[Peace] Champaign Ethanol Plant public hearing -- Tuesday 2/27, 6PM, Parkland rm D244

[Stuart Levy]

Though not an AWARE event, some of us may be interested.  And energy supply
is an imperial power issue, as well as being a local environmental one.

The Illinois EPA will hold a public hearing on the air-quality permit
for the proposed Andersons/Marathon corn-based ethanol plant,
planned for west Champaign.  Public input is invited, though
probably only air-quality questions will be accepted at this meeting.

Some details:
   http://www.epa.state.il.us/public-notices/2007/andersons-marathon-ethanol/index.pdf
Hearing will be Tuesday, 2/27, at 6:00PM, in Parkland College room D244.

More details, including project summary (6 pages), draft EPA permit
with specific emissions and monitoring requirements (82 pages),
and an engineering water-use summary (2 pages) at:

   http://illinois.sierraclub.org/Prairie/ethanol

The plant aims to produce about 110 million gallons of ethanol per year
(while drawing about 670 million gallons/year of water from the Mahomet
aquifer, and discharging about 40% of that into the Kaskaskia ditch).


Of course the plant's water use and water discharge are crucial questions
for C-U too.  Typical permitting practice for such plants pushes the
water hearing so late that it'd be nearly hopeless to change anything
about plant design or siting.  Also, in Illinois, there's no regulation
on how much water may be drawn from underground or surface waters,
nor is it required to report how much water has been extracted.

Traci Barkley of Prairie Rivers Network has asked the EPA to schedule a
water permit hearing in the near future -- or to allow water-related questions
at Tuesday's hearing.  We'll have to see what they do.  If we get questions
addressed in the next few months, real change may be possible.

It may be worth writing further letters to the IL EPA to encourage an early hearing,
and maybe also to put water use on the menu of issues that deserve regional planning!

We might well also be concerned that using commodity corn as ethanol feedstock
is unwise.  That's beyond the scope of EPA permitting, but not beyond
urging Congress to change the distribution of subsidies...

    Stuart