No Due Process, NO Development Plan, No Problem

[Tee]

Run that water thru an RO unit instead of putting it on the crops, sell it as purified bottled water and even at a conservative price like $1 per gallon, you'd net $78 billion per year and without all the corn consumption. Sell the corn overseas, pocket the money spent building the ethanol plant....now you are way ahead!!

[lurker]

The Holcomb coal fired electric plant will pump and evaporate 8,000,000,000 (billion) gallons per year from our aquifer (so Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico can have electricity).

How much money would that be? Hint: it's more than enough to fund Kansas with all of our gummmmmmmit waste.

[Made in the USA]

Originally Posted by Tee

Run that water thru an RO unit instead of putting it on the crops, sell it as purified bottled water and even at a conservative price like $1 per gallon, you'd net $78 billion per year and without all the corn consumption. Sell the corn overseas, pocket the money spent building the ethanol plant....now you are way ahead!!

You still have wastwater from an RO reject, Tee. And as far as putting their wastewater on the crops, it can't be done for long. The wastewater is highly concentrated in minerals and alkalinity.

Use potatoes for ethanol -- they hold 80 percent of their water (can be used in the process ), require few chemicals, require less water to grow, and the seeds can't be patented by Archer-Daniels-Midland -(opps, guess that's why using potatoes won't be done ...... darn ADM -- gotta have patents)

Never mind........ We don't need no friggin science .. we're Kansans !

[lurker]

Great post unreg....

Thanks.

BIOFUELS from the Wall Street Journal of 02.12.2007

Interest in alternative transportation fuels -- mostly ethanol -- soared following President Bush's declaration a year ago that the U.S. is "addicted to oil." Many potential fuels are being discussed, from biodiesel to hydrogen. Most of the buzz is around what's already by far the biggest alternative transportation fuel in the U.S.: ethanol made from corn.

There's lots of talk about the possibility of using ethanol as a standalone fuel to power cars. But virtually all the ethanol consumed in the U.S. today is used in a less-sexy way: It's blended into normal gasoline.

That's done mostly in parts of the country with bad air-pollution problems, because adding ethanol to gasoline reduces smog-causing emissions from the cars that burn the fuel. Ethanol also is used as a gasoline "extender."

The cost of producing ethanol depends largely on the cost of corn, ethanol's main feedstock. It also depends on the cost of the energy -- typically natural gas -- used to power the process that turns the corn into ethanol. Keith Collins, chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, estimates that today it costs about $1.60 to produce a gallon of ethanol.

Ethanol producers sell their brew on a wholesale market -- sometimes to gasoline refiners and sometimes to middlemen who sell to those refiners. The price of ethanol typically rises and falls with that of gasoline, which itself is a function of the global oil price. Ethanol typically has sold for up to 51 cents per gallon more than gasoline, because the federal government gives ethanol blenders a 51-cent-per-gallon tax break to encourage production of the supplemental fuel.

Over the past year, the industry that produces ethanol has had a wild ride. Last summer, ethanol prices soared, due to increases in both gasoline prices and ethanol demand. Gasoline blenders who had been using another emission-reducing additive -- methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE -- were switching over to ethanol because of concerns that MTBE was contaminating ground water.

Ethanol's per-gallon price premium over gasoline widened to more than $1. Margins for ethanol producers ballooned. Yet by late last year, the ethanol boom was cooling. The sudden profitability of the ethanol business, combined with increasing federal requirements for the production of alternative fuels, sparked a rush of investment in new ethanol plants.

Meanwhile, gasoline prices, and thus ethanol prices, were falling from their mid-2006 highs. The production costs for ethanol were also rising, largely because the rush to produce more ethanol had driven up the price of the fuel's main feedstock, corn.

On Friday, the price of ethanol for March delivery closed at $2.06 a gallon on the Chicago Board of Trade, and the price of gasoline for March delivery closed at $1.61 a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Where ethanol prices will go from here is a matter of debate. President Bush, in his State of the Union speech last month, laid out an ambitious target for the U.S. to consume about 35 billion gallons of ethanol and other alternative transportation fuels by 2017. (The U.S. currently consumes about 5.2 billion gallons of ethanol per year.)

Reaching the numbers outlined by President Bush won't be easy. It probably would require significantly increasing the concentration of ethanol that's blended into gasoline. That, paradoxically, is a move that scientists say raises potential air-pollution problems of its own. Studies show that while ethanol added to gasoline in low concentrations helps reduce certain emissions, such as carbon monoxide, it tends to increase some other emissions.

Another option to meet the government mandate would be to increase the use of ethanol as a standalone fuel. That would require the installation of ethanol pumps at gas stations -- a move that could cost the oil industry billions of dollars.

--Leila Abboud and Jeffrey Ball contributed to this article.

--Ms. Smith is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Los Angeles bureau

[Made in the USA]

Good article, "unregistered"! I say one sure fire method surrounding alternative energy, is to just turn the ethanol into "drinkable alcohol". Then supply every household in the USA with an allotment every week. Before too long, no one would give a crap about driving, cause they could stay plastered all day and watch "Judge Judy"!

[K C Muffin]

And just what in the world is wrong with Judge Judy? That's where I get ALL my legal advice......

[Made in the USA]

Wouldn't it be great if we had "REAL" Judges seated like Judge Judy?? You don't get any slack from her!!

Colwich rethinks ethanol plant rezoning

BY PHYLLIS JACOBS GRIEKSPOOR
The Wichita Eagle

Colwich's planning and zoning commission has reversed an earlier decision and recommended that the city deny Abengoa Bioenergy's request to rezone a parcel of 120 acres to build an ethanol plant adjacent to its existing plant.

The commission's Tuesday night meeting lasted past midnight and had more than 90 residents speak out against the proposed plant.

The commission did vote to recommend approval of a special-use permit for a 40-acre parcel that Abengoa already owns and that is currently zoned heavy industrial.

Abengoa could not be reached for comment Wednesday, and it was unclear how the mixed vote could affect the company's plans.

The Colwich City Council will vote on both recommendations Feb. 13.

Colwich residents cited concerns about air and water pollution from the plant and pointed to long-standing problems with the existing plant, which is one of the oldest in the country. Abengoa bought the plant from High Plains Corp. about five years ago. It has been cited for violations of its air quality permit and for wastewater problems.

Farmers in the region voiced concerns about the increase in truck traffic, particularly along 151st Street West to K-96. That route would mean an increase in traffic through the small towns of Halstead and Bentley as well as increasing congestion at the 151st Street and K-96 intersection.

"I just don't see how that road can bear that kind of increase in traffic," farmer Alvin Neville said. "We already have trouble in some areas handling the traffic we already have. As a farmer, I appreciate the benefits from ethanol, but there are problems with trying to build a plant that size in this region."

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The Colwich Council did approve the new expansion. What is interesting is that David VanderGriend, CEO of ICM (Firm that will build the Wright ethanol Plant) stated the following:

"Odor is not regulated but is subjective. A noise plan needs to be developed. The city nees to be sure that has the ability to make changes, and regulate changes resulting from biomass expansion"

His final comment to the city council members was, "What is the city council really doing for the citizens of Colwich if you allow this expansion?"

Why do I get the idea that Mr. David VanderGriend, CEO of ICM, is against the construction of a ethanol plant in the area he lives?