KTTC TV newscast video & article about the concerns Eyota residents have with the proposed MinnErgy ethanol plant. Click on the link below.

 

http://www.kttc.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?ClipID1=2832422&h1=Eyota%20residents%20want%20answers&vt1=v&at1=News&d1=175766&LaunchPageAdTag=News&activePane=info&rnd=68576376

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeVT7jMYZlo&feature=related
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV-vSTCln4Y&feature=related
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_syYtcy69E&feature=related
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9QQcP_Y1II&feature=related

Date: July 8, 2008

To:  Eyota MinnErgy Ethanol Task Force

From:  Olmsted County Concerned Citizens (OC3)

 

The information provided by the EDA Director Steve Grunseth provides anecdotal information about the impact of the corn ethanol plants in Preston and Claremont from the perspective of local officials and realtors.  A brief review of 2000 census data and 2006 demographic estimates from the Minnesota State Demographer for towns with ethanol plants show another story; populations of small towns with corn-ethanol plants decline in population.  Contrary to the EDA suggestions that growth would occur in Eyota the census data leads to a conclusion that corn-ethanol is not so good for local population growth.

 

If we first look at Eyota the official 2000 census showed a population of 1,644 people and the July 2006 estimate showed 1,738 people, an increase of 5.7% in six years.  Eyota’s growth appears to be from new home building for residents who commute to Rochester for employment.  The strong growth is evidence of a strong economic base and the desirability of Eyota as a hometown.

 

If we look at the same data from the 16 communities that have corn-ethanol plants we find only 9 towns had corn- ethanol refineries operational from before the 2000 census to the present.  The table below shows eight of the nine corn-ethanol towns suffered a decline in population while one town gained 4 residents for a gain of 0.1%.

 

TOWN	Ethanol Plant	MMG/Y	Year	2000 census	2006 estimate	% Change
Eyota				1,644	1,738	+5.7%
Preston	ProCorn	42	1998	1,426	1,354	-5.0%
Claremont	Al-Corn	50	1996	620	602	-2.9%
Marshall	ADM	40	1988	12,735	12,464	-2.1%
Buffalo Lake	Minnesota Energy	20	1997	768	754	-1.8%
Winthrop	Heartland Corn Products	99	1995	1,367	1,280	-6.4%
Benson	CVEC	45	1996	3,376	3,129	-7.3%
Morris	DENCO	24	1991	5,068	5,072	+0.1%
Laverne	CornerStone	22	1998	4,617	4,459	-3.4%
Winnebago	Corn Plus		1994	1,487	1,398	-6.0%

 

This analysis shows that of the three corn-ethanol towns of similar size, Preston, Winnebago and Winthrop the 2000-2006 population loss averaged 5.8%.

 

This raises the question of Eyota’s relative success and begs the question of why Eyota should add a risk factor like a new corn-ethanol plant?

 

THE MINNERGY ETHANOL PLANT EAW PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD HAS STARTED!

The proposed Eyota MinnErgy Ethanol Plant EAW is now out for public comment.  IMPORTANT NOTICE: The public comment period which originally ended July 2nd has been EXTENDED to end August 1st at 4:30 pm. We encourage people to make comments to the MPCA about the disastrous effects ethanol plants built in SE MN will have on our precious groundwater supply and air quality. Not to mention the devastation ethanol production will have on fish & wildlife habitat because of planting corn in areas that shouldn’t be planted and the removal of wetlands & CRP lands for even more corn production. To reveiw the MinnErgy EAW click on this link: http://www.pca.state.mn.us/news/eaw/minnergy-eaw.pdf

Free hard copies of the MinnErgy EAW for which the MPCA is the responsible government unit may be requested from Mary Osborn, . MPCA is informing the public that if people want a hard copy of the EAW for the proposed Minnergy ethanol plant in Eyota they are to contact Mary Osborn at the following address:  http://www.pca.state.mn.us/news/eaw/index.html 

 Below is an idex that Olmsted County Concerned Citizens (OC3) put together to make it easier to find information in the MinnErgy EAW. Wouldn’t you think the MPCA would include an index with ALL EAW’s that they release for the public comment period. The letter writing instructions for preparing formal comments needs to be followed when making comments on the MinnErgy EAW to the MPCA. Please, consider commenting! We need the public’s help on this issue!

