Ethanol competes for Midwest water
But specialists say the region can cope with rising demand
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- City officials in Champaign and Urbana took notice when they heard that an ethanol plant proposed nearby would use about 2 million gallons of water per day, most probably from the aquifer that also supplies both cities.
The proposal for a 100-million-gallon-per-year ethanol plant is just one of many made in the past several months across Illinois, which has seven operating plants and is the nation's number two ethanol producer, after Iowa.
High oil prices and support from Washington have inspired such interest in the corn-based gasoline additive that the Illinois Corn Growers Association now says that at least 30 plants are in various stages of planning across the state.
All will use a lot of water. It would take about 300 million gallons of water for processing the product and cooling equipment to make 100 million gallons of ethanol each year, according to the Renewable Fuels Association.
While water scientists in Illinois and Iowa say that they are concerned about the impact of that much demand, they are not sending out alarms yet.
``On a statewide scale, it's not a huge amount of water," said Allen H. Wehrmann, director of the Center for Groundwater Science at the Illinois State Water Survey.
The demand for water by the two-dozen operating ethanol plants in Iowa has not damaged water sources or supplies, said Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. Improving technology means that new plants use as much as 80 percent less water than plants built just five years ago, and most plants recycle their water, so it has more than one use, Shaw said.
Still, the draw on Midwest water supplies is a concern. ``It's an issue that is certainly at the forefront of our minds," said Paul VanDorpe, a scientist at the Iowa Geological Survey in Iowa City.
Many industries use more than a million gallons of water each day, still far less than the 23 million gallons per day used by Champaign and Urbana or the 500 million gallons per day that Chicago pumps from Lake Michigan.
The Mahomet Aquifer, along which several ethanol plants are proposed, has plenty of water. Running across the midsection of the state from the Indiana line to the Illinois River, it supplies an estimated 250 million gallons of water per day.
That is a pittance, given the estimated 13 trillion gallons of water in the aquifer, Wehrmann said. It would take more than a century to pump the aquifer dry, even if no water returned through rainfall and other natural recycling, which amounts to about 40 million gallons per day, he said.
``When you get down to the local level, there will be impact," Wehrmann said. ``You can't take the water out of the ground without lowering water to some degree. Other well owners may see water levels fall. In some cases their pumps may go out of the water, and that may mean lowering a well or pump."
But ethanol proponents say that there is virtually no risk that ethanol will contaminate ground water and that there is almost no waste water from its production.
Ethanol supporters also say there is more danger of running out of corn than there is of using too much water, and that limitation will limit the number of plants in a particular area.
``Corn generally comes from a 50-mile radius around an ethanol plant, so there's only so many plants you can put in and get the corn you need to operate them," said Phil Shane, marketing director for the Illinois Corn Growers Association.
As for the plant near Champaign, the city and Urbana lifted their objections after the proponent agreed to study the potential impact on the Mahomet Aquifer before moving ahead. The Champaign County Board voted last month to allow ethanol plants as a special use in heavy industry zones. 