"CORNOGRAPHIC" BEHAVIOR

Ethanolics Anonymous By DENNY HALDEMAN

In a land already plagued with poisoned groundwater, the incidence of atrazine and other poisons will only become more pervasive. Aquifers, already drained faster than recharge will only dry up faster in direct proportion to our ethanol consumption. It takes around 8,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn and each gallon of it leaves eight gallons of toxic waste sludge. Even in the land of 10,000 Lakes, Minnesota is experiencing water shortages from the ethanol production explosion. With 99% of corn production under intensive fossil fuel nitrogen fertilization regimes, there is a directly proportionate resulting contamination of surface and groundwater and growth of the dead zones where our rivers drain.

Depending on if you believe the science of the Corn Growers Association or scientists from Cornell University, corn will produce slightly more energy than is required to turn it into ethanol or substantially less. Having monitored the bioenergy crowd for a decade, repeated inquiries into true sustainability have been met with deafening silence. There is no ethanol plant in operation that can plant, grow, harvest, transport, process, and transport it's product on ethanol alone and still show a profit. It cannot be done given today's economics.

After we do the inevitable Enron-style bailout of the ethanol scamsters, we will be left with soils so depleted of basic nutrients, that any subsequent food production will be lower in nutrients, adversely affecting human and animal health and well being.

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Polluted water, polluted air, a depleted aquifer and soil that can no longer be tilled, due to it being depelted by the current rush to plant "horizon to horizon" to cash in on the ethanol craze.

Have we taken leave of our collective senses? Have we forgot the tales of woe and misery passed down from generation to generation about the horrors of the 1930"s DUST BOWL ?

Once the Ozarks Aquifer is polluted with the toxic wastewater from these ethanol plants and can no longer serve up clean, drinkable water, it will be WAY too late to stop the current madness in our rush to build these "Ethanol Factories."

And once the precious top soil is gone, American civilization will suffer the same fate.