Proposed ethanol plants not welcome some places

Many small towns across the nation's Farm Belt have spent the past few years trying to lure ethanol plants to their communities. While the plants can bring jobs and other economic development, they can bring some odd smells and other nuisances. Because of such drawbacks, some rural communities don't want the plants anywhere near their homes, reports The New York Times.

"In Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and even Iowa, the nation’s largest corn and ethanol producer, this next-generation fuel finds itself facing the oldest of hurdles: opposition from residents who love the idea of an ethanol distillery so long as it is someplace else," Monica Davey reports from Sparta, Wisc. In the town of 9,000 near the Minnesota border, residents have opposed plans for a Coulee Area Renewable Energy plant. Months earlier, city officials had approached the company about bringing a plant to the town at a site across the water from a park, in photo by Andy Manis for the Times. Now, residents are "worried that its emissions would taint the milk-based products made at nearby Century Foods International, one of the community’s biggest employers," Davey writes. "They even argued over whether the plant would reek like burned molasses or blackened popcorn or fermenting beer."

More than 700 Sparta residents signed a petition asking for a referendum on the ethanol plant, but the City Council voted against it, report the local weekly newspapers, the Monroe County Democrat and The Sparta Herald. Two residents filed a lawsuit asking for an injunction to halt any action on the plant, but the suit was dropped last month when lawyers for the residents, the city and Coulee Area Renewable Energy reached an agreement — a tentative one that no side cared to explain, the Herald reports. In addition to the protests in Sparta, Davey reports, "At least three proposed plants have halted construction recently, industry officials said, including one in Reynolds, Ind." That's the same town that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels nicknamed BioTown U.S.A. (Read more)