ERMUSR MISC 01-10-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Water supply can't meet thirst for newindustry • In Minnesota's and southwest, doors are closing to coveted farm-related businesses, particulazly etllanoi plants. By GREG CORDON ggordot-@startnbune.com WASHINGTON -Cargill Inc. made the approach quietly about a year ago - the kind of inquiry from an agri- business giant that could set a sleepy southwestern Minnesota town buzz- ing _.., .. _. _ .Seizing. on soaring demand far al- ternative fuels, Cargill was exploring prospects .for building a plant -near Pipestone that could produce 100 million gallons of corn-based etha- nol annually. Such a plant would be a boon to farmers and create badly needed jobs. But Dennis Healy, ,.chief; execu- tive officer of the Lincoln-Pipestone Rural Water System, said he liad to squelch it: His utility .couldn't come close to meeting. Cargill's need for more than 350 million gallons of wa- ter each year. It.mightbe hard to imagine a water shortage in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. But in acid southwestern Minnesota, a scarcity of water has forced utilities to distribute water from well "fields via thousands.of miles ofpipelines and to turn away more than.a dozen coveted factories that could make fuel and food from local farm products. `Teople can see they're running out of water;' said Tim Cowdery, a<Min- " nesota-based hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.::"They'd like to build more industry. They'd like to build more ethanol, plants. They just don't have the waterto do it." ~~ Water supply can't meet thirstfor newindustry ~ WATER FROM AI Cowdery and other water resource experts said the;, re- gion's predicament offers an early glimpse of the sorts of water shortage issues expected to be commonplace across the country in decades to come as demand rises. A farming region such assouthwestern Minrieso- to faces a triple whammy:.; • Farms need a, lot of ~yater for irrigation and livestock. • Fazm pesticide runoff has polluted groundwater, shrink-. ing the available supply.. • Ethanol plants, soybean processing plants and slaugh- terhouses use hundreds of mil- lions of gallons more water. The area relies, not 'on one large underground. aquifer; but on many smaller ones, and more than acentury ofwell-drillinghas pretty muchfoundwhat seems to be available. Healy said his""water system and three others: have "searched for water throughout a fairly large portion of the ar- ea: We haven't found anytling in large enough quantity tobe ofany real value." The thirst of ethaxtol Nowhere is the growing clash between economic de- velopment and water conser- vationmore evident than in the push to build- ethanol plants that typically guzzle 3%z to 6 gallons of water for every ga1- lon of fuel produced. Minneso- ta's 15 ethanol plants together consume about 2 billion gallons of water per year, and plants in Winthrop, Windom, Marshall and Granite Falls are straining available water resources. Two other ethanol plants under construction near Her- on Lake and Atwater "had to move from their original sites because there wasn't an ade- quate supply of water," said Jay Trusty, executive director of the Southwest Regional Devel- opment Commission. While Gov Tim Pawlent}~s two-year-old. JOBZone initia- tive offers tax breaks to encour- age businesses to locate in de- pressed areas, some state offi- cialsprivately questionthe wis- dom of granting further subsi- dies to ethanol plants that use so much precious water. Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Washington-based. Re- newable Fuel Association rep- resenting the nation's ethanol producers, said they all are "con- stantly looking at ways to im- provetheir efficiency," and some are installing water treatment fa- cilities so they can `Yecycle more <:of the water that they use." Help also is coming from a . $400 million public works proj- ect in South Dakota -the Lewis & Clark Rural Water System -that eventually will pipe 3.78 million gallons of Missouri Riv- er water each day to southwest- ern Fvlinnesotaand northwestern Iowa. But with shortfalls incon- gressional funding, the system might not bring water to Min- nesotafor another 10 to 20 years, and Healy cautions that it won't be enough to support many new water-intensive factories. The region is dry because of the whim ofglaciers -colossal masses of ice that melted 10,000 years ago, creating lakes and riverbeds in much of the rest of what is now Minnesota.