Dad’s Belgian Waffles
Eyota American Legion
8:30 am to 12:30 PM
May 16, 2010
Kids 5 & younger Free
Sponsored by OC3 – for clean water and air
Tickets $7 all you can eat.
Eyota City Wide Garage Sale
Walking Taco Feed at the West Side Park
Garage Sale Items for Sale
8:30 to 2 PM
Walking Taco Feed $5 for a drink and large walking taco
Tacos sold from 10 AM to 2 PM
May 15, 2010
The decision to suspend ethanol production was a difficult and painful one, but necessary, according to Randy Byro, chairman of the board for the farmer-owned ethanol plant and grain handling cooperative.
”Margins, margins, margins,” he said. The operation has been losing money in recent months and its near-term financial prospects continued to look negative, he said. It’s the only ethanol plant in the state’s top corn-producing county.
The closing doesn’t affect the company’s grain handling and agronomy operations in Buffalo Lake, Steward, Cosmos, Lake Lillian, Eden Valley or Darwin.
Byro said the ethanol plant will reopen if market conditions improve. He said the cooperative would need to see a 50-cents-to-75-cents-per-gallon upswing in prices before it would consider reopening the facility.
The facility opened in 1997 and has a rated capacity of 19 million gallons per year, making it one of the smallest ethanol plants in the state.
The plant’s closing was difficult news for Buffalo Lake due to the loss of jobs and economic activity it represents, according to Mayor Joyce Nyhus.
It comes exactly one year after the community saw the closing of its largest employer, Minnesota Beef Industries, formerly known as North Star Beef.
Nyhus, however, remains optimistic. She said the possibility now exists for the ethanol plant to be sold and would likely be suitable for other types of production.
One idea being floated around the Renville County community is the possibility of copying the example of the Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company in Benson, which makes Shaker’s Vodka. Some have even speculated about converting a portion of the county’s sugar beets into rum, she said.
In an ironic twist, it’s also possible that the ethanol plant’s troubles could ultimately benefit the community in ways unforeseen. As part of an agreement with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency involving air emission violations, Minnesota Energy has sold a well it developed when it was considering an expansion to the city of Buffalo Lake.
It will provide the community with high quality, arsenic-free water. Buffalo Lake has invested in a variety of technologies to remove the natural occurring arsenic from its municipal water source, all without success, according to the mayor. The arsenic issue was also considered the final blow to a string of problems that led Minnesota Beef Industries to close its plant, she noted.
The city will be opening bids later this month for developing a seven-mile pipeline to the new well. The city gains access to both a large quantity and high quality water source: Nyhus described the well’s raw water as being of higher quality than the treated water from the existing city supply.
Partly due to the availability of arsenic-free water, the city has received inquiries from prospective buyers for the meat processing facility. The city is working with the Renville County Economic Development Agency and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development in hopes of seeing the facility reopened.
Excellent information on ethanol & other biofuels
The Ethanol Industry is LYING/exaggerating the number of jobs the Ethanol Industry creates, WHY?
http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2009/11/kernalnomics-the-ethanol-lobbys-inflated-jobs-claims/
Sound Science Prevails In EPA Ethanol DecisionPosted by Don Carr in Biofuels, Featured Articles on December 1, 2009 | no responses | 
WASHINGTON December 1 –The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said today that it will wait until mid-2010 to decide whether to grant a waiver request that would allow up to 15 percent ethanol in gasoline. Growth Energy, an ethanol trade and lobby group, requested the waiver. EPA based its decision on the need to conduct more tests to determine the higher blend’s impact on engines. Under current federal rules gasoline can contain no more than 10 percent ethanol.
Environmental Working Group Midwest vice-president Craig Cox, who manages EWG’s agriculture programs from its Ames, Iowa, office, said this about EPA’s decision:
“EPA should be congratulated for resisting efforts by the well-funded and politically well-connected ethanol lobby to short-circuit a science-based analysis of corn ethanol’s adverse impacts on engines, public health and the environment. Blending more ethanol into the gasoline supply without conducting a sound scientific analysis of its total impact only serves a narrow constituency of large corn growers and ethanol producers while ignoring the potential risks a blend increase poses to consumers. It’s time we recognize that ethanol has been unable to attain independent viability as a motor fuel despite lavish subsides and mandates, and even more important, that it has been unable to prove that its production and use are beneficial to the environment.”
The corn-ethanol industry has lobbied fiercely for the increase in blend limit, claiming that a government-mandated increase in ethanol use would create more than 130,000 new jobs. But a new EWG report, citing independent university and government research, concludes that ethanol lobbyists have dramatically exaggerated the employment benefits of their proposal, even as automakers and small engine manufacturers warn that a higher ethanol blend could cause serious damage to millions of motors in vehicles, boats and lawn equipment.
View the report, Kernelnomics: The Ethanol Industry’s Inflated Jobs Claims
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Production of Biofuels is seriously depleting our potable water supply.
Please, write a letter to your legislator stating you don’t want to see a state or federal mandated increase of 15% ethanol in our gasoline! Read info about Petition in link below!