Des Moines Register, IA
07-01-07
Brasher: Report says ethanol may fuel dead zone
WASHINGTON FARM REPORT
Clean Gulf of Mexico needs bigger cuts in nitrogen fertilizer use, report says
By PHILIP BRASHER
REGISTER WASHINGTON BUREAU
Washington, D.C. - Shrinking that dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico will be much
more costly than first thought.
A group of scientists that looked at the problem during the Clinton administration
targeted agricultural runoff in the Midwest as the main source of the problem and
called for a 30 percent reduction in the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Gulf.
A new panel of scientists believes it's going to take a far bigger reduction in
nitrogen than that, on the order of 45 percent, according to a draft report.
And even that is not going to be enough. The scientists say that a second
chemical, phosphorus, which comes from city sewage systems as well as farms,
also needs to be reduced. By 40 percent.
Moreover, the report says that biofuels will likely make the problem worse,
because of the increase in corn acreage and use of nitrogen fertilizer needed to
keep with the demand for ethanol.
Encouraging more production of corn-based ethanol, in fact, "could nullify other
efforts" to reduce the dead zone, the scientists say.
"They're calling for a larger reduction (in pollutants) at the same time that the
rush to corn-based ethanol is moving in the other direction," said Don Scavia, a
University of Michigan scientist who served on the original advisory board that
completed its work in 2000.
The report calls for a wholesale overhaul of agricultural programs, away from
crop subsidies and into conservation measures that will reduce runoff.
The Gulf's dead zone is an oxygen-deprived area, nearly devoid of shrimp, fish
and other sea life, that appears every summer. It varies in size from 3,000 to
more than 7,700 square miles, an area approaching the size of New Jersey. The
oxygen loss occurs when high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus cause
excessive algae.
The government's goal is to reduce the average size of the dead zone to 2,000
square miles by 2015.
Farm groups had hoped that the latest scientific review would down play down
the role of nitrogen in causing the dead zone and instead pin the issue on
phosphorus. Instead, the study showed that both chemicals would have to be
addressed, and raised the new concerns about biofuels. By one estimate in the
report, the expanded corn acreage needed to support the ethanol industry could
increase nitrogen runoff by 33 percent.
An energy bill passed by the Senate in June would require refiners to more than
double their use of ethanol by 2015.
The scientists' report is due to the Environmental Protection Agency this fall.
After that, a task force comprising federal and state officials, including Iowa
Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey, will issue an action plan.
Iowa and other states will then be expected to come up with ways to meet the
reduction goals.
And now it's not just farms that could be affected. Cities and towns along streams
that drain into the Mississippi River could be forced to remove more phosphorus.
"It simply raises the bar of where we need to try to go. There will be new
resources needed to do that," said Dean Lemke, water resource bureau chief for
the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.
The final recommendations may be finished too late to bear on either the farm or
energy bills that Congress is writing this year. But if lawmakers were to heed the
draft report, they might rethink their direction on both scores.
The cost of significantly reducing farm runoff in Iowa alone would be high - more
than $600 million a year, according to Iowa State University economists who
are studying the issue for state farm organizations. That's roughly as much as the
entire state of Kansas received in federal farm payments last year and half of
Iowa's total.
"Policymakers need to have these kinds of numbers in front of them and right
now they don't have them," said Rick Robinson, who follows environmental
issues for the Iowa Farm Bureau.
"We're going to have to make choices. Where does the money come from? Does
it come from education? Does it come from public safety? Does it come from
health care?"
What's clear from the report is that the price tag for repairing the damage to the
Gulf isn't going down.