Ethanol Production Threatening Water Supplies

Ethanol Production Threatening Water Supplies



2007 September -   The rapid increase in 
ethanol plants under construction or planned for eight key farm states is 
threatening to pull billions of gallons of water each year from an aquifer 
that is already depleted and under stress, according to a new report 
issued Thursday by Environmental Defense. 
Authored by Martha Roberts and Theodore Toombs of the Environmental 
Defense Rocky Mountain office and Dr. Timothy Male, senior ecologist with 
the Land, Water & Wildlife Program in the group's Washington, DC office, 
the report takes the form of a case study of the Ogallala Aquifer region. 
One of the world's largest aquifers, the Ogallala Aquifer, also known as 
the High Plains Aquifer, is a vast, shallow underground pool of water 
located beneath portions of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, 
Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. 
The Ogallala Aquifer supports the majority of irrigated agriculture in the 
southern Great Plains. But the water table is declining in areas where 
rates of groundwater pumping have far exceeded rates of replacement. The 
region was also the center of Dust Bowl conditions in the 1930s. 
The report warns that water withdrawals for growing corn and processing it 
to make ethanol fuel will put unsustainable pressure on the aquifer. 
New corn ethanol plants currently under construction or planned will 
increase the region's ethanol production capacity by 900 percent, the 
report finds. The area currently hosts only five ethanol plants with 
combined production of 71.5 million gallons per year, but another nine 
plants, with 639 million gallons per year capacity, are currently under 
construction. 
Each gallon of ethanol takes four gallons of water to produce, so the 
authors calculate that the nine plants under construction would increase 
groundwater withdrawals from some of the most depleted parts of the 
Ogallala region by an estimated 2.6 billion gallons per year. 
"This dramatic expansion of ethanol production has substantial 
implications for already strained water and grassland resources in the 
Ogallala Aquifer region," the authors say. 
Additional water withdrawals will be required to grow the corn that will 
serve as feedstock for the ethanol production plants. 
The report cites USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service surveys of 
irrigation rates showing that production of one bushel of corn consumes an 
average of 2,600 gallons of irrigation water in counties in or near areas 
of high Ogallala depletion. 
According to this figure, if only 10 to 20 percent of the ethanol 
feedstock comes from newly planted irrigated corn acreage near the ethanol 
plants, water withdrawals from the most depleted parts of the Ogallala 
region would increase by approximately 59 to 120 billion gallons per year. 

This increase is equal to up to 86 percent of the total irrigation water 
demand of the state of South Dakota and is comparable to the 76 billion 
gallons of water used annually by the one million customers of the primary 
water utility for Denver, Colorado, the report states. 
Conversion of grasslands to cornfields is another likely result of the 
U.S. demand for ethanol, the report says. "Conversion may be directly 
linked to ethanol expansion, as when grassland is converted to supply corn 
to a nearby ethanol plant, or more indirectly connected, as when grassland 
is converted to satisfy demand for livestock feed or export markets 
displaced by increasing use of corn for ethanol." 
The report calls for measures to "mitigate the negative implications of 
biofuels production and create incentives for the cleanest production 
pathways." 
The authors praise California's Low Carbon Fuels Standard, which requires 
a 10 percent decrease in the carbon content of transportation fuels sold 
in the state by 2020. "Such policies should also be paired with strong 
incentives for water and wildlife protection that should accompany any 
solely carbon-focused standard," they recommend. 
They are looking to the new farm bill now before the U.S. Senate to 
maintain or expand the federal Conservation Reserve Program "in 
recognition of its critical role in maintaining vulnerable soil, water, 
and wildlife habitat resources." 
In addition, the report calls for a strong "Sodsaver" provision in the 
farm bill that eliminates subsidy support for any crops planted on 
formerly untilled grasslands. This measure also is advocated by many other 
environmental groups. 
The authors call on local and regional decision makers to strengthen and 
expand groundwater conservation efforts and also to guide ethanol 
production toward the most sustainable locations by making local approval 
of ethanol plant siting contingent on analyzing the impacts on water 
resources in areas of water scarcity. 

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