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97 comments on Where Does the US Import Oil and Other Petroleum Products From?
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97 comments on Where Does the US Import Oil and Other Petroleum Products From?
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Nate, our water usage for ethanol in the U.S. is only 2.75% that of the water used for "Golf Courses."
9700 USGA courses. One golf course = one 40 Million gal/yr ethanol refinery.
You have to separate betweeen water withdrawals and water consumed. Also, ethanol refineries are much more local while golf courses are spread out.
But I gave up golf for that reason (well, I kind of sucked too).
It's not all about how much water you use, but what happens after you use it.
A golf course grows grass that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere which helps reduce the green house gas problem.
The ethanol refinery - well, here is my personal contact with that.
They built a new refinery about 8 miles from my farm. They were going to dump all their waste water into a creek that just happens to be part of a major State Park downstream of the ethanol refinery. Enough people raised hell and made the State EPA withdraw their permission to pollute the creek, so they gave them permission to build a pipe line 6-8 miles cross country so they could dump all of their waste water into the Minnesota River about a mile upstream of my farm! Please note that the State Government has "been working hard to clean up the Minnesota River" which is one of the most polluted in the State of Minnesota and maybe the USA. Hell of a good way to cleanup the River - just dump all the ethanol refinery waste into it. Boy oh boy, does money talk!
That's interesting, Jon. Just what is in that water that makes in so environmentally bad? This is Not a "snark," or a "trick" question. I'm, sincerely, interested in what it is that Minnesota does not consider polluted that we might.
Assuming it's untreated sewage, it's likely full of organic matter. Organic matter rots and removes oxygen from the water, creating dead zones. Organic matter also fertilizes water, helping to create algal blooms.
Golf courses do nothing to help with respect to global warming. Any grass that grows (and plenty does with the amount of fertilizer used) is cut within weeks and the carbon released soon after. Golf courses themselves are very energy intensive on a per-customer basis and they use up huge amounts of city or suburban land, causing more sprawl and all the ills associated with it.
As far as the ethanol mill dumping untreated sewage, it doesn't surprise me considering how political in nature the industry is. Politicians support it because of special interests, not because of any real environmental benefit. Those special interests (the farm lobby) are looking out for number 1, not for the environment.
"Dilution is the solution for pollution" :-) Limerick at least as old as the Clean Water Act.
I'm confident that that number is only for ethyl alcohol refining and not for growing the feedstock. Using irrigated land, it easily takes 10,000 litres of water to make 1 litre of corn-based ethyl alcohol.