Ethanol booms threatens West's water supply [View All]

[IDemo]

Ethanol is supposed to be good for the environment. But producing green fuel can cost a lot of water.

By Jim Moscou | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb 21, 2008 | Updated: 10:08 a.m. ET Feb 21, 2008

Mike Adamson remembers when water wasn't such a problem. As a kid growing up on his family's cattle feedlot along the Colorado-Kansas border, "you could dig a post hole and see water runnin' in the bottom," he recalls. Today, Adamson is 48 and in charge of the family business, Adamson Brothers and Sons Feedlot, a holding ranch for cattle as they go to market. And the water, he says, is disappearing. "The lakes are gone. The wetlands are gone." In fact, Adamson adds, entire stretches of the nearby Republican River are gone.

In the arid regions of the American West, water has always been a precious, liquid gold. But in Adamson's home of Yuma County, two hours east of Denver, the stakes just got higher. Thanks to the boom in ethanol production spurred by green-energy concerns, corn farmers in Yuma County--one of the top three corn-producing counties in the country--are enjoying a new prosperity.

But the green-fuel boom touted as a clean, eco-friendly alternative to gasoline is proving to have its own dirty costs. Growing corn demands lots of water, and, in Eastern Colorado, this means intensive irrigation from an already stressed water table, the great Ogallala aquifer. One sign of trouble: in just the past two decades, farmers tapping into the local aquifers have helped to shorten the North Fork of the Republican River, which starts in Yuma County, by 10 miles. The ethanol boom will only hasten the drop further, say scientist and engineers studying the aquifers. The region's water shortage has pitted water-hungry farmers against one another. And lurking in the cornrows: lawsuits and interstate water squabbles could shut down Eastern Colorado's estimated $500 million annual ethanol bonanza with the swing of a judge's gavel. Collectively, " is clearly not sustainable," says Jerald Schnoor, a professor of engineering at the University of Iowa and cochairman of an October 2007 National Research Council study for Congress that was critical of ethanol. "Production will have serious impacts in water-stressed regions." And in Eastern Colorado, there's lots of water stress.

Still, with so much money growing in the fields, the current problems haven't stopped anyone on Colorado's plains. "Finally, here's the alternative market that farmers have been working toward for decades," said Mark Sponsler, executive director of the Colorado Corn Growers Association. The state's farmers planted a near record acreage of corn in 2007, up nearly 20 percent from the year before. It's not hard to see why. After hovering around $2 a bushel for nearly 50 years, corn is trading at about $4.50 today. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has called for ethanol to displace 15 percent of the nation's gasoline supply by 2015, double that by 2030. And Yuma is preparing. The state's two ethanol plants have been built nearby in just the past few years, with a third on the way. "It sure is a good time," says Byron Weathers, a farmer with 2,500 acres of corn. "It's definitely been a big plus for our state. The whole nation, really."


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