Sincerely,

Tom Dornack
OC3 Co chairman
131 Renabelle St.
Eyota, MN 55934

 
MinnErgy EAW Index

EAW categories:
1. Title; pg 1
2. Proposer; pg 1
3. RGU; pg 1
4. Reason for Preparation; pg 1
5. Location, tables figures and appendices; pg 1-3
6. Description; pg 3-8
7. Project magnitude; pg 8-9
8. Permits and Approvals Required; pg 9-10
9. Land Use; pg 10-11
10. Cover types; pg 11
11. Fish, Wildlife and Ecological Sensitive Resources; pg 12-14
12. Physical Impacts to Water Resources; pg 15-16
13. Water Use; pg 16-22
14. Water-related land use districts; pg 22
15. Water surface use; pg 22
16. Erosion and Sedimentation; pg 22-23
17. Water Quality-Surface-water runoff; pg 23-24
18. Water Quality- Wastewater; pg 25-29
19. Geologic Hazards; pg 29-32
20. Solid Wastes, Hazardous Wastes, Storage Tanks; pg 32-33
21. Traffic, Parking; pg 34-35
22. Vehicle-related air emissions; pg 35-36
23. Stationary Source Air Emissions; pg 36-43
24. Odors, Noise and Dust; pg 43-45
25. Nearby resources; pg 45-47
26. Visual impacts; pg 47
27. Compatibility with plans and land use regulations; pg 48
28. Impact on Infrastructure and Public Services; pg 48
29. Cumulative Impacts; pg 49-53
30. Other Potential Environmental Impacts; pg 53
31. Summary of issues; pg 53
 
OC3 LETTER WRITING INSTRUCTIONS
June 17, 2008
Instruction for requesting an EIS

The statutes and rules that govern environmental review and permitting require specific information and language in correspondence to the MPCA and DNR.

For all requests you must have the following information

NAME
ADDRESS (optional to add other contact information like phone and e-mail)

A Statement from the person or group stating their interest in the permit application or EAW

A Statement of the action the person wishes the agency to take, I’ am officially requesting that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) be preformed for the MinnErgy Ethanol Plant in Eyota, Minnesota.
 
You need to provide the reasons supporting your position, with sufficient specifics as to allow the commissioner to investigate the merits of the position.

For the EAW/EIS send to:

Jess Richards
Steve Sommer
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
Industrial Permitting Section
Biofuels/Ethanol Sector
520 Lafayette Rd North
St. Paul, MN 55155

Re:  MinnErgy EAW
 Request for an Environmental Impact Statement

Dear Mr. Richards and Mr. Sommer:

 

Questions/Comments to ask/send to the MPCA regarding the MinnErgy EAW

 

June 17, 2008

 

Why didn’t you number the pages or include an index?

 

Why are all the maps and air photos old?  It looks like the air photos are at least 5 years old because there is no Arbor Gardens (assisted living), Kwik Trip or houses.  Shouldn’t you use the most current data to assess the health risks to the residents and employees? 

 

The City Limits of Eyota are adjoining the MinnErgy site, but you say the plant is a mile away from Eyota.  The way we measure it, the plant is 0.6 miles from developed areas in Eyota.  How can your models be correct?  You don’t even know how close the plant is to Eyota!

 

Won’t it smell all the time?

 

Can’t you be consistent with the units of measurement?  Sometimes you talk about receptors a mile away, other times a kilometer away.  All distances and all map scales should be in English and metric units.

 

Can’t you put the units of discharge into pounds per day instead of ppm (parts per million).  If you know the discharge rate and the concentration it should be easy to calculate how many pounds per day the plant will discharge.

 

How many hours have you put into the MinnErgy EAW review?  Does MinnErgy reimburse the state for the time?  What is the monetary value of the MPCA work?  How much is it costing the State of Minnesota?  How can there be so many omissions and errors when you spend so much time?  (ie: metric and English units in the same paragraph)

 

• How big is the Ethanol Sector?  Are you authorized to charge for the applicant for the time?

 

Lake Zumbro is currently impaired for nutrients, including phosphorous that creates algae blooms.  What is the effect on Bear Creek, Silver Lake, the South Branch of the Zumbro River and Lake Zumbro of discharging an added 64 pounds of phosphorous a month?

 

The impaired waters are impaired due to nutrients, turbidity, and pesticides

 

Please define the watersheds.  Based on the site maps in the EAW the plant is in the Whitewater, Root and Zumbro River Watersheds.

 

Phase I of the plant uses 18 million bushels of corn.  How many acres of corn will it take to satisfy the corn demand?

 

 

The traffic calculations don’t seem to add up.  The traffic analysis assumes that every truck will haul 800 bushels but most farmers use gravity boxes or smaller trucks.  If the average is 500 bushels how many trucks?  How does this change the emission calculations?

