With oil prices rising, interest in ethanol, a plant-based gasoline additive, has skyrocketed. But the rising demand for ethanol has a downside: it takes about 300 million gallons of water to make 100 million gallons of ethanol each year, says the Renewable Fuels Association.
In Illinois, the second largest ethanol producer in the country after Iowa, proposed ethanol plants would use about 2 million gallons of water per day, which has city officials worried.
Illinois is already home to seven ethanol plants, and plans for at least 30 more exist. Iowa has 24 operating ethanol plants.
Not a Concern on a Statewide Scale
While scientists in Illinois and Iowa have expressed concern about the plants' water demands, others say the amount is not that big when you look at it on a statewide scale. Mid-size municipalities use about 23 million gallons of water a day, and larger cities, like Chicago, use 500 million gallons daily.
For comparison, the Mahomet Aquifer in Illinois, along which several ethanol plants have been proposed, contains 13 trillion gallons of water, which would take over 100 years to run dry.
You may be thinking one of the best uses for corn -- a grain people aren't adapted to consume very well -- is to produce ethanol-based fuels. And while a more renewable alternative to gasoline is indeed long overdue, ethanol is poised to make a major dent in the country's water supplies.
It seems so far only Illinois and Iowa scientists are concerned, and, ironically, that's where most all of the plants are located.
I would venture to say that many more people would be complaining if a new ethanol plant showed up in their neighborhood and started tapping the local water systems to the tune of millions of gallons a day.
You may also be surprised to learn that another manufacturing process -- and this one not nearly as worthwhile as ethanol -- has been using 800,000 to 1.5 million liters of water daily and running wells dry in southern India. The culprit this time? Coca-Cola's soft drink bottling plants.
Perhaps, a safer, healthier solution for our environment, when it comes to renewable fuel sources at least, is building cars with hybrid engines that burn tiny amounts of water.