Ethanol production plants are sprouting up all over the corn belt. Some areas are dependent on aquifers with limited supplies of water. The ethanol industry indicates it's only building where it makes sense. But for many areas, once that water is used, it's not replenished for centuries. It's much like mining a natural resource. Once it's gone, it's gone. That has some water experts worried.
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Piece Description
Ethanol production plants are sprouting up all over the corn belt. Some areas are dependent on aquifers with limited supplies of water. The ethanol industry indicates it's only building where it makes sense. But for many areas, once that water is used, it's not replenished for centuries. It's much like mining a natural resource. Once it's gone, it's gone. That has some water experts worried.
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Transcript
It's no surprise that the Corn Belt is the heart of the ethanol boom. Two main ingredients you need to make ethanol are corn and water. There's no shortage of corn of course, and in most places it's assumed there's also plenty of water. But as Rebecca Williams reports, even people in water-rich states are getting concerned about ethanol's thirst for groundwater:
Bob Libra can tell a lot about water by looking at rocks. We're in his rock library - it even has a Dewey decimal system. Libra's holding up one of the 35,000 chunks of rock in here.
(Sound of scraping on limestone core)
"This for example is a core from a well. You can look at this and say well this is what the plumbing system's like down there."
Libra's a state geologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Part of his job is to figure out how healthy his state's water supplies are. Any time a test well is...
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Host intro: It's no surprise that the Corn Belt is the heart of the ethanol boom. Two main ingredients you need to make ethanol are corn and water. There's no shortage of corn of course, and in most places it's assumed there's also plenty of water. But as Rebecca Williams reports, even people in water-rich states are getting concerned about ethanol's thirst for groundwater.
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