The traffic analysis the peak travel ties did not include the time the school is out in the afternoon.  It is my observation that traffic increased dramatically when school lets out?  How do we know the applicant’s data is correct? 

 

The pump test has a lot of questions:

• Were any groundwater / surface water interactions monitored?
• The water levels were still falling in the observation wells after 7 days. Doesn’t that indicate that the test should have been longer?
• Why didn’t they monitor water quality during the pump test?
• Assumption that each truck will haul

 

The plant emissions put out a cancer footprint.  We have had people review the MPCA records who say that MinnErgy has run numerous models that did not pass muster due to high cancer risks

 

MinnErgy has proposed a fence for pollution control and even revised the fence to make the air emission risk model pass.  What is this about?  How does a fence protect us from air pollution and cancer?

 

Describe the carcinogen footprint from the air emissions?

 

How do you know that the storm water coming off the plant site will flow in the subsurface to Bear Creek?  Don’t you need to do dye trace studies to prove the way the subsurface water flows.  We are concerned about the fate of contaminants

 

Where will spills and leaks flow to.

 

We have heard that a chemical spill could require evacuation of miles?  What are the evacuation distances for?

• Ethanol
• Gasoline
• Chlorine
• Sulfuric acid
• Ammonia
• Industrial bleach
• Ferric chloride
• Phosphoric acid
• Sodium metabisulfite
• Urea

 

 

 

Who is responsible for the emergency response plan? 

 

Is this pristine groundwater in the Jordan aquifer?  Are there any records of contaminated Jordan groundwater in the area?

 

How much water is used at the plant compared to Eyota?  Compared to a golf course in Rochester?

 

What happens to the water?

 

What is the anticipated expense to the City? 

• Emergency response like fire trucks, training, communications
  • Evacuations, spill response
• Roads and street upgrades and maintenance
• Sewer and water

 

The air dispersion modeling uses old wind data from Rochester and St. Cloud.  Why not use the MNDOT weather station on the interstate by Eyota?

 

 

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/05/12/eyota_ethanol/

05/08/2008 - DEFENDING ETHANOL
Metro News
The USDA will go to bat today for corn farmers in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and elsewhere who have taken a public relations beating over ethanol. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer and other top agency officials will hold a news conference to make the case for corn-based fuel. More than 2 dozen Republican U.S. senators want to cut this year’s ethanol production mandate in half, and scrap higher standards for 2022. Presidential nominee John McCain says corn-for-ethanol has led to higher grocery prices at home and food shortages overseas. A Wall Street Journal editorial yesterday said the product joins the pesticide Alar and silicone breast implants as quote, “the greatest scams of the age.” But South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson says gasoline would cost 50-cents more if ethanol was not around. He and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley have asked the EPA to maintain the corn ethanol production goals

http://www.twincities.com/ci_9163389?source=most_emailed

Click here for the report

Wall Street Journal

2008-04-14

WASHINGTON — Finance ministers gathered this weekend to grapple with the global financial crisis also struggled with a problem that has plagued the world periodically since before the time of the Pharaohs: food shortages.Surging commodity prices have pushed up global food prices 83% in the past three years, according to the World Bank — putting huge stress on some of the world’s poorest nations. Even as the ministers met, Haiti’s Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was resigning after a week in which that tiny country’s capital was racked by rioting over higher prices for staples like rice and beans.

Rioting in response to soaring food prices recently has broken out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. In Pakistan and Thailand, army troops have been deployed to deter food theft from fields and warehouses. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned in a recent speech that 33 countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising food prices. Those could include Indonesia, Yemen, Ghana, Uzbekistan and the Philippines. In countries where buying food requires half to three-quarters of a poor person’s income, “there is no margin for survival,” he said.

Many policy makers at the weekend meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank agreed that the problem is severe. Among other targets, they singled out U.S. policies pushing corn-based ethanol and other biofuels as deepening the woes.

“When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels,” said India’s finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, in an interview. Turkey’s finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, said the use of food for biofuels is “appalling.”

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House’s council on environmental quality, said biofuels are only one contributor to rising food prices. Rising prices for energy and electricity also contribute, as does strong demand for food from big developing countries like China.

But beyond taking shots at the U.S., there was little agreement this weekend on what should be done. Mr. Zoellick pushed the ministers to focus on the food issue in a dramatic Thursday news conference at which he held up a 2-kilogram (4.4-pound) bag of rice, which he said would now cost poor families in Bangladesh half their daily income. He kept up the pressure over the weekend. In a Sunday news briefing, he said, “We have to put our money where our mouth is now — so that we can put food into hungry mouths.”

