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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/13/america/13nimby.php

 In U.S. farm belt, ethanol plants hit resistance
By Monica Davey
Tuesday, November 13, 2007

SPARTA, Wisconsin: When plans were announced for a new ethanol distillery
on the outskirts of this city of 9,000, residents complained that it would
mar the view from the municipal golf course. They worried that its
emissions would taint the milk-based products made at nearby Century Foods
International, one of the community's biggest employers. They even argued
over whether the plant would reek like burned molasses or blackened popcorn
or fermenting beer.

The T-shirts opponents printed up told the story: "Good idea. Bad
location."

For years, the arrival of an ethanol distillery in agricultural America was
greeted mainly with delight, a ticket to the future in places plagued by
economic uncertainty. But in the nation's middle, the engine of ethanol
country, the glow is dimming.

In Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and even Iowa, the nation's largest
corn and ethanol producer, this next-generation fuel finds itself facing
the oldest of hurdles: opposition from residents who love the idea of an
ethanol distillery so long as it is someplace else.

"What they are trying to sell we aren't buying," said Deb Moore, who owns a
sandwich shop and soda fountain here.

The disputes have left some proposed plants waiting, mired in lawsuits; a
few have given up.

"There is a campaign of sorts that is seeking to slow and preferably to
stop the growth of the ethanol industry," said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman
for the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group based in Washington. "We
have to get through a barrage of mud pies to get our message out."

These are not the better-known philosophical opponents to ethanol, those
who question the efficiency of corn-based ethanol as an energy source,
blame ethanol for rising food prices, or disagree with the U.S. subsidies
that have long held up the industry.

These people are farmers. Or they know a farmer. Or their grandfather was a
farmer and, as in so many farm families, ethanol has meant new hope for the
fading towns built on corn fields. The biggest complaints are cousins of
the gripes brought about by proposed paper mills, landfills, prisons and
the like: an increase in noise, traffic, odor, emissions and demand on the
water system.

"No, no, no, we're not against ethanol production whatsoever," said Lonnie
Nation, who lives near New Castle, Indiana, where he and others have posted
signs, filed a lawsuit and were going door to door this month to stop a new
plant. "But if you put it where they want to, you're going to be squeezing
all our homes between an ethanol plant and a prison. What will that do to
home values?"

Some experts say the local protests reflect a new anti-ethanol mood spurred
by a slow but steady drumbeat of negative attention on the industry. Across
the Midwest, questions about ethanol have been raised by environmental
advocates, livestock owners have complained about soaring prices for corn
feed and farmers have fretted about how expensive some farmland has become.

"That wonderful aura that the ethanol plants had may be wearing off a
little," said Wallace Tyner, an agricultural economist at Purdue
University.

Industry advocates play down the size of the opposition and suggest the
increase in objections to new plants is simply a factor of math; 131 plants
are now operating and more than 70 others are under construction, and the
vast bulk of them are in the Midwest.

That is a marked increase from less than three years ago, when Congress
enacted an energy law that included a national mandate for the increased
use of renewable fuel in gasoline, setting off the ethanol rush. In January
2005, more than a quarter century after the commercial ethanol industry got
started, just 81 plants were functioning.

"The fights are rare, and sometimes it's just 11 people in a town of 5,000
or 6,000," said Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels
Association, a trade group. In Iowa, which has more ethanol distilleries
than any other state, residents near Grinnell filed a lawsuit to try to
stop a company from building an ethanol plant. "There are some people who
would rather see their town dry up and blow away than change the status
quo," Shaw said.

The local strife coincides with what is already a moment of tumult for the
ethanol industry. In recent months, an enormous supply of ethanol has
glutted the market, sinking its price and sending a chill through the
ethanol boom.

At least three proposed plants have halted construction recently, industry
officials said, including one in Reynolds, Indiana Only two years ago,
Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor, had held up the town as a symbol of
the shift to renewable energy sources and nicknamed it BioTown U.S.A.

In October, the owners of at least one long-running plant — one that
opened in 1983 in Grafton, North Dakota, and made 10.5 million gallons a
year — announced it would shut down for now, thanks to market forces.

Experts debate whether the current ethanol glut is the start of the end to
the rush to corn-based ethanol or merely a temporary correction as
transportation lines are developed from the Midwest to bigger markets on
the coasts. Either way, residents' complaints about proposed plants have
only added to the cascade of bad news for ethanol.

"It's like the dot-com industry," said Anne Yoder, who is pressing to stop
plans for an ethanol plant outside Topeka, Kansas, and describes herself
"not at all" as an activist but as "an ordinary soccer mom."

"When ethanol first came along there was so much promise," she said. "Maybe
that's starting to trickle off."

This spring, when Yoder first began going door to door to her neighbors to
describe her worries about a proposed facility, she expected to be
dismissed by the many farmers in her rural county, who presumably would
benefit from having a plant nearby to sell their corn.

"But I was shocked by what I heard," she said. "They don't want it here
either. Farmers have been in the business for hundreds of years and what
they told me is that they don't have a limitless supply of water to produce
more corn anyway. This isn't as pretty a picture as everyone wants to make
it out to be."

Yoder, who said she now spent several hours a day on this battle and has
helped to gather more than 500 names on a petition, has exchanged e-mail
messages with the organizers of communities in other states fighting
ethanol plants.

A loose network of opponents is growing. In June, officials from
Portsmouth, Virginia, toured three ethanol plants in Wisconsin, meeting
with neighbors and noting observations about odors ("like beer but with a
metal smell mixed in," for instance, residents in Wisconsin cautioned the
Virginia officials).

"We just swap information and talk about what tactics they took that
worked," Yoder said.

Still uncertain is how much these protests will affect the industry.

In Sparta, city officials were the ones who initially sought out Coulee
Area Renewable Energy to consider moving here, said Michael Van Sicklen, a
lawyer for the ethanol makers. The plans were sailing along through
annexation and zoning proceedings for months, he said.

Then complaints emerged from leaders at Century Foods International, which
sits not far from the proposed plant. Residents signed petitions. They
demanded meetings. They filed lawsuits.

In October, the ethanol makers and Century Foods International announced
they had reached a deal — one so tentative, confidential and in flux that
representatives on both sides declined to talk to about it. No one on
either side would say where an ethanol plant might go now, only that it
would not be here, in view of the golf course.