBE hinges on the interpretation of “reasonable use,” which was established by case law. Along these lines, an expert witness for the Citizens group will testify that water is already being drawn from the aquifer faster than it is being recharged and that the test well was not an adequate test.
Meanwhile, a larger controversy continues about ethanol itself. Some scientists maintain that there is no net gain of energy in the production of ethanol from corn because of the energy used in growing, transporting and conversion of the corn. Others are concerned about the effects of increased corn production, which is water and chemical intensive, on the soil and the environment. Still others worry about the effect on the price and availability of corn for consumption.
Consistent with the Sierra Club’s new energy policy, the Union for Concerned Scientists writes:
Though the current form of ethanol made from corn offers limited environmental benefits and limited potential for large-scale displacement of petroleum, it will be a key to the transition to cellulosic ethanol in the future.
Cellulosic ethanol is more energy-efficient than corn ethanol and uses more abundant and diverse feedstocks that, unlike corn, are not used for food production. Unfortunately, cellulosic ethanol is not yet ready for commercial deployment.
In the near term, the largest potential for oil savings comes from improvements in the fuel economy of new vehicles, and greater fuel efficiency will help lower the costs of an ethanol future.
To prevent the depletion of soil and other resources, the Club’s new energy policy also stresses the need for any source of cellulosic ethanol to be sustainable. The Club’s policy also concurs with the Union that energy conservation should be the top priority:
To view the Club’s new energy policy in its entirety go to: www.sierraclub.org/policy/conservation/energy.doc.