But the weekend’s meeting produced few concrete results. Mr. Zoellick recently urged rich nations to contribute another $500 million to the United Nation’s World Food Program, but he said that the U.N. has received commitments for only about half the money.

Integrated Response

Meanwhile, the IMF’s board of governors — basically, the world’s finance ministers, who run both the IMF and World Bank — urged the IMF to work with the World Bank for “an integrated response through policy advice and financial support.”

On Sunday, the committee that oversees the World Bank noted that “large groups of poor people are severely affected by high food and energy prices across the developing world.” The committee echoed the IMF committee’s call for “timely policy and financial support to vulnerable countries” and urged rich countries to be more generous in “immediate support for countries most affected by the high food prices.”

The World Bank plans to nearly double its agricultural lending to Africa next year to $800 million, and is urging members to ramp up relief for hard-pressed nations. The World Bank, IMF and big industrialized nations also are pushing for the completion of the Doha global trade talks, though cutting food subsidies in the U.S. and Europe under a trade deal would boost prices of food for impoverished importing nations.

Last week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged the G7 nations — the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan — to develop a comprehensive strategy for the food problem, encompassing trade, agricultural productivity, technology, biofuels and short-term aid for poor countries. In the past, Britain has taken the lead in pushing the G7 to write off the debts of the world’s poorest nations.

The situation in Haiti underscored some of the problems afflicting the world’s poorest countries. Haiti has enough food in the marketplace to feed its populace, but prices have increased beyond the means of many of the urban poor to pay for it, said Michael Hess, an administrator in the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance. “People are making two bucks a day,” he said. “And we’re seeing food prices go up around the world.”

Wave of Protectionism

In the Philippines, the world’s biggest importer of rice, a shortage of the grain has become acute. The government is considering a moratorium on converting agricultural land to construction of housing developments and golf courses. The government also is urging fast-food restaurants to offer half-portions of rice to slash the country’s rice bill.

Aggravating the problem, in some countries food inflation has prompted a wave of protectionism. Countries usually impose trade barriers to imports to protect local industries and try to boost exports. But food-trade protectionism works the opposite way. Recently at least a dozen of 58 countries surveyed by the World Bank have reduced tariffs to food imports and erected barriers to exports in hopes of restraining food prices domestically and moving toward “self-sufficiency.”

India, home to more than half the world’s hungry, is restricting grain exports, including a ban on the export of non-basmati rice. Taxes on edible oils, corn and butter have been decreased or eliminated.

Egypt similarly halted rice exports for six months as of April 1. The price of cereals and bread there has climbed by nearly 50% over the past 12 months. Eleven people have died in the past two months in incidents related to lengthening bread lines. The shortage compelled President Hosni Mubarak to order the army to bake additional loaves.

The global effect of export barriers, however, is to drive food prices even higher than they would be otherwise. Such policies “distort global prices,” said Mr. Simsek, the Turkish finance minister, in an interview. Rather than erect barriers, he said, Turkey plans to pick up the pace of constructing irrigation canals near dams in Anatolia, in southeastern Turkey.

Arvind Subramanian, a former senior IMF researcher, said that when countries adopt restrictive trade policies regarding food, “it becomes a bizarre kind of beggar-thy-neighbor. You’re not trying to sell more to the other guy; you’re trying to keep more in your own country.”

With the international financial institutions working on a slow track, countries have been cutting their own deals. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said on Tuesday that he had agreed to let Libya grow wheat on 247,000 acres of land in the Ukraine. In exchange, Libya promised to include the former Soviet republic in construction and gas deals.

Brazil recently invited Egypt’s minister of commerce to discuss a possible trade deal which would have a strong agriculture component. China also cut its first free-trade deal with a rich country, picking New Zealand, a major food exporter, and is talking about a pact with Australia, another big agricultural producer.

Meanwhile, Uganda plans to sell more coffee, milk and bananas to India. “Our problem is too much food and little market,” Uganda President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni told reporters, according to news reports,

About 18 of the countries sampled by the World Bank also are boosting consumer subsidies and instituting price controls. That prompted a warning from U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to “resist the temptation of price controls and consumption subsidies that are generally not effective and efficient methods of protecting vulnerable groups.” He said, “They tend to create fiscal burdens and economic distortions while often providing aid to higher-income consumers or commercial interests other than the intended beneficiaries.”

Better-Targeted Subsidies

Instead, the World Bank’s Mr. Zoellick urged countries to look at better-targeted subsidies — such as providing food in exchange for work, or increasing school-lunch programs for poor families, so that children can take food home to their families.

