No Due Process, NO Development Plan, No Problem

[Made in the USA]

The only job where you get paid, to not work!

[Bubba]

Here is the latest about global warming. It's about 7 minutes and well worth watching.

YouTube Video

[Highwayman]

Sen. Inhofe--Global Warming Tipping Point Reached

YouTube Video

[Bubba]

Religion is harming the environment...

YouTube Video

Hutchinson News Online


Looks like we may of won this. Those of us here in Wright just hope this is true that the plant won't be built here.

Ethanol plant gains KDHE permit; another is denied block grant

By Jon Ruhlen - The Hutchinson News - jruhlen@hutchnews.com DODGE CITY -

It was a case of good news, bad news for Kim Goodnight on Wednesday.

On one hand, the Ford County Commission chairman was excited to hear the Kansas Department of Health and Environment had approved an air-quality permit for a proposed Dial Energy ethanol plant west of Dodge City.

On the other, he was disappointed by the denial of a community development block grant for the Boot Hill Biofuels plant near Wright, east of Dodge City......

[Value Pack]

Writers on the Range: If you don’t know, our water is petering out

BY PETE LETHEBY
Writers on the Range
November 20, 2007

Gerald Spangler needs no statistics or charts to tell him what he already knows: We are running out of water. Spangler is a semi-retired farmer who has lived in southwest Nebraska, 15 miles east of the Colorado border, since the Dust Bowl days.

In 1979, he drilled his first groundwater well to a depth of 240 feet. Three years ago, the driller had to go down 380 feet at the same site before finding groundwater for domestic use.

That’s a 140-foot drop in 25 years, and “It’s kind of scary,” Spangler admits.

Spangler’s farm is the epitome of an increasingly alarming development across the entire country, particularly the Great Plains and West.

A recent National Ground Water Association survey received responses from 43 states nationwide, and all reported water shortages and anticipated more of the same in the future. Dire straits in Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix, Houston and other locales are well documented, as is the unsettling state of affairs with the over-appropriated Colorado River.

A shortage of available water may also do something nobody ever thought possible: Halt the relentless development up and down the Colorado Rockies’ east slopes.

Multi-year drought conditions over much of the nation’s heartland and decreased mountain snowmelt in the West — both likely exacerbated by climate change and both likely to worsen, climatologists say — have heightened awareness. But clearly, most of the fault for the current dilemma lies with ourselves. Our voracious appetite for water and the development that requires that water are pushing nature to the brink.

The Ogallala Aquifer, which covers 175,000 square miles and underlies eight states in places, has experienced dramatic declines of well over 100 feet in some locations since large-scale irrigation began in the 1950s. The USGS notes that the aquifer has been depleted by 9 percent since the advent of groundwater irrigation. That doesn’t sound like much of a problem, but consider this: A 2001 Kansas State University study warned that only 15 percent of this vast underground ocean is physically and economically feasible to pump to the surface.

Aboveground, the defining waterways of the Plains and West — the Platte, the Arkansas and the Colorado — are shells of their former selves after a century of surface diversions and groundwater pumping. Indeed, the headwaters of the Arkansas River near Leadville often give out before they get to Dodge City, Kan., 450 miles downstream from Leadville.

If anything is benefiting from all these miscalculations and water grabs, it is our legal system. It took more than two decades of court dates for Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado to reach their recent agreement on flows of the Platte River. Texas and New Mexico have wrangled for years over Pecos River water, and the Klamath’s water tension in the Northwest has made newspaper headlines for decades.

To complicate matters, the Midwest’s misguided fixation on creating ethanol from water-consuming corn is further endangering our precious groundwater reservoirs. Research shows that it takes 2,000 or more gallons of irrigated water to produce one bushel of corn.

Amazingly, after just one year of operation, a single ethanol plant in Granite Falls, Minn., reduced that area’s aquifer level by 90 feet. The days of blank checks for water appropriations and water rights will soon pass into history.
We can no longer use our groundwater and surface water as we please, nor for as long as we please. If we wish to avoid a future of water tribulations, we will need to adopt a Depression-era mentality: Recycle and reuse, and most of all, conserve. We will also need to finally consider water as both a public trust and a “commons,” and use it accordingly.

That will necessitate a painful change of priorities, one that gives recreation and ecosystem preservation seats at the table with municipalities, agriculture and industry. If we fail to take action, scenarios now playing out in rural and urban areas of the Great Plains westward will become much more common. The phrase “Dust Bowl” is freely tossed about these days, although most refuse to believe it could ever happen again. We should not be so arrogant.

Gerald Spangler, for one, will tell you he doesn’t want to find out what happens if nature’s limits are pushed too hard. “Human judges can show mercy,” visionary Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, “but against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.”

[Made in the USA]

If you dislike paying $3+ for a gallon of gasoline, wait until water costs you that much! We can live without gasoline. We cannot live without water!

[Bubba]

Some places charge more than $3 for a gallon of water now! Think bottled water at $1.29 per bottle.

Next Monday, November 26th, 2007, Boothills Bio Fuels will be requesting and getting a one year extension of their permit to build here east of Wright.

Those of us in Wright were hoping that the permit would run out. Now it looks like we will be up in the air another year to see if they build this water hog.

I hear that they are not building yet due to the fact that they cannot find enough people to invest $71,000,000 into this money pit. Could it be that people are wising up?

Just a little over a year ago, ethanol was winning the hearts and wallets of both Dodge City and the rest of the United States, with promises of greater U.S. energy independence, fewer greenhouse gases, and help for the farm economy. Today, the corn-based biofuel is under siege.

In one brief year, ethanol has gone from cure-all to outcast in the eyes of many.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that biofuels "offer a cure [for oil dependence] that is worse than the disease."

The American Lung Association expressed concern about a form of air pollution from burning ethanol in gasoline.

Last month, the National Academy of Sciences reported on the impact of ethanol production on water supplies. A University of Iowa professor chaired the report committee, so Big Corn might have hoped for a home-court advantage. But NAS reported that, "in some areas of the country, water resources are already significantly stressed . . . Increased biofuels production will likely add pressure to the water management challenges the nation already faces as biofuels drive changing agricultural practices, increased corn production, and growth in the number of biorefineries." When ethanol is criticized by scientists at Iowa's two largest state universities, you have to wonder who is for it.

The amount of water needed to grow the corn, process the fuel and dispose of the waste at a small ethanol plant is about equal to the water needs of a town of about 10,000, according to another report by the Environmental Defense Fund. This report does not even address the amount of water needed to grow the corn.

And although the next five to 10 years may not see major changes to the Plains region's water levels, long-term implications could be severe, says a study from the National Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based public-policy research institute.

Our County Commissions may have added one year of life to the possibility of an ethanol plant here in Ford County but between the banks who have to lend the money, scientists and just plan common sense at work, perhaps the only investors to be hurt will be Mr. Harshberger and Mr. Coffin.