Ethanol plant planned for Indian Orchard

Questions are raised about corn ethanol

By TOM KANE

TEXAS TOWNSHIP, PA - The coming of an ethanol plant to Wayne County isn’t a dream.

Last week, the Wayne-Pike County Farm Bureau made a $1,000 donation and took an option to buy a 90-acre property owned by William Pykus in Texas Township behind the Route 6 Mall in Indian Orchard.

An ethanol plant, costing an estimated $161 million, would be located on the west bank of the Lackawaxen River.

“We’re looking for about 400 jobs locally,” said Dave Williams of the Wayne-Pike County Farm Bureau. “Not just directly in the ethanol plant, but overall. In other words, rails, plumbing and all kinds of stuff.”

The plant alone will employ about 45 people, Williams said.

Initially, the plant will use corn to manufacture ethanol, an alternate fuel that is being touted across the nation in recent months. “Corn will be used in the beginning to pave the way for cellulose ethanol, which would be made from agriculture waste and also switch grass, which is very environmentally friendly,” Williams said.

Funding for the plant will be 30 to 40 percent from local investors, with the rest coming from loans and grants, Williams said. The plant will utilize the Lackawaxen-Honesdale Shippers Railroad, which is expected to have its tracks functional from Honesdale to Lackawaxen in the near future, he said.

There is much discussion among ethanol supporters about what products are best to produce the fuel: corn, switch grass, rapeseed, Jerusalem artichoke or other cellulose-based crops.

At a conference held at Pennsylvania State University called Crossover 2007, researchers, business representatives and educators gathered to investigate the expansion of the bio-fuel industry and prove its legitimacy.

Questions raised at the conference were: Is corn ethanol a dead-end technology that will never produce more energy than it consumes? Is ethanol really the clean fuel that it’s cracked up to be? Can food and fuel production reliably come from the same feedstocks? Does the skilled workforce exist to handle such an innovation explosion?

Some experts at the conference said that ethanol is grabbing all the headlines, but bio-diesel seems to have a brighter future. Bio-diesel fuel is produced from vegetable oil, peanut oil, soybean oil and canola oil.

Opposition to a local ethanol plant is growing

Four days after Election Day on November 6, it was announced that four write-in candidates who opposed the proposed construction of another ethanol plant, this one to be located in Mayfield, won seats on the Mayfield Borough Council. None of the incumbent council members who favored the plant won election. The one incumbent who opposed the plant won. Voters turned out in record numbers.

“It appears that write-in candidates have scored an upset,” said an article in the Scranton Times-Tribune.

Two weeks ago, the proponent of the Mayfield plant, Richard Shelling, CEO of Northeast Ethanol, addressed the Abington Council of Government about purchasing the corn from local farmers.

“If they’re [the farmers] willing to plant corn, I’m willing to buy it from them,” Shelling said. Shelling admitted that there was not enough in the region. “We would like to buy our corn locally,” he said, “but the facts being the facts, we’re not able to do that.”

Snelling said that it was more desirable to make ethanol from switch grass and other cellulose-based crops, but that the technology was five to seven years away.

“This is not corn country,” said John Bunting, a Delaware County farmer and agriculture writer. “There’s not much corn grown here. Production depends on good weather conditions. So, it’s pretty pointless to build an ethanol plant using corn.”

Some observers say the development of alternative fuels is driven by politics. There are many alternative fuel possibilities, but corn has the biggest lobby and therefore the biggest subsidies, the argument goes. Further, some say that the diversion of corn-to-fuel production also drives up the price of corn, a major source of animal feed for struggling farmers. Proponents of alternative energy urge that alternative fuels be selected according to their merit, rather than the clout of their lobbies.

With the cost of a barrel of crude oil most likely reaching $100, the cost of oil will skyrocket, laying the ground for the emergence of ethanol. “We feel that this plant could be a major part of keeping agriculture alive in our area,” Williams said.