During informal conversations and interviews, ministers mainly agreed that the U.S. policies on biofuels were especially harmful. U.S. ethanol is made from corn, which, ministers said, could be exported to feed the hungry, and benefited from tariffs that block Brazilian ethanol, which is produced much more efficiently from sugar cane.

The White House’s Mr. Connaughton said the U.S. is working on developing “second generation” biofuels that would use varieties of grass or agricultural wastes — not food — as source material. “That’s where we need to get to go,” he said.

The World Bank also has blamed the boom in biofuels for the rise in global food prices. That has put Mr. Zoellick in a ticklish position. Before taking his job at the World Bank, he was U.S. Trade Representative, and defended U.S. agricultural positions. In his Thursday news briefing, he didn’t mention the U.S. by name, but he praised sugar-based ethanol of the sort made in Brazil and questioned whether tariffs to block the fuel — such as the U.S. uses — make “economic sense.”

–John W. Miller in Brussels and Scott Kilman in Chicago contributed to this article.

“Anyone who can solve the problems of water

will be worthy of two Nobel prizes — one for

peace and one for science.”  John Kennedy

Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

Ron Tamillo of Ron’s Marine Service repairs a boat in Marina del Rey owned by Lawrence Turner. Turner has sued gasoline producers and distributors, arguing that they sold ethanol-laced gasoline at marinas without warning boaters of the additive’s harmful effect on fiberglass fuel tanks.

He says oil companies should have warned owners that the additive could cause damage. The oil companies say ethanol’s effect on fiberglass has been known for a long time.

By Elizabeth Douglass, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 15, 2008

Something was wrong with Sally Ann. ¶ For months, she sputtered and choked, and Barry Treahy’s remedies weren’t working. He kept changing her fuel filters. Then he rebuilt her carburetor. Finally, he cut into her gas tank, cleaned out the mysterious caramel-colored gunk and patched her up — twice.¶ Disaster struck on a summer day in San Diego, when Treahy’s beloved 20-foot fishing boat was parked street side with the outer hull plug open to drain any residual water. The boat’s 55-gallon gas tank failed and gasoline streamed into the bilge and down the street. ¶ “I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out at first,” Treahy said of Sally Ann’s chronic troubles. Finally, he found the answer in a boating magazine. Ethanol-laced gasoline was dissolving his boat’s fiberglass fuel tank, sending bits of resin to clog filters and ultimately eating a hole all the way through the tank. ¶ Years of adding ethanol to gasoline to reduce air pollution and foreign oil dependence has had a nasty side effect: The stuff appears to damage boat fuel tanks made of fiberglass. And California is a floating testing ground for the ethanol effect.

At the beginning of 2004, all gasoline sold in the state was required to carry 5.7% ethanol as a replacement for the banned fuel additive methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, which was fouling groundwater supplies. Some boaters were unaware of the ramifications of the switch.

Lawrence Turner, stuck with more than $35,000 in ethanol-related damage to his boat, decided to fight back. Last week, the Studio City resident sued Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and eight other gasoline producers and distributors in U.S. District Court, arguing that the companies sold gasoline at marinas without warning boaters of ethanol’s harmful consequences.

“It caught me completely by surprise,” said Turner, whose twin-engine, semi-custom Mediterranean sport fisher named Grateful Med is still out of commission. “I figured if you went to a marine gas station and filled up your tank, you were fine to operate.”

Ethanol-blended fuel destroyed the boat’s fiberglass fuel tank, and mechanics had to cut through the hull and remove the ruined tank piece by piece. A new, aluminum tank was being installed last week. Engine repairs are still to come.

“As I reflected on the situation, I thought about the fact that there were never any warnings from the fuel companies that the product they were selling could damage the tank that it was going into,” said Turner, a 50-year-old accountant, attorney and diet company president. “What if people pulled up to their local gas station [in their cars] and all of the sudden their gas tank started dissolving?”

A Chevron spokesman said the company hadn’t seen the lawsuit and couldn’t comment. Shell Oil Co., one of the defendants in the lawsuit, Monday rejected the notion that oil companies were to blame for boat damage caused by ethanol-blended gasoline.

“There were years of advance notification that this change was coming,” and ethanol’s effect on fiberglass has been known for a long time, Shell President John Hofmeister said Monday while attending a low-carbon fuels conference in Sacramento. “Any boat owner or any boat seller or any boat maintenance shop that didn’t know about this impending change and the potential consequences simply wasn’t listening or reading.”

Turner seeks damages and rest